Thought Picnic: Kids having kids

Break a bottle or two

Just consider a situation where a parent walked into a vintage wines shop where the average price of a bottle was for instance $2,000, just to satisfy their curiosity. Having in tow a toddler or even an adolescent child who then decides to try juggling bottles of Chateau Lafite 1954 as he saw on a cocktail demonstration on television.

Or maybe just a crockery shop where the child just takes plates off the shelf without care or concern, I would assume the parent would exercise authority with a firm caution and possible reprimand knowing that the damage caused by the child would be exacted in penalties against them.

The proud father at 13

My Though Picnic revolves around parent, child, responsibility and consequences.

The news looked interesting enough, a 13-year old boy in the UK had just become a father, the picture that appeared in the papers had father looking not a day over 9 and mother who is 15 looking like his really big sister and daughter born after the bird and the bees moved off the trees into some serious reality.

Apparently, the girl fell pregnant after having sex with her boyfriend – but the pictures also showed how girls who mature earlier than boys made this look like a family photo of siblings rather than parents and child.

An ancestry almost vile

The grandparents of the new born baby who have no discernable income apart from that of the lowly paid paternal grandfather makes the story all the more saddening and visiting an indictment on what our society has become.

None of the grandparents are in a normal family setting, all divorced and separated; something was definitely missing in the early education of the new parents.

First of all is the matter of consequence – sex between kids barely adolescent can produce, wait for it – A PREGNANCY. Then the matter of responsibility, what do these kids know of fending for themselves before ending up with a child?

Then being from broken homes with jobless separated parents on welfare, this piece of news generates more odium than should be accorded the little bundle of joy that is the result of a complete breakdown of responsibility.

Responsibility and consequence

It is very much like a few broken bottles or plates in the shops visited by the parents with their child only that now in the case of a teenage pregnancy and baby the parents are not being held accountable to the point of exacting costs and penalties.

There is no telling that if I were to engage in a business transaction that needed financing the source of finance would enquire of my ability to maintain payments through all sorts verification and authentication.

With the news of the single mother of six children living in a 3-bedroom apartment with her parents now having octuplets through in-vitro fertilisation treatment the question of affordability following responsibility cannot be overlooked.

Affording your children

People should just not have children beyond their ability to offer a good environment for upbringing without relying on charity or welfare. For many, the birth of a child might be a divine gift but the fact is God did not engage in the act of copulation and it required the human-being to adopt a suitable kind of contraception.

There is a case for society creating a means-testing approach to having children just as people are not allowed to drink, drive or vote until they reach a certain age.

Where those societal checks cannot be implemented and enforced then there should be a case of age-related contraceptive neutering – not so much for removing the organs but making the potency of the usage of those organs ineffective until an age of responsibility has been reached.

Time-limited impotence vaccine

Perish the thought that this kind of sexual-organ docility can be introduced through an infant vaccine which wears off as the person approaches 18.

Beyond this, the matter of the 15 year old mother gives cause for concern where her mother allowed her boyfriends to spend the night with her at home – so much so that the 13 year old boy is now asking for a DNA test as proof of paternity because the girl had apparently been offering pleasures to many a man.

At which point I could have fainted with incredulity but this is no time for moralising the matter there is a lot at stack for them, for society and the media-feeding frenzy that now has the grandparents salivating with the thought of making money of the back of this seeming societal tragedy.

No abortion? Then pay up

My biggest wagging finger would however go to the good-intentioned organisations of religious atrocity whose dogmatic adherence to the cult of life abhorring abortion never goes beyond lip service.

Until those organisations really wade into the matter of their principled positions of non-abortion by offering viable and usable care and support through counselling, parental guidance and monetary commitment their noise is piffle and they are hypocrites of the highest order.

No good at all

There is nothing of societal good in having children who cannot fend for themselves having children of their own where even their parents are not effective and beneficial contributors in the society where they belong.

It all lends a lie to the whole moral debate on these matters which can be summarised as follows – parents should provide good sex education to their kids; kids should not be experimenting with sex; if they are then they should have easy access to contraception; kids having kids is just not on and where there is no clear evidence as to how the child would have a life of comfort better than that of those who brought it into the world – adoption is an option whilst abortion should not be ruled out.

Basically, this is serious business, no boy should be proud of being a father at 13, no girl of 15 should be proud of having slept around that the owner of the pregnancy is in dispute, no parent should be seen to be encouraging these kinds of liaisons and no new-born child should be assaulted with the irresponsibility that pervades this sorry tale.

The innocent party to this tale are the child and the octuplets – if only for all that is good in this world they be extricated from the madness into which they have been born which calls for a cold hard look and what is becoming rabid news material but a sad reflection on our sense of responsibility.

Note:

Thought Picnics are a series of random thoughts where thinking the unthinkable becomes part of the conversation to excite debate.