"In the 19th century, single mothers were clearly viewed with disapproval, and according to church records, their lives were more difficult and fraught with problems compared to married individuals," says Andreas Kalkun, a senior researcher at the Estonian Literary Museum. His statement contradicts the image presented to the Estonian public through local and family traditions, but especially through the media. The media has largely popularized the view — based on the writings of 18th-century pastor and scholar August Wilhelm Hupel — that single mothers were not shunned in Estonian villages.

Now, Kalkun and Kersti Lust, a senior researcher at the Estonian Institute for Population Studies, have taken a closer look at the position of single mothers in village society. For the first time, they conducted a comparative analysis of diverse sources, including folklore genres ranging from proverbs and runo songs to legends and personal narratives, as well as journalistic writings, memoirs, fiction and 19th-century court records and church books. Their findings reveal that the historical reality of single mothers was significantly bleaker than previously assumed. "With our research, we want to emphasize that the fate of single mothers was bitter," Lust remarks.

Whore and harlot children

Although the sources examined by Lust and Kalkun were diverse, to their surprise, they revealed remarkably similar attitudes and narratives. "When we look at the words used to refer to single mothers, we see that there are many different terms, but they are far from friendly," Kalkun says of folklore genres.

In traditional folklore, single mothers were most commonly referred to with terms that were also used synonymously for sex workers, as well as derogatory terms for women in general. "Single mothers were generally called 'whores' (hoorad) and 'harlots' (litsid) and other semantically similar words. Likewise, their children were referred to as 'whore's children' or 'harlot's children,'" Kalkun states. Under the influence of Christian culture, illegitimate children were also sometimes called "children of shame" (e.g., häülats).

According to Kalkun, folklore genres vary in their level of truthfulness, poetic nature and age. For instance, although runo songs (regilaulud) were collected in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, their characteristic verse structure preserved many archaic elements. Some runo songs suggest that a girl becoming an unwed mother was not just a personal issue but also brought shame upon her entire family.

"Folklore contains sayings that reinforce the idea that children of single mothers are doomed to misfortune, such as: 'Luck like a whore's child.' Some figurative expressions even hint at the exclusion of entire families due to disgrace," he adds. Place names also bear witness to the fate of single mothers, as local traditions associate certain locations with the lives of historical unwed mothers — places where they supposedly hid with their children, drowned themselves, were beaten or publicly shamed.

"The Estonian Folklore Archive contains texts describing how single mothers were put in the pillory or on the shame bench near churches, where they were publicly humiliated or beaten before the villagers," Kalkun illustrates. Although such punishments for unwed mothers were officially abolished in the 18th century, their echoes remained in 20th-century narratives. For example, Kalkun notes that in 1965, a story was recorded in Kahala village: 'Grandmother said that when girls had illegitimate children, they were made to sit in front of the altar in church for several Sundays, facing the congregation with straw bands on their heads. Anyone could do as they pleased — hit them or spit in their faces... they were not allowed to resist.'

Kalkun also highlights oral traditions involving Karl Ast-Rumor (1886-1971) and Minna Kokk (1892-1971). Ast-Rumor recalled witnessing the humiliation of two mothers of illegitimate children during a school examination in Vastseliina. 'They crouched, hunched over, not daring to lift their gaze. The pastor asked one of them: "Are you the trough where every pig spits?"' Kalkun quotes. Meanwhile, the singer-songwriter Minna Kokk was herself an illegitimate child whose mother was abandoned due to poverty. "Minna's mother had suicidal thoughts. She often took her daughter to the cemetery to look at the burial mounds where suicides were laid to rest," Kalkun recounts. Later in life, Kokk became known for performing sentimental ballads about betrayed and abandoned young women who ended their lives in despair.

"Very rarely do we find the voices and experiences of single mothers or their children in folkloric texts. When single mothers are mentioned, it is always by someone else — who may be more or less sympathetic," Kalkun explains. While orphan songs were very popular among runo songs, there are no similar songs about illegitimate children.

Men were not quick to adopt children

Among other sources, Kersti Lust and Andreas Kalkun examined court cases and church records related to single mothers. "Court cases are quite specific, mainly involving so-called 'whore fines,' child support claims or infanticide cases," Lust lists. Additionally, court records contained substantial material on the darker side of life, including wage disputes, forced employment placements and, less frequently, acts of arson or other revenge actions against the child's father.

Using church records, the researchers aimed to better understand whether single mothers and their daughters were able to marry — and if so, to whom. They specifically tracked the lives of unwed mothers who gave birth between 1834 and 1894 in various manors of Helme Parish and Holstre Crown Manor.

According to Lust, their findings showed that it was difficult for a single mother to find a husband, as less than half of the women who had children out of wedlock eventually married. "It shouldn't be assumed that they preferred to remain single. On the contrary, they often settled for a much older or poorer suitor. Until the 1870s, in half of the cases, they married either a widower or a retired soldier," she explains. Depending on the parish and time period, the average age gap between the bride and groom ranged from 7.6 to 12.1 years, whereas in typical marriages in the same region, the age difference was usually around six to seven years.

