Category: Illegitimate, why does it exist?

Question

The Category: Illegitimate is found under Family parent category.  I am wondering why this category exists?  Categories are normally created to group profiles together, but I don't see the point of this one, they are all over the planet, not related to each other that I can see.

Illegitimacy also carries stigma in certain societies, so this adds to my wondering about why this exists on WikiTree.

Thoughts?

Edit:  Earlier question on the subject can be found here

Comments

You could ask the same question about the infant and child mortality categories.Does any one uase those, say for researching the prevalence through time?

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But not any more.  Do we think that way now?

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The question should rather be what a person from those times would think if they were able to see their WikiTree profile now. It's a matter of respect.

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not any more?  Are you sure of that?

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Read the wiki on legitimacy. The law on inheritance is affected by adoption,

As with child and infant motlity there should be no stigma for something that the "victim" did noy volunteer for.

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That is a realy strenge way of looking at history.

Facts are facts, and should not be written out of the narrative.  Do you want to ertase "base born" from the parish registers?

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Just for something to think about, why is ''bastard'' still considered an insult?  And why did somebody get into a tiff about a celebrity because they had '' illegitimate children''?  (in G2G that).  The mentality still exists to stigmatize such, whether the laws have been amended or not.

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Because they are RUDE, and/or cheeky. - Remember Bob Hawke and the 'America Cup' win. - -

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People being aerosols is no reason to pander to them, or tiptoe around the issue because some are snowflakes.

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I think that setting it to delete is the right action. It does not aid genealogy research in any way to have such a category. Just because I am a "bastard", categorising myself as one would do nothing to help me find other family members, um well actually not true as there are several in my line. Sort of a family tradition!

Answer 1

sigh.  There are a number of objections to deletion, mostly stating it can be used for research purposes, but never clarifying what type of research would require this sort of category.  The only one I can think of is for a One Place Study, and even then, what would it actually show in such a study?  Nobody has cited any examples of what they would use it for.

Some state it isn't a ''stigma'' in our day and age.  I beg to differ, else why is calling somebody a ''bastard'' still considered an insult?  And one should remember that WikiTree wants to be global, so the viewpoint about our modern views on the subject should not go just by what Western cultures think.  Which isn't even all the same, since I recall an objection to a notable being included in a project's list of such, because ''he fathered illegitimate children'' (this from somebody in a Western culture).  As we say, what's that got to do with the price of eggs?  Fathering illegitimate children does not detract from the man's accomplishments in other fields (and he hadn't fathered that many in any case, they all were recognized also).

And by this token, some say that they don't see the purpose of categories like Notables, for instance.  Notables are all over the planet also.  True, but there is an interest in such that is widespread, and they can be clearly identified, with specific types of notables (politics, arts...) and they very often influenced the lives of countless others.  Not so for ''illegitimate children'', their status is haphazard at best, and it doesn't influence others except in a very limited way.

So this continuing debate appears to be based on a misunderstanding of what categories are for.  They group people with someting in common, but that doesn't mean anything and everything people have in common should be categorized.  We are about genealogy first and foremost.

Comments

Sigh. Matt McNabb, Helen Ford, Nick Miller, myself and others have given detailed explanations including examples in these threads. Repeating we have not, does not make it so, it is not true.

I think you and many others are invested in this because of the perceived stigma only. If you can not get over it, just avoid this category and let other members use it. The other arguments you are trying to make, does not hold water.

"Illegitimate" is just as easy/hard to define as "Notable", probably easier, in my opinion.

We should all try harder to understand the difference between Structured (categories ) vs Unstructured data (bio text). We should use categories more, not less, because it gives us better more structured data.

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Standards for Notability is what was adopted by WikiTree a long time ago.  And your statement is not totally accurate.  Structured data?  What structure are you talking about?  And who is going to do research on a specific small location to see how many illegitimate children were born there, and what is the comparative datum?  One would have to have a comparative category for ''Legitimate children'' to do so.  Unless you are dealing with a man who decided that he would be ''father to his village'' and spread his seed around accordingly, I really don't see the use of this at all.  Illegitimate children are born all over the planet, at different times.  This is the ONLY thing they nominally have in common.  As Dave put it elsewhere, should we also categorize by hair colour or eye colour?  

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We can make a "Standards for legitimacy/illegitimacy" if needed.

