Parental rights over child's sexuality.
Wed 9th Nov

Last Monday an item in the news was the question of allowing "children" to have confidential access to contraception and abortion. Arguments in favour were based on the welfare of children, arguments against were based on the parent's right to know, that is to know better. It was taken for granted that most parents would want the best for their children but accepted that some do not really care. What of course was not understood is the element of self concern and impulse of control that inform parental choices. One interviewee, no I think she was a caller to radio five, talked of how she had been coerced (persuaded) into having an abortion at the age of 17 against her will. No information was given, it was not asked for or offered, about the parental reasons for exercising this control. I can suggest a few: what the neighbours would say; the parents opinion of the father; the likely financial implications for the parents; the parents plans, conscious, subconscious, or unconscious, for their daughter's future, which could include a marriage that would add to their status or security in old age, or a career ditto; even in cultures where marriages are not arranged parents often make powerful attempts to control which genes will form part of their grandchildren. That's the Dawkins line, from my point of view the hominin psyche is concerned with its own survival and as I have suggested in chapter 9 offspring have become inherently part of personal survival strategy. Mother-supporting behaviour may even start in the womb. One of the problems for modern society is that supporting parents in their old age no longer contributes to the survival of the offspring as it did in the Plio-Pleistocene, and in most cultures until fairly recently.

None of this was what I meant to say on Monday, what was in my mind then was the issue of maturity and the claim that humans have a very extended juvenile period. But when I was a teenager children could leave school at 14 and enter the workforce, and in the 19th-century a kitchen maid might be a 12-year-old working quite a long way from her home and mother (but sending money home perhaps), allowed a visit once a year on Mothering Sunday. Still in some cultures today a girl can be married at 12 or 13. So the bodies of today's pregnant teenagers would have been pressing them to reproduce because they were clearly mature enough. The question why are there more teenage pregnancies in Britain than elsewhere in Europe requires an answer from the hominin psyche. My experience indicates that when the organism is under stress the "thinking" of the hominin psyche overrides that of the sapiens psyche. The question then becomes what is the difference in stress experienced in this country. Well one element is that England is not a child friendly country. Today's morning program reinforced this view with the information that the proposed new plans for the welfare of preschool children is bringing in ideas that have been working for years in Europe. I already knew of how much better child criminals were dealt with across the Channel. Children are much loved in Italy for example but are often viewed with hostility, as likely to be a nuisance, in this country. But stress due to family circumstances is more immediately important; a lonely teenager who feels unloved is more likely to become pregnant but that also isn't it. What began to work in my mind was the thought of the inherent pressure towards reproductive effort as manifested in supporting (genes shared with) mother. For in today's society most mothers of 13 year olds will have stopped reproducing and the teenager will probably not have contact with a baby elsewhere because babies are so ghettoised these days. In previous millennia females approaching their reproductive years would be gaining experience through assisting their mother with younger siblings or perhaps aunts with young cousins. I've commented in chapter 9 on how my imaginal worlds expressed my body's, or my genes, urge to reproduce through stories featuring mothers, birth and babies. The hominin psyches of most teenage girls would be doing the same thing at a less conscious level. Does our way of life in this country provides slightly less scope for these images to be effective in reality in other ways than actually getting pregnant? If so of course this would be just one factor in a multitude of others.