ABSTRACT
The deep-seated fear of the illegitimate child has run uneasily through the social history of child-care. The anxiety became more acute in Western society following the Reformation in the sixteenth century, and from that moment on, the illegitimate child was seen to be a pariah in society, with no legal status or inheritance rights. The author going to suggest that the idea that the illegitimate child is innately flawed seems to hover in the shadows of our cultural imagination, whether East or West, and the ever-present ghosts of the child’s heredity and the uninvited guests of the child’s ‘natural’ parents are seldom laid to rest. With this thought in mind, he is going to look at some of the early myths that have surrounded the illegitimate or unwanted child as he believe such tales can help reader to see more clearly the way that this ancient anxiety still lingers and clouds their thinking about illegitimacy and adoption.
