warrenm2

Just a bit of FYI...



Beverley Hughes, the children and families minister, told the Guardian last week that there is nothing more the Government can do to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies. Her message was "Nothing to do with us. The government offers lots of sex education in schools, but those teenagers keep on having babies. Now it is up to the parents."

She was echoing Tony Blair who, as he bemoaned the lack of respect in British society, said he could not bring up other people's children for them.

So is it really nothing to do with them? Is there nothing they can do about?

Britain has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe at 42.8 conceptions a year for every 1,000 girls under 18. Our teenagers have five times as many babies as Dutch girls, three times as many as the French and twice as many as German frauleins. It seems unlikely that this has nothing to do with the government. There is not something particular about British girls that means they have babies more frequently than girls elsewhere.

Britain is second only to Sweden in Europe in the proportion of women aged 18 to 35 who are lone mothers. Lone mothers are more than four times more common here than in Italy, Portugal, Greece or Spain? It is unlikely that this, too, is nothing to do with government policy.

The very high numbers of teenage pregnancies and lone parent families in Britain have everything to do with the framework created by this government and its predecessors. Britain has not always been a world capital of teenage pregnancy and lone parenting. The rate of lone parenting in Britain was tiny after the second world war and it was only after welfare benefits were increased persistently - particularly for lone parents - that the rate increased. This, in turn, made it more acceptable for teenage girls to let themselves get pregnant without worrying too much if they were married first.

The contrasts between Europe countries are dramatic and revealing. Four countries offer little or no welfare benefits to lone mothers. Those same four countries - Italy, France, Greece and Portugal - are the same ones which have only a tiny percentage of lone mothers. It is true that three of these countries are Catholic. But that is not the deciding factor. Ireland is Catholic yet still has one of the highest rates of lone parenting in Europe. The difference is that Ireland offers relatively substantial welfare benefits to lone parents. Britain and Ireland were found to be the two with the highest benefits for lone parents in a survey of 14 European countries. They were also the countries with the highest proportions of lone mothers.

On this evidence, it seems that welfare benefits have a major impact on the rate of lone parenting. So governments cannot just wash their hands of it. They can and should act.

It is simply not true that there is nothing they can do about it. In 1996, Bill Clinton, in combination with the Republican majority in Congress, made major welfare benefit reforms designed to make benefits-assisted parenting a 'waystation' instead of a 'way of life'. The American government decided not to pay benefits to people for more than five years of their lives. All those on benefits, including women with young children, were required - yes, 'required', not 'encouraged' as in Britain - to seek work.

As a result, fewer young women with children in America are now defined as being 'in poverty'. More of them are working and the upward trend in lone parenting has, for the first time in decades, been arrested and is now beginning to turn down. Teenage parenting has been reduced. Meanwhile in Britain where the rate of births outside marriage was higher in the first place, it is still rising. In reality, the British government knows about this. It knows that governments can make a difference. But what it lack is the guts and the moral determination to do something similar to the USA.

The American government has since gone further and supported the teaching of sexual abstinence in schools. This has helped cause a drop in the pregnancy rate among 10 to 14 year-olds to the lowest rate for 60 years. Here in Britain, in contrast, 'sex education' tends to mean teaching children how to have sex and, implicitly, that it is a perfectly sensible thing for unmarried children to do.

Does all this matter? It is true that it is possible for lone parents and even a teenage lone parents to bring up children well. But it is far more difficult. All the evidence is that lone parenting results, on average, in children who are disadvantaged emotionally and educationally. They are more likely to be poor, more likely to be unemployed and more likely to become delinquents. If Mr Blair really wants a culture of respect, he will have to do something to discourage lone parenting - and thus the rate of teenage pregnancy. He will have to do something very different from the usual. Talking tough and blaming other people won't cut it.

Leslie

Perhap's if they were to help those who are married instead of actively discouraging it so that the original ways of true family life reappeared, we may get less teenage pregnancy and less yob behaviour.

Les

paulr

To blame all that on the government is daft.
Some of these countries have totally different cultures.

But thats scoobynet for you.Cut and paste ranting at its best.

CrisPDuk

Where you born stupid, or is it something you actively work at? Who the **** do you think creates/maintains the culture of a country anyway

According to the governments own figures, since 1997 a person in full time employment is on average has become £750 per annum WORSE off after taxes. If that same person had been on benefits, they would now be £2100 BETTER off There are girls in my stepson's year at school who openly boast about getting themselves 'knocked up' so they can get a free house and child support because it beats working for a living

The Zohan

Quite!

It has been made to easy, there is no stigma to it, it is a way of life and these are 2-3rd generation now.

It is the govenrments responsibility to get involved and not just the parents. This affects us all!

warrenm2

If you read it again, thats why Ireland is interesting as it is Catholic and yet it has high teenage pregnancy - because it has high benefits....

