Fact Check

The Bad Bachelorette

White newlywed gives birth to black child nine months after her wild bachelorette party.

Published Jan. 8, 1998

Claim:

Legend:   White newlywed gives birth to black child nine months after her wild bachelorette party.

Example:   [Collected on the Internet, 1994]




This happened at Erindale College, a part of the University of Toronto located on a remote campus in the suburbs. I had some acquaintances who studied some of those arts courses (I dunno, English or History or something), and they heard this from someone on the faculty there.

It seems there was this secretary who was engaged to be married. Both she and her fiance were Caucasian. A bunch of this woman's friends held a "female stag" party for her (evidently to which this faculty member raconteur had been invited), featuring a male stripper who was Black. Several months after the wedding, divorce proceedings were initiated after the secretary gave birth to a mixed-race child.



Variations:


  • In other versions of the legend the woman gives birth to a black child, a mixed-race child, or twins (either both mixed-race or one white and one mixed).
  • A variant of this legend places the onus of infidelity on the man, who engages in sex with a prostitute prior to making love to his fiancée and unwittingly passes on to her sperm from the prostitute's previous client, a black man.
  • Various family members (husband, grandparents, siblings) are often said to be present at the hospital, or even assisting with the birth, when the shocking event occurs.

Origins:   This

tale appears to have originated in the mid-1980s (possibly coincident with an increase in popularity of "bachelor" parties for women) and is quite possibly a gender-switched version of the earlier legend about a man who impregnates his wife with sperm from a prostitute's previous (black) client. This legend presents the common motif of a marital infidelity revealed and punished, with hints of some older folkloric elements warning against the "evils" of miscegenation. (Most adultery legends end with the exposure of an affair, but this one makes a point of illustrating that the result of this particular misadventure — a spouse giving birth to a mixed-race child — was too great for the wronged partner.

Last updated:   8 July 2005





  Sources Sources:

    Brunvand, Jan Harold.   The Baby Train.

    New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.   ISBN 0-393-31208-9   (pp. 50-52).




  Sources Also told in:

    The Big Book of Urban Legends.

    New York: Paradox Press, 1994.   ISBN 1-56389-165-4   (p. 125).


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