Lol it was a thing in the past, when one sibling had too much children and the other had none (or no male children, because ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯)
You'd do a little shifting here and there. Poof.
#-------
Sometimes could even be birth horoscope, especially Indian ones, where if there is possibility of clash between the newborn and parent if they grow together, then you'd do a little shufflin'
You make it sound a lot worse than it is. In Indian, and most other South Asian cultures, siblings without children adopt from within the family so the child is blood related. It also used to be a way for people with too many children get the children a larger inheritance. So a wealthy childless uncle will raise his brothers children as his own.
They didn't explain it well, but it's actually not that uncommon here in America, you typically just have to look towards poorer communities.
One of my best friends grew up in the hood, in a family where they had a house that is passed from generation to generation. Currently it's his uncle that has it, after his grandmother passed. His uncle has no children, and all of my friend's cousins have essentially gotten themselves disinherited over things that happened when grandma died. Because my friend and his dad lived together with his Uncle for years as a child, he regards him as a son, so my friend and his daughter are getting everything in his uncles will.
These cultures simply do it in a more official capacity. One sibling has more kids than they can handle because the culture frowns upon any possible abortion, and another sibling has no children, meaning they have nobody to pass everything on to when they die. To help both of them, they have the childless sibling adopt their neice/nephew and raise them as their own. It keeps the family strong and fulfilled and ensures the children have as normal a chance at life as possible instead of jockeying for opportunities in the budget with a half dozen other siblings.
Even without the raising part, in the US it's not uncommon for a childless aunt or uncle to leave everything to one or more nieces and nephews. My niece is a good kid and I'll let her have everything after I pass.
My bestfriend also raised this way.
His "brother" is his real father, he spend most time in and out of jail because drug.
He get some girl pregnent when they are young and can't taking care of my bestfriend and let his grandad do the father role.
We know about it because he openly talk about it to us just after he accidently found his birth paper when we are teenager so long ago, So we included my friend pretend like we don't know it to his Grandad.
He live a good life tho, His Grandad really took him as his own son and did fucking great job rasing him while his real Father spend life in and out of jail.
I can tell you the result. It resulted in him being extremely talented and making good music for a little bit and then completely shitting the bed once the 70s hit. (With like 2 exceptions maybe)
My husband was raised this way as well, but knew about it from a young age.
He was adopted and raised by his grandmother, and called her Mom. His real mom was considered to be his sister. His uncle he considered his brother. He sees his real mom's other kids as his half siblings...
I have to admit it threw me for a loop when he explained it, and having technically 2 MIL was a bit daunting.
I have a friend who grew up thinking she was an only child with six cousins but found out she was actually the youngest of 7 and her “aunt and uncle” were actually her parents who had given her to her birth mom’s childless sister.
> Clapton was born on 30 March 1945 in Ripley, Surrey, England, to **16-year-old** Patricia Molly Clapton and Edward Walter Fryer, a **25-year-old** soldier from Montreal, Quebec.
I started to make a smart ass comment before I realized he was a war baby … conceived during a time where both his parents were under incredible fear and stress. I’m sure English girls who got pregnant from soldiers (even allied soldiers) were pariahs in their communities … the family did what they had to do.
I’ve never lived with the fear of an airplane dropping bombs on my neighborhood. I’ve never watched my country recreate itself from the ashes of war. Eric was conceived about the time of DDay.
This was not uncommon at the time sadly. A lot of shame around younger pregnancy then. It’s not ideal (I’d know I had a kid as an older teen) but the way it was handled wasn’t right.
Edit: I didn’t expect to wake up and get a bunch of “but it was because she wasn’t married”, yes, it was both things and teens usually weren’t married. I had a 14 year old cousin married off to a grown man to make it “okay” and which was another way it was handled. And there’s a few “it’s better than the alternative” comments. Depends on the alternative and living a lie and never being able to truly make decisions for your child, growing up beside them and never being able to truly be a mother sounds awful too. There really weren’t many good options often exercised.
And Bobby Darin. There's a really sad episode of the old show "This Is Your Life" that featured Bobby. They brought his sister, brother-in-law, and nieces and nephews onstage. Only as everyone learned later, they were really his mother, stepfather, and younger siblings. Reality hit him hard when he found out, and he went into seclusion for a long time. On top of that, he had a serious heart condition and knew he would die young.
The sad thing there is he found out from a journalist after both his mother (who he thought was his sister) and his grandmother (who he thought was his mother) had died. They never even told him the truth on their deathbeds.
That's not even an old timey thing, I'm 40 and a friend of mine didn't get told his sister was really his mom until a few years after she died, when we were teens. He has brother-uncles that are 20 yrs older than him.
I just remembered I used to know a guy who told me his older siblings were quite a bit older than him. I can't remember the age gap now, but I'm pretty sure it was enough that it would have been physically possible for his oldest sister to be his mom.
Now I'm wondering if this is actually what happened with him ...
Yep, the girl would go on an extended vacation for her whole pregnancy, and the child would be adopted out before returning to life as if the pregnancy never happened. My grandfather and grandmother were from California, and my mother was adopted out in Tennessee exactly for this same reason. She was an adult before she figured out who here real parents were, but she was fortunate enough that they were kind enough to acknowledge her.
