Children
having children. It's a scary concept. But look at pictures of
baby-faced 13 year-old Alfie Patten, who became Britain's youngest
father this month, holding his week-old daughter, and you're seeing the
most recent embodiment of an on-going social trend.

Children
like Alfie, who look barely old enough to have given up G.I. Joes and
Barbie dolls, are having sex and making babies. Even though most adults
don't know how to deal with the pressures and complexities of
parenthood, teenage mothers and fathers are becoming a normal part of
the social landscape. And every year, it seems to become less unusual
and more common.

When I was in school, it was still pretty
controversial when one of my classmates got pregnant or had an
abortion. But it happened. Skip a few years along the line into the
classrooms of my younger siblings, and it's not only happening, but it
has become much less shocking. For my youngest sister, who is 11 years
old, it may be an accepted part of her world. Many of the girls she
knows will get pregnant before they are old enough to drive.

Teenage
pregnancy isn't anything new. For years, Britain has had the highest
rates in Europe. On a global scale, the U.S. and the U.K. remain in
first and second position, respectively, for adolescent fertility
rates. Fewer children are being born to teenagers in England than they
are in America, but that may be because British youths have been given
easier access to abortions in the last decade. From 1998 to 2006, the
rate of teenage conception has slimmed minimally from 48.6 girls in
1000 to 40.4 girls. But now, almost half of all pregnancies are
terminated.

What Alfie reminds us is that the problem is still
there, still unresolved despite various attempts to significantly curb
the reproductive rates of a rambunctious youth population. It should be
telling us that the measures our governments seem so often to revert to
- increasing sex education, making contraception available in schools,
standardizing abortions - aren't enough. Something much more basic,
much more human, is the problem here. Instead of arguing about the
"Hows" of teenage pregnancy - How can we stop it? How can we teach
children about sex? How can we give them easy access to contraceptives?
- we need to be analyzing the deeper, more difficult question: Why?

Why are children having children?

The
obvious answer is that children are having sex. In England, the average
age for first-time sex is 16. In America it's slightly higher, at 18.
In my experience, at least, those numbers reflect a marginal difference
in the attitude towards sex in the two countries. For British
teenagers, sex has become something intrinsic to Saturday-night youth
culture. Coupled with a penchant for weekend binge drinking, pregnancy
and STDs abound. (See The Independent: Higher STD rates linked to
increase in teenage drinking.) Chlamydia notifications are now issued
by text message ("You're OK!" or "Please make an appointment with your
doctor.") In America, the act seems a little more demonized. What the
Brits are dragging out into the streets at 3am on a weekend night, the
Americans still seem to feel the need to hide. The same principles are
reflected in sex education. British teachers are told to "keep morality
out" of sex education classes, while America is giving its teenagers
two options: abstinence or hell.

But in both countries,
regardless of cultural attitudes, children are having children. And
underneath that fact a boiling stew of sociological reasons ferment.
The foundations of society are rotten, or "broken" as British
Conservative leader David Cameron defined it. Sex education alone
cannot solve the problem of teenage pregnancy and
re-establish the concept of "childhood" in Britain and the U.S. because
the underlying causes of children having children are much more
complicated than not knowing how to use contraceptives, understanding
the biological process of conception or reading the Bible. There are elusive, intangible
issues that pervade the culture. A lack of self-esteem certainly plays
its part. A lack of security. A lack of attention, love, affection...
all encourage children to validate themselves through sex, to seek at
least a superficial sense of security through sex, to establish the
presence of unconditional love and affection with a baby.

It's
no wonder then, that in environments where emotional neglect is most
likely, that teenage pregnancy is highest. In the poorest, urban areas
of the U.K., sex and babies have become a healing force for children
affected by insecurity and low self-esteem. Over-burdened parents,
unable to spend quality time with their kids and teach them about
relationships, especially the one they have with themselves, raise
children who are thirsty for affection, insecure and lacking a stable
idea of who they are or what their place in society should be. For some
of these teenagers, having a child means adding definition to their
lives. It provides purpose and validation: concepts that are so
fundamental, so basic, so necessary to human existence, that we keep
forgetting to teach them to our children. So instead, they sacrifice
their childhoods to bring more children into the world.

In some
cases, yes, these teenagers will make good parents. But the odds are
against them. For a child who doesn't even know what the word
"financial" means and lacks parental guidance enough to stop him -
through physical or mental discipline - from performing an adult act,
the chance that he is going to be able to provide the mental and
emotional support to raise a stable human being is low. And so the
cycle continues into yet another generation, another year, another
nation of childhood-less children raising babies.