Those around before "single mothers" were commonplace: Did you ever know an "unwed mother"?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Yeah, a girl I was in school with got pregnant at 13. She and the boy married. She didn’t return to our school until junior year in high school. She became a cheerleader and was homecoming princess in senior year. She was smart, and they had lots of family support.

I was a bit surprised at my 20th reunion to see they were still together. They’d both finished college and had a couple more kids a few years later.

Sometimes it works.

Edited to add: the year she got pregnant would have been '66 or '67.

22

When my grandmother was in her dotage and in a nursing home, it was difficult to get her to talk coherently about anything current, but she was fine about things that happened fifty years ago. Unfortunately, she had no filter, and did not consider that she was talking to her grandson. I learned lots of things about her side of the family that I did not necessarily need to hear. Being pregnant outside of wedlock wasn’t even the worst of it.

And my first girlfriend was being raised by her grandmother. That would have been around 1968 or 1969, and was still considered scandalous. Only one pregnancy in my high school class that I am aware of. She raised the baby on her own, also with her family’s help (her father had died). Don’t know what became of any of them.

Regards,
Shodan

23

Oh my goodness yes. I graduated from a Catholic girls’ high school in 1966. Getting pregnant before/without marriage was THE worst thing that could happen to a girl. The boy? He wasn’t in as much trouble as she was. After all, it was a girl’s job to say NO and keep her knees firmly together. Marriage was required and if no marriage then the baby was given up for adoption. No ifs ands or buts.

I know a story [names redacted]… a woman a few years older than me told me about 15 years ago. She went to New York City after high school–early 1960s-- got a job, went to a party and met an up and coming songwriter/poet a bit older than she. They had a two-week relationship and she got pregnant. She told him, but he wasn’t interested. Turns out he had several such children scattered around and he wasn’t interested in them either. Her parents sent her to a home for unwed mothers and she gave the baby up for adoption. The father went on to become a living legend and a household name, a name you would absolutely recognize. Decades after this happened my friend searched out the child, a boy-- now a man-- and formed a relationship with him. Then they had some kind of falling-out and lost touch. The end.

So yes, I’ve known an “unwed mother.”

What I can’t figure out is how the stigma of having a baby before/without marriage has completely vanished in mainstream society in only a couple of generations. :confused:

24

I was pregnant at 16.
Was in a home for unwed mothers for a few months.
Then surrendered my child for adoption.

25

A girl in the grade above me had a baby in middle school. She “went away” for a semester, and no one really spoke of it.

This was in the mid-1980s.

26

My mother was 15 when she got pregnant with my oldest sibling. That was in the '50s. She went on to get married to my father and have 6 kids with him. They divorced and she hooked up with my step-dad. She had a kid with him, fought all the time, then they got divorced. Common law marriage was still a thing in Iowa in the '70s. She ended up staying with him until he passed away.

As for the oldest sibling’s father there were stories of “he went away to the war and died in combat”. Which war was never specified but I guess it was the Korean War. I’m sure at some point my mother told that sibling more information but they have never shared that with the rest of us.

27

In the late 70’s, I took a summer English class and one of my classmates was taking the class so she could graduate early. She was an A student and said that she didn’t want to have to go through her senior year during her pregnancy. She never talked about getting married or who the father was.

28

Let the guessing begin!

29

Given the timing, and the term “songwriter/poet,” I might suspect that his name would rhyme with Rob Nylan. :slight_smile:

30

I thought Reonard Nohan

31

Sorry, guess until you turn blue, but I’m not sayin’.

32

Reading “Nohan”'s entry on Wikipedia, it sounds like he wasn’t in New York at that time. He’d been there for a while in the mid '50s, going to school at Columbia, before returning to Montreal.

33

Oh, I wouldn’t expect you to. Just idle speculation.

34

I worked with a man in the 80’s who’s grandmother told them they were in for a surprise when they finalized her affairs. The only surprise they found was that there was no marriage on record…

35

Because in the 1960’s women got more rights, and pointed out the total hypocrisy of blaming only the woman for getting pregnant. It takes two, you know. Yet women were sluts and men were studs. Go figure.

