For Millennials, Out-of-Wedlock Childbirth Is the Norm (cost, compared, rating)

[chiluvr1228]

Originally Posted by Scooby Snacks

I'm curious as to where this horrible term "illegitimate child" comes from. Normally I think PC terms don't matter, but in this case I do. The child born to unmarried parents is no less legitimate than a child born to married parents. The term makes the child sound like counterfeit money; a fake child and one who doesn't matter. And the baby certainly has no control over the circumstances of his/her birth. I certainly hope that any parent or grandparent of such a baby never uses that term around them, at least at the age where they can understand what it means.

Anybody see the old movie with Greer Garson called "Blossoms in the Dust"? I believe it was based on a true story of a woman in Texas who was trying to get the term "illegitimate" removed from birth certificates. Good movie if you're into those.

[Scooby Snacks]

Originally Posted by Scooby Snacks

I'm curious as to where this horrible term "illegitimate child" comes from. Normally I think PC terms don't matter, but in this case I do. The child born to unmarried parents is no less legitimate than a child born to married parents. The term makes the child sound like counterfeit money; a fake child and one who doesn't matter. And the baby certainly has no control over the circumstances of his/her birth. I certainly hope that any parent or grandparent of such a baby never uses that term around them, at least at the age where they can understand what it means.

Originally Posted by RMESMH

Yes, the child is. Look up the word ba***rd in the dictionary and read the definitions. What did the child do to deserve having parents who aren't married? Answer...nothing. Doing so is selfish. Your 'horror' is part of a rationalization for a lack of standards.

So you agree with me. A kid born to unmarried parents shouldn't be called illegitimate. Just because an archaic term is still listed in the dictionary doesn't make it appropriate to continue using today.

Originally Posted by Taiko

It comes from the ethic that a person can only "legitimately" engage in sexual activity with their legal spouse. While the term might not be used around the child in some jurisdictions, The Philippines being the one I am intimately aware of the birth certificate has a big red over stamp "ILLEGITIMATE" on it. It is part of the social punishment to their parent for engaging in quasi-illegal sex.

From that nation, with a single parenthood rate of around 38% within the margin of difference of the American rate because of the illegitimate stamp there is/was a "fixer" business to provide clean birth certificates and where "legally married" relatives pretend to be the birth parents. Today there is less stigma since one of the last Marcos acts in the mid 1980s was to add the unmarried father's name to birth certificates. When records started to go to computer databases and not depend upon a hard copy many women found themselves "married" when actually trying to legally marry since if one form had "married" check marked, normally for the child to have a clean birth certificate the computer report turns up hot. And then you have o go to court to either go through a fake annulment, the most often used route or try to prove that somewhere along the line an official's signature was a forgery.

OK. It's still not the child's fault the parents weren't married, so labeling the child as somehow defective is wrong, IMO. I still find it interesting there is some inherent assumption that marriage is insurance against the eventual breakup of the relationship. It is hardly that, as the divorce rate demonstrates. If married couples decide to have children, wonderful, but people shouldn't frown on unmarried couples having kids just because they aren't married. Marriages are certainly not divorce proof nowadays, and it's a lot more complicated to divorce than for an unmarried couple to simply go their separate ways should a relationship not work out.

[Taiko]

Originally Posted by Scooby Snacks

So you agree with me. A kid born to unmarried parents shouldn't be called illegitimate. Just because an archaic term is still listed in the dictionary doesn't make it appropriate to continue using today.



OK. It's still not the child's fault the parents weren't married, so labeling the child as somehow defective is wrong, IMO. I still find it interesting there is some inherent assumption that marriage is insurance against the eventual breakup of the relationship. It is hardly that, as the divorce rate demonstrates. If married couples decide to have children, wonderful, but people shouldn't frown on unmarried couples having kids just because they aren't married. Marriages are certainly not divorce proof nowadays, and it's a lot more complicated to divorce than for an unmarried couple to simply go their separate ways should a relationship not work out.