What is structured data? We have already explained it in these threads. I wrote 3 hours ago in a separate answer:
"Unstructured data is the bio text. Structured data is simply put everything else, including categorization. Filtering and searching using Unstructured data (the bio text) is much much harder.  It does not give the same high quality results as working with Structured data (categories) does."

We do not need a "comparative category" to compare rates.
For me, it would be interesting to study a village or parish where I have a high concentration of ancestors. Compare the rate of children born out of wedlock before and after major events like industrialization. Before and after the railway was built in the area etc. We already know these type of events had a huge effect, but to see the change over time, in detail, in a limited area where my ancestors lived, would be very interesting. Like Nick Miller said, this gives social context .

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Danielle Liard, I have answered many questions you have asked. Now I want to ask you a question.
If you would find you have family belonging to the categories under:
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Slavery
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Criminals
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Germany%2C_World_War_II
They carry a million times more stigma.
Will you delete these categories?
If not. Why?

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Then your categorization should fall under a One Place Study only, which type of study can have sub-categories for specific aspects.  Not under a universal ''illegitimate'' category.  The stigma attached to the term is not the only criterion for eliminating it, the main one is that grouping everybody on the planet together under it is totally useless.

Slavery category is very relevant to the people who suffered under it, being bought and sold, shipped off to another part of the world.  It has mostly been eliminated as a practice, although one sees reports now and then that the practice still exists today.  I worked on one specific profile which falls under this, Marie Josephe dite Angélique

The Criminals categories were first instituted under the now defunct Black Sheep project.  And I actually have 4 known ancestors in one of the sub-categories.  They were tried and convicted.  It's a part of their history, and their children suffered from the repercussions.  There have been changes to these categories over time.

As to the German WW!! categories, talk to Military and War project and the WWII project.  I have no German roots at all.

You keep missing the main point, which is that as a global category, Illegitimate has no valid reason to exist.

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No, you keep missing the point.

A One Place Study with sub-categories is complete overkill. It would be very interesting to compare the out of wedlock rates between several places. You would set up several one place studies with several sub-categories and re-categorize every profile just to do a comparison?
We have these very powerful global categories (structured data) that can be combined with other structured data in searching and in filtering lists. We have proven and explained to you how they are useful. We have given the detailed examples you have asked for. Your main argument, that the category is useless, has been debunked.

What other general global categories are you going to delete because in your opinion they are useless?

Stigma. I didn't ask for a history lesson. I didn't ask where your roots are. In these threads you and others have used stigma as an important reason for deletion. Now you are back-pedaling on stigma. Why don't you delete the criminal categories your ancestors belong to because of stigma?

What other categories that carry stigma are you going to delete?

This is a slippery slope.

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I said:

Categories are normally created to group profiles together, but I don't see the point of this one, they are all over the planet, not related to each other that I can see.

Illegitimacy also carries stigma in certain societies, so this adds to my wondering about why this exists on WikiTree.

The point about stigma came second.  

You tell me you didn't ask for a history lesson, but you keep bringing in other categories as comparisons.  Your example of how you could use this category implies that location categories are also present on the profiles.  Just from a quick look at the ones labeled with this, about half of them don't have a location category, so it wouldn't work trying to correlate them through WikiTree+

You say

A One Place Study with sub-categories is complete overkill. It would be very interesting to compare the out of wedlock rates between several places. You would set up several one place studies with several sub-categories and re-categorize every profile just to do a comparison?

Do you know what a One Place Study entails?  Creating  a profile for everybody who lived in the studied location.  There is no way you can truly study ''out-of-wedlock'' rates between several places without doing just that, else you will get a twisted / incomplete picture.  So your example of a use for this falls down.

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Bruno, I think you're missing a major piece of functionality regarding categories. They are not tags. We have no search function for (eg) getting all profiles that are illegitimate, from Nova Scotia, and between 1778 and 1876.

Edit: although WikiTree+ may sometimes be useful to force the issue: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/663047/search-engine-for-categories

To create the granular groupings is (first) a large definitional task and (second) a huge lift in terms of maintenance.

Categories simply do not work the way you assume they work. When you say "We have these very powerful global categories (structured data) that can be combined with other structured data in searching and in filtering lists." The point is: we do not, we can not, do with categories what you are suggesting here.

