There was significant stigma around unmarried motherhood in the mid-twentieth century. However, having a child
out of wedlock was not always looked upon so poorly; it is only as
social, moral, and economic attitudes changed that women who found
themselves unmarried and pregnant became stigmatized. To understand how
the mid-1960s came to become the peak period for adoption in the UK (as
well as other countries), and the stigma that drove this apex of
adoption, we must first understand a bit of the history affecting
attitudes towards illegitimacy.
‘Concerning bastards begotten and born out of lawful matrimony (an
offence against God’s and Man’s laws) the said bastards being now left
to be kept at the charge of the parish where they were born, to be the
great burden of the same parish and in defrauding of the relief of the
impotent and aged true poor of the same Parish, and to the evil example
and the encouragement of the lewd life, it is ordered and enacted.’