LET'S have a go at balancing things. Let's turn the whole thin round. Let's try a bit of herstory or ourstory, rather than hisstory, for a change. Take this.
A few words - dead ordinary, everyday words - are glaringly obvious by their omission in the recent agonising debates following the exposes of the unmerciful orphanages that littered the country in the recent past. These words are also missing from the accounts surrounding the thousands of children and babies who were transported to apparently rich but infertile Moms and Pops in the brave, new world hungry for Caucasian children. They are also missing in, for example, one article written in this newspaper a few weeks ago which was headlined: "Rise and rise of the welfare mother".
The words? Just take three for starters - "men", "fathers" and "responsibility".
If you accept the fact that it is not the Holy Ghost, but rather, that it is just ordinary men who are/were involved in the double act of conceiving babies, then why is nobody talking about these invisible and irresponsible men/fathers?
According to the "Rise and Rise" piece, their numbers are growing at the current alarming rate of 300 a month (statistics from the Department of Social Welfare). And, more shocking, this figure does not include the cautious estimate of 500 or so men who, every month, father foetuses that will never see the light of day because they are sluiced down the drains of England every month - at any stage from 0 to 24 weeks of pregnancy. Neither does this figure include the numbers of could be fathers - if the morning after pill did not exist. Nor does it include the men who father children of mothers who are never recorded because they never go near the Department of Social Welfare. And their numbers are highly significant. According to a Social Welfare source in the "R&R" report, the numbers of economically viable single mothers is equivalent to their impoverished cousins. So you can tack on another 300 men.
If you forget about the morning afters, the spontaneous abortions and other acts of nature, when you tot up the figures, the number of feckless, reckless men out there comes to about 5,600 a month. A month.
So, given these facts, would you not resist the tediously cliched "welfare mother" headline for a story about the one person of the couple conceivers (that was the basis of the R&R article) who is left holding the bawling, colicky child and who ends up queuing for a high rise flat or a council house in the back end of Darndale? Would you not go instead for something like: "Rise and rise of feckless fathers", or "The kiss and run of men" or "I will not ever be called `Daddy', scream 300 men a month".
At this stage, one can but wonder how Ireland is escaping the escalating drop in the availability of male sperm being experienced in every other Western country. This is one of those stories that men agonise over - usually only in the company of other men. And it gets next to no coverage in any medium. If the sperm less syndrome does exist in Ireland, it somehow leapfrogs, over the fearless, "have it all for free" bucks who cavort around the countryside. They are undaunted by any pressure, social, religious or financial. Nobody names them or blames them not a bishop, nor an employer, nor a tax man nor, says the R&R piece, does the Department of Social Welfare attempt hot pursuit. All the sound, fury and denouncement through the media - which has replaced the pulpit is targeted at the woman holding the baby, begging for somewhere to live.
Fianna Fail TD, Eoin Ryan, who was quoted extensively in the R&R piece, is one man very bothered by it all. Briefly, he confirmed this week, his concern is based on what he has seen in his constituency clinics for the past 10 years. And what hops and skips across his doorstep is one unmarried mother after another - according to the report, they are not even mothers yet, simply Pregnant from Ringsend or wherever, who want flats or houses for next to nothing with all the Soc. Wel. fittings such as free fuel, free or nearly free heating, lighting and food, free or subsidised furniture - along with the weekly £77.70 allowance. Briefly, he, and a few other men, including an anonymous GP, conclude that young girls deliberately get pregnant to establish an adult status for themselves, to break away from home and to play with their babies instead of dolls.
A 43 year old married father of three, Ryan says his main concern is for these dumped, unmarried mothers who are already at the bottom of the social pile and who are supremely ignorant of the other mountains of oppression they are creating for themselves. He helps the pregnant girls get accommodation "with mixed feelings".
MOTHER of God, what right has he to protest against any system that has been put in place by some government sometime? Why is he involved anyway? If something like a free flat for a PFR (Pregnant from Ringsend) is available to those who can make the points, they should get it. Why is a TD tied up in the rigmarole of bureaucracy that is the Department of Social Welfare. Like Ryan, I have been paying taxes and the rest since I was 18. More than half my take home stuff disappears "into the maws of the State. One of my gripes against the political clinics system (I scratch your back, and you scratch Number 1 against my name) is that my taxes are considerably helping to pay the salaries of Ryan and the other 165 TDs. Nothing personal but there are hundreds of ways I want my money to go rather than propping up a bloated and over manned Dail with deputies conspiring in a plot to keep the electorate ignorant of their rights.
That being said, Ryan is the only man in a public job I have heard talking about the Absent from Ringsend fathers. He (Ryan) also deserves his nice guy image. I am convinced he is genuinely concerned about the creation here of what he calls "an underclass as has happened in the United States. We give these young girls accommodation and the lone parent's allowance and then they are in a trap. Very few of them are going for further education or training of any kind and they are growing up in an area where primary education is badly under funded so they are in a vicious circle".
I believe he is convinced of the simplicity of this argument but when did he last try to find out what classes/training courses were available for cramped young women? (Zilch). Ryan's real problem is not stopping the development of additional under classes but of convincing his own party colleagues that the entire system needs to be thoroughly detoxed.
He says: "I see pregnant young girls every week coming looking for a flat and they are almost invariably on their own. I could count on the fingers of one hand the numbers of times they've been able to say: Here's my boyfriend." (Is this the politician doing what used to be the parish priest's job?) He adds: "Someone needs to tell these girls they're not getting a bargain".
I can tell Eoin Ryan that I could count on less that five fingers the number of women I know (legit or otherwise) who get a bargain in any relationship with a man. And what right has he, or any other man I know, to be self righteous? To a man, there is none who can say with confidence that they never had a lost weekend, even a one night stand, which they did not conveniently consign to oblivion once the booze or the mood wore off. How many men always asked if the woman - was using pregnancy control?
IF they got a girl pregnant there is a fair amount of evidence that, after such a random sojourn, she never told the man. Guilt, embarrassment, fear of not being believed and certainty that she would be shown the door were the prevailing feelings that many middle aged women are now giving as their reasons for not telling the fathers of the children they gave up for adoption.
Always aware of the sensitivities of nice guys like Ryan who says he wants every child in this nation to have the advantages of his three, I squirm nevertheless at his naivete - but applaud his idealism. Only, it is not enough. He is aware of it and talks about societal changes being crucially enforced in primary education.
For all of us who have been around for more that 10 years, this "get the pregnant woman" targeting has an odour of overdone mustiness which has had many previous outings, notably by the redoubtable Alice Glenn. I do not like or approve of sex discrimination on any grounds. If Eoin Ryan and his thinkalikes want to get real about women, why opt for the cheap headline? If they are not simply carrying on the old line of blaming women for every damn thing, I challenge him to lobby within Fianna Fail for more power for women, quotas or lists which will get more women into seats and ministries - and doing something real to change the rubbishy old tunes.
