【拼音】sīshēngzǐ
【英语】sideslip，love child
非婚生子女（俗称私生子，为有轻蔑侮辱意味的用法）是在受胎期间或出生时（各地法律定义有别），其生父生母无婚姻关系的子女。由于法律上对婚生和非婚生子女的保护程度有别，故有区分的实益。
现时不少国家及地区的法律都赋予非婚生子女较婚生子女较少的权利，即使他们拥有同样的公民权利。在从前的中国、英国、美国等地，非婚生子女常会被视为耻辱。未婚妈妈常会被逼或被游说放弃子女抚养权。有时非婚生子女会由外祖父母或其他已婚亲属抚养，生母则以非婚生子女的、姑母、姨母等身份出现。直至1960年代，英国和美国才开始不把非婚生子女视为耻辱。在华人社会，至今依然有不少人认为非婚生子女（尤其是所生的子女）令家族蒙羞。
父权社会传统文化中，非婚生子女的生父所受的谴责往往不及生母所受的那么强烈，除了对男女的有不同标准外，另一个原因是难以确定生父是谁，有些生父亦因此不用负担任何责任。已婚女性与丈夫以外男性所生的子女，有些会成为生母丈夫名义上的子女，甚至他们名义上的父亲也不知道自己并非他们的亲生父亲。而在容许一夫多妻的社会里，已婚男性与无婚姻关系的未婚女性若生有子女，可以把该女性娶为平妻或纳为妾侍（视乎不同时代、地域的法律和女性的身份而定），生父与生母建立婚姻关系后，子女亦变为婚生子女。
在古代东亚地区（中国、日本、朝鲜等），非婚生子女与妾所生的子样称为庶子或庶女（日本实行一夫一妻制后，「庶子」或「非嫡出子」是非婚生子女的意思），但正式妾待所生子女和非婚生子女的实际地位可以相差很远。在中国古代，男性的宠婢（）如生下子女可纳为妾，但并非必然。有些宠婢即使生下子女，仍然得不到任何婚姻名分，她们所生的子女有时也会不容于家庭，常会于生父去世后被生父的正式妻妾逐出家门，有些则被视为奴婢看待，甚至生父也不把他们当作子女看待。例如汉朝的卫青是母亲卫媪与平阳县吏郑季私通所生之子，在生父家中被歧视、虐待[1]。有时生父的妻妾无子，而宠婢或其他人有子，这些非婚生子常会被生父视为正室的儿子（嫡子）抚养，生母却未必得到名分，亦不能与儿子相认。有些得不到生父抚养的非婚生子女会跟随母亲另嫁他人，视继父为父亲，并跟继父姓。
Thus illegitimacy has affected not only the "illegitimate" individuals themselves. The stress that such circumstances of birth once regularly visited upon families, is illustrated in the case of Albert Einstein and his wife-to-be, Mileva Marić, who — when she became pregnant with the first of their three children, Lieserl — felt compelled to maintain separate residences in different cities.
By the final third of the 20th century, in the United States, all the states had adopted uniform laws that codified the responsibility of both parents to provide support and care for a child, regardless of the parents' marital status, and gave "illegitimate" as well as adopted persons the same rights to inherit their parents' property as anyone else. Generally speaking, in the United States, "illegitimacy" has been supplanted by the concept, "born out of wedlock."
A contribution to the decline of "illegitimacy" had been made by increased ease of obtaining divorce. Prior to this, the mother and father of many a child had been unable to marry each other because one or the other was already legally bound, by civil or canon law, in a non-viable earlier marriage that did not admit of divorce. Their only recourse, often, had been to wait for the death of the earlier spouse(s).
Today, in the Western world, the assertion that a child is less entitled to civil rights, or abides in a state of sin, due to the marital status of its parents, would be viewed as dubious. Many religions continue to regard premarital or extramarital sex as a sin, but generally do not hold that a resultant child itself dwells in a state of sin.