Every combination of factors needs to be set up manually. And because we encourage people to categorize to the most granular level in a hierarchy, it's basically impossible to slice and dice this information and keep it useful.

Defining and maintaining (and extending) a system of categories that includes categories such as "nineteenth century Anglican bastards with red hair and brown eyes from St. Peter's, Nova Scotia belonging to the McNeil name study who are Scorpios and died in infancy" is not feasible.

Another system of structured data, such as tags, might be able to handle it. Categories unequivocally can not.

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Brad Foley,
I am not sure if you have read enough of this thread before posting? I have not spoken about anything else than using Wikitree+.

Example:
"All profiles that have categories "illegitimate" and "twins" and "farm laborers", from Alabama, between 1850 and 1859."

Text search query:
categoryword=illegitimate categoryword=twins categoryword=farm laborers BirthLocation=Alabama sql="([Default].[Birth Date num].AsNumber in 18500101..18591231)"

Link to Wikitree+ with the full query

Wikitree+ is powerful stuff. The AND/OR/NOT operators. The SQL filter. This example is very simple.

I am not sure how the rest of your post is relevant when using Wikitree+? 

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D. you are presuming that the profiles will have categories for locations, twinship, employment, on top of the illegitimate.  Your search results disply 2 profiles only.  I rather doubt that there were only 2 illegitimate births in Alabama in the 1850s that became farm labourers.  The twins does narrow it down, but why it's there, I'm not sure.

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I am showing you that Wikitree+ is working like I said.

1. As you can see I am searching the birth location field, location categories are NOT needed.
2. I am combining three different categories to show off, in response to Brad Foley. I can use one or two or three categories if I want.
3. I am controlling the time period.

Here is a simpler example without twins and farm laborers

This is 100% the search we discussed was needed to use this type of categories like I said.
Your argument these categories are useless is 100% debunked.

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So using WikiTree+ for ad hoc queries onon categories combinatorially is cool. It's not a use case I've used but I see your point.

But here are my two cents as a bit of historical context, every three months or so we get someone in G2G demanding their *very specific thing* for signalling something about profiles (whether military, or disease). 

Usually these categories imply a large amount of ongoing work in perpetuity: creating additional category structure and maintenance with renaming or refiling. And these kinds of categories very rarely get used so you'll have eg ten categories for different varieties of childhood cancer with only two members in different categories. 

As a result, most people's instincts, mine very much included, is to reduce the number of broad categories to those that are actively being requested, maintained and used by projects; or that fit a broad, useful purpose. The general feeling is that if a category isn't broadly of actual use, it will tend to be misused.

Misuses include people wrongly applying categories without research or instead of adding biography text. Natalie has documented that this overwhelmingly seems to be the case with the illegitimacy category.

This suggests that any research someone does using this category as data is going to be invalid. This is why people have suggested a narrower focus one place study for you. If you are in fact interested in doing this work, 100% you absolutely can, using a one place or personal project. The broader category might in theory be useful if people used it correctly. But almost no one is.

Answer 2

It seems this suffered the fate of many important discussions in WikiTree--extensive debate and what (unscientifically) appears to be a most common thought emerging followed by no action. Natalie Trott pointed out that at that time in 2020 the category had 284 profiles and now it has over 600 so it continues to be used though I would concur with the sentiment the cat is of little value. At the time Natalie wrote, "The problem is that the category has been misused. I randomly chose 5 of the profiles to examine the use of the category and 4 out of 5 had the category assigned either incorrectly (no source supporting it, parents were "unknown" therefore someone assigned the category of "illegitimate," which is not the same), etc. Only one of the five fit the category in the manner "Legitimacy was a legal status that determined what surname a child was allowed or obliged to use, and legitimization by later marriage of the parents was an option."

Comments

I just did the same exercise, and again, lots of those I looked at had nothing to justify the category in their bios.  I believe we need to delete this thing.

Answer 3

I wish I knew. I think it should be deleted, as it is more of a label than something that needs to be grouped for research purposes.

I just read over the past discussion, and someone thought we should add dates to it. I don't really think this will help anything. The whole thing is unnecessary.

Explain it in the bio (my mantra).

Comments

I agree. It seems unnecessary and doesn't facilitate research in any way. If we were to delete it, is there a chance it would keep being recreated? How often do people add it to profiles?