"Of the single mothers who did marry, nearly half only found a husband after their children had died. These findings suggest that men were generally unwilling to marry women who already had children from previous relationships and that biological fatherhood was important to them," Lust adds. Over time, marriage prospects for single mothers improved, though the extent varied by parish and region.

For daughters born out of wedlock, marrying was also more difficult compared to their peers — at least until the 1890s. "In half of the cases, they had to settle for a suitor who was either a widower, a retired soldier or an illegitimate child themselves," Lust notes. However, by the end of the century, the situation changed significantly and the marriage patterns of daughters born out of wedlock no longer differed as markedly from those of legitimate children.

Being born to a single mother source of tragedy in literature

The researchers also examined how single mothers were portrayed in the press. According to Andreas Kalkun, early Estonian-language journalism generally avoided discussing such immoral or intimate family matters. "Apart from crime reports and court news, topics related to single mothers and their children gradually began appearing in the press alongside the rise of the women's movement and the general liberalization of society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries," he explains. In these discussions, illegitimate children were often portrayed as innocent victims.

This time, the researchers only briefly explored memoirs and fiction. Kalkun notes that Estonian prose from the late 19th century and the turn of the 20th century rarely addressed single motherhood. Similarly, memoir literature from this period contains few references to single mothers, though some fragments are particularly telling. In fiction, both Kalkun and Kersti Lust highlight Juhan Liiv's "Vari" as a significant example. Single mothers also appear in the works of authors who were especially attuned to social issues, such as Ernst Peterson Särgava, as well as female writers like Elisabeth Aspe and Helmi Mäelo.

"In literary works, an illegitimate child often leads to a tragic event: the single mother's close relatives die from heartbreak, the mother herself dies in childbirth or at a young age or the child's grandmother kills the newborn," Kalkun lists. He describes Helmi Mäelo's major work, the five-part novel cycle "Oma veri," as a rare example that follows the fate of single mothers across generations — though even there, the tone remains largely bleak. "Single mothers and their children also appear in short-lived popular or genre literature and their fate is invariably tragic," he adds.

Suspicious number of stillbirths

The study on single motherhood also revealed that, in earlier times, infanticide was not uncommon. According to Kersti Lust, the issue of infant killings remained a public concern at least until the 1920s. "The prevalence of infanticide is one of the starkest indicators of how difficult it was to be a single mother," she states.

Reliable statistics on the number of infanticides are impossible to obtain, Lust explains. However, the extent of the phenomenon is reflected in the number of cases that reached the courts — such as secret births, concealment of bodies and similar incidents — as well as the abnormally high proportion of so-called stillborn illegitimate children recorded in church registers. "Some cases of infanticide never reached the courts because the bodies were disposed of — thrown into bogs, water, forests or fed to pigs," Lust lists.

Together with Andreas Kalkun, she examined cases from Helme Parish and Holstre between 1834 and 1889. They found that the frequency of infanticide in that region was four times higher than the average for Estonia and Livonia a century earlier. "The causes of infanticide ran much deeper than the official 'shame punishments' that Enlightenment thinkers in the 18th century believed to be the main factor," Lust remarks.

She notes that in the 18th century, about 2 percent of children were born out of wedlock. "This was reportedly similar to the proportion in other rural areas of Europe," she says. However, by the 19th century, Estonia lagged behind the rest of Europe, and until the mid-century, the proportion of illegitimate births in rural Estonian parishes remained around 2 to 3 percent.

There was no unified statistical data covering the entire area of present-day Estonia at the time. However, for the Governorate of Estonia (which roughly corresponds to present-day northern Estonia), church statistics were regularly published in contemporary newspapers. "These records show that in rural parishes, the rate of illegitimate births remained below 5 percent until the end of the 19th century and rose slightly above 5 percent at the beginning of the 20th century," Lust compares. Nonetheless, there were significant differences between individual parishes and municipalities.

More sources and critique

The sources examined in the new study are diverse and, according to Andreas Kalkun, reflect broader societal attitudes toward single mothers and their children. However, Kersti Lust notes that it is easier to discern the church's perspective from these records than the attitudes of the rural community. For example, alongside harsh condemnation, some pastors also expressed sympathy. "Among other things, they encouraged fathers to provide financial support for their children. Some pastors even fathered illegitimate children themselves. So, the picture is quite mixed," Lust points out.

Rural attitudes can, to some extent, be inferred from church records, which provide clear insights into the marriage prospects of single mothers and their daughters. "At least in Mulgimaa (an area covering modern Viljandi and Valga counties — ed.), single mothers had bleak prospects. A single mother there typically remained an old maid," she states.

Going forward, Lust hopes to explore the role of women in Estonian village society in more depth. Kalkun advises other researchers to be more critical of isolated reports, especially when they are not corroborated by other sources. Observations made by outsiders describing Estonian culture should always be placed in their historical context. "Even if we would like to think that our culture was historically less patriarchal than that of our neighbors, we must seek very broad-based support for such a claim from the sources," Kalkun asserts.

The study "Illegitimacy and its Effects on Marriage Prospects in Pre-Industrial Rural Estonia" is set to be published in the journal Gender & History.

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