08Aug01 UK: HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU, BABE - COMMENT - OPINION.
By Alice Miles.
Sssh. We can only discuss this very quietly. And only at this time of year. For
at this time of year, everyone with children is abroad, wrestling with foreign
airports or in the traffic jam on the Autoroute du Sud, dog and child in hot and
howling harmony in the back. The departure en masse of Britain's families gives
those of us left behind the opportunity for a rational discussion, from which
nearly all parents are barred because they cannot be rational about their own
children.
To breed or not to breed, that is the question. The choice is no longer a
personal one, but a social, political and economic one as well. What was once a
relatively simple matter of personal liberty has become an ethical minefield.
Very broadly, the nation divides into two camps, the parent and the childless.
The demands of the first impinge upon the rights of the second. An article in
The Times last week flew the flag for the most extreme and thoughtless position:
"Why we must all be responsible for children", ran the headline. Why, exactly? I
am not responsible for your children (actually I am, financially, but more of
that later). The author recalled the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, in which the
nasty Baron and Baroness Bomburst banned all kiddies from Vulgaria. Poor,
starving, unloved children were forced to live underground until the good
Caractacus Potts and Truly Scrumptious rescued them and gave them back the
world. The author made the extraordinary claim that "bringing children up in
this country...is not so far removed from the film".
The words "loss", "perspective" and "of" spring to mind. Ooh, there goes the
evil child-catcher down Wapping High Street again - a bit early today, he must
be hoping to get home in time to watch Brass Eye (the repeat). Being myself of
an age when one's friends suddenly begin to sprout children at an alarming rate,
this loss of perspective is familiar. In part, it seems to be the fault of an
overbearing State. What was once a relatively simple matter of giving birth and
looking after your child as best you can has become a nightmare of tests and
monitoring, competitive parenting and afternoons with the health visitor.
Why, I wonder, does it now take the friend who survived happily with me for
years on Saturday's cold curry in an insanitary slum on a filthy street, half an
hour to unload everything from her car for a ten-minute visit with the baby? At
what point did somebody decree that a child needed all that antiseptic
paraphernalia, its own plate and cutlery, the sterilised bottle, the changing
mat, the wet wipes, the creams, the pushchair, the child seat and the three
changes of clothes? And the box of toys. Why, too, does it take parents two
weeks to achieve a move of house which takes the rest of us a day or two at
most? Do the children have to be dismantled and reassembled, along with the
beds, the shelves and the Royal Doulton dinner set? And at what point did that
other friend, who looks the same as she did a year ago, have that parenting gene
inserted, the one which makes her say "His nappy needs changing, d'you want to
come upstairs and watch"?
None of that matters very much. But from the loss of perspective over the
significance of the product of your child's bowels, to the loss of perspective
over the significance of your child. In the same article in The Times, the
author wrote: "It is often said that having children is a personal choice and it
is a decision for which, as parents, we are expected to take sole
responsibility. What is forgotten is that this desire to breed is inbuilt, and
it is a desire that is fundamental to our existence as a human race. Each and
every time somebody gives birth they are contributing a new member to our
society and as such, we are all responsible for their upbringing, their care and
their role in society."
Now hang on a minute. Your new member of society is my financial burden, a
burden I accept without protest. I help to fund your child's healthcare, your
childcare, her nursery, her school, your child benefit, your maternity leave and
your working families tax credit. I don't have to be grateful to you as well.
And when you return to work, I cover for your time off when the child is ill,
your parents' evenings, the days when your nanny hasn't turned up. Not that some
mothers ever really return to work properly. They start late, leave early, and
spend the interim hours on the phone to the nanny and building a shrine to
little what'shername around their desks. And no, I don't want to see the
birthday photos. I'm trying to do your work. Of course, we heartless childless
people don't realise how emotionally draining and exhausting, "just how hard
raising children is". Yes, we do. That's why we haven't had children (yet).
That article again - "The financial issue alone is a major headache for most
parents...work patterns and school hours have all, on the whole, remained
grindingly slow to change, still failing to accommodate the needs of today's
parents. Yet it is society that should take responsibility for this." What,
exactly, was it that the new parent didn't know before they decided to have a
child? But of course, they didn't actually decide to have a child because they
didn't actually have a choice: it was an inbuilt desire to breed...
An inbuilt desire to breed which is going to end up in the courtrooms and
debating chambers of the world. Yesterday's meeting of scientists at the
National Academy of Sciences in Washington included three who have said they
intend to clone human beings. One of the scientists present, Brigette
Boisselier, was going to try to clone the late son of a wealthy West Virginia
lawyer who has now changed his mind. Another, the Italian fertility pioneer Dr
Severino Antinori, first made headlines in 1994 when he enabled a 62-year-old
Italian woman to have a child. Dr Antinori has said that he plans to start
cloning embryos in November, to enable hundreds of couples, including several
Britons, to give birth.
He will carry out the experiments in an unnamed Mediterranean country where
cloning is not illegal. The US House of Representatives has voted to ban cloning
for any purpose. In the UK, we are the first nation to allow cloning in order to
create embryos to harvest stem cells for use in medical research. The
development of such research, which will enable scientists to create organs for
implants to save many people's lives, has been hampered by confusion over the
ethics of the science. Human cloning raises complex moral issues, and it is
right that they should be widely debated. But disquiet over the thought of
producing cloned human beings has fostered squeamishness over the question of
experimentation with stem call research. So the clamour for children on demand
("it's my right"), and the debates over cloning and stem cell research have
become confused.
The social, ethical, political and economic responsibility which attaches to
childbirth is vested not in the "society" which ought to bear the responsibility
of someone else's child, but in that child's parent who chooses to reproduce. It
is the responsibility of prospective parents to ensure that they have the
financial and emotional means to support a child.
And having children is not a "right". Rather, society has a right not to be
corrupted with cloned offspring. Those children produced by cloning have a
right, too, not to be so unnaturally produced, in a manner which will mark them
out as a social "freak" and risks leaving them seriously physically deformed.
The compunction to create the "perfect family" and "be fulfilled" has
overwhelmed common sense and reason. Children have that effect.
I know. None of this, you see, applies to any of my friends' children, and
especially not to my nephews, or to my godchildren and their siblings. My
goddaughter answered the phone this morning when I rang her mother and said
"hello". She's so clever. One of my godsons sent me a painting, you'd be amazed
at how good he is at such a young age and my nephew has drawn me a picture for
my birthday and one of them's being christened this weekend they're so sweet
look here's some photos...and there goes that perspective again.
[email protected]
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2001.
(c) Not Available for Re-dissemination.
THE TIMES 08/08/2001 P14
Am especially curious to know how she "contributes" to my childcare. I thought that my choice to work means 2 taxpayers for the government (me and the nanny) and effectively double tax.