The article is based on edited and published records of souls from Austrian and Slovene Carinthia, edited in particular by ethnologist Marija Makarovič and social historian Michael Mitterauer (as well as by other, less thorough authors), and on lifestories taken from a collection of five books entitled "That's how we lived, the biographies of the Carinthian Slovenes". The article analyses the phenomenon of the particularly high percentage of illegitimate births in the 19th and 20th centuries. The life-stories are indispensable qualitative complementary sources in which the narrators reflect from a subjective point of view on the causes and consequences of their own forbidden love or that of others. External causes for the number of illegitimate children - the percentages vary from 40 to 60 per cent in different parts of Carinthia and are the highest percentage of all Slovene provinces - proved to have a decisive impact. Among them prevail property conditions and heritage customs, labour conditions and the status of farm-hands, the influence of religious actors, family relationships and family units, courting customs and the importance of virginity, general health and sex education.