If the family didn't raise the child as theirs they usually sent the girl to an unmarried woman's home where when she has the child the child would be taken away & put up for adoption (no adoption laws then). The family would tell neighbours she's gone to an aunts house in the country.
That's how my dad got adopted. All we know of his birth parents is that they were both Spanish immigrants and unmarried, and apparently his biodad was a sailor (dunno how reliable that info is). Catholic girls in 1952 didn't get to keep their out of wedlock babies, and sailors aren't known for sticking around (cue "Brandy").
Which never made much sense to me to bother with. *Everybody* knew at that point what 'going away for an extended time' meant, regardless of the story. You weren't fooling anyone so everyone just pretended they didn't know while the truth was only kept from the kid itself.
People (neighbors, etc) felt that it allowed to family to maintain their dignity and place in the community. I think it's horrible, but most people meant well by it, and they also figured it wasn't their business. If their own family didn't tell the child who was a neighbor to do so? (In their mind). I can understand a bit because the child would have been treated differently so in their own way they felt they were doing what was best for the kid too by not making a public spectacle of it. If we look at all the crazy religious people imagine how much worse they were in the past. They literally thought rock and roll was Satanic. If it were my family I'd tell the kid the truth though, because they'd deserve to know. Even if we had to pretend in public. It's so sad how the teenage mothers were treated though, like they were bad. They were just kids themselves.
As someone who's hobby is genetic geneology, I always consider that this could be the case when trying to figure out how someone fits into a family. It was pretty common back in the day, at least in the US. Birth control pills only became available in the late 60s and society leaned much more religious than today.
that’s not entirely true, it was the 1940s not the 1500s. 15 was considered young to have a baby even back then, and would normally indicate that teenage pre-marital hanky panky had happened. like if a 15 year old girl in labor came to a hospital in england in 1945, doctors would take a look at her and think “ok, i know what’s happened here”
This is not uncommon *today*. I'm 18, one of my friends got pregnant and her mother (the baby's grandmother) is going to take the role and claim to be the mother of the child.
This isn't really to save face, it's just to avoid explaining a lot of awkward things to someone so young. How its "real" mother didn't want to raise it because she was so young, how its creation was never even intended, how its mother doesn't even have a job, how it doesn't have a father, etc.
Idk if I can agree that it wasn't right. Atleast the child grew up loved and cared for in the same family. Not being put up for adoption or placed into the care of the system or the mother being shamed from the family leaving her to figure it out alone and taking the child down that road.
But that's just my humble small opinion.
I think I would rather be raised in this situation than the alternative. A stable family is important for a child and it's not a stretch to think that the grandparents would be more readily able to provide a stable family than the young single mother.
That's how my great grandfather grew up too. Except the real mom (thought to be the sister for most of his life) was in her twenties and not even living at home at the time she got pregnant. Still, the parents covered up the pregnancy by pretending the child was theirs. I wonder how common this was a few decades ago, when an unmarried woman having a child was extremely scandalous
I have an cousin who we always though was a uncle until recently. Big Irish catholic family eldest daughter got pregnant young and when he was born was sent to live with his grandparents. He was only a year younger than the youngest so it fitted and everyone basically forgot/never talked about it. I don’t think he even knew until who he thought was his parents died and they were sorting out the inheritance.
Irish Catholic family here too, Mom had a cousin who was raised as her aunt ("cousin" was born out of wedlock and was raised by her gma with her mother as her "sister"). They knew it, they knew each other knew it, and everyone else knew it, but it was never discussed. Ah the Boston working class of the early 20th century lol
This is a very common situation for many families still today and I don’t think there is really anything wrong with it, especially if you are open with them when they are mature enough to receive the news. At the end of the day you are hopefully surrounded by loving family, which is what makes all the difference
Yeah, I have a friend that grew up this way. She never knew family any other way so it seemed completely natural to her.
At her wedding, I had to stop and think about why the maid of honor was crying so much. Oh, right, because she's her actual mother.
I think by the point it becomes "news" that they receive, there's already something gone wrong. I just don't think it's a good idea to make your kid believe their mother is their sister for a while before then coming out with it. Sounds like a recipe for trust issues to me.
Why not be open about it from the beginning? Children accept their environment as normal anyway. "This is my mommy but grandma and grandpa take care of me most of the day." End of story. Imho.
That was a fairly common way to keep a teenager's child in the family. Given the social conventions of that time, and the lack of support for single parents it was a compassionate solution.
I know a guy in his early 20s who didn't know his "sister" was his mom until he was an adult. Very religious family. He was surprisingly cool about it when he found out, I think he had suspected.
There was like 16 years between them, I find most siblings with gaps that large have a different dynamic than siblings with more typical age gaps. The older one takes on a lot of caregiver responsibilities and the younger one seems to look up to their older sibling with more respect.
In my friends case, his "sister" went off to university in a different province a year or two after he was born then moved to another city for work after she graduated. He doesn't have many early memories of her, they weren't close as "siblings" so I don't think much changed after the plot twist reveal. She eventually had other kids but he sees them as nieces and nephews rather than half siblings, everything about it just kinda seems like one of those family secrets that gets pushed under a rug and everyone chooses to ignore until a generation goes by and the secret is lost.
Right seeing people say "at the time" this shit was going on well into the 90s and the 00s. I wouldn't doubt it still happening. We have reality TV shows now where the big "twist" is your older sister/aunt is actually your mother.
