A shotgunwedding is a wedding that is arranged to avoid embarrassment due to premarital sex possibly leading to an unintended pregnancy, rather than out of the desire of the participants. The phrase is a primarily American colloquialism, termed as such based on a stereotypical scenario where the father of the pregnant bride-to-be threatens the reluctant groom with a shotgun to ensure that he follows through with the wedding.
Rationale
One purpose of such a wedding can be to get recourse from the man for the act of impregnation; another reason is trying to ensure that the child is raised by both parents. In some cases, as in early America and in the Middle East, a major objective was the restoring of social honour to the mother. The practice is a loophole method of preventing the birth of legally illegitimate children, or if the marriage occurs early enough, to conceal the fact that conception occurred prior to marriage. In some societies the stigma attached to pregnancy out of wedlock can be enormous, and coercive means for gaining recourse are often seen as the prospective father-in-law's "right", and an important, albeit unconventional, coming of age event for the young father-to-be. Often a couple will arrange a shotgun wedding without explicit outside encouragement, and some religious teachings consider it a moral imperative to marry in that situation.
By culture
Asia
West Asia
Pre-marital sexual relations remain taboo across all social strata throughout the Middle East. In many cases, fornication is illegal and even a criminal offence. Even when it is not, the social response can be extreme, especially against women who have lost their virginity prior to marriage. In this cultural milieu, shotgun weddings serve to obscure the fact that a baby was conceived prior to marriage. When that proves impossible, the social standing of the couple involved is irreparably damaged. Nevertheless, shotgun weddings serve to prevent the individuals involved, especially the women, from becoming social pariahs. Apart from instances of regional slang, there is no special term for "shotgun weddings" in Arabic. This is because they are not recognised as a regular social phenomenon and because a successful Middle Eastern shotgun wedding is not known to be a shotgun wedding by the guests.
East Asia
In Japan, the slang termDekichatta kekkon, or Dekikon for short, emerged in the late 1990s. The term can literally be translated as "oops-we-did-it-marriage," implying an unintended pregnancy. Notable celebrities with these marriages include Namie Amuro, Takako Uehara, Yōko Oginome, Hitomi Furuya, Ami Suzuki, Kaori Iida, Nozomi Tsuji, Anna Tsuchiya, Meisa Kuroki, Leah Dizon, Melody Miyuki Ishikawa, Riisa Naka, Rie Miyazawa and Emi Takei. A quarter of all Japanese brides are pregnant at the time of their wedding, according to the Health Labor and Welfare Ministry, and pregnancy is one of the most common motivations for marriage. The prevalence and celebrity profile of dekichatta-kon has inspired Japan's wedding industry to introduce an even more benign phrase, sazukari-kon.
In China, the term 奉子成婚 means that the couple married because conception occurred outside of marriage. It is a pun on the phrase 奉旨成婚, pronounced Fengzhichenghun and implying that a wedding is approved by imperial edict. It is becoming increasingly common among China's youngest generation. However, in the same age group, there is objection and criticism to such a practice.
In Korea, the slang term 속도위반 refers to the situation in which the pregnancy preceded the marriage.
In Vietnam, the term "Bác sĩ bảo cưới" is often used with humorous intention.
Southeast Asia
The Philippines also has a shotgun wedding tradition wherein a man shall be forced to marry a woman whom he impregnates. Other forms of this tradition include a girl's parents forcing the man to marry their daughter due to the latter's social status or wealth and others. Firearms may or may not be used during the coercion but other forms of threats include litigation.
Indonesia has a similar condition with the Philippines; this is usually called "married by accident".
Europe
Because of the sexual revolution beginning in the 1960s, the concepts of love, sexuality, procreation and marriage began to separate after being intimately entangled in social consciousness for centuries. However, sexual practice had not always followed social convention, resulting in shotgun or Knobstick weddings.
In the United Kingdom, one source reports that almost 40% of all brides were pregnant in 1850.
In Denmark, a 1963 study found that 50% of all brides were pregnant.
In the Netherlands and Belgium, the Dutch term moetje was a commonly used euphemism for marriage resulting from unintended pregnancy. The noun is formed from imperative of the verb moeten with the added suffix -je, indicating a diminutive. Thus, it might be translated as a "little must" or a "little you-have-to", i.e. one is compelled to marry to avoid the shame of giving birth out of wedlock.
Moetjes were a common occurrence in Belgium and the Netherlands until the first half of the 20th century. In the early 1960s, about a quarter of all marriages in the Netherlands were shotgun marriages; however, in some areas, up to 90% of the brides were pregnant. By the late 2000s, the practice had become so rare that the term was growing obsolete. According to a 2013 by the Centrum voor Leesonderzoek, the wordmoetje was recognised by 82.5% of the Dutch and 43.1% of the Flemish.
North America
In the United States, the use of duress or violent coercion to marry is no longer common, although many anecdotal stories and folk songs record instances of such coercion in 18th- and 19th-century America. The phenomenon has become less common as the stigma associated with out-of-wedlock births has declined and the number of such births has increased. Effective birth control and legalized abortion have also resulted in fewer unplanned pregnancies carried to term. Nonetheless a marriage which occurs when the bride is pregnant, even when there is no family or social pressure involved, is still sometimes referred to as a "shotgun wedding".
In popular culture
Films
Acht Mädels im Boot, German musical film
Eight Girls in a Boat, American feature film, refilming of Acht Mädels im Boot
