What do you tell your oldest kid, if you "had" to get married?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Not asking for myself-- asking as a purely academic question, prompted at this moment, because the episode of Young Sheldon where Georgie finds out his mother was already pregnant when she and his father married just ran on Nick.

However, not asking just because of the show. While I don’t have highly personal experience with this, I did have a friend in high school who, at age 15, did the math with her parents wedding date and her birthday, and totally freaked out (this would have been circa 1981, so they would have married when abortion was illegal almost everywhere in the US). I mean, really freaked. She was born 6 months after her parents’ wedding, and was nearly 8lbs.

Then, I had a friend when I was in my 30s, and she was in her 20s, decide to get married, mainly because she was pregnant, although I think the couple would eventually have married anyway. This was already around 2000, so an awful lot of babies were being born to unmarried couples, and I doubt this baby was due for a freak-out in 15 years; however, my friend was feeling a bit of a dilemma wondering when and how she would tell her kid about this.

I said it should probably be like the way people dealt with adoption now-- now being since about 1980-- which is, never making it a secret in the first place. That is, talk about her wedding, and finding out that she was pregnant in the order that they happened without any vagueness. Showing the kid wedding pictures from the earliest age one would normally do so, and telling her she (she already knew it was a girl) was in the pictures even if she couldn’t be seen, that sort of thing. I also said to be totally honest with her daughter regarding her feelings about a “surprise” pregnancy, the good ones, and the bad ones, although use appropriate vocabulary when her daughter was little, and don’t answer questions she hasn’t asked.

Having given that advice rather glibly, with my only real experience being my one friend 20 years earlier, I’m wondering, seeing the subject come up while watching this show, how “on” my advice was. I think it was probably better than what my high school friend’s parents did, which was “try to keep it a secret forever, and hope the kid is really bad at math,” but was it the best thing to do? and if not, what could have been better?

I realize I’m asking a very personal question, so maybe people don’t want to share. If anyone wants to disguise their own story as a friend’s or relative’s, it wouldn’t bother me. Also, if anyone has a “friend” story, like the one I have about my friend in high school, I’d be happy to hear that.

The 20-something I gave advice to, took it, and her daughter was doing great as of the last time I babysat her when she was about seven, but she moved, and I moved, and we were out of touch for several years. Now we are Facebook friends, and I know her daughter is pretty successful, and the mother is still married, with two subsequent children, but I don’t know with absolute certainty that her daughter was totally unscathed.

So, anyone have more personal experience to share? And what advice would you have given?

2

I was born 7 months after my parents were married. I didn’t know this until I was almost an adult not long after my parents divorced. Until then, I had no idea what date my parents’ anniversary fell on or even the year they got married and I was never curious enough to ask. I wonder if never openly celebrating their anniversary was for my benefit.

3

That’s interesting. My parents never celebrated their anniversary either, not even their 25th, but I know when it was, because they had their ketubah framed and hanging (it had the Jewish and secular dates), which nearly every Jewish couple does. They were married four years before I was born, if anyone cares. Oh, and I’m the older of two.

I guess it would be harder for a Jewish couple to keep things quiet. If they didn’t display their ketubah, that in itself would be odd.

4

Is that even a thing anymore? I can see people getting freaked out in the 1970s but now?

Japanese even has a term for marriages because of pregnancy, “dekikon” from “dekita” (was made) and “kekkon” (marriage). Apparently this is is an “old” term

From wiki:
In Japan, the slang term Dekichatta kekkon (出来ちゃった結婚), or Dekikon (デキコン) for short, emerged in the late 1990s. The term can literally be translated as “oops-we-did-it-marriage,” implying an [unintended pregnancy]
(Unintended pregnancy - Wikipedia).
The prevalence and celebrity profile of dekichatta-kon has inspired Japan’s wedding industry to introduce an even more benign phrase, sazukari-kon (授かり婚, blessed wedding).
“sazukaru” is a very to be to be blessed with a baby, although the use of that term is optional for sleep deprived new parents.

On a recent trip to the states, I found out from my cousin that our great aunt and her new husband apparently quickly moved to Las Vegas after their wedding. They did have their first child a proper nine months later but wouldn’t let anyone come down and visit for well over a year.

In those days documentation wasn’t required for starting school, so the differences between the son’s actual birthday and the one he had been using only came out after he was an adult,. He continued to “protect” his mother’s honor up until his death but his wife had the correct date written on the tombstone.

That apparently was too much for the mother and she never forgave her daughter-in-law.

5

My friend asked for advice almost 20 years ago, not yesterday. It’s probably not a thing, except maybe in some religious circles, but I guess it still was 20 years ago. Or maybe she was not so much concerned about her daughter feeling like a “mistake,” as her daughter thinking that her parents’ marriage was some kind of sham.

I wasn’t so much asking how the advice would play out today-- if someone asked me in 2021, I’d probably reply that no one cares about that anymore-- I was more wondering how my advice was. Maybe it was bad advice because even 20 years ago, I should have said “Just don’t worry about it.”

6

I’ve heard that if a couple waits until they marry to have sex, god will reward them with a shorter first pregnancy.

7

Wow. I guess this one couple I know really waited, and got rewarded with a 3-month-old.

8

What takes nine months for cow or countess, an eager young bride oft accomplishes in six.

Which I thought was an old saying, but Google doesn’t seen to have ever heard of it.

9

I found out that my dad’s oldest sister “had to get married” - this would have been in the 40s. I also found out that her husband of many years was not the father of her daughter. Perhaps not coincidentally, she’s the sibling who moved the farthest away from the family.

