2 (behind Johnnie Taylor's "Who's Making Love") — and paved new ground for a major pop hit with its then-controversial subject matter of illegitimacy.

The Supremes debuted the dynamic and intense song on the season premiere of the CBS variety program The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday, September 29, 1968.

Instead of composing another love-based song, the team decided to craft a tune about a woman who is asking her boyfriend not to pressure her into sleeping with him, for fear they would conceive a "love child".

The woman, portrayed on the record by Diana Ross, is herself a love child, and, besides not having a father at home, had to endure wearing rags to school and growing up in an "old, cold, run-down tenement slum."

Given that the single spent a then lengthy 11 weeks in the Top Ten of Billboard's Hot 100 (the longest of any Supremes hit), its 1968 year-end ranking of 27 is low-seeming.

Cash Box said that "Diana Ross clicks with a contemporary narrative message which (accompanied by up-tempo beat and pop arrangements) open up a new top forty image for the act.

In 2010 Korean-born American professional skateboarder Daewon Song recreated the first part of his Love Child run trick-for-trick for a DVS Shoes promotional video.