This blog will be posted as two parts as the issues contained would make a single post unreasonably lengthy. Upon publication of the second part I'll post a link to the first part and vice-versa. This first part explains the situation that brought me to write this piece, whilst the second will explore the question expressed in the title.

On Sunday I watched a documentary on BBC called "18 Pregnant Schoolgirls" (You can find it on iPlayer here) which covered the story of how 18 girls at a school in the Catholic town of Gloucester, Massachusetts became pregnant in 2007, and explored the possibility that there may have been a pact between the girls to have children at the same time. The girls in question were all 15 or 16 years old (In Massachusetts the age of consent is 16 - It varies from state to state), however the ages of the boys involved have been disputed as only a few have come forward due to the risk of conviction for rape.

The programme was so focussed on the possibility that these girls had conspired to get pregnant at the same time that it completely overlooked the issue on which they should have focussed - what on earth possessed these children (and lets face it, these are just children!) to conclude that having a child was in any way a responsible choice? Whilst a grand conspiracy makes fantastic copy for a tabloid it is not the real issue at hand, we should really be concerning ourselves with the fact that 18 young girls (either individually or collectively) chose to become pregnant.

Teenage pregnancy normally results from a failure to practice safer sex (Only abstinence is truly safe sex!), though admittedly some pregnancies do arise from the 3% failure rate that contraceptive methods suffer from. Gloucester High School had a health centre where two practitioners resigned after the school board refused to allow them to distribute condoms to the student body, instead preferring to follow an abstinence only sex education program. Whilst the promotion of abstinence is worthy we have to accept the reality that teenagers will have sex, and therefore it is the duty of the school system to promote the use of contraception. Despite the schools stance on abstinence they actually provide a day care centre for the children of students, not only does this effectively legitimise teenage mothers, to me it also screams "Don't have sex, but if you do then you should be having children".

The decision to have a child brings forward a huge amount of responsibility, and I cannot even begin to comprehend the true expanse of them having not fathered a child myself. Whilst there are no specific criteria for potential parents (and I would never suggest we should have) I'm sure we can all agree that financial independence and security absolute necessity - how can someone expect to provide for their child if they struggle to get by at present?