No child deserves to be stigmatised if a woman chooses to become a lone parent, writes Daisy Cummins
So, I am a bastard? So, I am a bastard. The meaning that the Oxford Dictionary gives it is this: obnoxious, despicable person, person born of parents not married to each other. Collins English Thesaurus (edition 1993) says: "n. illegitimate (child); love child; natural child; whoreson (archaic) and/or: adj. adulterated, baseborn, counterfeit, false, illegitimate, imperfect, impure, inferior, irregular, misbegotten, sham, spurious."
Wow, no wonder Kevin Myers was aroused to such a frenzied rant in his infamous column. I'm surprised I don't have scales and horns myself. Reading the above definition would incite anyone to hatred, much less someone who is patently as volatile as Mr Myers.
For him to claim, as he does in his column of grovel the next day that he genuinely feels "that the word [ the b-word] has no stigma attached to it" is disingenuous to the point of being farcical.
That word has always had negative connotations, not least because until very recently, and even today in some quarters, to be born out of wedlock was never acceptable and always lessened the offspring in terms of inheritance and social standing.
But any moderately well-educated person knows that, so I for one cannot and will not accept Myers's apology.
I was born to an unwed mother in 1974. But I was not an unwanted pregnancy; I was born of a conscious decision. Much like the children that Myers thinks of today; being born to mercenary "state-benefit" gold diggers if you will.
I was lucky in many ways. My mother had a relatively well-paid job and could support us both. She could afford to send me to a fee-paying school, and I had the benefits of a good education. A good enough education to be able to read Kevin Myers's words and laugh at his ill-informed, archaic mindset.
Unfortunately I do believe that there are plenty of people out there who would agree with him, and the language he used. This is what we need to challenge. There is a social debate that needs to take place, and the sooner the better from all accounts.
That a well-known, supposedly erudite and prominent columnist is reduced to provoking us with such shameful language is quite frightening.
Are we in such a stupor that only bad language will wake us up? And instead of focusing on the question in hand, of course, Myers spectacularly helped to turn it into a slanging match.
The discussion must start with the leaps and bounds made to date, alongside the lack of progress. We are ready for a change.
It seems fair to say that many of the structures in place now are still reactionary to the witch-hunts and Magdalen laundries of the previous decades.
Surely the structures and benefits need to be reviewed? While it is commendable that if a disadvantaged young woman finds herself pregnant and has the back-up of the state, it shouldn't be at the cost of being forced to go it alone. There must be more options than that.
Now there are far more lone parents, of whom many are men, so the landscape has changed completely; for the better in the main. Many women now choose to become single parents, and not just for the reasons that Myers outlined.
This is a choice that is a human right, and no child deserves to be stigmatised for it.
A good education has to be one way forward. Children are a captive audience while in school. That has to be rich and fertile ground for making them aware. As well as a social syllabus, a good sex education incorporating a good contraceptive education can be a start.
We should be inspiring all children to want to strive for the best that this State can offer them. If all young people were educated in the same manner, the idea of premature or unwanted pregnancies would become anathema to them.
They would want to ensure to the best of their ability that it didn't happen.
While it is unrealistic to assume that it will never happen, more options must be available. There have to be more inspiring avenues to explore than Myers's bleak vision of some women consciously bringing babies into a fatherless wasteland to grow up in what he seems to envisage as a semi-vegetative apathetic and pessimistic state.
As much as I believe that the two-parent family is the ideal - I have first-hand experience of how hard it is on mothers alone - it is supremely naïve to say that it is always going to be the best format.
How many unhappy people do we know who have emerged from the battlefield of living with two parents that have grown to hate each other?
On the other hand single parents, for the most part, are very conscious of making up for the lack of a mother/father, and consequently those children are often far more aware of being loved and secure.
Improvements and change have to come from a society, and government in particular, that takes into account the changing face of the modern family and adjusting its laws and education accordingly.
Despite popular opinion this week, I would hope that schools did discuss Myers's piece and expose it for the racist polemic that it was. And also that they discussed that word, bastard, and maybe even discussed lobbying to have it removed from the English dictionary as unnecessary in the world today.
As the bastard of a mother of a bastard I, and a few more of my ilk, did not turn out too badly. And there's no reason why any woman can't make a choice that allows her to have children that feel the same way. Whether they are born in or out of wedlock.
Daisy Cummins is the daughter of the late Irish Times journalist, Mary Cummins