Nevertheless, the late-20th-century demise, in Western culture, of the concept of "illegitimacy" came too late to relieve the contemporaneous stigma once suffered by such creative individuals, born before the 20th century, as Leone Battista Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci , Erasmus of Rotterdam, d'Alembert, Alexander Hamilton, Sarah Bernhardt, TE Lawrence or Stefan Banach.
Despite the decreasing legal relevance of illegitimacy, an important exception may be found in the nationality laws of many countries, which discriminate against illegitimate children in the application of jus sanguinis, particularly in cases where the child's connection to the country lies only through the father. This is true of the United States [1] and its constitutionality was upheld by the Supreme Court in Nguyen v. INS, 533 US 53 (2001). [2]
The proportion of children born outside marriage varies widely between countries. In Europe, figures range from 3% in Cyprus to 55% in Estonia. In Britain the rate is 42% (2004). The rate in Ireland is 31.4%, close to the European average of 31.6% [3].
History shows striking examples of prominent persons of "illegitimate" birth. Often they seem to have been driven to excel in their fields of endeavor in part by a desire to overcome the social disadvantage that, in their time, attached to illegitimacy. Examples include Henry Morton Stanley, the explorer of Africa.
Parental responsibility
In the United Kingdom the notion of bastardy was effectively abolished by The Children Act 1989, which came into force in 1991. It introduced the concept of parental responsibility, which ensures that a child may have a legal father even if the parents were not married. It was, however, not until December 2003, with the implementation of parts of The Adoption and Children Act 2002 [4], that parental responsibility was automatically granted to fathers of out-of-wedlock children, and even then only if the father's name appears on the birth certificate.
Recently, some people in the United States have taken to stigmatizing the parents, rather than the child, by labeling the parents as "Bastard Parents," because it is the parents who are ultimately responsible for the actions that caused an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Conservative cultural commentator and radio talk-show host Michael Medved advocates this stigmatization, especially in the case of "Celebrity Bastard Parents."
中华人民共和国:
根据中华人民共和国法例，私生子女与婚生子女享有平等的权益，私生子样有遗产继权承。
香港:
香港法例规定，于1993年6月19日或以后去世人士的非婚生子女享有继承权。自1995年起，继亲关系没有继承权，因此已婚人士的非婚生子女（包括婚前或婚后与现任配偶以外人士所生的子女）并无生父或生母之配偶的遗产继承权。至于生父或生母的遗产继承权，非婚生子女与婚生子女享有同等权利。
男女双方在子女出生时，未具「有效婚姻」关系，子女即属非婚生子女。非婚生子女的父母双方一同提出要求，可把父亲的姓名包括在登记纪录（例如出生证明书）内，不需提出任何出生者与其父亲之血缘关系的证明，亦不需要提交结婚证明。若后来男女双方取得「有效婚姻」关系，即确立为婚生子女。非婚生子女的生父或生母可根据《父女条例》向该子女双亲的另一方要求给予非婚生子女的赡养费，但必须证明对方是非婚生子女的亲生父亲或母亲。另外，如非婚生子女被视为一个家庭的子女，可依上述《婚姻法律程序与财产条例》向生父或生母要求赡养费。
台湾民法的规定:
根据民法第1063条的规定，无论是否有真实血缘的联络，只要是在婚姻关系存续中受胎所生的子女即推定为婚姻关系中之夫之婚生子女，称为婚生推定。若该子女事实上并非妻自夫受胎所生、与夫并无真实血缘关系，则夫妻之一方可提起婚生否认之诉（参见民事诉讼法第589、589-1条）。
在法律上，非婚生子女与生母之间因为分娩的事实而为婚生子女的关系，自然具有血亲关系（参见民法第1065条）。但是和生父之间因为分娩的事实并无法确定血缘联络，所以在认领或准正之前，非婚生子女和生父之间在法律上并无任何关系。因此若生父死亡，非婚生子女无法继承其财产。
近年来由于亲属法的立法基本精神已经由原本的家长（父）本位、家本位，渐渐演进到子女本位，即以保护子女为优先价值，加上以同居代替结婚、和未婚产子的情况日渐普遍，故婚生与非婚生子女的划分价值已经越来越低且不必要，因此也有学者主张应该停止区分。
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