The Story of the „Dark” Child in History
The Story of the „Dark” Child in History

Summary/Abstract: The "dark" child was an outcast, bearing the stigma throughout their life, and was the most unfortunate of all bastards. Often, the woman and her child, and even her family, would leave the community to escape shame and ostracism. Because the air of the city makes you free, as a medieval proverb said, many such unfortunate situations faded away in the turmoil of urban markets. Often, the unwritten chronicles of the urban peripheries mention a woman with a child who appeared out of nowhere and took shelter with someone, the mother working as a day labourer to earn a living. Their situation gradually improved through legal regulations beginning in the 20th century, especially after the First World War. For the Romanian rural world, we have an extension of custom beyond the 1970s. The progressive urbanization of young age groups in rural areas also brought about changes in mentality regarding starting a family. Of course, plans differed, and children, teenagers, and young people played different roles depending on the setting: the city offered certain freedoms that were forbidden in the parental home, while at the opposite end of the spectrum was the world of the native village, where, during vacations, they respected the codes of the community, hiding the "progress" they had achieved in the other setting. The barrier between the two behavioral spaces exploded after 1990: legitimate or illegitimate children, adopted or "dark" children, all have rights recognized by law, and society has changed its attitude toward the artificial prohibitions and classifications that came from the old law.

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