Your comment about "bastard children being rare" is maybe the biggest crock of crap I have ever seen posted.
You are welcome
@sneakypete , to prove me wrong, but you will fail.
It was not only NOT rare 100+ years ago,it was WELCOME,even if rarely talked about in "polite company". ESPECIALLY in small communities in remote areas,where male strangers traveling through often received VERY "warm welcomes" by local wives because the locals recognized they NEEDED the "fresh outsider blood" injected (no pun intended) into their community to keep from becoming a tribe of drooling idiots.
Nah. Total bullshit. By local maidens, I might admit - of a certainty, young women looked to leverage their situation by way of the allure of strangers... Stories abound with that moral warning. And while there were no doubt affairs - again, the stories of our fathers abound - but all of that distracts from the norm - That norm being a man and a woman in matrimony, till death. Even yet you will find it the norm - Just masked by the statistics of the popular culture.
In my family, on both sides, going back as far as history affords, there are but three divorces - An aunt on my father's side, an uncle on my mother's side, both in the last generation, and my own. It just wasn't done, and should not be done now.
There was also the problem of farmers who might be impotent or sterile needing babies in order to have strong young bodies to help with the farm labor. It took an insane amount of labor to farm prior to mechanization,and the more children you had,the more land you could put under the plow,cattle you could milk,etc,etc,etc.
Your mischaracterization of such events stand against you. There is little to base the claim on sterile farmers... Infant and child mortality were high - or higher than now - And sure, there was a benefit in a big family (even as it remains today), but the adoptions to which you refer that emptied the orphanages of the cities, were governed by the churches with regard to placement, and that placement, by and large, was not for the benefit of the adopting parents, but rather a charity that was extended, and a good thing.
There was also the question of sudden infant death syndrome,as well as childhood diseases and accidents.
...Standing outside of your point, promoting fornication and bastardy...
Hell,back in the late 1800's people in the rural western areas of the US were organizing trains to bring orphans from the big eastern cities out west to be adopted to work the farms for childless parents.
Right, except in the supposition of childless parents. No doubt some would be childless, but that was not the point of the adoption.
Truth to tell,there were a LOT more "bastards" born before 1970 in industrialized nations than there are today.
You will find that statistically impossible to prove. What you will find along those lines is a lot of 7 and 8 month old deliveries, within the bonds of marriage... Folks messin around and getting caught by a pregnancy generally did the right thing and got married - sometimes with a shotgun as an incentive. You will also find early widowhood, and children orphaned by fate.
You forget the social implications of your position - A woman alone with a bastard child had no recourse, and little in the way of means. Even as it is today, though the popular culture will not admit it. And a bastard child was unable by law to claim inheritance. And in a time when family was everything, being without family was nearly a death sentence, and likely to result at least in abject poverty.
I almost guffawed at the hilarity of your position... All one would need to do is look at the comparative drain upon society, now and then... There is no single other thing dragging down our society like the cost in single parent families and bastard children. By far and away, that is the major cause and cost of our welfare system, and entirely different from before, by orders of magnitude.
Bastard children have always been there, all the way along, sure. but in nowhere near the magnitude we suffer today. Likewise divorce - but statistically minute in comparison.