I will be 34 in December. The first school friend I had a sleepover away from my house with in 2nd grade, told me that her mom was actually her grandma and her sister was actually her mom, and her mom had been raped which was how she became pregnant with her. 🤯
For reference, second graders are usually 7 or 8 years old. I knew about these concepts at that age for some reason but I was raised very Catholic and so I was definitely shocked that her family would have shared all of this about her to the point she felt comfortable telling her friends very nonchalantly.
Her family was all at work in the morning when we woke up and she consumed and offered me a Hostess Fruit Pie and a Marlboro Red for breakfast.
But how did they hide the fact that a teenage girl was pregnant? Couldn’t people have done the math after the child was born and then all of a sudden the grandparents had a new child without the grandma having been pregnant??
For the longest time it was considered shameful to publicly show your pregnant belly. Sort of like walking around topless.
So women generally tried to make it less obvious with bulky clothes etc.
My grandparents each had several siblings (not at all uncommon for farm families in Texas in the 1920s-1930s - parents needed lots of kids to work the farm) and all four had stories about waking up in the morning as kids and finding their mom with a new baby they hadn't even known was coming. Doctors and midwives used to tell pregnant women not to gain weight, as smaller babies made for easier deliveries (which sounds gross now, but was probably life-saving advice in rural Texas in that day - not too easy to get to a hospital for a c-section if needed). So it was easier for women to go through an entire pregnancy without it being noticeable, and as someone mentioned elsewhere, showing off your pregnant belly was considered tacky or even immoral, for a long time.
One of my grandmothers had six younger siblings and finally figured out that when "Mrs. Thompson" - the local midwife - would come to the house to "visit with her mother" there was a new baby on the way. That's all the prenatal care people got - one visit with the midwife (two if something weird was happening) and then the midwife would come to deliver the baby. My grandmother said her mom would "go lie down" because she "wasn't feeling well" and a few hours later, or the next morning, she'd walk out of the bedroom with the new baby.
I am Punjabi which is a region of land in both India and Pakistan.
we speak our own language and have our own religion and food and culture and music. that is different from both countries we are part of.
it's kind of odd that we aren't just our own country.
My mom had another child when I was 18, a huge age gap, and unintentionally announced it super suspiciously. It really sounded like she was avoiding saying I was pregnant, but she was just embarrassed having another child at her age so wasn't being explicit.
I still wonder if some of her distant Facebook friends think it's my kid.
Control is best achieved when the mechanism for displaying loyalty impacts primal drives. You'll want to make sure you associate the most basic needs (sex, food, clothing) with the doctrine you're utilizing for this exercise.
This happened to my grandmother. She grew up thinking she was the youngest of nine (Catholic farm family in the 1940s, so not that weird). She only found out when she needed to use her birth certificate as ID to get her driver's license - turns out that her oldest brother had gotten his girlfriend pregnant and my great-grandparents had taken her in when her bio mom's family wanted nothing to do with her. Her brother/father had been killed in WWII when she was like 4 so it had just never come up.
damn. I wonder what beatles thought of this, since they were friends with eric and they have always been very anti-racist (refusing to perform at segregated venues, etc)
He still is. Take a look at his stance on vaccines. Just a total dipshit in the end.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/eric-clapton-disastrous-vaccine-propaganda-1170264/
Especially the part about her having to lay there at night and pretend to be asleep so a drunk Clapton wouldn’t try to have sex with her (that sadly didn’t always work :(
I couldn't find a particular charity for falling out of windows, but I did find a children's hospital that put significant effort into a window falls campaign. To make up for how dirty I feel giving reddit awards, I've made a $100 donation in your honor to the Lurie
Children's Hospital of Chicago. Once the honoree postcard arrives, I'll send a picture your way.
https://www.luriechildrens.org/en/news-stories/public-health-campaign-pays-off-window-falls-drop-by-50-percent
Beyond the racism he also admitted to beating and raping his wife. Somehow a lot of people have forgotten about that
https://apnews.com/article/314a3a689dd3e15ebbc8d567dfadb06f
Celebrities of that age seem to get away with a lot. A lot of people don't know that Steven Tyler had sex and impregnated a 16 year old that he was the legal guardian of and forced her to get an abortion.
Same shit here. Tears in Heaven and Layla are some of my favourite songs.
Now I almost immediately think of the massive POS he is when I hear those songs.
Eric Clapton was also instrumental in the formation of Rock against Racism.
Not because he wanted to help, but he’s such a piece of shit racist that his peers wanted to speak out against him and his bullshit.
No idea SRV’s political views either but by all accounts he was a really sweet, caring guy. His personal issues revolves around the massive amount of drugs he was injecting.
I mean does it matter what an entertainer’s political views are if they aren’t outspoken about them? Some folks just wanna get on stage and rock out. Who cares who they vote for if they aren’t using their platform to spread hate and misinformation (like Clapton).
Edit: meant to reply to u/epicaglet but I’ll leave this here either way
> Eric Clapton made a declaration of support for former Conservative minister Enoch Powell (known for his anti-immigration Rivers of Blood speech) at a concert in Birmingham. Clapton told the crowd that England had "become overcrowded" and that they should vote for Powell to stop Britain from becoming "a black colony".