I don’t know what, if anything, she told her daughter, but when my mom told me about it all, I knew it wasn’t to be spoken of again. They’re all dead now, so it’s not likely to come up anyway. The only thing that was disturbing to me was imagining my old aunt doing the deed, :open_mouth: and I do kind of wonder how it is she ended up married to her husband. They never seemed particularly in love.

10

I’ve got no direct or indirect personal experience with this situation. So here come some WAGs. …

Still trying to get my arms around the timeline here. Around year 2000 the OP gave advice to a 20-something pregnant woman about what to tell her then-fetus later as that child grew up. So the questions, etc., from the kid would have begun somewhere around 2005 & the kid is now 20-ish herself.

Assuming that’s right, I think the OP handled it just about perfectly for how society has evolved. Good crystal ball gazing there. If the mom, or our society, had gone all fundamentalist along the way, then advising her to hide the “shameful secret” would have been better (or at least more socially acceptable) advice.

I’m glad our society is driving away from the need or want to hide all the variety of “shameful secrets” life throws up to us.

Wait a couple days and it will. Thanks to you. :wink:

I can’t say I’ve heard it, but it’s well-wrought enough to be a classic.

11

I seem to remember Robert Heinlein using that line, perhaps in one of his Lazarus Long novels.

12

I realized at my grandparents’ 50th anniversary that my grandmother was pregnant when they got married, as my mom’s 50th was only 5 months later.

No idea when my mom figured it out, but I expect it wasn’t discussed too much.

As my grandparents got married and stayed together I think the actual timing of the pregnancy became less of an issue.

I only found out recently that my mom’s cousin got married so early (6 months before high school graduation) because she thought she was pregnant. Didn’t give birth until almost 2 years later so she was either never pregnant or had a very early miscarriage. I think she doesn’t even know. They just celebrated 60 years together.

13

I was born seven months after my parents married in 1966. So? My mother always said “we were already engaged, the only person who was upset was your grandmother (my father’s mother) who was more upset that she didn’t know when the wedding happened and then felt foolish.” (Par for the course for that grandmother, everything was about her and how it reflected on her).

My mother’s youngest brother married his pregnant girlfriend right out of college - that was a rushed wedding - but…engagements tend to be lengthy things. And if there is some shame to “had” to get married (i.e. weren’t engaged when the pregnancy happened) and its necessary to save face due to cultural constraints, secret engagements are a thing and can be blamed on the disapproval of a dead relative. My aunt and uncles story has always been “we intended to get married, maybe not that soon.”

14

In the 1970s I had a friend whose birthday (he was born in 1948) was only 5 or 6 months after his parents’ anniversary. I casually asked him if his parents ever talked to him about the fact they “had to get married.”

Remarkably, it had never dawned on him that he was conceived out of wedlock. My question shocked him, as he thought about it and realized a truth that had somehow escaped him despite being right in front of him all his life.

We never talked about it again, but his parents’ marriage was unhappy (at least as described to me by my friend; I never met them) and I know he felt very sorry for his mother, who he felt was emotionally mistreated by his father. I got the sense he felt a bit distressed to realize his conception was what prompted the marriage.

From that one sample (and possibly some other family situations I was aware of in the 1970s but never discussed with the involved parties), I’d guess that the main strategy was “say nothing and pretend it didn’t happen that way. With luck, no one will put two and two together. If they do, they won’t say anything and will maintain the polite fiction/default assumption that the pregnancy occurred following the marriage.”

15

To Sail Beyond the Sunset, the biography of Lazarus’ mother Maureen. It was traditional in the Howard families for the woman to get pregnant before marriage since it made no since to get married to a fellow “Howard” if you weren’t fertile.

16

I think @CairoCarol nailed it.

I said earlier I have no indirect experience. Her tale reminded me that that’s wrong. My Dad (born in 1930) was the trigger for his parents = my grandparents forced marriage. I never knew anything about the dates, and GP & GM were old enough when Dad was born that I always assumed GP & GM were married.

As a teen I asked Dad to tell me all about his early life. So we spent a couple hours with him telling his whole bio up until I was old enough to remember being in it. Which included him sharing the fact his parents had gotten married because of him being imminent. I recall that “revelation” was pretty much “Hm. OK. Who cares?” to me. And he seemed totally matter of fact about it … then. I never found out how he learned about it or what he thought / felt when he did.

Dad and I never spoke of it again. I don’t even know if my brothers know. Not that I (or he when he was alive) thought of it as shameful. Just that it’s not a topic that naturally comes up. Which is exactly how I managed to not remember it in my earlier post. Out of sight, out of mind for 40+ years.

17

I’d tell him “Grandpa had a shotgun.”

Does this matter anymore? Did it ever? Marriage is retroactive in these circumstances.

18

In this day and age it should be treated as a non issue. If a kid does the math and asks just say “yes, we were expecting you when we married.”

If E asks “why didn’t you mention it before?” The answer is “there’s nothing to mention. It didn’t matter then and it doesn’t matter now.”

19

Well said, my opinion on this has always been that the few months of unwedded pregnancy pale into insignificance compared to the treatment you’ve been given in the years since.

20

Slightly related to the topic, if you squint:

My husband and I had a whirlwind beginning - 4 weeks from first date to elopement. A couple weeks after, he met my parents and we told them. (For the record, I was a month shy of 30 at the time and I’d been on my own for 11 years.)

My dad’s first comment when we told them we were married: “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

Our daughter wasn’t born till a year and a half later, so, no, I wasn’t pregnant.