Teenage mothers - a tale of two worlds

There was a horrible irony in the juxtaposition of two particular news stories this week.

Two 15-year-old mothers appeared on the front pages; one the mother of twins born last year, the other the mother of - allegedly - Alfie Patten's child. Both girls were allowed to sleep with boyfriends under the parental roof despite being 14 years old. The news stories suggest they are not isolated examples; teenage motherhood rates are on the increase across the country - as a glance into Max Clifford's postbag would doubtless confirm.

Meanwhile in Nigeria and Ethiopia, to name but two, health workers campaign tirelessly for an end to child marriage. In both countries, girls can be married as young as 12 and many teenagers die or suffer serious injury as a result of giving birth too young and with inadequate health care. The authorities are reluctant to legislate against this, citing cultural and religious imperatives as justification.

A reporter interviewed a young Ethiopian girl who expressed her delight and relief that her wedding had been postponed because a doctor said she was too physically immature. "Now I am happy that I can go back to school." she said, "I want to study and take my exams. Perhaps one day I too may be a doctor." Education for her is a prized commodity, while in Britain it is, like universal free healthcare, taken for granted.

Thus it is that, while in some countries girls in their early teens are coerced into leaving school and facing the risks of early motherhood, their British contemporaries play truant and rush headlong into sexual activity, with all the associated risks of disease and under-age pregnancy, secure in the knowledge that, whatever happens, the NHS and the welfare state will pick up the pieces.

The Alfie Patten Circus

Newgate is no stranger to the seedy side of life, but even the rakes, harlots and highwaymen of Peachum’s Tavern have been choking on their gin at this week’s tabloid news sensation. The most hard-bitten chroniclers of life in the stews of Hogarth’s London would be unlikely to dream up a scenario as bizarre as that surrounding 13-year-old Alfie Patten and his baby daughter.

Before the welfare state, an unplanned teenage pregnancy meant another mouth to feed, providing families in straitened circumstances with a strong incentive for curtailing the sexual activity of their unmarried resident children. The families involved in this case, however, seem to have no such compunctions. The result of allowing two under-age children to sleep together on a regular basis has been a massive financial windfall in the proceeds of a bidding war between the tabloids, courtesy of, inevitably, Max Clifford. To complicate matters, up to eight alternative potential fathers have emerged from the 15-year-old mother’s somewhat murky past, presumably attracted by the vast payouts on offer.

Meanwhile, like Karen Matthews, the baby's relatives are well-versed in the potential benefits of mass publicity. The next development (according to the boy's father) could be the unveiling of the paternity test results live on a TV chat show, a spectacle which rivals even the Tyburn public hangings for cruel and ghoulish entertainment and will doubtless attract the same kind of baying mob for an audience.

When the Department of Health's Teenage Pregnancy Unit instructed teachers to tell their pupils about the "enjoyment of early fatherhood" and inform them that teenage boys could be "proud and able parents", one fervently hopes that this was not the outcome they had in mind.