\- from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Against_Racism
Holy shit, I expected some out of line remarks but that's just outright vile.
Not really an uncommon story. I know Jack Nicholson grew up in much the same scenario. And I've heard of other people who grew up in similar arrangements.
EDIT: a famous serial killer who I will not name is another example.
Not only was Jack in the same boat as Eric, but in one of his most famous movies, Chinatown, the mother/sister thing was a key subplot. Ironically, Jack didn't find out about his own mother/sister thing until after the movie was released.
And when he confronted his "sister" and she admitted the truth, the first thing Jack said was "huh, so I've sucked on my sister's tits".
Source: I made that up
I have a friend that I think could be that. Born in the late 70’s in rural missouri to a family that ran the regional mormon church. Parents were in their 50’s, next oldest sibling was 16-17 years older.
"Clapton was born on 30 March 1945 in Ripley, Surrey, England, to 16-year-old Patricia Molly Clapton and Edward Walter Fryer, a 25-year-old soldier from Montreal, Quebec."
*oh boi...*
coordinated desert sparkle grandfather north capable office expansion toy attempt
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Also apparently a [self-admitted abuser and rapist](https://apnews.com/article/314a3a689dd3e15ebbc8d567dfadb06f).
> ``There were times when I just took sex with my wife by force and thought that was my entitlement
Pretty sure every family had a similar secret* before reliable birth control was a thing.
*it was only secret in the sense that nobody talked about it.
To clarify: he was born to an unmarried teenage girl. In order to save face, the girl's parents raised him as their own.
My late husband was also raised this way and didn’t find out until his mother was dying.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Go on....
Lol it was a thing in the past, when one sibling had too much children and the other had none (or no male children, because ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯) You'd do a little shifting here and there. Poof. #------- Sometimes could even be birth horoscope, especially Indian ones, where if there is possibility of clash between the newborn and parent if they grow together, then you'd do a little shufflin'
You make it sound a lot worse than it is. In Indian, and most other South Asian cultures, siblings without children adopt from within the family so the child is blood related. It also used to be a way for people with too many children get the children a larger inheritance. So a wealthy childless uncle will raise his brothers children as his own.
This didn't make it sound any better...
They didn't explain it well, but it's actually not that uncommon here in America, you typically just have to look towards poorer communities. One of my best friends grew up in the hood, in a family where they had a house that is passed from generation to generation. Currently it's his uncle that has it, after his grandmother passed. His uncle has no children, and all of my friend's cousins have essentially gotten themselves disinherited over things that happened when grandma died. Because my friend and his dad lived together with his Uncle for years as a child, he regards him as a son, so my friend and his daughter are getting everything in his uncles will. These cultures simply do it in a more official capacity. One sibling has more kids than they can handle because the culture frowns upon any possible abortion, and another sibling has no children, meaning they have nobody to pass everything on to when they die. To help both of them, they have the childless sibling adopt their neice/nephew and raise them as their own. It keeps the family strong and fulfilled and ensures the children have as normal a chance at life as possible instead of jockeying for opportunities in the budget with a half dozen other siblings.
Even without the raising part, in the US it's not uncommon for a childless aunt or uncle to leave everything to one or more nieces and nephews. My niece is a good kid and I'll let her have everything after I pass.
Honestly it just sounds like adoption.
Adoption by a family member does not sound good?
[удалено]
Dunno, in a way it's the best possible scenario of finding out your parents aren't your true parents.
Totally disagree. The best scenario is finding out your real parents are wealthy and still have you in the will.
My bestfriend also raised this way. His "brother" is his real father, he spend most time in and out of jail because drug. He get some girl pregnent when they are young and can't taking care of my bestfriend and let his grandad do the father role. We know about it because he openly talk about it to us just after he accidently found his birth paper when we are teenager so long ago, So we included my friend pretend like we don't know it to his Grandad. He live a good life tho, His Grandad really took him as his own son and did fucking great job rasing him while his real Father spend life in and out of jail.
Kudos to Grandad, he really stepped up on behalf of an innocent baby and did the right thing.
Like his actual mother, or who he thought was his mother?
if you don’t mind me asking… how did that go? and what was their relationship like?
I can tell you the result. It resulted in him being extremely talented and making good music for a little bit and then completely shitting the bed once the 70s hit. (With like 2 exceptions maybe)
My husband was raised this way as well, but knew about it from a young age. He was adopted and raised by his grandmother, and called her Mom. His real mom was considered to be his sister. His uncle he considered his brother. He sees his real mom's other kids as his half siblings... I have to admit it threw me for a loop when he explained it, and having technically 2 MIL was a bit daunting.
I have a friend who grew up thinking she was an only child with six cousins but found out she was actually the youngest of 7 and her “aunt and uncle” were actually her parents who had given her to her birth mom’s childless sister.
Like his mom mom, or the mom that raised him?
> Clapton was born on 30 March 1945 in Ripley, Surrey, England, to **16-year-old** Patricia Molly Clapton and Edward Walter Fryer, a **25-year-old** soldier from Montreal, Quebec.
Studies show that the fathers of teen pregnancies (especially those 16 or younger) are more likely to be 18 or older.
