Britain's youngest mother

And while drunken kids do indeed have sex all the time, I still think a 15-year-old boy sleeping with a drunk 11-year-old is just.... taking advantage, frankly.

What was a child of 11 doing in Edinburgh?

I dunno, it's a tricky question. Is a 11-year old responsible enough of making such a decision? Then again, if she is, wouldn't that also make her responsible of getting drunk and having unprotected sex?

Look, I don't mean to say she isn't a victim here, I just meant to say that in cases like this the morality and blame isn't necessarily clear-cut.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/4764417.stm

(Again, this is mere speculation. What I'm trying to say is that, in my opinion, not every time a 11-year old has sex with a 15-year old it is a case of rape.)

(x-post)

how does an 11-year-old get pissed anyway? where? what on? a thimbleful of vodka?

gah, i sound like some pompous twat from the shires there. i don't mean to. i just think there are issues here that run far deeper, and go back much further, than this particular story.

thinking about it: i was 13 when i first got steamingly drunk. but that was a one-off; it didn't happen again for another year. it seems implicit in this story that this girl and her mates are going on "nights out" and getting pissed. they're fucking 11!

her mother is obviously a major-league arsehole; but even then, it's not quite that simple, is it?

quite.

The age of consent here is 16. I think most people could tell the difference between a 16-year-old and an 11-year-old, even one who'd had her first period (the newsagent selling the ciggies may have chosen to turn a blind eye...)

i'm sorry. i think i've offended even myself.

Weird thing is, she might still be in school when her child starts at infants.

As if any teenager gives a fuck what the legal age of consent is! Kids be fucking.

This is obviously a case of massively irresponsible parenting. That mother is a fucking disgrace. How anyone could allow an 11-year-old to smoke, let alone get drunk at parties unsupervised is beyond me.

I didn't get any mockery or stuff like that - neither my friends nor hers didn't seem to think it was that weird (or at least they didn't say anything out loud), and even her mom seemed to accept it, despite me spending nights at their place. Of course I thought about it myself, since she was in the nineth grade and I was already out of school, but in the end I realized she wasn't that much less mature than I was, so I didn't feel like there was anything wrong with it.

I really love the completely unnecessary emphasis.

And is this part, slipped in as an afterthought at the end of the article:

Both were thought to be visiting the UK from Africa.

A sly anti-immigration jibe, or am I being paranoid?

Yeah...

x-post

"Your honour, it was all a misunderstanding. I was just trying to swap football stickers with the boys."

The study found that IQ is 70% dependent on genetics, 30% on environment. 30% is still quite alot. The authors are careful to point out that they did not include in their samples any examples of people from deprived backgrounds, such as the 11 year old mother. Also you cannot assume that IQ 100% dictates where people end up in our society.

Both nature and nurture have an important role to play.

Oh really? Environment had nothing to do with it? So she'd have been out on the streets drinking at age 11 if she'd happened to be born into a dry islamic country? I suppose her inbuilt predilection would have sent her sneaking into western hotels for the need she never knew she had.

What if she'd grown up in the country? Her thirst for under-age sex would have resulted in Scandal At Village Primary, all 90 pupils of it?

Okay, that girl is LARGELY the way she is because of a set of inherited traits.

HOW do you figure that? What parts did she inherit? Low IQ, for one, is utterly irrelevant to moral development. I know people with IQs well under 100, and some with IQs far, far above that. Nowhere do I see a correlation in what sort of people they are.

I mean, jeez! Look at the mom!
You do know this is an argument for nurture, don't you? The moronic mum nurtured her, and brought her up this way. Or you think the girl would have turned out the same had she been adopted by an upper-class family and sent to a really good prep school?

xpost

Or you think the girl would have turned out the same had she been adopted by an upper-class family and sent to a really good prep school?

Yes, I do. I've known people who were adopted as infants and given loads of opportunies and still were plagued by addictions, etc. I've also known well-adjusted adoptees. They each entered the adoptive family their own genetic baggage, which enabled them to benefit from their environment or not.

You know that unless they entered exactly the same family, this anecdote is meaningless, right? (Again: what parts do you think we inherit that survive any circumstances? The shag-young gene? The get-drunk gene?)

Now that you're also giving credence to the sibling order thing, I'm beginning to wonder if you'll just settle for any theory here that removes responsibility from the mother's parenting and offloads it to genetic or other uncontrollable factors.

