Wedding while bride is pregnant?

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I know plenty of people that were pregnant and got married prior to having the child. I did notice a pattern, though. Pregnant couples married in the early 1960s and prior seem to stay together, whereas couples from the 1970s onwards seem to get divorced. Not in all case, obviously, but there seems to be a striking difference between those time periods.
 
Kelfa28 said:
This I disagree with.

I was baptized Catholic at birth…so, technically I was Catholic. In name only…no one taught me the faith at all.

I literally had no idea living together was considered a sin. My parents lived together before marriage and my sister lived with her boyfriend, now husband…and no one scolded them about it. No one told them they were sinning.

Sorry…but it’s certainly not true that every Catholic knows that living with each other before Marriage is a sin.

When I found out about this…after I had found out I was pregnant and had started to really reconsider religion and started researching the Catholic faith for the first time…I was horrified. Literally, horrified…especially since no one had ever told me this in my entire life.
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I have heard of people rejecting the authority of the church and state in the matter or thinking their own personal commitment was all that was needed but even in this secular age not to know that religions in general consider it sin seems odd.For what its worth I can not name a woman in my extended family who was not a mother or had a “premature” baby at the time of her marriage in the Philippines or America since 1970 except a cousin who married a Baptist preacher and my sister in law who married a Nation of Islam minister.
 
4Squarebaby said:
I have heard of people rejecting the authority of the church and state in the matter or thinking their own personal commitment was all that was needed but even in this secular age not to know that religions in general consider it sin seems odd.
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I wasn’t taught anything about religion to be frank. While I was baptized Catholic…I was raised agnostic.

It’s not odd when you weren’t raised with any moral teaching when it comes to love, sex and marriage.
I learned everything I needed to know about “love” and sex from my girlfriends. My mother and father had no part in it.
We didn’t go to Church and no one else in my family did either. Pre-marital sex, at least what was taught to me, just wasn’t wrong.

So…how could I possibly know it was wrong when I was raised in a secular household, with girlfriends and a sister who ALL moved in with their boyfriends when things got “serious” and no one blinked an eye?

When the relationship became serious with my husband…I figured it was the next step because it was what everyone did. 🤷
My parents actually helped us move.

Then we started looking into becoming Catholic…and I started looking into RCIA and pre-cana and I came across a website from the Hartford Diocese that flat out refused to wed any couple that was co-habitating.
“Wait…what?” Was my first reaction.
“Oh, no…what am I going to do now?” Was my second reaction.
 
Thanks for all your replies everyone. So many of them! I’ll reply when I get to work. 🙂
 
This is why I take issue with parishes that have “mandatory” 6-month waits on matrimony. Some couples who fully intend to marry find themselves in a situation where they have to have their child out of wedlock, or walk down the aisle 7-months pregnant because the parish won’t budge on their rules. A shotgun wedding is not always bad! My great aunt got pregnant in the 1950s and was married in the Catholic Church two weeks later. Baby was only slightly premature! Her husband died after 65 years of marriage, which produced 5 kids.
 
JackieMom said:
This is why I take issue with parishes that have “mandatory” 6-month waits on matrimony. Some couples who fully intend to marry find themselves in a situation where they have to have their child out of wedlock, or walk down the aisle 7-months pregnant because the parish won’t budge on their rules. A shotgun wedding is not always bad! My great aunt got pregnant in the 1950s and was married in the Catholic Church two weeks later. Baby was only slightly premature! Her husband died after 65 years of marriage, which produced 5 kids.
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This was sort of the situation we found ourselves in.
We had originally planned to get a dispensation for my husband and I to marry, do a Church wedding and then bring family out to dinner after. This was planned for a month or so after he proposed.
We didn’t need a long engagement anyway…we had been together for several years at that point.
Then we sat down with the priest.
The Church that married us said we had to wait at least 6 months…which would have put me at 8 months pregnant if I went by the 6 month wait.

This was the reason why we had so many people in our family pressure us to get married in the courts first and then do a “real” wedding after.

I said…if they are going to make me wait…then I want a real wedding, done right, the first time. My husband would be Catholic at that point and our marriage would be valid from the start.

My daughter was born out of wedlock…yes, but she will never suffer from having “unmarried” parents. She was barely 2 month old when we got married. She’ll never know what it would be like to not have married parents.
Her birth certificate and the wedding pictures are the only indication that she was born out of wedlock.