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I agree. It isn't necessary and should be a bio item. This seems like using a Category as a "tag" and not really as a categorization tool.

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Please get rid of it.

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I agree with deletion - the category is too broad to be useful. If there is interest in a research project, it should be set up as such with a well defined realistic scope and objectives. Wikitree is not Biobank.

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I hope the category team consider deleting it.

Answer 4

I vote to leave the category alone.  Do not delete it on profiles that others have added it to.

1) I dislike the practice of members deciding to eliminate information because they personally have no desire to use that information and want to prevent others from using that information.

2) Decisions to disallow (or allow) certain practices should go through formal voting procedures.

3) "Illegitimate" provides information similar to "adopted" in that the person is not (or possibly is not) genetically (DNA) related to one or both parents.

4) We do not delete categories simply because nobody has posted supporting sources for inclusion in the category.

5) I believe the term "Illegitimate" will remain a stigma as long as we try to hush it up.  If you want to legitimize the term or status then say it aloud.

Comments

It's a bio item!  There is no sense in categorizing these profiles, which are all over the planet, disrelated, and furthermore in some cultures being branded ''illegitimate'' is attaching a stigma, in some cases outright offensive.  People can and should state the individual case in the bio (many of the profiles categorized don't even have that).  Categories do NOT replace the bio. 

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I agree completely. Why have a category to put a label on the child that had nothing to do with the incident that created the category.

The fact that there parents were not married will be in the individualʻs bio as Danielle wrote. It will also be shown on each parent (if known).

Think about a category for First Born Child (obviously huge), that would also be a world wide category for unrelated people who have nothing more in common. Would that category be good to have?

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Agree with all of our points, especially (2). I see the person who started this thread has now unilaterally decided to delete the category only because they personally see no value in it.

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Your second sentence is not correct, Matt. Danielle said she based her decision to delete on the majority of opinion in favour of doing so, and this is clearly demonstrated by the votes on the question and its respective answers. I agree with the arguments for deletion; though I had not explicitly said so previously, I had voted accordingly.

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Jim - there are currently five (5) people who've expressed on this thread a wish to delete the category. Pretty slim "majority" for a major decision like this. In actuality, the majority of WikiTree users didn't even read this thread .

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I count seven people who've said they are in favour of deletion, not five, and they are supported by votes of between 23 and 25 at present, whereas the greatest vote against deletion is 8.

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Peggy McMath, thank you, I agree with everything in your answer.

Answer 5

Why does the [[Category:Illegitimate]] exist?

It states on the Category page the following:

• This category contains profiles of persons born outside of wedlock.

It goes on to state:

• These are the profiles of the children of people who are living, but not married to one another at the time of their child's birth. The child's parents may be publicly known, at the time of the birth or later. This may be the case if the couple later marry, or if the child lives to marry, and legitimate birth is a requirement for their prospective in-laws.

Comments

that's just a description of the category.  Doesn't justify even having the category, since these are disrelated individuals all over the planet.

Answer 6

Regarding the point "they are all over the planet, not related to each other that I can see."

That also applies to the category "Notables", should we delete that as well? And all of the Occupation categories? And "Died Young" ? Could have saved the debate over the sticker icon by just deleting the sticker and category entirely.

Categories are not just for grouping closely related people. They can also serve to record traits of a profile where there is no field or checkbox for that trait. 

As I see it, the more data that is available about a profile in structured form, the better, even if some people don't personally find that data useful to them at this point in time. 

"Putting it in the bio" doesn't enable you to run a search for combinations of traits, or study a trait occurs in a certain region and time period, for example.

Someone may wish to study the impact of illegitimate births on the life in 19th century Ireland, for example.  I personally find that a more interesting topic than a list of American football players.

Comments

Matt, see earlier G2G discussion on this same subject.  Again, the majority wanted it done away with, it just fell between the boards.

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I agree with Mark's general points, I can't see the genealogical purpose of many categories. This category,as it is so wide, is one of many such categories.