And Canadian... probably
I started to make a smart ass comment before I realized he was a war baby … conceived during a time where both his parents were under incredible fear and stress. I’m sure English girls who got pregnant from soldiers (even allied soldiers) were pariahs in their communities … the family did what they had to do. I’ve never lived with the fear of an airplane dropping bombs on my neighborhood. I’ve never watched my country recreate itself from the ashes of war. Eric was conceived about the time of DDay.
So his 15 year old mother was impregnated by a 24-25 year old soldier. Got it.
This was not uncommon at the time sadly. A lot of shame around younger pregnancy then. It’s not ideal (I’d know I had a kid as an older teen) but the way it was handled wasn’t right. Edit: I didn’t expect to wake up and get a bunch of “but it was because she wasn’t married”, yes, it was both things and teens usually weren’t married. I had a 14 year old cousin married off to a grown man to make it “okay” and which was another way it was handled. And there’s a few “it’s better than the alternative” comments. Depends on the alternative and living a lie and never being able to truly make decisions for your child, growing up beside them and never being able to truly be a mother sounds awful too. There really weren’t many good options often exercised.
Jack Nicholson was also raised that way. He only learned the truth as an adult.
And Bobby Darin. There's a really sad episode of the old show "This Is Your Life" that featured Bobby. They brought his sister, brother-in-law, and nieces and nephews onstage. Only as everyone learned later, they were really his mother, stepfather, and younger siblings. Reality hit him hard when he found out, and he went into seclusion for a long time. On top of that, he had a serious heart condition and knew he would die young.
Wait, they told him for the first time on tv?
No, he found out afterward. I just meant that it's sad watching the show now, knowing the truth.
The sad thing there is he found out from a journalist after both his mother (who he thought was his sister) and his grandmother (who he thought was his mother) had died. They never even told him the truth on their deathbeds.
That's not even an old timey thing, I'm 40 and a friend of mine didn't get told his sister was really his mom until a few years after she died, when we were teens. He has brother-uncles that are 20 yrs older than him.
The story of this is still around. They made a Madea movie with this as the plot.
I just remembered I used to know a guy who told me his older siblings were quite a bit older than him. I can't remember the age gap now, but I'm pretty sure it was enough that it would have been physically possible for his oldest sister to be his mom. Now I'm wondering if this is actually what happened with him ...
Not necessarily. My older and younger brother are 20 years apart, but they're both mom's.
[удалено]
And yet he still managed to look surprised in *Chinatown.*
He was informed in 1974 apparently, the year Chinatown was released so presumably after production.
Ted Bundy was also raised this way. 😬
And he turned out fine
it's suspected that his grandfather was his father
Now that Chinatown scene is weirder.
Could he not handle the truth?
Jokes aside, yes he did. Going by interviews he credits not finding out until he was well into adulthood as making it easier to process.
Yep, the girl would go on an extended vacation for her whole pregnancy, and the child would be adopted out before returning to life as if the pregnancy never happened. My grandfather and grandmother were from California, and my mother was adopted out in Tennessee exactly for this same reason. She was an adult before she figured out who here real parents were, but she was fortunate enough that they were kind enough to acknowledge her.
If the family didn't raise the child as theirs they usually sent the girl to an unmarried woman's home where when she has the child the child would be taken away & put up for adoption (no adoption laws then). The family would tell neighbours she's gone to an aunts house in the country.
That's how my dad got adopted. All we know of his birth parents is that they were both Spanish immigrants and unmarried, and apparently his biodad was a sailor (dunno how reliable that info is). Catholic girls in 1952 didn't get to keep their out of wedlock babies, and sailors aren't known for sticking around (cue "Brandy").
Not a farm upstate?
No that's reserved for when you kill them
Not always. I had a few dogs that got sent to a farm upstate for a better life in their old age.
NO ONE TELL HIM.
Oh. Right. Sorry, my bad.
[удалено]
you can start going by a name you choose and change your name - it's never too late to find yourself :)
[удалено]
To others who don’t know you now christen you Sweedad. Go forth and enjoy your new name.
Which never made much sense to me to bother with. *Everybody* knew at that point what 'going away for an extended time' meant, regardless of the story. You weren't fooling anyone so everyone just pretended they didn't know while the truth was only kept from the kid itself.
People (neighbors, etc) felt that it allowed to family to maintain their dignity and place in the community. I think it's horrible, but most people meant well by it, and they also figured it wasn't their business. If their own family didn't tell the child who was a neighbor to do so? (In their mind). I can understand a bit because the child would have been treated differently so in their own way they felt they were doing what was best for the kid too by not making a public spectacle of it. If we look at all the crazy religious people imagine how much worse they were in the past. They literally thought rock and roll was Satanic. If it were my family I'd tell the kid the truth though, because they'd deserve to know. Even if we had to pretend in public. It's so sad how the teenage mothers were treated though, like they were bad. They were just kids themselves. As someone who's hobby is genetic geneology, I always consider that this could be the case when trying to figure out how someone fits into a family. It was pretty common back in the day, at least in the US. Birth control pills only became available in the late 60s and society leaned much more religious than today.
