Saturday 15 July 2006

Pic of the day: Experts still can't explain why many young women suddenly decide to have children already in their teens. Is there something in their upbringing that subconsciously primes them to consider this a natural "career"?

"Uterus for hire"

The irony is overwhelming, but evidently only if one is a genius. Or perhaps it takes something even more profound, a kind of alienation from humanity. Not as in misanthropy but rather as in seeing it from outside, as if one were a curious, visiting alien.

If poor women were to advertise "will bear children for money", how would you react? What would you think about a society where this was considered an acceptable (though not respectable) career choice? What would you think about the fact that young girls, even in their teens, saw this as their best option for the future?

It happens on a large scale. It may be argued that until recently, this was the most common way for a woman to keep starvation at bay, to bear the children of a man. In so far as she even had a choice. Today, women have a choice. But some choose to bear children, not for any particular man, but in order to receive welfare from the state.

In pretty much every civilized country, certainly in every western one, underprivileged girls decide to have children, in order to get state support. Contrary to popular belief, a study shows that young girls don't necessarily become pregnant because they don't have knowledge of contraceptives or access to them. Rather, they decide to become pregnant because it seems a better choice than staying in their birth family. They can't afford an education and they sure can't get a job, but they can get a baby. And with welfare and child support, they have enough money to live on their own, although it is certainly not a garden of Eden.

I don't know how this is in other countries, I think it varies, but here in Norway the money kinda wanes after a few years. Oh, the child support from the father continues, but it is not really enough to feed a parent as well, unless you have found a rich victim. And this is highly unlikely, for various reasons that I don't think I need to explain. The special support for women with small children falls away after a few years. Time to put the good old uterus to work again! It is not a particularly pleasant experience, to say the least, but a few years is enough to forget exactly how excruciating it was. And the money comes back, at least.

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Imagine a country where a state or federal agency regularly advertises: "Looking for women to bear children for the state. No qualifications needed for any parent. Secure income, can work from home." What would you think about such a society? Is this a place you would want to live?

Surely you would feel that this was at most marginally better than state bordellos. Possibly worse, because a state bordello only has adult victims. No children are harmed in that case, but we cannot make any such guarantee when women breed for money. I am sure few if any of them intend to mistreat their children, and most of them certainly don't. But these are mothers with less resources than the average person, which is why they chose this path in the first place. And still they are expected to do the work of two parents, raising a child (or several children). This cannot be a good thing, overall.

But because we don't spell it out, but only write it between the lines, it is suddenly OK. We know that there are many such women who bear children for money, but we pretend that they all just had an unlucky love affair or forgot their contraceptives or something. Yes, that must be it. They all forgot to take their pill. The fact that they flunked school and grew up in neighborhoods with no jobs and poor schools doesn't matter. Blame it all on the Pill!

Or at the very least blame it on the women. They should have stayed at home being beaten up by their drunk dad, going to school and failing, then try in vain to get a job. There is nothing wrong with a society in which your best bet is to work with your uterus. Oh no. As long as I have a nice day, there is nothing wrong with society. Or is there?