The Trinidad & Tobago 2015 budget was passed two days ago, and so was the $500/month for Single Mothers. Today in the Trinidad Guardian newspapers – feminists have commented about it.
According to self-proclaimed feminist and children’s rights ‘expert’ Diana Mahabir- Wyatt – “It’s Okay, but mothers need better training in being better parents. Ms Mahabir-Wyatt was disappointed that the government did not take her on when she had lined up a proposal from PLOTT – Powerful Ladies of TT, to train these women to train better mothers. The plan was to hire baby sitters to take care of the kids when the moms go to collect their cheques which they would only get upon attendance of the parenting classes. Mahabir- Wyatt dismissed the possibility that this is going to be an incentive to go out and “make babies” – according to her expertise – “Personally, from my life’s experiences and observations, I don’t think that is a valid comment”.
Head of NGO (non-governmental organizations) Hazel Brown, instead focused on the “baby milk” that was the driving force behind the $500/mth proposal by the PM, who said that she was moved by a story sometime in our past history, where a mother was arrested for stealing baby formula at a grocery store. Brown chided the PM about the importance of breast milk and focused on teen mothers and helping them get out of the predicament they were in – “what these young women need was help with getting back to school”.
Here’s the problem – Young women all over TT are having babies very early in life – Brown said that many of these young women have 3 kids before they reach 19. How do we deal with this? Well for one, you cannot give incentives to have babies – politicians get this wrong all the time – its economics 101 – incentives given to an ‘underprivileged’ group have historically been to the detriment of that group, all over the world this is the case. Welfare or Social Programs as they are known in Trinidad & Tobago have kept, and will continue to keep the underprivileged, underprivileged. It does not work – Sorry, Diana Mahabir Wyatt – you are ignorant about this matter, and we should give two hoots about your ‘life experiences’ as a factor in intelligent discourse on this matter. You should go and read what famed black American economist and social scientist, Thomas Sowell has to say about preferential policies and how it destroy the chances of those you are trying to help. Let’s get back to the problem.
How do you incentivize young girls (and men) to make the right life choices? The problem is that children need resources to grow up well. Over and over, it is resources – money, to learn, to live comfortably, to eat well and live healthy. When teenaged girls go out and get pregnant – it is detrimental to both the child and the mother. And about the father? This website don’t believe that there is such a thing as ‘deadbeat’ dads. There are men who never had any say in the having of a child. Having sex with a woman is not consent to being a father. Until men have a full say in becoming a father – just like the mother (or what those who are advocating the, “my body, my right” mantra) we cannot say men are deadbeat fathers. There are many women who deliberately get pregnant for a particular man without him knowing. I have heard many women propositioning men with “let’s have a baby nah? You won’t have to do anything” trap. A survey commissioned in the UK said that One in 4 women will have a baby without their partner participating in the decision. Yes this is what feminism is about – my body, my right – but when it’s about taking care of the kid, all we hear about are deadbeat dads. We’ll get into this who dead beat dad myth in another post but for now, we need to disincentive men from getting women pregnant when they can’t or won’t contribute to the child’s welfare. These mothers obviously don’t have the responsibility or maturity to manage their reproductive rights.
To solve these problems we need policies and programs that will give incentives in that direction. Give fathers incentives to make child support payments. OR give them incentives to take custody of the child. This website believes that fully engaged men make better parents than single mothers, but our society abhors the idea of a man taking up the mantra of parenthood by himself. As a matter of fact western culture have for decades ridicule men as parents by themselves, hopeless buffoons, clumsy around kids. This is feminism at work. Our pop culture and by extension the media and entertainment have all jumped on this stereotypical idea that men are not supposed to be with kids unless they are married to their mothers. But the data supports men as parents far more than it does the other way around. Single mothers bring a host of risks to the parenting table – poverty, predator men, lack of resources, lack of education and job skills etc. strike at the core of parenting. But this can never be a solution. Engaging men to take up a role in their children’s lives is not what society wants. Our attitude is that men must pay up only. We prefer to allow women to use kids as a weapon against the child’s father (where this is the case) and even a means of income. There are many women today who live off the kids child support. We see men as “also ran” when it comes to being a good parent. This is wrong according to the latest research which we will present in a future post. Single fathers can no longer be ignored – they are growing faster than single mothers. The better outcomes of single father households’ vs single mother households’ are hard to ignore. Single father households in the US now number 2.6 million vs 8.6 million for single mother households – that’s a 9 fold increase vs a 4 fold increase compared to 1960 figures according to Pew Research (2011).
Our solution must include comprehensive sex education and the importance of birth control especially condoms. Another important tool in this battle, convoluted by our social norms. “We don’t want to be sending the message that it’s okay to be having sex all over the place”. Well, the truth is that young people will experiment and have sex whether you like it or not. Abstinence programs are counterproductive and need to be abolished as pseudo-scientific.
References
- The Rise of Single Fathers http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/07/02/the-rise-of-single-fathers/
- Mahabir-Wyatt on baby fund http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/2014-09-11/mahabir-wyatt-baby-fund-teach-moms-how-be-better-parents
- Thomas Sowell on Preferential Policies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qUvouEqLk8
- What the research shows about government funded abstinence only programs https://www.aclu.org/reproductive-freedom/what-research-shows-government-funded-abstinence-only-programs-don%E2%80%99t-make-grade
Men Against Feminism - Trinidad & Tobago 