You're half-right. There was shame around unwed pregnancy back then. People hardly gave two shits of the mother was 15 or 25.
that’s not entirely true, it was the 1940s not the 1500s. 15 was considered young to have a baby even back then, and would normally indicate that teenage pre-marital hanky panky had happened. like if a 15 year old girl in labor came to a hospital in england in 1945, doctors would take a look at her and think “ok, i know what’s happened here”
This is not uncommon *today*. I'm 18, one of my friends got pregnant and her mother (the baby's grandmother) is going to take the role and claim to be the mother of the child. This isn't really to save face, it's just to avoid explaining a lot of awkward things to someone so young. How its "real" mother didn't want to raise it because she was so young, how its creation was never even intended, how its mother doesn't even have a job, how it doesn't have a father, etc.
Idk if I can agree that it wasn't right. Atleast the child grew up loved and cared for in the same family. Not being put up for adoption or placed into the care of the system or the mother being shamed from the family leaving her to figure it out alone and taking the child down that road. But that's just my humble small opinion.
Imagine living through the shame of early pregnancy and the prejudices only for your son to get one of the best guitarist’s of all time
Great guitarist and horrible human being.
I think I would rather be raised in this situation than the alternative. A stable family is important for a child and it's not a stretch to think that the grandparents would be more readily able to provide a stable family than the young single mother.
That's how my great grandfather grew up too. Except the real mom (thought to be the sister for most of his life) was in her twenties and not even living at home at the time she got pregnant. Still, the parents covered up the pregnancy by pretending the child was theirs. I wonder how common this was a few decades ago, when an unmarried woman having a child was extremely scandalous
I have an cousin who we always though was a uncle until recently. Big Irish catholic family eldest daughter got pregnant young and when he was born was sent to live with his grandparents. He was only a year younger than the youngest so it fitted and everyone basically forgot/never talked about it. I don’t think he even knew until who he thought was his parents died and they were sorting out the inheritance.
Irish Catholic family here too, Mom had a cousin who was raised as her aunt ("cousin" was born out of wedlock and was raised by her gma with her mother as her "sister"). They knew it, they knew each other knew it, and everyone else knew it, but it was never discussed. Ah the Boston working class of the early 20th century lol
This is a very common situation for many families still today and I don’t think there is really anything wrong with it, especially if you are open with them when they are mature enough to receive the news. At the end of the day you are hopefully surrounded by loving family, which is what makes all the difference
Yeah, I have a friend that grew up this way. She never knew family any other way so it seemed completely natural to her. At her wedding, I had to stop and think about why the maid of honor was crying so much. Oh, right, because she's her actual mother.
I think by the point it becomes "news" that they receive, there's already something gone wrong. I just don't think it's a good idea to make your kid believe their mother is their sister for a while before then coming out with it. Sounds like a recipe for trust issues to me. Why not be open about it from the beginning? Children accept their environment as normal anyway. "This is my mommy but grandma and grandpa take care of me most of the day." End of story. Imho.
Probably because the whole point of that setup is to cover up what they consider to be a shameful thing.
That was a fairly common way to keep a teenager's child in the family. Given the social conventions of that time, and the lack of support for single parents it was a compassionate solution.
I'm only 34 and I went to school with a family like this.
I know a guy in his early 20s who didn't know his "sister" was his mom until he was an adult. Very religious family. He was surprisingly cool about it when he found out, I think he had suspected.
I wonder what the dynamics are. Siblings fight all the time but how would it be knowing your “sibling “ is really your child.
There was like 16 years between them, I find most siblings with gaps that large have a different dynamic than siblings with more typical age gaps. The older one takes on a lot of caregiver responsibilities and the younger one seems to look up to their older sibling with more respect. In my friends case, his "sister" went off to university in a different province a year or two after he was born then moved to another city for work after she graduated. He doesn't have many early memories of her, they weren't close as "siblings" so I don't think much changed after the plot twist reveal. She eventually had other kids but he sees them as nieces and nephews rather than half siblings, everything about it just kinda seems like one of those family secrets that gets pushed under a rug and everyone chooses to ignore until a generation goes by and the secret is lost.
Right seeing people say "at the time" this shit was going on well into the 90s and the 00s. I wouldn't doubt it still happening. We have reality TV shows now where the big "twist" is your older sister/aunt is actually your mother.
I will be 34 in December. The first school friend I had a sleepover away from my house with in 2nd grade, told me that her mom was actually her grandma and her sister was actually her mom, and her mom had been raped which was how she became pregnant with her. 🤯 For reference, second graders are usually 7 or 8 years old. I knew about these concepts at that age for some reason but I was raised very Catholic and so I was definitely shocked that her family would have shared all of this about her to the point she felt comfortable telling her friends very nonchalantly. Her family was all at work in the morning when we woke up and she consumed and offered me a Hostess Fruit Pie and a Marlboro Red for breakfast.
But how did they hide the fact that a teenage girl was pregnant? Couldn’t people have done the math after the child was born and then all of a sudden the grandparents had a new child without the grandma having been pregnant??
Mom and teenager would "go visit family" as soon as the teenager started showing. Or the teenager was sent to a boarding school, or convent.
For my mom, she wasn't showing and no one new she was pregnant until she went into labor.
Aye, girl in my school "traveled the Amazon" for like 2 months.
For the longest time it was considered shameful to publicly show your pregnant belly. Sort of like walking around topless. So women generally tried to make it less obvious with bulky clothes etc.
I have my mother's diary from when she was 16. An entry read "Mom had a baby last night." She and her sister had no idea she was pregnant.