However, categorising illegitimate births within a small area would be meaningful for a local study.  For example, there is a much discussed/ tested/ contentious concept amongst  historians of an illegitimacy prone (sometimes termed  a bastardy prone) sub society. I have a published microhistory of a group of Kent parishes in front of me. One chapter explores this. There were 151 illegitimate births in three parishes, in a period of 50 years and very many more brides were pregnant at marriage. There are 4 pages of  named kinship charts. The author found no evidence of a sub society 'the illegitimacy-prone intermarried with all but a very small parish elite' ( who stigmatised such births? Interesting thought  because I'm at present writing the profile of the son of a very wealthy artist's illegitimate daughter. Inherited all the money, act of Parliament to change his name, acceptance in elite society! )

 No-one could use  this existing wikitree category for  such a study .It's  far too broad and  it's totally open to chance whether or not any relevant profile is so categorised.  However, if a member wanted to do a similar study, within the context of a one place study or just because they wanted to use wikitree to store their research, a local sub category would be useful.

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@Helen - you can use WikiTree+ to search for any combination of categories and bio fields; e.g. Illegitimate + born in Kent .

At the moment it is an unwieldy process but I live in hope that in future WT will improve its category technology to make it easier to do multi-category (and subcategory) searches. I feel most of the "localized categories" are redundant since that same information could exist already in the form of a Location category.

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Matt McNabb, Helen Ford, thank you. I agree with everything. Except Helen Ford's paragraph starting with : "No-one could use  this existing wikitree category..."
But Helen Ford later changed her mind about that, see her answer below, which I agree with.

Answer 7

The category should be kept for the near future - (1 to 2 years perhaps) and for these reasons 1) It is a legitimate concept for the range of dates given, but no longer now - post 1980s .

2) these are the original profiles that were used to construct the Cat. : 

Edwin Fox abt 04 Jan 1895 Burke, North Carolina, United States - abt 04 Oct 1966

Guy Fox abt 1900 Burke, North Carolina, United States

and there may be one more if I can find it - -

3) the Member who created the Cat appears now, to be inactive, but should be given time to respond - active since :

Honor Code Signatory
Signed 15 Jun 2015 | 6,266 contributions | 121 thank-yous | 2,350 connections: but no further Contribs after 17 Jun 2018

04:48: Sandra Shannon . This is close to 6 YEARS; perhaps Admin should investigate to help resolve these 2 emotional threads - - qed.

Answer 8

I have added comments to the question above.  I think it should be kept, as it is a flag for the social context of the mothers.

I do agree that where it has been used instead of ''Unsourced'' where the father is unknown it should be removed from the porofile.

I also pointed out that none of the Profile Managers that uised it where there is evidence e.g. the parish register recording ''Base Bone'' or similar were polled for our opinions, which kind of devalues the porocess as carried out.  I only found out about this initiative when two of my profiles were edited by a third party.

Comments

Categories exist to group profiles that have a commonality of genealogical interest. They are not for calling attention to details of the biography of the profiled person.

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Nick, it has nothing to do with the ''social context of the mother'', since I have seen baptisms of children where the mother is named, but the father is listed as ''unknown'', these mothers were in various social strata of the colony at the time.  I've also seen the legitimizing of 3 children at one go when a couple married, never did discover why they hadn't married before then.  It's an individual bio item.  Grouping them serves no purpose.

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I disagree. It is the only way we have to alert any one with an interest in that aspect of family history.

Is Wikitree a historical resource, or are we just collecting ''engine numbers''?

If the Birth record states father unknown, Base Born, Profession Single Woman, the child is illigitamate, that is what the term indicates.

If like my grandmothers half sister the parents marry some time after the birth, the child is no longer illegitamate, However in my great aunts case it does flag up the social context of her widowed mother.

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This reply is sef contradictory.

Details of the biography are of genealogical interest are they not?  Or why else is there the Biography section?

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you miss the point that this is about a category.  Which has no valid reason to exist.  And for your info, a child is not automatically legitimized by its parents' marriage, there has to be an actual formal recognition of the child.  My own direct line paternal ancestor was illegitimate, I have seen trees on Geneanet which have the rest of his family but totally miss him because of this.

Answer 9

This is an extremely depressing thread to read. You don't like some information, so you suppress the info, by making it less visible. What else do you hide away? This is not how genealogists work. This is not a good look.

Comments

D. we're taling about categorization, which is meant to group people together.  This category has been used indiscriminately all over the planet.  Serves no useful purpose.  The info is supposed to be in the BIO.  Categories do not replace a bio, and most of the profiles tagged with this category that were checked did not have any justification for their inclusion in such.

