Illegitimacy

Unsurprisingly I have been advised against using the term "illegitimacy". It is a word I've struggled with before (and been advised against using before).

But the following passage made me think again so I'll quote it (also from The Bell Curve.)

We use the older term "illegitimacy" in favour of the phrases currently in favour, "out-of-wedlock births" or "births to single women", because we think that, in the long run, the word illegitimacy will prove to be the right one. We are instructed in this by the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. In his research early in the century, Malinowski observed a constant running throughout the rich diversity of human cultures and indeed throughout history. He decided that this amounted to "a universal sociological law" and called it the "principle of illegitimacy". No matter what the culture might be, "there runs the rule that the father is indispensable for the full sociological status of a child as well as of the mother, that the group consisting of a woman and her offspring is sociologically incomplete and illegitimate." The rule applies to east or West, primitive cultures or advanced ones, cultures where premarital sex was accepted or banned, where children were considered as asset or a burden, where fathers could have one wife or many.

I agree that the religious connotations of the word, that a child is born of sin, is a "vile concept". (So is the idea of children being born into sin which is why I refused to have mine baptised.)

So I could use another word for the sake of diplomacy and not causing injury to the feelings of single parents and their children but then I would be doing exactly what has got us into this unhappy state of affairs; saying that it is completely legitimate for single women to have babies with no care for whether the father will support her or her child emotionally or financially.

I need to make one more point. It is none of my business if a woman wants to do motherhood alone and can do so independently. But she is the exception to the rule. The majority of single mums having babies alone go on welfare.