A baby is for life

Caught a breakfast item the other morning about a girl bemoaning that the NHS will not fund her IVF treatment for the baby she so desperately wants with her new partner. The significance of the two children she successfully had but with a previous partner escape her self preoccupation. Babies are a necessary and an essential status image to show off to the world how successful you are. It is your right to have as and when you choose.

Maybe, just possibly there are other considerations that have got lost along the way and need to be taken down and dusted off. Yes, having a child is the single most important life event for man or woman. Our society needs strong healthy children to sustain its population, provide the labour and wealth generators to keep the social infrastructure rolling on. We need stable, well-rounded and confident children that fit easily into the established social networks and patterns. The few odd-ball adventurers or opportunists can be absorbed. We know that children with a single parent or possibly worse serial parents do not grow up to become stable, well-rounded and confident adults. The parenting skills or wants have a huge impact on how that child matures.

It is not about our self-centred personal whims and fancies. How lovely a baby would be. At its roots, it is only about ensuring a sound society can continue to grow and prosper. In the past sheer bloody economic necessity meant there was no option. You had to make do with the partner you ended up with. Woe betide you if you let your fancy wander to a peacock or a thrilling stud. Your life partner choice was critical. Get the best partner your circumstance gave you access to and your circumstance enabled you to seal against the competition. Choose well, then a well managed house and children with the best food from available resources and a regular income provider not tempted to dally elsewhere. Else you are stuck in all the flip sides. With a high mortality, where with luck three out of twelve children might survive into adulthood, unimpeded fecundity was the order of the day.

Not any more. We have to constrain our birthrate but a single child policy is not the answer either, as China's growing pool of 'Little Emperors' testifies. Our investment in marriage as a concept has to be overhauled. It used to signify family, the core and centre of society. Family, the start of the new generation and the handing on of all the inherited attributes. A big event where two gene lines meet, exchange and forge long term relationships. A hugely important event carrying the whole investment of the past and the hopes for some sort of future. Now sidelined as a show, a public display of current success, ephemeral, the oaths given as meaningless as the bouquet tossed aside. No wonder a gay marriage is on the agenda. A marriage is just a civil right, no more significant than casting a vote.

We have evolved, we have a plethora of weapons, so let us keep civic partnerships for all who want a legal sanction on their union, whether for one year or for life. Marriage needs to be upgraded given a special place. Marriage that is the rock bed of procreation and long relationships. Marriage only for couples willing to commit to stay together and bring up the direct results of their union, their children, no matter what.  Not an automatic right for all and sundry but a much sought after and highly regarded right only conferred on those able to demonstrate a long term commitment and likely to produce vigorous progeny.  A precious and hard-earned right then achieved only after passing a peer review and assessment on your suitability, your conformity and viable breeding. Your peers deciding whether you have what it takes to produce and hold a family together in your neighbourhood. With that granting, recognition by the State of that special status approved with additional health, housing, pension, tax rebate rights. Encouragement to provide that long term stable care that we all need our society to foster.

Nothing wrong with childbirth, fostering, IHV, adoption, whatever outside of 'marriage' but within a civic partnership, just lacking the state's sanctification and benefits. We must invest heavily into our future but be compassionate for the many that do not measure up.

A Day of Shame

The Queen bestows the highest award in the land on the Duchess of Cornwall! A day of shame and humiliation for what was once a proud nation known for its high moral standing and lofty principles.Yet another example of how the monarchy is so out of touch with real life, as lived and experienced by ordinary people. A closet of pampered, spoilt mediocrity inbred with the delusions you always get want you want and have whatever you desire, regardless of cost or consequences.


The viper in the nest is of course the Prince, Heir Apparent, who chose to stand before the world declare his oath of marriage whilst all the while continuing with his other concealed life, with his long standing mistress. Know nothing of the mistress and have no wish to. In my book, the other woman that comes between a marriage, who wreaks a family unit and encourages a weak male to follow his lust and not his principles, is not a woman to admire or reward with high honour. This is not someone who got involved with another in a broken relationship. Oh, no. This is some one who was more than willing to stand by whilst a wife was declared to the world and then carry on regardless. To be rewarded for hanging onto her target, for not letting decency and good sense prevail, but opening herself to her suitor to ensure his continuing attention, is plain wrong. She should be sidelined by society, not shunned, but to be openly displayed that this is not how adults conduct themselves. Wallace, in contrast stood by her man but received no recognition throughout her life. What value judgements do our monarchy use to get it so consistently wrong. Other than of course that they are so wrapped up in their cosy inward looking bauble they have no comprehension about life outside it.

No doubt in the minds of the monarchy there are loads of extenuating reasons why this honour had to be given. None justify the insult now made public to all those other commoners that have been awarded an honour for truly significant  contributions to life, in so many heart rending ways. A public snub, a cock of the royal snoot to all those commoners. Your well earned and well deserved award has just been trashed. These awards and honours are not the playthings of the monarchy. They used to be regarded as the ultimate honour and should be the ultimate public recognition of services, beyond the call of duty, for services rendered. Not laying on your back giving pleasure to a man who should have had the sense and decency not to have been there but back home supporting his chosen wife.

