re: "...the girls regarded pregnancy and the resultant baby as an answer to existential problems. The young women came from broken, violent, chaotic, and loveless homes; they hated school because it seemed pointless; their only employment prospects were in the lowest-paid and most monotonous jobs.
A baby, then, answered all their prayers. It was a constant focus of interest and an object upon which they could lavish their hitherto thwarted desire to love and be loved. They also found that, thanks to welfare, their financial position actually improved after having given birth, provided only that the child’s father did not live with the mother or work to earn his living—whereupon, of course, all state benefits stopped, casting the young family into poverty.
The young mothers also reported that having babies fulfilled a desire for “independence,” a word used without irony in the report. This language is evidence that the British character has changed utterly in the last 60 years. Where once even the poorest people would have thought it a disgrace and humiliation to depend on public welfare, such handouts of taxpayer money by the state now constitute the very conception of independence for a considerable proportion of the population..."...
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