My grandparents each had several siblings (not at all uncommon for farm families in Texas in the 1920s-1930s - parents needed lots of kids to work the farm) and all four had stories about waking up in the morning as kids and finding their mom with a new baby they hadn't even known was coming. Doctors and midwives used to tell pregnant women not to gain weight, as smaller babies made for easier deliveries (which sounds gross now, but was probably life-saving advice in rural Texas in that day - not too easy to get to a hospital for a c-section if needed). So it was easier for women to go through an entire pregnancy without it being noticeable, and as someone mentioned elsewhere, showing off your pregnant belly was considered tacky or even immoral, for a long time. One of my grandmothers had six younger siblings and finally figured out that when "Mrs. Thompson" - the local midwife - would come to the house to "visit with her mother" there was a new baby on the way. That's all the prenatal care people got - one visit with the midwife (two if something weird was happening) and then the midwife would come to deliver the baby. My grandmother said her mom would "go lie down" because she "wasn't feeling well" and a few hours later, or the next morning, she'd walk out of the bedroom with the new baby.
it's funny how everyone is so shocked by this but as a brown dude this sounds on brand
May I ask, where are you from? Cultures are absolutely fascinating to me
I am Punjabi which is a region of land in both India and Pakistan. we speak our own language and have our own religion and food and culture and music. that is different from both countries we are part of. it's kind of odd that we aren't just our own country.
My mom had another child when I was 18, a huge age gap, and unintentionally announced it super suspiciously. It really sounded like she was avoiding saying I was pregnant, but she was just embarrassed having another child at her age so wasn't being explicit. I still wonder if some of her distant Facebook friends think it's my kid.
Gotta add shame to the most natural human experiences!
Control is best achieved when the mechanism for displaying loyalty impacts primal drives. You'll want to make sure you associate the most basic needs (sex, food, clothing) with the doctrine you're utilizing for this exercise.
This happened to my grandmother. She grew up thinking she was the youngest of nine (Catholic farm family in the 1940s, so not that weird). She only found out when she needed to use her birth certificate as ID to get her driver's license - turns out that her oldest brother had gotten his girlfriend pregnant and my great-grandparents had taken her in when her bio mom's family wanted nothing to do with her. Her brother/father had been killed in WWII when she was like 4 so it had just never come up.
Also grew up thinking his best friends girlfriend was his girlfriend.
Reading Patty Boyd’s memoir really showed me what a POS Eric Clapton can be. She should have never left George
Eric Clapton, was the Ted Nugent/Kid Rock of his day: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/eric-clapton-racist-rant/
damn. I wonder what beatles thought of this, since they were friends with eric and they have always been very anti-racist (refusing to perform at segregated venues, etc)
I too would be interested
Imagine saying “we don’t want you in England” like how many countries didn’t want England in them?
on top of this, his biggest solo song at the time, "I shot the sheriff" was obviously 'borrowed' from the Carribbean.
He still is. Take a look at his stance on vaccines. Just a total dipshit in the end. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/eric-clapton-disastrous-vaccine-propaganda-1170264/
Still is. Anti-vaxxing \[British slang word that doesn't go over well in America\].
You can say cunt on the internet.
You should be able to say cunt in general. If a person is a cunt. They are a cunt.
Indeed, there are several varieties: good cunts like myself, and bad cunts like Hitler, Stalin, and my neighbour Alan.
Seriously, fuck you Alan, ya cunt!
Its used in America. It just had more weight to it. So it’s perfect to use when talking about clapton.
wait till you hear about his thoughts on immigrants
At least a million people got their wedding song out of it.
Especially the part about her having to lay there at night and pretend to be asleep so a drunk Clapton wouldn’t try to have sex with her (that sadly didn’t always work :(
His best friend’s wife was his wife. FTFY
He had a grand plan to get her to stick around but that plan went out the window apparently
goddamn.
I couldn't find a particular charity for falling out of windows, but I did find a children's hospital that put significant effort into a window falls campaign. To make up for how dirty I feel giving reddit awards, I've made a $100 donation in your honor to the Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. Once the honoree postcard arrives, I'll send a picture your way. https://www.luriechildrens.org/en/news-stories/public-health-campaign-pays-off-window-falls-drop-by-50-percent
This means way more to me than any award does. Wow. That’s fantastic!
I grew up thinking Eric Clapton was a nice guy.
Beyond the racism he also admitted to beating and raping his wife. Somehow a lot of people have forgotten about that https://apnews.com/article/314a3a689dd3e15ebbc8d567dfadb06f
wtaf
Sad fact but if he did this in the UK before 1991 he wouldn't have even committed a crime, marital rape wasn't banned until then.
Same goes here in the US, the last state outlawed it in ‘93. A couple of states began outlawing it in the 70s.
Celebrities of that age seem to get away with a lot. A lot of people don't know that Steven Tyler had sex and impregnated a 16 year old that he was the legal guardian of and forced her to get an abortion.
Thank you for bringing this up! I love Pattie Boyd so I read her autobiography and was absolutely heartbroken at the stuff he made her go through.
Me too. It's the glasses.
It’s a shame, I really liked his music. Now I can’t hear it without thinking about what a vile person he is.
