Posted on 08/03/2006 10:08:07 AM PDT by neverdem
It has long been an official pretense in Britain that we have so many teenage pregnancies—the most by far in Europe—because British girls don’t know where babies come from. The answer to the problem, therefore, is yet more sex education: ever more children putting ever more condoms onto ever more bananas at ever-earlier ages.
A report from the charity, the Joseph Rowntree Trust, throws doubt on the official line. Its researchers interviewed 41 teenage mothers within a year of giving birth, some as young as 13, who reported wanting to have a baby. They also interviewed ten young fathers.
Although the sample was far from representative, the authors gave the careful reader reason to suppose that the phenomenon of young girls wanting to have babies is more common than often supposed, as Kay Hymowitz also found among American underclass girls (“The Teen Mommy Track,” Autumn 1994). Rather than face up to the disapproval of their parents (or, more likely, parent), and that of the rest of society, teenage mothers prefer to claim that their pregnancies were accidental.
As the report makes clear, and as I have found from clinical experience, the girls regarded pregnancy and the resultant baby as an answer to existential problems. The young women came from broken, violent, chaotic, and loveless homes; they hated school because it seemed pointless; their only employment prospects were in the lowest-paid and most monotonous jobs.
A baby, then, answered all their prayers. It was a constant focus of interest and an object upon which they could lavish their hitherto thwarted desire to love and be loved. They also found that, thanks to welfare, their financial position actually improved after having given birth, provided only that the child’s father did not live with the mother or work to earn his living—whereupon, of course, all state benefits stopped, casting the young family into poverty.
The young mothers also reported that having babies fulfilled a desire for “independence,” a word used without irony in the report. This language is evidence that the British character has changed utterly in the last 60 years. Where once even the poorest people would have thought it a disgrace and humiliation to depend on public welfare, such handouts of taxpayer money by the state now constitute the very conception of independence for a considerable proportion of the population. Indeed, welfare recipients almost all call the day on which they receive their dole “the day when I get paid.”
In not a single case—at least, as far as one can deduce from the report—did a mother wonder whether she was reproducing the conditions from which she was, for understandable reasons, fleeing. The report does, however, quote from an article that appeared in the liberal British newspaper, the Guardian:
So when a girl at 17 decides to go ahead and have a baby, there is no tragedy of lost opportunity other than the local [supermarket] checkout till waiting for her low-paid labour. Why . . . can’t [the government] recognise that some of these teen mums are making reasonable—even moral—decisions about what they value in life, and what they want to do with their lives? How did opting for baby and motherhood over shelf-stacking ever become a tragedy?
Sometimes shallowness goes too deep for tears.
Liberalism always generates the exact opposite of its stated intent---Ping.
Having babies is a natural biological function for females.
Females working in a minimum-wage job to pay for the "privilege" of having babies is unnatural. It is the end to a long line of societal contrivances created for the good of the state, not of the individual.
And in that having babies is *essential* to the good of the state, there seems to be a problem with priorities, here. The state wants more and more out of females, instead of just their basic and essential ability, the full-time job of raising children.
Males, on the other hand, are for the most part disposable. And while it is nice for them to help with the upbringing of the children, their prime after-procreation function is to provide for the female and the offspring.
So for females, this makes the equation simple: does having a male around provide more than welfare? If not, then they are unneccesary.
If the state slashes welfare, females will provide only the bare minimum needed for their offspring, or they will link up with marginally productive males for that purpose. But it will be a marriage of convenience.
So optimally, the males work in a good job, the females work by raising the children. The state interferes only by insuring that the males are paid enough, either by collective bargaining, or by forcing business to pay enough of a wage to support a family with children. The state also goes to lengths to not tax such families, or to add other burdens and requirements to the raising of their children.
Say what you like about the morality of it all, like water, relationships seek their own level. If this results in pregnant 14-year-olds, then the problem is least with them--they are just adapting to circumstances.
I agree with your analysis. Even in refugee camps under constant artillery bombardment women can and will have babies. Nature will be served, and this is true for the young women described in this article as well. If state handouts change their attitudes towards the process, then maybe the handouts should stop, or be radically altered.
That said, what do you think of the Guardian quote? I sometimes wonder if a computer has been programmed to spit out this stuff. How exactly is having a child out of wedlock and on the dole the "moral" choice? What does "moral" mean to the author? I'm not sure I want to know what "reasonable" means to him or her.
Exactly. In the eyes of the Left, the crisis appears to be solely that young women aren't doing what feminists demand they do: enter the work force in large numbers and focus their lives on eroding the "patriarchy".
The author's given name is Theodore. I haven't encountered any females with that moniker. Dr. Dalrymple is a physician and conservative commentator. He has worked in the British prison system. He may have been trained as a psychiatrist. Here's another sample of his writing.
A Little Social Experiment - On a London street, “social” housing encourages antisocial egotism.
Ahem.
"That said, what do you think of the Guardian quote?"
I think you should reflect first, and post second.
I think you should reflect first, and post second.
You lost me. The Guardian is a well known leftist rag. I thought you were asking about Dr. Dalrymple's attitude, since I thought he was the author that was the subject of inquiry. That's why I linked another article from him.
Maybe your queries could be more explicit. Then you wouldn't need to insult. I was trying to be helpful.
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