Fine, let the Prince and Duchess forgo all privileges and retire to a private life then even I could wish them well. Until they accept their lack of moral judgement they are condemned. We are living through a period where the glues that binds society together are held in contempt. Fairness, tolerance, putting others first, being true to your word, not taking advantage of the weak and vulnerable, integrity, standing up for what you believe in, dare I say it, honour, all, they all sound so old fashioned and quaint, so unfamiliar in today's rush and grab world. Yet unless we can trust that person next to us we cannot function as a society. We are going to have to rediscover these old values. We need our leaders and public figures to stand proud and affirm by their lifestyles these essential but now old fashioned sounding qualities.

Sexism

This has been sparked by an article of no consequence, bemoaning the lack of Catholic woman priests. That is just the entry point and otherwise not significant. It is just that it bought my mind around to considering sexism. A few years back, starting with and as a celebration of my Mothers ninetieth birthday, I began charting my family history. Knowing nothing of my father, who left home when I was around 8years, naturally I explored my mothers side. Got engrossed and, with bit now fully between the teeth, explored all provable connections on my mothers line, proud of the links and lineage discovered. In reaching back to the tenuously discernible 1730's I began to consider and explore the social history that led to some key changes in my families histories. Farmers do not become labourers nor end up in a workshop to die of 'insanity', ( as alcoholism was known), without due cause. Cutting a long introduction short I eventually after a couple of serendipity moments, stumbled on an entry point and began to unravel my fathers family. Only to discover I was repeating the steps he too had taken some twenty years earlier. Nothing new under the sun.

I was pulled up short on more than one occasion by relatives who dismissed the maternal line as not having any significance. To them, it was only the male line of inheritance that had any relevance. With my background this puzzled me but slowly other pieces of jigsaw have begun to fall into place. 

We are now, here , this is where it is at, but we are only a continuum of our past. We have to keep our past in view to understand where our future lies. The way forward has to be shaped and based on the path taken to reach this point. All very laboured but let us not forget, male inheritance has been the dominate consideration. Up until this point, the now. Inheritance is simply the passing on of the title to land. Land equates to wealth, privileged, influence and power. Your position utterly depended on what land you inherited and the wheels and deals you could use it for to expand it or prevent others from taking it from you. The by far greatest wheeling deal in town was who you could get to marry you, bringing in privileges, connections or simply more land, not for love or romance but plain pragmatics. Hopefully a woman who could bear strong sons, strong enough to survive childhood. That she was compliant, frugal or even attractive were very secondary considerations. Lets us roll back the years even further. To get land and hold on to it, you had to be a strong fighter able to attract other men to fight by your side and defer to your authority. As top dog, women you could take and have a plenty but you needed one who would bear you a son and nurture it whilst you were away defending you claim to land against all others. Nurture it and stay loyal to you and you alone. A son that you could pass your battle won respect (titles) and land to to survive after your death and making your fights, battles and inevitable death in battle worth while. It does not justify it, but with so much emphasis on the brute force of the macho man, it is understandable that women were regulated. Regulated to a secondary role even to the point that they were legally chattels to be placed, controlled and futures decided at the whim of their lord and master.

Fast forward to today's now. Gender equality rules. The girl, should she choose to marry, may or may not take the male name. Maybe the continental practise of hyphenating the two families lines names into one surname, one from the father and one from the mother, would make good sense. But then which name is to come first, not as on the continent, the fathers name first, that would be sexist. Alphabetical order? And then are both lines to be given equal weight and standing in the family tree? I can avow that the family tree very quickly becomes very diffuse and difficult to read. Starting with four parents, with eight grandparents, sixteen great grandparents and so on. This does probably reflect our genetic inheritance. Very clearly we, as an individual, are a meld of our two parents and through them it is possible to discern genetic characteristics passed from the grandparents. There are some genetic features that are so dominate and survive through several generations even stretching back into the mists of time. We should not be too dismissive of genetic traits. Science has yet to declare whether one sex or other inherits more from one parent or the other, probably not.

My desire to know where I have come from, whose dominate trait do I have that gives me the flair or flaw I struggle to cope with does not justify selecting a male or a female line as my line. To select both is too unwieldy, too diffuse, too many branches that could or could not be significant or worse arbitrary. To make sense you have to follow back along one line of parents but unless we all follow the same rules chaos ensues. Is the need to know and acknowledge our direct line of inheritance more important than this, probably, transitory fashion of gender indeterminacy? It matters to me. I have to know whether I am my fathers son. It matters to those few where the chance of inheriting the stately pile or crown depends on it. To the rest of the world? Just a blip in our ever evolving story of personkinds development and ultimate extinction.

Family Unit

Fact, as far as I am concerned, the best environment to bring up a child is within a stable marriage. This statement is not suitable to be a subject of a scientific proof and lies beyond belief, which requires an acceptance of some deity. It is the cornerstone of our development as a human person. Let us not beat about the bush. I mean opposite sex marriage, there is no other, period. No matter how political correctness might wish to fudge the issue, there is no other basis. It requires each sex to make the baby and to provide the best, richest (in stimulation) and supportive environment within which the child can confidently grow and mature, until ready to launch out on their own. Life deals rough cards, partners die and some are wildly false to their initial presentations. So a single parent is part of life mosaics but one of regret, not as a state of normality.

