Four mothers who epitomise everything that’s awful about Britain
Motherhood is a trial, a blessing, a gift. Most mums will tell you that having a baby is the one single thing that made sense of their lives, made them complete, made them whole.
having a family is the best thing they ever did — how many times have we heard that? Yet tragically, not everyone thinks that way.
out on the margins of society, a baby can be many things: an afterthought, a hindrance, a means to an end, a terrible surprise. they are bundles of joy not for their precious little selves, but for their merits elsewhere. Most notoriously of all, as tokens to be bartered to ensure better housing and benefits.
All of this in a society which actively encourages women to do so. Where did we go so wrong?
two mothers are in the news this week . . . no, let’s make that four mothers. A quartet of mums who, between them, epitomise everything that is bad and getting worse about this country.
Most shocking is the case of the 12-year- old girl, who has given birth. the father is only 13, which makes them the youngest parents in the UK.
We profess ourselves to be horrified by child brides in India and Afghanistan. this is the sort of thing we expect to happen in uneducated tribes in third World countries, yet it happened here, in our midst.
the child’s own mother was only 15 when she had her, which says — I am sorry, but it does — everything you need to know.
The girl’s father — not with her mother any longer, no surprises there — says he thinks it’s great. his argument is that his daughter is not on drugs, a baby is a wondrous thing and she is in a committed and loving relationship.
I feel slightly sick that he is crediting his little daughter with complicated emotional and sexual feelings that she cannot possibly have, but it clearly makes him feel better about his (non) role in her catastrophic upbringing.
Come on. At her age, she is too young to understand what a relationship is, unless it is the one she enjoys with her teddy. Note that she got pregnant when she was only 11 years old, and neither her mother nor her father even knew until she was eight months gone.
this is more than lax parenting. to me it suggests serious negligence, perhaps even a neglect worthy of prosecution. Will that happen? of course not. But I’d have both parents arrested, just the same.
Meanwhile, in rochdale, a 36year-old jobless mother encouraged her own 19- year- old daughter to ‘work the system’ by having a baby, which she has duly gone and done.
Mother-of-two Sinead Clarkson has no qualifications, has never worked and takes in £1,200 a month from the State. ‘I am better off on benefits. I refuse to work for a pittance and struggle,’ she says.
Bad enough that her own life has been stunted by a system that has suffocated any spark of ambition or drive, now she is ushering in a new generation who will behave in exactly the same manner.
her daughter has done what Mum said, and is expecting her first child in three months.
Cause for celebration? Yeah — in our Cash-for-Kids system, she immediately gets an extra £400 a month in benefits once the baby is born. Woohoo! the Clarkson mums not only make a mockery of the system, they divert money away from the impoverished and the desperate, who need and deserve the money so much more.
they haven’t even tried to get jobs. And despite the millions spent on sex education and the role models who are supposed to foster ambition in young women, far too many girls still dream of nothing more than getting knocked up.
It does not help that sex education in schools is nonjudgmental, or that contraceptives are handed out with no mention of moral boundaries.
BUt I don’t blame the State, I blame the parents. they are supposed to be the moral guardians. ‘Maybe we could have done more,’ said the father of the 12-year-old mum, which has to be the understatement of the year. ‘ We cannot keep her wrapped up her whole life,’ he insists.
Fine, but she had not even reached the age of consent. She is and was a child who needed to be protected. At the very least there is supervision, discipline, teaching right from wrong and taking an interest in your child’s life. the basics of family life, so terribly ignored here.
We’re all supposed to clap our hands and say: ‘Babies, how lovely! don’t be judgmental.’ Both these babies might have tremendous lives, rise above their circumstances and the short- sightedness of young mothers who have brought them into the world with all the planning of an impulse purchase in Primark.
Yes, it might turn out like a Ken Loach film, with the quiet nobility of the morally impoverished overcoming all obstacles in the end. the 13-year- old father might stand by the 12year- old mother — until the next girl or football match or Xbox distraction comes along.
the teenage girl who had a baby just so she could get a bigger flat and more benefits might turn out to be the mother of the year. Yet what are the chances?
the cycle goes on, teenage mum begets teenage mum begets teenage mum, driving down a one-way street to a dead-end life. they have failed and been failed in every way. By their own mothers most of all.