Teenage mums: all rights and no responsibilities
The option of "creating more choices" for such "poverty-stricken mums" is all fine and well: those choices as suggested by Finlay, however, will apply to all lone parents and will invariably be paid for out of the taxpayer's wallet.
Why is it that such socialist agitators only get excited about more 'rights' for less fortunate citizens but rarely allude to the quid pro quo of responsibility from those sometimes irresponsible groupings.
When Mary Harney tried to open a debate on the unsustainability of the concept of lone, and especially teenage, motherhood before the 1997 election, she was roundly condemned by the baying masses including Fergus Finlay who are now criticising Kevin Myers for his controversial and polemical column on lone motherhood.
Similarly, Prof Edward Walsh came under attack for comments that criticised the welfare system which inadvertently rewards the procreation of children into less than satisfactory circumstances.
The birth of children to lone and teenaged mothers, often addicted to alcohol and drugs, and sometimes from different drug-fuelled fathers, is a recipe for intra-generational poverty and crime. Inevitably, any consequent poverty and crime is then blamed on society's supposed inequities by those legions of socialist commentators, when the real blame lies in the amorality of certain socio-economic communities who defiantly refuse to castigate their teenage offspring for unsustainable and destabilising procreation.
A question never asked by the defenders of these practices: how is it that teenagers in the middle class still abide by old fashioned mores, such as not cohabiting and also not having children until officially partnered and/or until later in adulthood? This is not value-judging; it is simply asking the never-asked question regarding how it is that females in the lower socio-economic groups seem happy, and are permitted due to lack of criticism, to procreate in appalling situations without any long-term planning or concern for the well-being of their offspring.
The middle classes, on the other hand, are more inclined to provide a bulwark in responsibly creating societal unions and groupings that contribute to harmony and civic responsibility later in the reproductive cycle.
The defenders of such lone and teenage mothers, since Myers' column was published on February 8, have been spinning the line that the numbers of children born to teenage mothers 3,000 per annum is the same now as in the 1960s.
This is disingenuous in the sense that the teenage mothers of those earlier generations either gave their children up for adoption; were married and/or had strong familial support; would not have had drug and/or alcohol addiction problems; and did not have the social welfare safety net currently available.
It is interesting that a debate on this issue has been kick-started by the Walsh and Myers' dissertations.
Why, for example, was there not a debate on unsuitable and irresponsible parents after the many pointed references to the lack of social services for out-of-control pre-teenagers by some members of our judiciary in recent years.
The comparative free-for-all in relation to 'moral values' in this state over the last two decades, when compared to previous generations, and when measured against intercontinental theocratic societies, has resulted in childbirth to lone and/or unmarried parents often teenaged being regarded without any criticism whatever by those promulgators of a laissez faire approach to social issues.
In future will we regard, with equal equanimity, homosexual parenting unions, resulting from natural childbirth or adoption; cloned children; IVF-assisted childbirth to single geriatric mothers? Burying our heads deeper in the sand on the issue of irresponsible parenting is not the answer.
Eoin McMahon
Northumberland Road
Dublin