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1. With this logic, we could get rid of all categories and always put everything in the bio.
2. Many categories are global like this one. It does not make them useless and nobody would delete them. They are still very useful, especially in combination with other categories and with other data.
3. When we find a profile with categorization that is wrong, we correct the categorization of the profile, we do not delete the category.

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One can carry anything to extremes, which is what you are doing with #1.Read Help: Categorization for things that are useful to group together.  We did away with cause of death, outside of health subjects and disasters, because it's also the type of thing that is all over the planet.  For instance, getting kicked in the head or thrown by a horse.  What possible use can one make of this, considering that it can have happened anywhere, any time.  Illegitimacy is also offensive to some.

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The suggestion to delete this category is extreme. You "setting it to delete" 5 days ago after many people protesting in many different threads is very extreme. 

This is about principles. What is the process here? This is a slippery slope we do not want to slide down. Who draws the line? What else is offensive? What else do we want to suppress? Delete all categories under https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Slavery and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Criminals?

This is like book burning, we start burning only a few books some individuals think should not exist?

Single individuals claiming a category is useless does not make it so. That is their opinion. There are plenty of these general global categories on Wikitree. Because we need structured data. We don't just filter a result by one category at a time, we combine a general category like this with a geographical area and a time period and we get very useful recordsets. Especially with wikitree+, the possibilities to do combined category searches are endless.

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More people agreed to the deletion than those who protested.  And there was ane earlier discussion on the same subject which also got the same result.  and there is absolutely nothing structured about children born in different centuries in different continents getting labeled as illegitimate.  To make any sort of valid categorization for this sort of thing, one would have to go through every birth record available and tag those that fit.  Sorted by geography, century, etc etc etc.  Because it's not a few hundred profiles that are ever going to provide enough data for research purposes.  And these children are in large majority unrelated to each other, so that's not an item either.

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Only a handful of people found these threads and expressed an opinion. We saw people saying the category is useful in all these threads. We saw people saying it should not be deleted in all those threads. That should be enough to keep it. 

Using general categories like these on profiles gives more structured data, that is a fact. Using that structured data in combination with other structured data could be very useful to many people, that is also a fact. Categories and other data can be combined in wikitree+ searches. We need more structured data, not less.

These ideas about "valid categorization" and "enough data for research purposes" are just wrong. These ideas about how categories work and how they are used are extremely limited.

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To me, illegitimate as a label is pretty must like categorizing for eye or hair color, handedness or born on March 3rd. Yes they can group but not really say anything about the individual. Location and other categorization. Then there is always the problem of definition. Terms like this can mean different things in different times and places. They also mean different things in the same time and place depending on religion and local customs.

There will always be disagreement over how to handle things like this.

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There are many categories that don't mean much at an individual level but they are useful on a group level. Especially when comparing different groups.

"problem of definition. Terms like this can mean different things in different times and places. They also mean different things in the same time and place depending on religion and local customs."
Yes. These are general problems with any categorization. They are not in any way unique problems with this category.

I am not questioning disagreement, I am questioning deleting this category, how it happened, the precedent it sets and where it will end. Now any member can get 5 friends, start some g2g threads, and then start deleting categories against the expressed wishes of other members?

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D Bruno, can you please say how you would find Category:Illegitimate useful?  Can you give an example?

My sense from reading all the objections over the years is that those folks who objected to the category's deletion did not fully understand the purpose of categorization. There are many people on wikitree who incorrectly use categories to add details about a person's life. That is not the purpose of categories. That's the purpose of the narrative.

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making an answer

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Jillaine Smith, you wrote:
"D Bruno, can you please say how you would find Category:Illegitimate useful?"

Please see Helen Ford's separate, excellent answer from 5 hours ago.
I have, and many others in these threads have already answered your question many times over already. Here is some of it again:
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Matt McNabb wrote:
' "Putting it in the bio" doesn't enable you to run a search for combinations of traits, or study a trait occurs in a certain region and time period, for example.
Someone may wish to study the impact of illegitimate births on the life in 19th century Ireland, for example.  I personally find that a more interesting topic than a list of American football players.'

