March 19, 2010
Teenage Girls Have Sex. Get over it.
Liberal Conspiracy recently reported the hilarious, if disturbing, remarks of Tory MP Tim Loughton:
“We need a message that actually it is not a very good idea to become a single mum at 14. [It is] against the law to get pregnant at 14. How many kids get prosecuted for having underage sex? Virtually none. Where are the consequences of breaking the law and having irresponsible underage sex? There aren’t any.”
So, The Guardian asked, should there be prosecutions?
“We need to be tougher. Without sounding horribly judgmental, it is not a good idea to be a mum at 14. You are too young, throwing away your childhood and prospects of developing a career.”
Without sounding horribly judgmental, anybody who thinks that there are no consequences to getting pregnant, and that a criminal record promotes a happy childhood and helps develop a healthy career, is a Platinum Imbecile.
Platinum Imbecility aside, there’s something to note about the bizarre universe Mr Loughton resides in: girls get pregnant by magic.
In the universe I inhabit, pregnancy outside of IVF clinics requires two people, male and female. Assuming that most teenage girls are having sex with teenage boys, the preoccupation with “teenage mothers” is thus striking. Why don’t we hear more about “teenage fathers”?
Sadly it’s not just idiotic Tories that insist on believing that Britain’s teenage girls are experiencing immaculate conceptions. Idiotic Labour MPs are possessed of this bizarre mysticism too. Check out this obnoxious nonsense from Tom Harris. Teenage mothers are the problem, he shrieks. But what about the boys who are getting them (if you’ll pardon my French) up the duff? Not a word about the lads.
Things become especially bizarre when we recall Don Paskini’s post highlighting that teenage motherhood can be an overwhelmingly positive experience. It’s just not the case that teenage motherhood necessarily results in packs of feral youths roaming the streets, gleefully breaking Britain. The problem is not with teenage motherhood, it’s with poor parenting. And that can happen whatever a parent’s age. A more sensible attitude, therefore, entails developing strategies to aid parents in difficult circumstances, not obsessing about their age and stigmatising them accordingly.
And you know what? I really have no problem with teenagers having sex – and even getting pregnant – per se. There, I said it. Scandalous. But it strikes me as obvious to any sane person that Teenagers Having Sex is only a problem if, for example, a particular teenager is personally not ready for the “consequences” of sex. Say because they are pressured into it, or find the experience traumatic. Or because they end up with an unwanted pregnancy.
But these qualifications are crucial. Sex is not bad per se, even for teenagers. Sex is bad when it’s attached to undesirable experiences and consequences. Perhaps the risks of “bad things” is higher for sexually-active teenagers. Maybe. But even then, a sensible approach is to make judgements using evidence, on a case-by-case basis. What’s silly is to condemn all teenage sex just because it is teenage sex. There is no inherent reason why teenagers can’t have sex without negative consequences. Thousands do on every day of every year – whether the Daily Express likes it or not.
Which brings us to an interesting point. Our society exhibits a bizarre hysteria about teenage sex. Most especially, there is an overwhelming hysteria about teenage girls having sex. We live in a world of paradox. Advertising, music videos, film and TV push relentless images of sexual availability in young females. Teenage girls are constantly encouraged to look available and attractive. Yet actual sexual activity by teenage females is viciously scorned and stigmatised. Adolescent girls are to look and act as though they are sexually available – but should they ever actually be sexually active and available they earn the labels of slut and slag. (Boys, of course, are players and studs – a significant attitudinal difference, I would suggest).
It’s the bizarre, confused, quasi-Victorian mania about female sex and sexuality that largely animates Loughton and Harris. The blunt horror of even thinking about teenage girls having sex so overwhelms them that they forget that girls do not have sex alone. Teen mothers are vilified by Harris, while Loughton demands they suffer criminal penalties. The question of whether teenage fathers bear responsibility, or are worthy of our extreme moral disdain, or even our attention, never makes it onto the radar. That these politicians’ attitudes are the norm tells us something important about our society.
