The Death of Illegitimacy

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Archive on 4: The Death of Illegitimacy

BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4, The Death of Illegitimacy

Has the stigma of illegitimacy died out? Former MP Caroline Flint finds out.

4 Extra Debut. Ex-MP Caroline Flint, the daughter of a teenage single mother, explores if the stigma of illegitimacy has died out? From 2018.

Illegitimacy once meant you were a 'bastard'. 

MP Caroline Flint wants to know what the word 'illegitimate' means now.

Caroline has always been open about her unmarried Mum having her when she was 17 and that she had her first son before she got married. Caroline describes her own family's story as a Catherine Cookson novel. There are suspicions that her widowed great-grandmother had an illegitimate child. Her grandmother's older sister had an illegitimate child during the First World War with an American soldier who was brought up as though his mother was his sister. 

She explores the archives to find out if the stigma has died out with social historian Jane Robinson and discusses the issue with best-selling crime author Martina Cole and MP Jess Phillips. 

Martina, who is also an ambassador for the single parent families' charity Gingerbread, became a single parent by choice when she was 18 and then again 20 years later. Jess conceived her son when she was 22 and had been with her boyfriend for barely a month. 

Is the biggest deal today not whether a child is illegitimate but whether she bears her father's surname? 

Has the cloak of illegitimacy really fallen because daddy is willing to say publicly: she's mine?

Producer: Lissa Cook

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2018.

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