This defence of nature over nuture sounds like those Victorians who defended the slums with things like "these underclasses are naturally tribal -- even if they had space to live, they'd still choose to live eighteen to a room. It's nature's way"

There is no way this girl would have ended up a pregnant 11-year-old chain-smoker if she'd been born rich or even with better parenting. To say that her current outcome is inevitable, and would have happened to her no matter what, is a line of thought that ends at eugenics, passing a whole lot of miserable shrivelled towns on the way.

"A total pinko AND a genetic determinist" just means that your beliefs aren't coherent!

You said earlier that the girl would have turned out exactly the same, rich or poor, and that environment would have little-to-no effect on her. So why fix the environment at all? It's a waste of money, because those children are going to turn out exactly the same. If they can't help their genes, and good parenting can't help (like with the adopted kids), why offer them help?

(Unlike the argument "well if the entire evolution of humanity was different this wouldn't have happened", which just takes you to "oh shit, nothing we can do, o well, what's on TV?")

*some* things! it's the totalizing argument that i'm a bit wary of, just cos i've been a bit pessmistic of late really.

Whatever their genetic baggage, they have to do their best by their children, and if they have limitations (poverty and addictions being the huge factors, usually), they should be offered (and should accept!) help.

Firstly, you can't force anyone to accept help (ignoring the fact that if they have to accept, it isn't really offering, it's forcing). Secondly there are extensive social programmes in this country to assist people to get out of the benefits trap. It hasn't helped this lassie and many others like her one little bit.

thewres general revulsion, and shock at the fact that an 11 yr old would be smoking 20 a day, and got pregnant. its been stated that certain age groups olde than this smoke and have increasing rates of pregnancy within them eg 13-15. when is the cut of point where we tend to view it as more normal behaviour for kids? when do we stop ascribing pregancy or a smoking habit to mental illness of a history of abuse?

16 is a watershed age set by the law for consensual sex, where did this age come from? if different countries have different ages of consent, are some wrong or some right? to what extent is such an age limit arbitrary? how do we judge whether a 14 yr old is more able to make decisions about having sex, or keeping a baby, more than a 12 year old? are 18 year olds necessarily able to make those decisions?

hence why she's in the papers. yep, she seems extremely ashamed of her acts.

BUT IT IS THE 21ST CENTURY!

actually the 21st century is all about delayed adulthood.

I like being called an old fogie.

When I was in Brownies all we ever did was play traffic lights and try and steal the toy owl off the toadstool.

crosspost

Sure I'm a drinker now, but to hear people readily say "oh heaps of girls are preggers at school by 15" appalls me, really. I guess I have to accept I grew up in an environment that was fairly stable. Not wealthy though, I'll say that much.

Its funny though - once of a time, girls had children as soon as they were able, so we're talking 12-15 off they went. Child brides, arranged marriages, that sort of thing. What changed society to decide that was too young? We generally accept the body isnt ready for birth at that age but thats when one goes thru puberty. I am genuinely curious as to what brought that "gap" about - the teenage years.

everyone is appalled w/ everyone else on this thread personally why should you be any different?

The modern 'teenager' is a product of embourgeoisement and child labour laws.

I misremembered this, Demi was going to call it Beyonce but called it Aleesha instead. I think she still kept Beyonce for the middle name though.

Just a remarkable thread to read, 15+ years after.

Especially after the restrictions in abortions in America, but much else too. I think the ILE UK/US division in understanding of how the country 'works' generated a lot of the heat. The poor are still trapped and demonised though.

But I think of all this in terms of what would justice and community could look like as applied to this case. In another world (one which I think is possible) I think the mother -- who wanted to keep her child at a young age -- would be able to access child care and be able to live her life to study and work and provide, to do what she wanted. The state would rather demonise (with a willing press and public) than have conversations about what children experiment with and do.

Similarly the 15 year old man might not have his life ruined by what could be a mistake. Why go with prosecution at the first opportunity when a life of that girl might not be ruined (especially if she is provided for as I described?) I agree with some of the posts that talk of this time as one of experimentation with sex, identity and so on. I look at how children under 16 want to change or don't feel at ease in their body and want to do something about it as an example that is talked about a lot today.

"Remarkable" is one way to put it!

That's right