Where the illegitimate label still exist there tends to be no divorce, the law in the Philippines or the woman can be jailed for having extra marital sex like the Persian Gulf States. The illegitimate stamp mostly came up when the parent would attempt to enroll the child in school meaning she, normally the mother was custody, got the 'punishment. And with no divorce just separations from "the legal spouse" as they use the term and living with boyfriend/girlfriend to start a new family the illegitimatacy rate is so large that it does not bounce back socially on the children,

[censusdata]

The term illegitimate refers to ability to get inheritance when the parents die. My mother in law is a great example. Her dad had 8 kids with his wife and 8 other kids by two side women. When he died the children of the wife got 100% of the inheritance and the 'side kids' got nothing. Her mom was a side woman so not a penny to her.

[Pub-911]

Graph the rise in illegitimacy against the decline in shotgun-marriages. It's not like a few words of pastor mumbo-jumbo ever made anything different or better anyway.

[Taiko]

Originally Posted by censusdata

The term illegitimate refers to ability to get inheritance when the parents die. My mother in law is a great example. Her dad had 8 kids with his wife and 8 other kids by two side women. When he died the children of the wife got 100% of the inheritance and the 'side kids' got nothing. Her mom was a side woman so not a penny to her.

Similarly upon my father in law's death the mistress stepped forward to sieze a quarter of the estate as was allowed for by their laws. I wondered how it works if he had more than three mistresses with children

[Unsettomati]

Originally Posted by Scooby Snacks

I'm curious as to where this horrible term "illegitimate child" comes from. Normally I think PC terms don't matter, but in this case I do. The child born to unmarried parents is no less legitimate than a child born to married parents. The term makes the child sound like counterfeit money; a fake child and one who doesn't matter. And the baby certainly has no control over the circumstances of his/her birth. I certainly hope that any parent or grandparent of such a baby never uses that term around them, at least at the age where they can understand what it means.

Well, that's the working definition of 'political correctness' used by 90% of the people who harp about it: "Modifying speech so as not to offend... unless it offends me!"

The big boogeyman of 'political correctness' is nothing but a speech code with which someone subjectively disagrees - but it is always disingenuously presented as a principled opposition to the very concept of speech codes in general.

Side note:
In the 1990s I worked for West Publishing, the largest legal publisher in the United States. They publish annotated appellate court decisions, and the main mark-up they provide is to identify the specific points of law being adjudicated. These are categorized and sub-categorized. As you can guess, there's a large body of caselaw around children born to unmarried parents. One of the primary categories was listed as such:
CHILDREN BORN OUT OF WEDLOCK [before 1973, see BASTARDS]

West was (and is) being politically correct.

And the next time you, dear reader, refer to the fact that a child's parents are not married and you decline to use the word 'bastard', you are being politically correct.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

[Gunluvver2]

A child should not be punished for the behavior of their parents. Children born out of wedlock have enough problems.

[Steve McDonald]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

The article does not say that out of wedlock childbirth is the norm for Millennials. Here's what it says:

64 percent of mothers gave birth at least once out of wedlock. Almost one-half had all of their children without ever exchanging vows.

The findings echo a separate study from 2012, which found that, among women under 30, more than one-half of all births happened outside of marriage

It says 64% of mothers in the Millennial generation gave birth at least once out of wedlock. That doesn't include all the Millennials who aren't mothers, and are single or in relationships without kids. The article went on to say that among college-educated Millennials, 3/4 married before having kids.

There are many different statistical findings about this subject, as with most issues. But about 4 years ago, for the first time in this country, more than half the male-female couples who lived together, were not legally married. That includes those of all ages. For Millennials, ages 17-37, the percentage is only 25% and among Millennials age 25, only half of that. For the even younger ones and members of the upcoming Last Generation, could we expect that trend to change? The term, "out-of-wedlock" is outdated and can no longer be effectively used as a category for derision.

[GER308]

Marriage is an outdated concept. Kids need loving, caring parents. whether the parents are married or not makes no difference. Marriage is for tax reasons.