New life
Single parenthood
Zenga Longmore
henever Omalara is gracious enough to allow, I put my feet up in front of the telly, and sip upon the palm wine that Olumba's Aunty Aduke brought back from Nigeria. It is a witty little wine which I heartily recommend to any red-blooded Spectator reader. A few weeks back, however, the taste became as vinegar to my tongue. Whilst gazing blankly at the screen, I noticed that young women were being shown parading their babies in a school, before bewildered adolescent girls. All well and good you might say: why not tutor the young and inexperienced on the joys and duties of motherhood. But read on.... These young mothers were there to instruct teenage girls on the perils of single parenthood, as in a real life, modern day
temperance play. Teenage girls are ex- pected to gasp in horror as they stare at a sweet baby dangling on its mother's knee.
Drawing deeply on the palm wine, one question after another bu77ed within my mind, like drones around a queen.
The first question, which remained un- explained in the programme, was why is it so terrible to be a single mother? Granted a good father is a priceless gift, but what of the more abundant variety — the bad father? Social workers often return a child to its mother when she moves a man into the house. `Ah, a stable family unit,' you'll hear them utter. 'Now that there's a father figure in the house, balance is restored, the snail's on the thorn, God's in his heaven etc, etc.' Any father figure is considered better than none at all. In actual fact, no father is infinitely better than a bad father. The high incidence of stepfathers abusing their children proves that very often a mother does a better job of things on her own. Many adults will say that the happiest moment of their lives was when their parents secured a divorce, the most miser- able being when their tortured parents had remained together 'for the sake of the children'.
And why, I asked myself, is all this anti-single-parent campaigning always directed at the woman? The men, who turned the women into single parents in the first place, are left out of the act. Too many people imagine that young women im- maculately conceive their children in order to spite and burden the state.
Single fathers bringing up their children are always saints of the highest order. 'How wonderful of him to look after Timmy and Daisy all on his own,' on the one hand, and 'How selfish of her to have those kids with no father around. Tschah!' on the other.
It must be said, though, that it's the teenage single mothers who bear the brunt of all this outrage. Shouldn't the school- boys be taught the duties and responsibili- ties of parenthood? If young men realised the importance of being good fathers, then fewer single parents would exist.
The term 'one-parent family' makes no sense if one considers the family a biologi- cal unit, because every child born has two parents and four grandparents, (alive or dead). But if the family is considered a spiritual unit, bonded by love and care, there are many families that are 'one- parent families' because all the caring and protection of the child has been taken over by the mother. Where all other relatives including the father have forsaken the child, and the mother cares for it alone, public opinion seems to blame rather than help her in her supreme task. She is scorned, placed in bad housing and given so little money to live on. How grossly unfair it seems!
Although I speak from the heart, I have no personal axe to grind. I am not a teenage single parent, nor do I ever intend to become one!
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