The Toronto Star is calling child poverty Canada's shame in todays editorial. A way to eliminate most of Canada's child poverty is for men and women to stop procreating outside of a committed relationship. Most children living in poverty are living with their single mom. The father has taken no responsibility for the child.
I grew up during the 40s and 50s, and people took the time to check their finances before they had children... People were self sufficient then, not like now, if you failed, it was your fault, if you did well, it was because you worked hard enough.
It is these types of attitudes that go the furthest towards ensuring that children in poverty will not get help that the cycle of child poverty will continue.
Now, maybe I'm wrong, maybe the upstanding citizens will support that it is not the child's fault that the child was born into poverty and they will support increased sex education and increased education programs for families below the poverty lines, or measures to get single mothers off of social assistance and into jobs that actually pay a living wage where a parent can afford to work one job, daycare and be a parent. But I'm guessing like the endless deluge of this unthinking mentality that the response will be abstinence is the answer, society shouldn't pay for someone elses "mistake" and my favourite paradox is that typically this view goes hand in hand with thinking that pregnancy is the punishment for women who have unwed sex and the woman should be punished by having a child to raise in poverty rather than have access to abortion.
Seriously? End child poverty by an anti-sex campaign?
If that hasn't worked in the last 2,000 years why is it going to work now?
Let's start by turning off the rose coloured glasses on the "golden age" of our youths and stop pretending that teenage pregnancy didn't exist in the past. 1957 was the highest (US) teen pregnancy rate since the 1940's at 96.3 / 1000 (2004 41.1 / 1000)
Source. Teen Pregnancy has been in decline since the 1950' s in large part due to better sex education. According to the
Guttmacher Institute
The teenage pregnancy rate in this country is at its lowest level in 30 years, down 36% since its peak in 1990.
So, why am I talking about teen pregnancy. Well simple if we know that the vast majority of children who live in poverty live in poverty because their parents are in poverty then we need to look at who is having children, when and why. The simple reason is that most poor children are the result of teenage pregnancy.
So, it makes no sense to talk about ending child poverty unless we also talk about how to reduce teenage pregnancy. Ending teenage pregnancy has a lot to do with keeping teens in school, with access to education and specifically sex education that is more than just abstinence. This does not mean that abstinence should be left out, only that it is clear that abstinence only sex education is not effective.
English speaking developed countries have significantly higher child poverty rates than those of Europe.
Source It is hard not to see that it is also these countries that have higher resistance to sex education and do less to support single parents and have less social securities in place for single parents.
In 2000
The US had 21.9% of children living below the poverty line, and 52.1 of every 1,000 births was a teenage mother. In Canada 16.3% child poverty, 20.2 of every 1,000 births was a teenage pregnancy.
Source
Compare this with Europe overall 9.0% child poverty, and 10.4 of every 1,000 births a teenage pregnancy and France in particular 7.9% child poverty and 9.3 of every 1,000 births a teenage pregnancy. See source above.
It is very important to look at child poverty and teenage pregnancy as cyclical. Children who are born into poverty (1997 US stat) 34.1% drop out of school , and 40% of girls from this poorest demographic (born into child poverty) have children as teenagers. From the UK if the family is poor with the child is 7,11 or 16 the demographics show that 87.9% of these children have left school at the earliest (UK) legal age of 16, compared to 67.9% overall. 16% of females from this demographic are lone mothers by the age of 23 compared to (UK) 6.3% average.
Source.
What should be clear from all of this (especially if you've read the source material) is that child poverty un-addressed will lead to increases in child poverty. The Guttmacher report and accompanying sources is a clear indicator that better education and better sex education is the number one way to reduce teenage pregnancy. And teenage pregnancy needs to be reduced to reduce child poverty.
Sure, we can stand by and take a bizzare hard line and say that if these girls had sex, and became poor parents then they deserve what they got... but really? Does making motherhood / parenthood a punishment do any social good?