And how do you explain the situation in America?

But I guess thats just your Scoobynet knee jerk reaction for you!

pete1977

Dont know why your all moaning ,the majority voted these muppets in for the next few years.Get used to it.

paulr

Do you not think that the reason Italy offers little benfit to lone mothers is because there arent any,and the reason there arent many is not due to benefits,but due to a different cultural attitude to the family in Italy.

OllyK

No, the majority did not vote them in, the majority voted for other parties. I agree if you were dumb enough to vote for NL you have little right to complain, but for the rest of us we have every right to point out how fuc*ing dumb the 35% that did vote for NL are at every opportunity we get until they do something about the people they voted in.

ajm

would this be a good moment to mention mass, mandatory chav sterilisation?

CrisPDuk

Alternatively, do you not think that the reason there are hardly any single mothers in Italy is because, sensibly, the Italian Government does not offer the financial incentive that ours does!

Hanslow

Yes, but you forgot culling as well

Personally I think there is too much emphasis on the schools teaching kids everything and parents accepting no responsibility whatsoever. It cuts both ways. Parents should be instilling rights and wrongs into kids and the schools should be supporting the same ideals. Unfortunately, ****e parenting probably leads to a downward spiral through the genepool

richs2891

Yes

Oh and follow America's example of the benefits for 5 years !

Might be a good starting point !

Richard

paulr

No i dont.Anyway offering someone a crap house to live in,in a bad area,on very little money is hardly a great incentive to start a family if your only in it for what you can get.

mattvortex

these people have lived all there lives in "crap houses" in "bad areas" so they know no different so to be offered this at16/18 is fantastic to them. Paul, crispy duc was right -you really have no idea

Lum

Labour can't cut the benefits now, if they do that they will lose the chav vote at the next election and suffer a massive defeat.

ChrisPDuk is correct and I've heard similar boasts and claims "As soon as I'm 16 I'm havin a f---ing baby so I can gerra council ouse and gerraway from me f---ing mother", the mother in question is probably useless and needs getting away from but the mother to be will be just as bad and likely for the same reasons.

My mum used to run a Merseyside youth club which served a couple of estates, half the kids from one estate had the same dad! one of them got pregnant and they organised a sweepstake to determine who the father was based on people she was known to have slept with in the last few months. About 20 names went in and no-one won!

Being a youth worker my mum had to try and stop this sweepstake because it was insensitive, but then she'd come home and **** herself laughing about it.

Oh and as for sex education in schools, half of this lot didn't bother going to school

matt85

True, Labout cant cut the benefits because they would undoubtedly lose the 'Chav vote', (which was nicely put by the way ), but everybody knows that is the only way to cure this problem, which to me indicates that the British political system is very, very wrong.

In a similar way to the way monetary policy has been handed over to the MPC to stop politicians creating conditions of 'boom and bust' to suit their own agendas come election time, maybe we need to start handing over other aspects of policy over as well so we can actually get some SOLUTIONS TO OUR PROBLEMS!! Only problem here is going to be when you start doing that, where do you stop?

******* politics in this country; wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong......

Soulgirl

He couldn't do anything in the first place the useless c unt. No more than any other government tracked ****** could do.

Until a leader isn't scared to offend there might as well not be a government.

Politically correct? Bollickly-connective more like.

Who's in f ucking charge anyway?

Obviously those that don't actually fiscally contribute, that's who.

^OPM^

i dont like the man but ken livingstone sums politics up nicely-

'if voting changed anything they would ban it...'

sums up politics nicely i think-bet even pslewis will agree on that one!

New_scooby_04

iTrader: (4)

Yes........Yes, it would!

NS04

the moose

Funny, I used to hear exactly the same back home in Newcastle 20 years ago, under a Tory government, proving that nothing changes. It's entirely fair to say that this becomes a second- and third-generation issue, but entirely unfair to blame any one government. Blair is right to say that there are limits to what the government can do - ultimately, it's the fault of the parents, who have abrogated their responsibilities to educate their children.

It's not a government duty to tell your children not to sponge, not to get knocked up at 14, and not to steal cars ..... sure, the schools can help in this, but every parent knows that education on these most basic concepts really does start at home.

OllyK

Sorry, previous governments inability to address an issue does not absolve future governments from doing so either. NL are in power now, the problem is still present, it is very much down to them to sort it out.


Yes the parents are to blame, but having and welfare state in place that supports / encourages the behaviour doesn't help either. If that was removed, the parents couldn't rely on the state for everything and would have to start standing on their own feet.

Sure parents and schools need to provide education, government needs to make sure that the spongers don't sponge by limiting / removing the benefits that allow them to do it.