'you can use WikiTree+ to search for any combination of categories and bio fields; e.g. Illegitimate + born in Kent .
At the moment it is an unwieldy process but I live in hope that in future WT will improve its category technology to make it easier to do multi-category (and subcategory) searches. I feel most of the "localized categories" are redundant since that same information could exist already in the form of a Location category.'
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Helen Ford wrote:
"However, categorising illegitimate births within a small area would be meaningful for a local study.  For example, there is a much discussed/ tested/ contentious concept amongst  historians of an illegitimacy prone (sometimes termed  a bastardy prone) sub society. I have a published microhistory of a group of Kent parishes in front of me. One chapter explores this. There were 151 illegitimate births in three parishes, in a period of 50 years and very many more brides were pregnant at marriage. There are 4 pages of  named kinship charts. The author found no evidence of a sub society 'the illegitimacy-prone intermarried with all but a very small parish elite' "
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Nick Miller wrote:
"I think it should be kept, as it is a flag for the social context of the mothers."
"It is the only way we have to alert any one with an interest in that aspect of family history."
"If like my grandmothers half sister the parents marry some time after the birth, the child is no longer illegitamate, However in my great aunts case it does flag up the social context of her widowed mother."
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I, D Bruno wrote:
"They are still very useful, especially in combination with other categories and with other data."
"There are plenty of these general global categories on Wikitree. Because we need structured data. We don't just filter a result by one category at a time, we combine a general category like this with a geographical area and a time period and we get very useful recordsets. Especially with wikitree+, the possibilities to do combined category searches are endless."
"Using general categories like these on profiles gives more structured data, that is a fact. Using that structured data in combination with other structured data could be very useful to many people, that is also a fact. Categories and other data can be combined in wikitree+ searches. We need more structured data, not less."
"There are many categories that don't mean much at an individual level but they are useful on a group level. Especially when comparing different groups."

Answer 10

  I said in an earlier comment  that this category, as presently constituted didn't  have a lot of value. But  I really don't think it's any  different to many other categories. See for example ' footware occupations'  Not much used, little to do with genealogy, except  perhaps that families might work in the same industry (almost 11, 000 men, that is 40% of the  male population of my home town in 1871 worked in shoe manufacture,  often with their wives and children working on piece work at home.)  Potentially it's  a huge category just from one medium sized town in England.  It's not much used and I've certainly not used it for all the cordwainers,  cobblers, clickers, finishers and cutters in my family  but at present, no-one is suggesting removal of this or any other of the occupational categories.  Maybe we should revisit the purpose of categories.

 The word or perhaps concept of  Illegitimacy is said to be a stigmatising  and this is in part the reason that it has been  targetted for deletion. Yet, it was  a legal entity and of vital important for inheritance purposes,  (as we go back in time, genealogy is often dependent upon the records associated with inheritance rather than 'vital records')  At times it may  be very relevant to genealogy, (DNA  springs to mind ).It is certainly important to know when evaluating later marriage records particularly where the father (fictious or not)is recorded or helping prevent instances like  the geneanet record that  I checked this morning where three children were wrongly attributed to be the children of the very  late husband.  All these could certainly go in the biography but it does seem that sometimes categories are used for 'flagging'.

As someone who uses genealogy for local history I can see that  it  could  be a useful category for local studies (one place studies) .When I commented I  thought  that one  global category was too broad. I hadn't  realised that one can select by more than one category at a time.  (see the answer by  Matt McNabb  to my comment). If so, this makes even  the  global  category potentially more useful for anyone in the future who wants to do the kind of local history study I mentioned  (Here's another more accessible example using the same type of methodology https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Bastardy+in+Butleigh:+Illegitimacy+Genealogies+and+the+Old+Poor+Law+in+Somerset+1762%E2%80%931834&author=French+Henry&publication_year=2020#d=gs_qabs&t=1714217092684&u=%23p%3Da0K7RRq9k50J 

In conclusion, I don't think we should be should be deleting it simply because it is global (if we can sort it by place). I certainly  don't think we should remove a category by  using present day conceptions ( misconceptions perhaps in some eras and places) of past  stigma.  Better to challenge these, which is what some of the research does rather than consider  the word or even the concept  offensive. 

Comments

Thank you. I agree with all of this.

Answer 11

Helen Ford wrote:
"When I commented I  thought  that one  global category was too broad. I hadn't  realised that one can select by more than one category at a time. (see the answer by  Matt McNabb  to my comment)"

After reading Helen Ford's separate answer from 5 hours ago and going back and reading these threads all over again, I've realized even more than before that  most people who want to delete this category have missed two very important things. I recommend everybody claiming some categories are useless to learn more about these two things.

