Illegitimate children and unmarried mothers in Sweden The Church and Society´s official view on the consequence of extramarital affairs

Children born out of wedlock have often been exposed to the judgment of Church and Society, regardless if the children were to be blamed or not for this crime. Even the mothers of these children have had to face hard judgment through the times, with examples such as not being allowed to sit next to the real women, the honorable, in the church, or having to wear special clothing when in public so everyone knew what crime they had committed. The view on this crime has varied through the times and already during the medieval times in Sweden, the term defectus natalium was used for children born out of wedlock and the children were called spurii or naturalis. After the reformation had come to Sweden these children came to be called, oäkta, illegitimate. Terms as risunge or horunge have also been used in the society for these children, but as the society evolves these terms are used less and less frequently. One of the reasons is the new inheritance laws and that the parental code had been introduced in the Swedish laws. With this change in the legal system, the Swedish society are no longer using any terms to separate between legal or illegal children in State documents, instead the focus is on the parents and the title, unmarried mother, is used to define the relationship between the parents when the child was born