Gym-Slip Love

“If welfare help for young single mums dried up so would the problem!” screams the Daily Mail reader, perpetuating the myth that these lecherous young women’s desire for a cushy existence is a calculated financial life-choice, and a characteristic of Britain’s moral disintegration. “Samantha McCall fell pregnant at 16 and receives child tax credit, income support, child benefit and a £500 maternity grant!” scream the headlines, as though a 22nd floor flat on the roughest estate in your borough and existing on less than a Kwik Save cashier would bank each year, were an easy ride.

As a teen mum (with not a benefit book in sight) I’m qualified to state that morning sickness on your eighteenth birthday isn’t desirable, and neither is bringing a baby into the world when you’re ill equipped with the financial and emotional security, patience and life experience required to smoothly procreate. It’s a lonely, frightening and depressing existence, made harsher by the attitudes and right-wing headlines which brand you a state-sponging, social leper. So what’s going on with young women? While the boys are out knifing and gunning one another into oblivion, teen girls use sex as though it were their only valuable asset. Teen pregnancy is the sad end result.

The numbers of teen mums are on the increase. Britain now has the highest rate in Europe with 40,000 teenagers giving birth each year at a cost of £63 million to the taxpayer. At times, Joe Public’s resentment is understandable. In the Seventies Britain had similar teenage pregnancy rates to the rest of Europe, but while other countries got theirs down in the Eighties and Nineties, Britain’s rate stayed high.

Controversial research into the after-effects of teen pregnancies are beyond bleak, with teen mums less likely to finish their education and get a decent job, and more likely to become single parents and live in poverty. However it is the prospects for the children of teen mothers that are most depressing. Their children are at a greater risk of poor health and academic failure at school and more likely to become teen parents themselves. Criminologist George Hosking’s report went as far as to state that teen parents’ ‘lack of emotional maturity and misjudged attempts at discipline could lead to their children developing violent tendencies’. A cycle of aggression that means many young people today are 25 times more likely to be a victim of violence than 50 years ago. So apparently not only have you messed up your own life if you get up the duff in your teens, there’s every likelihood you’re rearing tomorrow’s killer.

What is sad and depressing is the outlook of some teen mothers like Olivia, who, when asked how she feels about being a mother at 16, replies “I’ve no regrets about having [her daughter] Ayeasha at 15. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me and if I had to do the same again, I would. I don’t have contact with Ayeasha’s dad but I have help from my parents and there’s nothing else I wanted to do with my life. I don’t want a career - I want to bring my little girl up and still go out and have fun.”

Not all young mothers view life as a teen mother like Olivia, and, one thing is for sure, society’s demonising of young mothers is unhelpful and unproductive. A number of young girls see it as a positive experience and one that they will use to help them become a better person. “The love you get from a baby son or daughter is the best feeling you will ever experience, knowing they rely on you completely and they show you love in a whole new way,” says Natasha 16, illustrating her belief that a baby’s love will fill the holes in her life. Andrea fell pregnant when she was 15; now 17, she is studying a three-year course in law at college: “In three years time I’ll be a qualified legal executive. I’m going to make it all work for me, because everyone expects me to fail and that just motivates me to prove them all wrong. I’ll be a good mother and a good lawyer.”

It might be a while before the government recognises that entrenched cycles of poverty and lack of decent education mean that the working class British youth just doesn’t get it when it comes to sex education, so until the penny drops, the responsibility lies with the individual to be smart. Sadly, many young women are left carrying the baby alone, so ladies: be smart. Sex is one of life’s mystic treasures and I know it’s pointless to advocate abstinence in over-sixteens, but let your body be your temple, keep sex safe, use a condom and let the words of the great Maya Angelou emanate through you: “I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.”  
 
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