Teenage pregnancy is a calamity. On this society seems to be agreed. The
Government certainly is. It calls teenage motherhood a “serious social
problem” and has set up a task force to deal with it, while the rest of us
seem happy to accept the Vicky Pollard stereotype that very young mothers
are ill-educated dropouts, abandoned by feckless teenage fathers, who will
drain the welfare system and produce children who will soon be collecting
Asbos.
But what if we dare to entertain the idea that having a baby at 16 can be a
good thing? What if we admit that many babies born to such girls receive a
quality upbringing and are supported by the fathers? What if - shock, horror
- we suggest that teenagers may even make better parents than many
middle-class thirty-somethings who pay others to mind their babies?
During the past few months, documentary-makers for Channel 4's Cutting Edge
have been filming at The Liverpool Women's Hospital. They had no particular
brief when they started, but were so impressed by some teenagers giving
birth there that their film, Pramface Babies, has become a semi-comical
celebration of teenage motherhood and challenges the idea that only planned
babies are wanted babies.
Ruth Pitt, the executive producer, says that working on it made her reflect
that the middle class had hijacked the idea of what constitutes ideal
motherhood. “Some of these mothers could teach the middle class quite a bit
about having babies,” she says. “These young women, though none planned
their babies, are incredibly committed to them: the children are put at the
absolute centre of their world and they just get on with it. I have a
suspicion that there are a lot of middle-class families whose love for their
child is partly conditional. It's related to achieving academically. But a
lot of these teenage mums don't expect anything of their children. They love
them for what they are, and their overwhelming priority is looking after
them themselves.”
Krista Wright, from Bootle, Merseyside, was 16 when she fell pregnant with her
first child, Megan. She had been with her boyfriend, David, for just four
weeks. She dreaded telling her parents and booked an abortion, but couldn't
go through with it. David and her parents supported her decision. Megan is
now 4 and Krista and David, a stevedore, are still together and have a new
ten-week-old baby, Mary Anne.
Although Krista had to leave school and delay her plans to train as a midwife,
she is enraged by the assumptions about girls like her. “Some people think
that if you're young and have children you are automatically a slag,” she
says at the tenement flat she shares with David. “They turn their noses up
at you on the bus. Well, I've been with David for five years and I know he
will never walk out on the children. I'm very, very happy with the decision
I made.”
She plans to train as a midwife once Mary Anne is at school, and believes
fervently that teenagers often make better mothers: “A lot of people expect
you to fail as a mother, so you are more determined to prove them wrong,”
she says.
This view is borne out by academic research. Simon Duncan, Professor of Social
Policy at Bradford University, says that a baby can be a positive turning
point for teenagers, making them more determined to gain qualifications,
focus on improving their lives and shun some of the “wayward” friends they
may have had.
“Recent studies show that the age of pregnancy has little effect on future
qualifications, employment or income level,” he says. “Indeed, teenage
mothers often do better than their social peers. This appears to be because
many young mothers find that motherhood makes them feel stronger, more
competent and more connected ... similarly, it seems that teenage fathers
often want to be good fathers, to be actively involved in childcare.” A
study for the Teenage Pregnancy Unit found that young women's attendance
records and ambitions improved after pregnancy.
We musn't be naive about the statistics. They do suggest that a teenage mother
is more likely to drop out of school, to have low or no qualifications, to
be unemployed or low-paid, to do less well at school, to become involved in
crime, and to use drugs and alcohol. But academics make the point that girls
who fall pregnant at an early age (and only 7 per cent of teenage mothers in
Britain are under 16) are more likely to be from such a background in the
first place. It is not the babies that cause the deprivation. On the
contrary, parenthood is more likely to motivate a young person to get out of
poverty.
The film Juno, a comedy-drama about a 16-year-old dealing with an unplanned
pregnancy, has been accused of painting an irresponsibly upbeat picture of
teenage pregnancy. But the non-doom-laden side of the story is rarely heard
these days.
Sue Thompson, one of two “young women's midwives” at The Liverpool Women's
Hospital, says that in her experience teenagers usually make “very capable,
loving mothers”. “For []a great many the pregnancy is a turning-point,” she
says.
Karen Comber, the deputy head of midwifery, says that of the 8,000 births that
take place there each year, 120 are to teenagers, mostly aged between 16 and
18. Per thousand births in this area, 41.6 are to teenagers, compared with a
national average of 40. But, in line with Government targets, the hospital
has seen a 28 per cent reduction in teenage pregnancies since 1998.
