Oh my how things have changed!!!

Indeed.My niece has been researching the family tree and discovered that all four sets of her great-grandparents conceived their first child before they were married (all around the turn of the Twentieth Century). In the case of my Dad's mother she ended up never marrying the father.So much for Victorian morality and respectablity! Mind you that veneer could have a sharp edge - my maternal grandmother had to leave the town her family lived in and move to another one twenty miles away when she became pregnant.

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The limited research I've done on this suggests it is true that the level of child disappearance, abuse, murder etc. is not significantly different to historical times and yet - in the UK at least - there is almost mass hysteria about it.For about the last ten years or so it has reached the point where it is better not to engage children in conversation or play as you are likely to get a suspicious or hostile reaction from their parents.

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