Bring these two contradictory sexes together, with opposing aspirations and inner conflicts, and it is a miracle that a stable long lasting partnership could ever emerge. Yet is has because it was the requisite platform for their progeny to prosper. Perhaps the key cornerstone of this survival was sheer economic necessity. Man and woman just had to stick together because that was only way to keep a roof over their heads and food to come in to feed the family. She had to stay at home to keep his home, look after the children, so he was able to go out and get work to provide for them. Yes of course, there were many permutations, both man and woman, or only woman, or all including children had to work. Yes I know, the man seldom looked after the home or the children if the woman had to work. I am not pretending it is any form of ideal life. Just that was how it was, over the centuries.

One result of female emancipation is that they have achieved financial independence. They are not longer dependant on a male to succeed and make progress in life, they can go entirely their own way. Bravo for that. We should perhaps be surprised that it is only one in three marriages that survive. The challenges of two sexes getting to live together is so great that, without that sheer financial necessity binding them, it is a constant wonder that any at all make it. Let us not under-estimate just how difficult it is for man and woman to live together with some degree of harmony. When the woman forms her attractive and protective nest and looks for reassurance and confirmation that she has done well it is easy to understand any frustration even resentment when the males comes in and fails to acknowledge the efforts. Why should she put up with the male trashing her objectives and ignoring her needs whilst he looks for new horizons and challenges. They are poles apart in aspiration yet so need each other and should be dependant on each other when it comes to raising their children.

Convention has it that after a separation the children go with the woman. Convention, but it also acknowledges the reality that the woman gives birth to the child and only she knows with degrees of certainty who the father actually is rather than the one who believes or accepts he is the sire. On a break-up, more often than not, the woman takes the child and then society arranges that she is granted sufficient of the couples estate to bring up the child. It is a win win for the woman freed from the shackles of the male, supported and nurtured by her society. Why should she choose any other route and why should she endure the inconvenience of putting up with a male in her domain. All the incentive are currently stacked against couples staying together.

The change point was small and insignificant in practical consequences but huge in terms of the social message it sent out. The ending of the Marriage Person Tax allowance, absurd in its triviality, yet it underlined that the State now considered a married couple no different to two people living together. It normalised a growing trend. The financial implications were slight but the message was clear. Why bother to get married when there was no advantage to do so. It confirmed getting married and, even more important, staying together was no longer the norm but now for the minority. Many of those that do now marry may not be together ten years later. Serial partners for the children is now the acceptable social currency. Marriage like Divorce are just part of the tools we use to arrange our affairs.

We as a Society have to make marriage matter as that is the only acceptable stable relationship within which to bring up children. I can see no other satisfactory option. Married couples have to be given priority by the State when it comes to Tax, Housing, Retirement, in all of its dealings. Harsh yes on those that fall out of marriage but that rather is the point. It has to hurt to not succeed else it is too easy to fail. Which is not to say we as a society do not need to be doubly compassionate with those that fail through no fault of their own.

But there is the point, we as a society have to be able to know with confidence they are victims of a 'no fault'. The community have to know and share in the person misfortunes so they can agree how blameless and how much compassionate support should be offered. Single mum's had better think twice before the deed unless they can stand on the rostrum and have their cry of rape accepted by the community that it occurred in. Pregnancy is not an incidental accident, it is as the result of a choice, to have sex. There is nothing to say that if a person wishes to keep their life private they should but then they cannot seek benefit merely because it hurts as a consequence.

The child is always the victim when a parent gets it wrong. We as a society have to choose our priorities then each of us have to moderate our behaviour to fit within those priorities established. For me quite clearly parents who stay together to bring up their children is an overriding priority. We as a society have no better arrangement to ensure the best possible start off in life for our children. There are prices to be paid and we need to ensure our compassion is freely and easily available to those deserving amongst us, as long as they choose to share their troubles.

Being a child of a failed broken marriage the last thing I would advocate is a marriage kept together just for the sake of the child. It is more a matter of how we handle the inevitable breakdown of some marriages. But before that it is raising the expectations of what it means to be married and what each partner is required to endure so that it can succeed. Helped to see the strengths in the partner not just the weaknesses and having as roles models couple living together, not individuals pursuing self-satisfaction.

Revolution - addendum

Kate and William came across as a nice sincere level-headed couple and I wish them well, as ordinary citizens. Having already been sold a sham marriage at least twice before (Margaret then Charles) by the royal firm I am not prepared to buy into this one. I do ooze sympathy at their plight in having to plan a bean feast in time of economic hardship. Perhaps if his Dad was to fore go claiming all the Euro money intended for small struggling farmers my sincerity might be more palpable. The biggest lesson the royals need right now is for the British public to turn their united backs on their celebrations and just ignore it. It is over time the royals woke up and realised that have to treat their 'subjects' with respect and actually earn the trust they seem to think they can take as a birth right.