A recent story to confound the doubters was that of James Sutton, from
Manchester, who was 12 when he fathered twin girls with Sarah Drinkwater,
then 16. Eight years on the twins are fine, the couple are still together
and they have another baby. Now 21, James has spent five years working for a
construction company and is studying for a university degree.
All the young mothers featured in the Channel 4 film all being supported by
the fathers of their babies, and all these fathers have jobs. This is not to
say that there are no moments of pure Vicky Pollard comedy, though. For
instance, 18-year-old Laura spends almost her entire labour on her mobile
phone, trying to locate the baby's father, who fails to make it to the
birth. When she finally speaks to him, her newborn son in her arms, he asks:
“Has he got a big chopper?” A few weeks on we see her at home with the baby,
declaring him the best thing that has ever happened to her, and pointing out
a new gift that her partner has bought her - a Pit Bull puppy named Gucci.
But, contrary to stereotype, the couple have set up home and are still
together.
Kerrie, 17, says she wanted a baby “for something to love” because her
upbringing, largely in foster care, had been so wretched. For those who
frown at this reasoning, doesn't a thirtysomething who gets pregnant merely
because she wants to tick all the boxes before she is 40 have a less
defensible motive? And here is a twist: while we who wait until we have a
nice house, a career and a nanny before having our babies may judge the
teenage mother, be assured that she judges us.
Lindsey Boyd, who was 18 when she fell pregnant with her first child, is
incredulous that any mother would choose not to be with her child
permanently for its formative first four years, and employ a nanny or
nursery instead. “Motherhood isn't watching someone else bring up your
kids,” she says. “Don't get me wrong, I'm going to work when they're at
school. But I want them to be able to say ‘our mum brought us up from the
day we were born'.”
Lindsey had two babies within a year - Tayla, now 15 months, and
three-month-old Andrew. Like Krista's children, they are immaculately turned
out and happy. She and the father, Andy, don't live together but he shares
the childcare and they are, they say, “taking it slowly”. Lindsey's mother
Pat, 45, herself became pregnant at 18 and, although she didn't want her
daughter to follow suit, agrees that children have been the making of
Lindsey. “I never thought she'd be able to cope with two so young but she
has totally proved me wrong,” she says. “They are always clean, always fed
and happy. What more can you ask for?”
Germaine Greer is among those who have questioned the Government's
preoccupation with teenage pregnancy. She cites the reasons behind its
Teenage Pregnancy Strategy's aim to halve “unwanted” pregnancies by 2010 as
“truly lame”. “We have 39,000 unwanted births a year - unwanted by the
Government, that is. No one is speaking for the mums,” she says. Of Beverley
Hughes, the Children's Minister, who said : “Having children at a young age
can damage young women's health and wellbeing,” Greer is disparaging.
“Childbearing can damage health and wellbeing at any age,” she says. “The
associated risks of childbearing are certainly higher for adolescent mums
than for mums over 20, but nowhere near as high as for women on IVF - but we
haven't decided to halve the number of them by 2010.”
Professor Duncan says that the image of teenage girls having babies to secure
a council house and scrounging off the State has been exaggerated. Besides,
he adds, teenage birth rates in the UK are no higher now than they were in
the 1950s, while in the 1960s it was deemed normal for 18-year-olds to have
babies. In some cultures young motherhood is encouraged and, as fertility
rates are highest in the teenage years, nature does not seem to deem it a
disaster.
Teenage parenthood has become conflated with a wider moral panic about the
decline of marriage, single parenting and teenage sexuality. And the
“benefits burden” tag doesn't bear scrutiny, he says. In the US, comparative
studies have been made between girls who became pregnant as teenagers but
miscarried and teenagers who went on to have their babies. By their mid to
late twenties the teenage mothers did better than the mothers who had
miscarried in terms of employment and income “which, ironically, meant that
government spending would have increased if they had not become young
mothers”.
Lindsey, who was working as a waitress and attending a bricklaying course at
college when she fell pregnant, is looking forward to working, but says: “I
wonder whether, if I'd had a big career first, I'd have thought ‘Well, my
career's my life' and the kids would have come last in it.”
Doesn't she feel that she is missing out on life? “I have a better life now
because every time Tayla smiles I feel proud. I'm happier now than I've ever
been. “
Krista, too, seems sincere when she says that she doesn't regret her “lost”
teenage years. “I was out clubbing when I was 15. I've done all that: when
you've seen one club, you've seen them all,” she says.