1.  We can, with Wikitree+ and other tools, make filterered lists combining several categories and other data, like time and location. Most people claiming general global categories are useless, they are too broad, etc, they have all missed this.

2. Structured vs Unstructured data. 
Unstructured data is the bio text. Structured data is simply put everything else, including categorization.
Filtering and searching using Unstructured data (the bio text) is much much harder.  It does not give the same high quality results as working with Structured data (categories) does.

Answer 12

There does seem to be some differing opinions (in this thread and elsewhere) about who it might apply to. 

Someone said that it should be used because it's a legal term related to inheritance or to whose surname a person is allowed to use. If we mean it in that sense, then it shouldn't be applied to people who were later "legitimized" via marriage or via some other form of official recognition (regardless of whether their parents ever married). And whether someone was allowed to use a surname wasn't consistently enforced or even cared about in some places, regardless of the law. If someone born in 1857 uses her father's surname even if her parents never married each other, does she fit the category?

There was also a mention of people who's birth or baptism records state the father is "unknown." But what if he is known and included on the record? What if the parents later marry? 

Another commenter remarked that it might tell you something about the "social condition" of the mother. Just the mother? Really? We have to be able to label profiles, so we all know your opinion of the mothers? Aside from that problematic tone...from my own family history, I am pretty confident that it tells you nothing about the social condition of the mother. Some unmarried mothers in my ancestry were wealthy and privileged. Some were not married to their partners because of anti-miscegenation laws. At least one of them was a prostitute. I haven't yet identified one that would make me eligible to join the Royal Bastards, but I'm still hoping. Identifying all their children as "illegitimate" would tell you absolutely nothing about their mothers. Or their fathers, for that matter.

I can't really tell whether people are arguing for a category that groups the small number of people who had a parent that did not legally recognize them and for whom there was some kind of familial wealth or title for which this mattered—or if people just want a broad category for people whose parents weren't married when they were born. Or one for "women who put it about a bit and look where it got them."

Comments

I am quite sure for most people the category is not that complicated. When the child was born, were the biological parents married to each other? Yes/No. 

All that nuance you mention belongs in the bio text.

No one said "social condition" in this thread except you, I think. I said "it gives social context" which is factual. No problematic tone intended.

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Whether the parents were married may or may not indicate the legitimacy status. It depends entirely upon the time, the place, and the social context. It can be very nuanced. Since making a statement about legitimacy is a fact, there does need to be a source that explicitly calls out that status. Then, shouldn't there be an indication of whether it is a religious based designation vs. a civil designation? While frequently the same, there can be a different understanding.

In any case, your yes/no answer is too simplistic.

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The category description stated:
"This category contains profiles of persons born outside of wedlock."

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D. Bruno, you said in another question which you started on the same subject:

as it will be usefull to any one interested in the social circumstances of the mothers 

Simply isn't true. Says absolutely nothing about the circumstances of the mother, just about the child. 

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This is false. Please stick to facts. Nick Miller started that thread and he said it. Not me.

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I couldn't remember who brought it up and, more importantly, thought it would be the opposite of helpful to call out people by name.

But my point stands: What people want to categorize or label varies and why they want or need it varies. I have no objection to the category if it's clearly defined and useful. If some people want a category that doesn't fit the current (or ideal) definition, then maybe we need additional and better defined categories.

I do think that a broad "people whose parents weren't married at the time they were born and may or may not have been illegitimate at the time they were born or later, but we're calling them all illegitimate" is probably not a well-defined or especially useful category.

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"If some people want a category that doesn't fit the current (or ideal) definition, then maybe we need additional and better defined categories."

The category description stated:
"This category contains profiles of persons born outside of wedlock."

I haven't seen anyone here who wants to change that definition, except you and Doug McCallum?
And it's not clear to me what you want? Perhaps it would help if you make a clear proposal what you want to change?

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With the current definition, the name of the category is inappropriate. Not all children of unwed parents are considered illegitimate. That is where context is critical. As currently defined, the category is actually pretty useless for analysis. 

Also, what defines unwed? Not finding a document? A document from a religious entity that doesn't recognize civil marriage?