it's completely insane. She had sex with that kid, who claims to be 13.

I don't even know what to say it's so bizarre. I don't even know if I spelled bizarre right.

I love Dionne Warwick doing Bacharach and David tunes.

I think the real surprise here is the amount of surprise, although I guess that this isn't all that regular an event over on the other side of the pond.

I've dealt with 13 year old Baby Mommas, and at least one 12 year old Baby Daddy.

It's whole big buckets of wrong.

But the DNA testing could prove interesting.

Does Alfie have to give the money back to the Sun if he's not the baby daddy?

The Sun jumped at it because although the boy is 13 (and is not the youngest father in Britain) he looks about 8. That made for a visually arresting front page story.

The majority of the tabloids are right wing, so they loved this story - got them all frothing at the mouth about the state of the country and how it was going to hell in a handbasket yada, yada, yada. Wet dream of a story for them (all spurt and no substance) because of course the girl will get benefits, it's about underage sex in our "permissive" society, the Mum lives on a council estate, etc etc. Luckily none of those involved were immigrants, otherwise The Mail and the Express might have spontaneously combusted.

The broadsheets have been able to weigh in, as they are read by the educated classes, and their children are sent to single sex private schools and tied up with music lessons, sports clubs and drama until they are 18, so they have as little time for underage sex as possible. And of course if their sons or daughters do propagate it is handled within the family, shrugs and sympathy all round and they all get on with it quietly.

The bottom line apparently is it's Gordon Brown's fault. It wouldn't have happened if we still had corporal punishment in schools, it's the fault of sex education (or not enough of it) the Welfare State, swearing on television (probably Russell Brand has some culpability) and the only solution is to bring back hanging and National Service.

So you don't see a link between decreasing conservative values and increasing social decline?

Nope.

I've been hearing it since I was a child.
We don't seem to be in hell yet, handbasket or not.

People have always been degenerate, one way or another.
Dickens wrote accurately about the times he lived in for example, he only invented the characters. Hogarth's famous Gin Street etching was about society on the verge of collapse.

I doubt he's the first 13 year old to have fathered a child. And he won't be the last.

Oh PLEASE expound on this. I need a good spanking!

*runs around gleefully*

Oh, I'll spank you, alright, and don't even need a reason, you minx!!

Amazing, all this talk and the kid may not be the father.

I see teens prego all the time. It really is a problem world wide. The youngest I have seen was prego at 12 and delivered at 13.

Kids need better education about birth control options and access to it. Not talk.

Just think. This could happen to your kid.

"What is happening to our young people these days?
I see a deterioration of values that worsens with every passing year."
- Baltasar Gracian, 1658

You really should be dating women around your own age, Merc ;)


Srsly, this is an old problem. Our bodies are capable of reproduction years before our minds are capable of making sensible decisions about it.
I don't see how this can be "solved", but it can be managed by, as Merc says, better information, access to contraceptives, and also discouraging kinds from doing it (and keeping them busy with other things), but not condemning them if they do.

Right on.

Define social decline.

This is such a non-story. Sundae's right, it's his baby face that's brought the tabloids in.

My part of England (my borough) has one of the highest teenage conception rates in the country. We've also brought those figures down at a faster rate than anywhere else, because it's something the local authority and partners (health trust, police, anti-social behaviour units, neighbourhood management, CYP Directorate) have concentrated a hell of a lot of effort, time and resources into: reaching at-risk youngsters, outreach education programmes in schools in the area etc.

Why does my area have such high levels of teen conception? It's nothing to do with permissiveness, and a lot to do with the kind of social breakdown that goes hand in hand with poverty and economic distress. Much of my borough is no different to the rest of the country; but we have two areas within it that rank in the top ten on the multiple deprivation index: which means we have two of the most deprived areas in England. No prizes for guessing which parts of my borough are contributing most to those figures. The life expectancy of children born in those two parts of the borough is ten years lower than children born in my village. That is not a slipping of conservative values, it's poverty plain and simple. It never went away.

Why does being poor increase teenage (& preteen) conception rates?
They have nothing else to play with?
Despair/seeking solace in sex?
Poor = poor parenting?
laissez faire attitude about life results in poor and poor parenting?