Several pregnant single women started suing the employers who fired them, and men started getting involved in child rearing, with or without marriage. The term “unwed mother” became “single mother” and “single father.”

36

In the early 1960s, my mother was an airline stewardess. At that time, the airlines had policies which let them fire stewardesses for getting pregnant (and for getting married, as well).

While my mother left the industry when she got married, several of her roommates (who were also stewardesses) were involved in the lawsuits against the airline industry to get those policies thrown out; they wound up becoming career flight attendants, even through marriage and motherhood.

37

My mother, although a political conservative, was a very liberal thinker when it came to women’s rights in the 60’s and 70’s. She provided haven for a couple single women who needed help for the final parts of their pregnancies. This included my aunt who was a respected single career woman in a small New England town. She lived with her mother until her death. Somewhere out there I have a long lost cousin who was given up for adoption at birth.

My mother was a free spirit who joined the Air Force and left home, shocking behavior in her mother’s eyes. She herself got pregnant and had to quit the military (to the day she died she could never get over seeing pregnant military officers - they weren’t allowed in her day). Because she then married my father, also an Air Force officer, she lived away from her home town so our house was a safe haven from the gossip of the nosy neighbors in town, and my mother just happened to be an obstetrics nurse.

My mother was also the only one in her family to show support for a cousin of hers who fell in love and got pregnant with a black man. Except for my mother her entire uptight New England family disowned her for such a disgraceful thing! (They did get married, but I don’t know if that wasn’t just as bad in her family’s eyes.)

38

I guess I should add my contribution to the discussion. I was born in 1963 when my mom was 19. She was very open to the fact that she and my dad had a civil marriage first and then had a Catholic wedding to satisfy the religious members of mom’s family. It wasn’t until I was a teenager, reading through the baby books that mom kept for me and my brother (fantastic nostalgia!) and saw that in one of the books (mine, I think) she had written in the date of their marriage, a year before my birth. And then crossed it out and wrote another marriage date about two months before my birth. That was when I realized they had a “shotgun” wedding. Because of me.

I have always liked having such a young mother. I remember when I was around 6, she would put her hair in ponytails and lip-sync to a 48-rpm record of “Hold your Head Up” (by Argent) played on 78-rpm. Later, we shared a love of rock and roll, and she was always a liberal/progressive and very supportive parent.

Also my aunt, mom’s youngest sister, got pregnant in high school. I was about 5 or 6 at the time, and remember her being huge and living with us for a few months. I was too young to understand any conversation around her situation but she seemed to move out on her own after my cousin Todd was born, and was a single mother for many years before she finally married a nice man. I don’t remember anybody saying anything critical of her, though. She was family, that’s all.

39

There was a old man whose wife of many, many years had died, and whose 3 sons rarely visited unless they needed money, but it was his 80th birthday, and he got word to them that he really hoped they could come over for dinner on his big day.

His first son arrived and said, “Hi Dad, Happy Birthday, I wanted to get you something, but I have been really busy lately, but I know you understand.” and then helped himself to a beer from his Dad’s fridge.

The next son comes in and says, “Happy Birthday, Pop, I went to the store and picked you up a bottle a few nights ago, but I ended up drinking it myself, but I know you get that it is the thought that counts, right?” and then sat down and started fixing himself a sandwich.

The youngest son gets there last, and says “Dad, good to see you, I meant to buy you a gift for your birthday, but I have been chasing after this hot 19 year-old stripper, and all of my money has been going to her, if you know what I mean, but I know you don’t mind!” and then starts helping himself to the spread on the table.

So the old man stands up and says, “Boys, there is something I need to tell you, I have been waiting until you were old enough, and it is long past time. You see, your mother, God rest her soul, and I, well, we never got officially, legally married in all those years, we were going to, but somehow, we just never got around to it.”

His shocked sons, in unison, manage to splutter out, “You and Mom weren’t married?!? Does that mean, we’re, we’re, B…?”

“Yep, and damn cheap ones, to boot!”

40

2 high school girl friends disappeared after finding they were pregnant. As we had been friends, their parents asked me what I knew, which of course, was nothing. IDK if they ever turned up. Fear of parents, so sad, this was the very early 70’s.