I don't know how common the terms "bastard" and "illegitimate" are any longer referring to children (well, specifically those deemed "boy" at birth I suppose) but a radio story today prompted my wonder.
I wonder 'cause I'm a bastard, classically speaking: born to an unwed mother (gasp!) way back at the end of the 1960s when it was still something that was deemed "not done" by a good swath of society. I got a paternal last name (long since changed) and my mother also adopted that last name "just in case" she and my father should get married--hint hint (which event not only never happened, I never knew the man at all).
But "bastard?" "Illegitimate" child? Why these terms, why that thinking? Who or what does this serve? By saying "illegitimate," does that indicate that I'm not really a person? Am I not human? I haven't needed to be attended to by doctors all that often, but there never seemed to be a question concerning my humanity, my person-hood: I have all the necessary ID that the state recognizes, so why those terms?
Could they be (or have been) markers about my supposed "fitting" into society? A proscription--that only children born within a marriage--to hew someone into an "acceptable" norm? Like gender markers (or whatever) it would appear that I was meant to have a given role that was pre-ordained--or be left out of something that my culture deemed "good." What that "good" might have been I can't say--I don't think I've ever suffered any real consequences for my "bastardy." Good thing I'm not angling to be a royal.
As noted, I don't know if anyone pays any attention to whether someone is "illegitimate" or not any more, except when there are legal questions around inheritance, maybe--which is not something that's likely to be a problem for me, nor for a great number of other people I'd guess. If that particular couching of someone as being outside some norm has gone by the way (if it has, as I could hope it has for the majority), then it stands that other old norms can also be dispensed with.