I hardly think she’ll ever “suffer” from not having married parents. She’ll always have a stable upbringing with a married mom and dad…we just made mistakes prior.
 
edwest2 said:
Well, the concept of really getting to know the person before the ceremony has fallen by the wayside for too many. Sex, which is a tiny part of married life, is being modeled in movies and on TV the wrong way 24/7. “Test drives” are a must as if people are so concerned that “if we’re not good in the sack then what’s the point?”

Not that long ago, there was a working system that was gradually sabotaged. It included honoring your mother and father, not excluding them.
  1. Dating with NO sex. Sure, some kissing and hugging but ONLY after you’ve become friends with the other person and each of you have earned each other’s trust. Good idea.
  2. Going steady. This meant you were seeing no one else and learning about each other. You know, finding out if your personalities matched and that you enjoy each other’s company, because, face it, after 30 years together, enjoying other’s company matters the most. You’ve spent plenty of time in the sack. Your focus should be on keeping your relationship going and enjoying your time together and life in general.
  3. Courtship. This is the time where you talk about marriage and your possible future together. You need to know what he or she expects from married life BEFORE the ceremony. You meet her parents, she meets yours. Then, once your convinced he’s not an axe murderer, has a criminal record, or abuses drugs or alcohol, you consider the next step.
  4. Engagement. Normally, the young man goes to her father or mother and announces his intentions. Now the young lady’s father was in his twenties once and he gets it. He will ask all the important questions: Where will you live? Are you making enough money? Transportation? Kids? All the important stuff. And either party still gets to change their mind.
My sister was pregnant when she got married at a beautiful and old Catholic Church. In the past, it was not considered a good thing but acceptable because the commitment, for life, was made.

Peace,
Ed
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This.

There is another thread about sexual compatibility and getting to know if you are sexually compatible before marriage.

Of course, getting married while pregnant is a whole lot better than getting pregnant and then living with the baby daddy and even more better than abortion. It is not ideal however.
 
JackieMom said:
This is why I take issue with parishes that have “mandatory” 6-month waits on matrimony. Some couples who fully intend to marry find themselves in a situation where they have to have their child out of wedlock, or walk down the aisle 7-months pregnant because the parish won’t budge on their rules. A shotgun wedding is not always bad! My great aunt got pregnant in the 1950s and was married in the Catholic Church two weeks later. Baby was only slightly premature! Her husband died after 65 years of marriage, which produced 5 kids.
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The problem is that if one of the parties makes their vows under undue pressure, it invalidates the marriage. Even if the couple stays together, if you have someone convinced he or she was forced to marry and didn’t choose their spouse freely, that can put a poison in a marraige. So while moving up a wedding date isn’t necessarily bad, anything truly like a “shotgun” wedding is pretty much always bad. (Well, except in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers; those were good kidnappings and forced weddings, everyone knows that. :rolleyes::D)
 
altms said:
I’d love your opinions on what has become a ‘normal’ trend, even in our comparatively conservative country, getting married while pregnant.

Several cousins, friends and classmates have all got married while pregnant (some being grooms, others the pregnant brides). A good amount of them Catholics as well. Which is a contrast to my other friends and relatives from the Muslim side. You’ll rarely, if ever see the bride pregnant during her wedding. Something that was quite uncommon a generation ago (as most of you in your own countries will testify). The biggest reason is usually, ‘to test if everything works’.

My personal take on this is, I don’t approve it. I’m not judging or condemning those who’ve done so, but the whole idea of “testing the system” is, IMO cowardice, and something I won’t do. If you love each other and want to live together for the rest of your lives, why should you “take a test drive”? So question, if she doesn’t conceive, will the engagement be broken off? Does it mean that women who sadly can’t give birth don’t deserve to be married? And it’s usually blamed on the woman…What if it’s the man that’s shooting blanks?

So, we all love and want children of our own, and I’m no different. However, children come from God. If it’s meant to be, it will be. If there is a problem conceiving, then the married couple should work through that problem together. We shouldn’t be setting pre-requisites before marriage, it’s just not kosher.
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While I don’t approve of waiting for a child to be on the way before marriage at least they are getting married and not just living together without commitment.
 
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