“I don't agree with having nannies. I enjoy looking after my kids. You brought
them into the world, it's your responsibility to look after them. If you're
not prepared to do that, don't have kids. What's the point?” The Government
has sold the idea to young people that having babies “ruins lives”. Anyone
who has seen older women suffering the trauma of leaving it too late could
reply that not having babies ruins lives, too.
Cutting Edge: Pramface Babies,
Channel 4, Thursday, March 13, 9pm.
Young motherhood a blessing? I beg to differ
It's all very well to talk about the benefits of young motherhood when there
is a father figure present, as there is in all the case studies here, but
this does not correspond with social reality. In most cases, teenage mothers
end up alone. And the idea that teenage single pregnancy is a net social
benefit is absurd.
Many teenage single mothers may not see childrearing as a way of securing
benefits such as housing and child allowance, but the availability of such
benefits permits them to imagine that having a baby will be the answer to
their problem.
What is their problem, exactly? Most of them grow up in loveless environments
in which the membership of the household changes kaleidoscopically,
stability is almost unknown and conflict universal. They have often
experienced violence and abuse. Neither their families, nor their schools,
nor popular culture give them any guidance on how to improve the quality of
their lives. It is not surprising, then, that a baby is seen as some kind of
solution, irrespective of who the father is or how he can be expected to
behave in the future. Indeed, as the father is expected to play little or no
role in the future of his child, it does not really matter what he is like.
“A baby is someone to love, who will love me back.” This is a statement that
I have heard from patients a hundred times, and it is a sad and moving
testimony to our intrinsic need to love and be loved. There is no doubt that
many single mothers, abused, exploited and abandoned by the fathers as they
so often are, lavish immense affection on their child and find in that child
the whole purpose of their being, but this is not the same as asserting that
such a pattern of childrearing is good for society, or a harbinger of a
prosperous and happy future. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that it
promotes (though does not, in all cases, lead inevitably to) every possible
kind of social pathology, from drunkenness to criminality, from drug-taking
to sexual abuse.The connection between this pattern of childrearing and
violence does not arise by chance.
Young women who have babies by men who are then absent do not remain celibate,
but their future sexual partners often do not care to have other young men's
children around them, and make this plain in a variety of ways. Moreover,
the presence of another man's child (or, often enough, other men's children)
acts as a permanent reminder to a man of the transitoriness of the woman's
relations with men. This is a powerful stimulus to jealousy - and jealousy
is the most important cause of violence between a man and a woman.
There are few things sadder than to ask young single mothers what they hope
for, both for themselves and for their children. Would they, for example,
like their children to have the lives that they have had? I have never met
one who did.
On the contrary, what they hope is that their child will one day have a good
job and settle into a stable relationship, preferably marriage. The problem
is, of course, that they have no more idea of how this may be achieved than
of how to fly to Mars.
DR THEODORE DALRYMPLE
Pulling no punches:
In Juno, the 16-year-old title character is pregnant. She decides that a
childless couple, Mark and Vanessa, will adopt her baby. In this scene Juno
is in hospital with her stepmother, Bren, and an ultrasound technician:
Technician: Well, there it is. Would you like to know the sex of your
baby?
Juno: No, there will be no sex!
Technician: Plan to be suprised when you deliver?
Juno: Well, no, but I want Mark and Vanessa to be surprised and if you
tell me I'll just ruin it.
Technician: Are Mark and Vanessa your friends from school?
Juno: No, they're the adoptive parents.
Technician: Oh, well, thank goodness for that!
Bren: What's that supposed to mean?
Technician: Well I've been doing this for a long time and I've seen a
lot of teenagers come through here and it's obviously a very poisonous
environment.
Juno: How do you know I'm so poisonous?
Bren: They could be utterly incompetent. There's no guarantee they'll
do a better job raising this child than my dumbass stepdaughter will. What
is your job title?
Technician: I'm an ultrasound technician.
Bren: Oh yeah? Well I'm a nail technician and I think we both ought to
just stick to what we know.
Technician: Excuse me?
Bren: Oh, you think you're hot shit 'cause you get to sit over there
and play Pictionary, well guess what? My five-year-old daughter could do
that and let me tell you, she's not the brightest bulb in the tanning bed.
So until you have your own kid, why don't you just go back to night school
in Mankato and get a real job?
