The big teenage pregnancy drop is a triumph of progressive politics
|
Version 0 of 1. The latest figures on teenage pregnancy confirm that rates are still going down. In fact, 2013 the rate of conception for under-18s was the lowest since records began, in 1969. That’s such good news. Astonishing, really. It’s a tribute to the idea that progressive social policy – education and support – is vastly preferable to stigma and repression. In 1969, the taboo against unmarried pregnancy and single parenthood was generally still very strong. Now, there’s virtually no taboo against these choices at all. The pragmatic view is simply that parenthood at a young age can be challenging for both parent and child. Certainly, much effort has been put into getting that view across to young people. But the effort is paying off. Of course, both carrot and stick have been used to get these figures down. In the 1980s, as teenage pregnancy soared, it was widely accepted that girls were having babies to get state handouts, including council houses. But this was always a crude and simplistic caricature. The problem was that many girls simply didn’t perceive themselves as having other choices. Life, in the end, was still all about having babies. Why wait, when you were no longer expected to, and when a home and a family of your own was the ultimate aim? These young mothers fell between the tectonic plates of social change. As I say, the taboo against unmarried pregnancy and single parenthood fell away in the 1970s and early 1980s with amazing speed. What fell away less quickly was the idea that underpinned those taboos – that the attainment of home and motherhood should be the female priority. Indeed, as unemployment kept on climbing, the idea that “working women” were taking away jobs that male “breadwinners” could do, barely lost purchase in the most stricken and hollowed-out communities at all. Liberating women to have babies when they liked simply took much less time than liberating women to claim equality in the workplace, for obvious reasons. Girls have an understanding now that getting an education, having a career and gaining financial freedom is not just possible for them, but something they need to do to secure their futures, with motherhood an aspect of their lives but far from the sole purpose. And while conservatives may say that the rising age of women having children is a new social problem to be concerned with, the reality is that everybody – teenage girls included – is coming to the realisation that having children can be a tough and unpredictable undertaking. Women, of course, still do not have equality in the workplace. Even Oscar-winning Hollywood stars suffer under this pervasive discrimination. No one cares much what age men are having children at, even now, as these figures attest. If schoolgirls can achieve the realisation that having children is a very serious business, for which they have to be prepared, surely the next step is for men to start cottoning on to the idea that if parenthood isn’t having an impact of their careers, it can only be because they are cheating their kids. |