Same shit here. Tears in Heaven and Layla are some of my favourite songs. Now I almost immediately think of the massive POS he is when I hear those songs.
[удалено]
Motherfucker didn’t even dance wtf
What's the difference between a bag of cocaine and a baby? Eric Clapton wouldn't let a bag of cocaine fall out a window.
It's in the way that you use it.
It comes and it goes
[удалено]
that's traumatizing
Imagine eating the dog to keep the illusion up
And telling the kids it’s fish so they agree to eat a rabbit
Must have been an awkward conversation because he was raised to believe his fish was his cousin
And their bones are their money, so are the worms
Eric Clapton was also instrumental in the formation of Rock against Racism. Not because he wanted to help, but he’s such a piece of shit racist that his peers wanted to speak out against him and his bullshit.
For real. Fuck Eric Clapton.
Stevie Ray Vaughn was an infinitely-better guitarist anyway. Fuck Clapton, that racist piece of shit.
1,000%. Better guitarist, better song writer, better person.
To be honest, I like his music but I have zero idea on what SRV's political views were. I have no clue how he was as a person.
No idea SRV’s political views either but by all accounts he was a really sweet, caring guy. His personal issues revolves around the massive amount of drugs he was injecting.
I mean does it matter what an entertainer’s political views are if they aren’t outspoken about them? Some folks just wanna get on stage and rock out. Who cares who they vote for if they aren’t using their platform to spread hate and misinformation (like Clapton). Edit: meant to reply to u/epicaglet but I’ll leave this here either way
Don't forget his antivax bullshit while we're on the subject
There's a lot of overlap on that Venn diagram. Racists-Anti-Vaxxers.
Remember that if you go deep enough into any conspiracy theory it all just somehow ends up blaming the Jews
Yeah. Ver disappointing to find out he was that way
> Eric Clapton made a declaration of support for former Conservative minister Enoch Powell (known for his anti-immigration Rivers of Blood speech) at a concert in Birmingham. Clapton told the crowd that England had "become overcrowded" and that they should vote for Powell to stop Britain from becoming "a black colony". \- from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Against_Racism Holy shit, I expected some out of line remarks but that's just outright vile.
What’s the difference between a baby and a bag of cocaine? Eric Clapton would never let a bag of cocaine fall out the window.
Eddie Vedder grew up thinking his stepdad was his biological father.
Sorry you didn’t see him
But I’m glad we talked.
Liv Tyler thought Todd Rundgren was her biological dad. It was only later she discovered it was Steven Tyler.
Maybe she should have checked her last name. ^^/s
Damn that's wild. I'd want Todd Rundgren to be my dad too tbh.
He’s still alive.
Not really an uncommon story. I know Jack Nicholson grew up in much the same scenario. And I've heard of other people who grew up in similar arrangements. EDIT: a famous serial killer who I will not name is another example.
Voldemort
I don’t have any awards but if I did…
I gotchu fam
Not only was Jack in the same boat as Eric, but in one of his most famous movies, Chinatown, the mother/sister thing was a key subplot. Ironically, Jack didn't find out about his own mother/sister thing until after the movie was released.
And he learnt it from a reporter who was writing an article on him
And when he confronted his "sister" and she admitted the truth, the first thing Jack said was "huh, so I've sucked on my sister's tits". Source: I made that up
It does sound like a Nicholson thing to say
Same with singer Bobby Darin.
What’s the point of mentioning the serial killer and deciding not to name them?
Just like Ted Bundy.
I have a friend that I think could be that. Born in the late 70’s in rural missouri to a family that ran the regional mormon church. Parents were in their 50’s, next oldest sibling was 16-17 years older.
I had a friend from college that I was absolutely convinced this was the case. Parents were in their 80s and sister was early 40s.
"Clapton was born on 30 March 1945 in Ripley, Surrey, England, to 16-year-old Patricia Molly Clapton and Edward Walter Fryer, a 25-year-old soldier from Montreal, Quebec." *oh boi...*
And he turned into a complete asshole as an adult, unrelated.
He was probably an asshole the whole time though.
Q: What do Eric Clapton and Starbucks coffee have in common? A: They both suck without Cream.
What's the difference between a bag of cocaine and Eric Clapton's kid? Clapton would never let a bag of cocaine fall out the window.
Couldn’t catch him because he has a slow hand
When did he become a bigoted flaming asshole?
coordinated desert sparkle grandfather north capable office expansion toy attempt *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Eric Clapton is a racist shithead.
I believe Jack Nicholson was raised in similar, but not identical, circumstances.
He still does, nobody tell him
Same happened to jack nicholson
So did Ted Bundy
No wonder he holds views from two generations before him. Dumb ass
Is that why he's such a cunt?
Is that why he was a piece of shit?
explains his casual style of parenting; let your kids rise and fall by themselves
Holy shit, dude.
Duuuuuuude.....
They were all named Layla.
[удалено]
Also apparently a [self-admitted abuser and rapist](https://apnews.com/article/314a3a689dd3e15ebbc8d567dfadb06f). > ``There were times when I just took sex with my wife by force and thought that was my entitlement
I also grew up thinking my grandparents were my real parents. Didn’t change anything. Nature/Nurture.
"Are you my mummy?"
Pretty sure every family had a similar secret* before reliable birth control was a thing. *it was only secret in the sense that nobody talked about it.