Accidents happen, but would you ever intentionally have a child out of wedlock, more commonly known as a bastard? It’s a shame that linguistic blame for the situation is lain on the innocent child, when “bastard” would probably a better term for a father who leaves a pregnant woman, or a woman who decieves a man (it’s ok, I can’t get pregnant).
I wouldn’t intentionally raise a baby on my own.
I’m female and I often get the urge to be maternal, to care and baby something/someone… but I have been able to appease that feeling by volunteer work with seniors or simply making a craft or doing something special for a friend.
It’s not that I don’t think single parents can’t do a great job raising children (no doubt, some are better at it than a 2 parent household) It’s just at 25, I can’t fathom have a life long responsibility now.
The concept of illegitimacy doesn’t hold the same stigma that it did in the past. Single mothers and single parenthood are accepted in American culture, and most of us don’t think twice about it.
Here are some stats from the CDC about babies born out of wedlock.
Robin
Yep.
One of my girlfriends is a single mom.
She is very well off (as in paid cash for a Lexus SUV and owns a stable business she can pay other people to run for her).
She wanted a baby badly
She’d reached her mid 30s
She decided it was better to be a single mom, than marry some guy just so he could play Daddy.
I know other single moms. They are single cause they married some guy to be Daddy and it didn’t work out.
And other women who might as well be single moms. One of my friends husbands travels Sunday night to Friday evening, every week.
Seems to me that you are better off going into the single mom thing intentionally.
Now, I myself am barely cut out for mothering my two with lots of help - personally, I’d be insane to intentionally try single motherhood.
But if you have the financial, emotional, and social resources for it, I don’t see what the problem is.
BTW, you might want to back off on throwing the words “bastard” and “illegitimate” around. My son’s birthmom was unmarried. Your OP would have been better off just talking about if its ok for a single woman to intentionally have a child out of wedlock than to throw in those loaded words. Even the Catholic church has backed off on those.
Second that, about things having changed, and using the buzzwords “bastard” and “illegitimate”. I know a perfectly nice Christian twenty-something who is not married to the father of her three children, and nobody in church seems to have a problem with that, at least not publicly. Nobody has called for her ostracism, or that she get up in front of the church and confess her “sin”. She grew up in the church, and folks just seem to accept the fact that she has these three children, and they’re a part of the church family whether or not their mommy was married to their daddy.
And this could reasonably be described as a “Fundie” church, too.
What Robin said–the concept of “illegitimacy” is starting to lose a lot of its stigma.
Can we blame Murphy Brown for that? 
Virgowitch, my son is a bastard. His father and I didn’t marry. We broke up. I raised him myself until I met my current husband (who was my brother-in-law).
Wanna make somethin’ of it?:dubious:
At least in terms of Social Security law, and the state law I have seen it reference, the terms legitimate, illegitimate, and bastard are rarely - if ever - used. Has little - if any - bearing on the kid’s legal rights with respect to the parents, or the parent’s legal responsibilities.
Right. In fact I live in one jurisdiction where since 1948 there is legally NO such thing as “bastardy” or “illegitimacy”. Before the law here, a child is a child is a child, and there is fullness of rights and obligations irrespective of parental marital status. No special notations anywhere.
I just used the “B” word in keeping with the mean-spirited OP. I got into it with my dad about this very issue. He seemed to think there was no insult or demeaning attached to the word (he’s in his 70s). I told him I never heard it used as merely a descriptive word, but only as a hurtful word. It has no place in today’s society.
Ain’t no such thing as an “illegitimate child” – just illegitimate parents! 
FWIW, the term bastard as applied derogatorily to a vengeful, forceful individual with whom one comes in conflict results from the medieval observation that the bastards (in the technical legal sense) of noblemen tended to be bitter about their disinheritance from their father’s name and estates and to evince the kind of attitude of the modern-day individual put down as “a real bastard” in an effort to pull themselves up to the role that they would have enjoyed in society if they had been his legitimate heirs. (Minor linguistic hijack, I know, but I thought the information was interesting.)
America today, at least in the areas I’ve known well enough to speak about, seems to be far more accepting of a single mother and her children, not judging how she came to be both a mother and single. The absent father, however, is castigated unless he at minimum provides child support and, ideally, handles the role-model job on at least an occasional basis.
