In the 1970s, Britain’s rate of divorce, teenage pregnancy and other indices of family stability were much the same as those of other European countries. From 1980 onwards they shot off in their own direction, so that today Britain has one of Europe’s highest levels of teenage pregnancy and family break-up.
The widespread unease over the news of pre-teen mums in South Yorkshire reflects the sense that the moral purpose linked to procreation and to families remains a powerful impulse – a public good that people cherish. Child mothers disturb our complacency about a steadily improving society. What is going on?
One of the two cases that have hit the headlines is in my constituency. The area where the girl lived is one of the neater, more settled areas of Rotherham, with good schools, excellent local councillors, active churches, a community bobby and lively civil society organisations. The 12 year old’s mother is herself only 26. She already has five children, and until recently was in a settled marriage. Her children went to school normally. The sadness of this case – which now involves the police and criminal charges – has little to do with teenage sexual tussles, or sex education, or contraception, or being out of home late at night. We are in the territory of adults and young children and every Englishman’s home being his castle within which he is master.
There are lessons from this sad case, but they are about putting right the bad policies of the past, not hoping to re-engineer the human soul. Twenty years ago, Rotherham had 18 working coal mines and 12,500 men employed in basic steel-making. Thirty years ago, the working men’s club in Greasbrough, a Rotherham suburb where William Hague grew up, had enough money and enough style to bring over Sammy Davis Jr for a one-night stand from Los Angeles.
Young men left school to go to a job in pit or plant, which provided identity, purpose, rules, value and order. In short, the existential crisis of South Yorkshire man was solved through work. But between 1980 and 1995, 40,000 of those coal, steel and engineering jobs for men disappeared in Rotherham alone. Suddenly, those who once had spare money for a Hollywood star had no money for a condom.
Most other OECD countries have gone through a wrenching loss of male jobs in traditional industries, but elsewhere national or regional governments accepted a responsibility to nudge the labour market to offer some replacement work. Not so Margaret Thatcher or John Major, who consigned areas such as South Yorkshire to a black hole of indifference. Rotherham’s teenage pregnancy rate reflects the unemployment level and the rise in poverty. Though it has come down since the late 1980s, it remains four times higher than in more prosperous parts of the country.
Usually headline-dominating events spur governments to produce special reports and action programmes. Now we have the reverse. The South Yorkshire child mothers come in the wake of the publication in June of the Social Exclusion Unit’s paper on teenage pregnancy. It concluded that teenage births were “far worse in the poorest areas and among the most vulnerable young people . . . who see no prospect of a job and fear that they will end up on benefit, one way or another. Put simply, they see no reason not to become pregnant.”
The decline in teenage pregnancy in Rotherham, despite the recent cases, may be a function of the big drop in unemployment since the New Deal jobs programme was piloted in the area 20 months ago. There is a tangible return of hope linked to other labour-market interventions such as the minimum wage, the new tax credit for low-wage working families and the move to partnership dialogue in place of the militant class-war rhetoric associated with the region in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Social workers, the council, doctors, teachers and the other usual suspects in Rotherham are this time ahead, not behind, the government loop. There is joined-up work between the different agencies locally in South Yorkshire – now designated a health action zone.
Everyone locally wants better and more moral sex education and, given the ever-lowering rate of puberty, that means primary schools. Peer instruction groups – 16-18 year olds talking about sex to 13-15 year olds – have been tried out and have yielded much better results than an embarrassed adult lecturing embarrassed children. Too many of my constituents work too many hours of day and night to be at home to talk with children.
All the joined-up thinkers in Rotherham agree that getting good medical advice – including drop-in clinics – into schools is vital. But few want to risk the wrath of the media, which start frothing when schoolchildren are told the real facts of life. One staunchly Catholic GP I talked to in Rotherham protested about the lack of contraception easily available for adolescents. He wanted to see the morning-after pill on sale over the counter in Boots.
Lessons about families and marriage from teachers need reinforcement from government and employers through fiscal support, employment, regional economic development and working-time reforms to support family life. The CBI, for example, could help reduce the strain on Britain’s families by easing up on its hostility to working-time regulation and paid parental leave.
A more moral nation implies a more equal nation. I just hope the baby born in my constituency can get through its own young years to voting age as a normal teenager. If he can look forward to a decent job, if he is properly taught about where babies come from and if building a family is supported by public policy, then he stands a chance. If not, he may be a dad towards the end of Labour’s third term.
The author is Labour MP for Rotherham
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