Lone Parents

On my way to work this morning, I got off the bus several stops early because I wanted to walk. It was a fine morning, bright and sunny with no wind, just a breath of coldness in the air. The trees were still mostly green, just beginning to turn yellow and brown and gold in patches. We've had a lovely October, and November, so far, seems just as good. I've travelled in Europe and Africa, but it's still my firm conviction that England is the most beautiful country in the world. The natives, however, are a different story.

Last night, I watched a programme on Channel Four, 'Too Big To Walk,' about how a group of foul-mouthed lard-buckets waddled their way from Devon in the south of England, to Edinburgh in Scotland, a walk of five hundred miles. Only a few of them finished, but all praise to those few, for their feet were in a shocking state, with blisters, sores, and dead skin. But what made me think was something said by the one young woman who made it to the end. She declared that before she had done this walk, she would have 'popped out a couple of kids by somebody I didn't know, and spent my life on benefits.' Now, she said, she knew she was capable of actually achieving something. I was glad for her, but unfortunately her way of thinking is by no means uncommon. We have several hundred lone parents on our office caseload, and I want to introduce you to one of them, whom I'll call Tia, and who came for an interview the other day.

Tia is just seventeen years old, and left care not long ago. She was pregnant. That's not surprising, half the girls leaving care in this part of London are pregnant. She had been moved into a council flat, and she had come to the office to request a community care grant (not a loan), to furnish it. She is very thin, (she has just suffered a miscarriage) and has dark circles under her eyes. Tia's mother, 'Alice' is thirty-eight, and works as a professional benefit claimant. Who was Tia's father? Tia doesn't know, and probably her mother doesn't know either. Alice began her career at sixteen, when she fell pregnant with Tia's older brother, who died a few years ago of a drugs overdose. She has lived on benefits all her life, and has never had a job. Nor does she intend to, for she has now found a doctor who will supply her with medical certificates for the usual ailments, depression, nervous debility, and back pain, and lives with her latest partner, who is also her carer.

Tia has been in and out of council care all her life, coming home to Alice when Alice was temporarily without a partner, and being sent back to a council home when her mother was, in her own words, 'too busy to look after her properly.' Busy doing what, I'd like to know? Certainly not working for a living. Tia has filled in the form for her grant, and hands it to me to check. Surprisingly, it is written in very neat handwriting, and the spelling is correct. This is because Tia has spent some time at a boarding school for children in care, and has at least learned to read and write properly, if nothing else.

I then try to interest Tia in some of the training and college courses we have to offer young people. She listens politely enough, but I can tell she thinks that nothing I am saying has any relevance to her own life. I tell her that she has lost her baby, and that's very sad, but she can't sit around doing nothing (lots of them do though) and she looks up at me and says 'I'm pregnant again.' I am really angry, although I'm not allowed to show it. It's not for us to judge other people's lives, we're just here to pay benefits and help them into work. I ask about the child's father, and receive a blank stare. So the story for the CSA will be the usual, 'I met him at a party, and I never saw him again.' The life of Alice will be repeated by her daughter.

Why? Tia is not a stupid girl. She simply has no ambition, and no expectation that her life will be any different from that of her mother. The tragedy is not so much that she will live her life on benefits, but that she does not mind doing so.