Peter said,
March 19, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Two great posts by Ben Gunn, relating to sex and children, here:
http://prisonerben.blogspot.com/2010/03/kids-and-sex.html
http://prisonerben.blogspot.com/2010/03/defining-children.html
uberVU - social comments said,
March 20, 2010 at 6:22 am
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by paul_sagar: Teen sex: http://badconscience.com/2010/03/19/teenage-girls-have-sex-get-over-it/ (watch the pervs click the link)…
Joseph Takagi said,
March 20, 2010 at 2:02 pm
“To the first, I have only to say that the notion of teenage mothers as rational economic agents calculating to get pregnant for the long-run utility benefits of state-subsidy tallies poorly with observed behaviour of teenagers generally, and teenage attitudes towards sex especially.”
Yet, the Netherlands, Japan and Switzerland all have lower teenage pregnancy rates. And all 3 are stingy with regards to supporting teenage mothers. Likewise, the British unwed pregnancy rate was tiny when married people got priority on council lists rather than girls with babies.
It also happens in poorer families, which suggests that it has more to do with alternative opportunities, in other words, that there is some correlation. Either they’re deliberately doing it, or girls from richer families are talking a lot more action not to have babies than girls from poorer families. If someone sees their outlook as bleak in terms of getting a house without having a baby then I’m not saying they’ll sleep with someone, but maybe they’ll be less picky or less likely to use contraception.
I say none of this to condemn those teenage mothers. I cast no moral judgement. If you are on minimum wage and don’t see yourself as having great prospects then you’d be mad not to have a baby to get the council to house you. Because the middle classes with their NIMBY attitude to housing have given the poor little choice.
Bad Conscience said,
April 11, 2010 at 7:03 pm
[...] especially on teen girls – is one that I’m not entirely comfortable with. As I’ve said before, teen pregnancy is not bad per se and it’s worth thinking about why Anglophone societies [...]
Bristol Palin and American Class Consciousness « Bad Conscience said,
April 11, 2010 at 7:04 pm
[...] especially on teen girls – is one that I’m not entirely comfortable with. As I’ve said before, teen pregnancy is not bad per se and it’s worth thinking about why Anglophone societies [...]
Disappointed Googlers « Bad Conscience said,
April 15, 2010 at 12:24 am
[...] I can’t repeat some of the search terms that have led members of Teh Internet Communitie to this post. They must be so disappointed when they get there. Unless biting analytic commentary about [...]
Steve said,
April 27, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Personally, I am sick to death of the wholescale rape of the benefits system by job shirkers, disability fakers, system cheating immigrants and those who bring a child into the world for a long term meal ticket.
Anyone who lives in or near an area where figures are high for teenage pregnancies – and the subsequent babies! – will know what I mean. On any given day, dozens of Vicky Pollards can be seen promenading the high street, one hand simultaneously holding a fag whilst pushing a pram, the other sending texts on the latest shiny new mobile phone.
They don’t put the father’s name down on the birth certificate, that way they are eligible for maximum benefits. Then, once esconced in an abode paid for by those of us who work, laddo moves in, and together the pair systematically rape the benefits system using information given to them by the Citizens Advice Bureau. The CAB is nothing more than a body from which those seek to do it extract information about how to beat the system. If I went there for advice I would probably be told to pay for a solicitor.
Look, whatever the benefits of unmarried, teenage girls having babies may be – and I cannot see any – it should be their business, and their responsibility to look after that child, and they should be made understand that much whilst at school, and reiterated as soon as they get pregnant so that they can make arrangements accordingly, be it termination, adoption, or help from parents and partners to set up, or share a home and the cost of bringing up the baby. I see no reason why the the tax payer should be charged with the wholescale costs of bringing up someone else’s child. Especially when it is done for the very purpose of sponging off the state.
I was born and bred on a council estate, I consider myself to be a moderate.