It looks like statistics for 2k show about a third of children are illegitimate. I suspect by now that may be higher. My family still uses the term “bastard” to mean a child born out of wedlock, and it still carries the same social stigma it always has, which might explain why the other two thirds of children are not born out of wedlock, regardless of all the social PC spin doctors. I wonder how many of these children grow up to have different opinions about the choice that their parents made for them. They will certainly hold their parents responsible. “Mommy, why weren’t grandma and grandpa married?” “Well, they were born during a time when people had different ideas about honor and marriage.” If a man has a child by his wife, and one by an adulterous affair, which one do you think is likely to inherit? It’s never the child’s fault of course, but they do become aware of the circumstances of their birth, and I doubt that all of them are grateful and proud of their parents choice. For my family, it is still an issue of honor.
He might have something of a point. In years past “bastard” was used (correctly) as a more specifically descriptive term for out of wedlock male children than a purely pejorative term. In conversations between male relatives when I was a child I heard the term “bastard” used in this descriptive, matter of fact context discussing another relatives out of wedlock child with no animus attached.
I don’t doubt that it was used that way in the past, but it isn’t used that way anymore. Nigger used to be used as a descriptive word, too. Now it only has a hateful association.
It was the worst fight we ever had. And he really likes my kid, too! He’s not exactly a kid anymore, at 26.
The stigma has indeed been eroding over time.
When the old Underdog cartoon was popular in the 60s, for example, no one ever complained about his arch enemy Simon Bar Sinister.
Guess you didn’t choose to read JR’s and my posts. Let me know if you simply need us to use simpler words.
I don’t really see any debate here.
Or are you contending that we should agree upon some insulting name to apply to fornicators and adulterers?
If you’d like to start a thread defending adultery, go ahead. However, I am quite the fornicator myself and have no problem with that. I pose the debate on illegitimate children to the international community, not just one region. I’m interested in social climates, not local laws,:wally
Virgowitch, your honor isn’t worth a hill of beans if you stigmatize people with your choice of words. It’s mean and pompous and out of touch.
It does not matter whether the parents are married or not. The child is just a child.
You’ve been asked nicely to back off on the word bastard. I don’t care if it is used in your family, it is not a nice way to refer to a child. My grandfather referred to a certain type of person as a “kike” and amongst some people in my family being Jewish carries a certain stigma - doesn’t make it polite conversation (and it isn’t something I brag about). You really don’t want to be Pitted for your attitude before you get to 20 posts.
And, IMNAM, but insults such as putz are not permitted in GD.
Now, gods, stand up for bastards! King Lear: I, ii
With them a bastard of the king’s deceased, King John: II, i
To say if that the bastard boys of york King Henry VI, part II: V, i
To save this bastard’s life,–for 'tis a bastard, The Winter’s Tale: II, iii
That thou thyself was born in bastardy; King Henry VI, part II: III, ii
bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men. Coriolanus: IV, v
As 'tis said, the bastard son of gloucester. King Lear: IV, vii
And not these bastard bretons; whom our fathers King Richard III: V, iii
And a bastard, and a knave, and a rascal. what ish <http://www.rhymezone.com/a.gif> King Henry V: III, ii
Your tongue, though but bastards and syllables <http://www.rhymezone.com/a.gif> Coriolanus: III, ii
You had a bastard by polixenes, <http://www.rhymezone.com/a.gif> The Winter’s Tale: III, ii
You any good; and that is but a kind of bastard <http://www.rhymezone.com/a.gif> Merchant of Venice: III, v
Within joan la pucelle, charles, bastard of orleans, <http://www.rhymezone.com/a.gif> King Henry VI, part I: III, ii
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base? <http://www.rhymezone.com/a.gif> King Lear: I, ii
There are over 90 uses of the term in Shakespeare. Shakespeare is very much a living part of my heritage. Disagreeing on an issue does not make it a non-issue, as some would like to imagine. At least the word “whoreson” has fallen out of use, as I am sure that this one would be offensive to the son’s of prostitutes, nothing being more insulting than calling a thing what it is;)
