by Paul Sagar

We recently reported the hilarious, if disturbing, remarks of Tory MP Tim Loughton:

“We need a message that actually it is not a very good idea to become a single mum at 14. [It is] against the law to get pregnant at 14. How many kids get prosecuted for having underage sex? Virtually none. Where are the consequences of breaking the law and having irresponsible underage sex? There aren’t any.”

So, The Guardian asked, should there be prosecutions?

“We need to be tougher. Without sounding horribly judgmental, it is not a good idea to be a mum at 14. You are too young, throwing away your childhood and prospects of developing a career.”

Without sounding horribly judgmental, anybody who thinks that there are no consequences to getting pregnant, and that a criminal record promotes a happy childhood and helps develop a healthy career, is a Platinum Imbecile.

Platinum Imbecility aside, there’s something to note about the bizarre universe Mr Loughton resides in: girls get pregnant by magic.

In the universe I inhabit, pregnancy outside of IVF clinics requires two people, male and female. Assuming that most teenage girls are having sex with teenage boys, the preoccupation with “teenage mothers” is thus striking. Why don’t we hear more about “teenage fathers”?

Sadly it’s not just idiotic Tories that insist on believing that Britain’s teenage girls are experiencing immaculate conceptions. Idiotic Labour MPs are possessed of this bizarre mysticism too. Check out this obnoxious nonsense from (alleged) Labour MP Tom Harris. Teenage mothers are the problem, he shrieks. But what about the boys who are getting them (if you’ll pardon my French) up the duff? Not a word about them.

Things become especially bizarre when we recall research that teenage motherhood can be an overwhelmingly positive experience. It’s just not the case that teenage motherhood necessarily results in packs of feral youths roaming the streets, gleefully breaking Britain. The problem is not with teenage motherhood, it’s with poor parenting. And that can happen whatever age the parents are. A sensible attitude means developing strategies to aid parents in difficult circumstances, not obsessing about the parents’ ages and stigmatising them accordingly.

But you know what? I have no problem with teenagers having sex – and even getting pregnant – per se. There, I said it. Scandalous. But in my opinion, Teenagers Having Sex is only a problem if, for example, a particular teenager is personally not ready for the “consequences” of sex. Say because they are pressured into it, and find the experience traumatic. Or because they end up with an unwanted pregnancy.

But these qualifications are crucial. Sex is not bad per se, even for teenagers. Sex is bad when it’s attached to undesirable things, whatever they happen to be. Perhaps the risks of “bad things” is higher for teenagers. Maybe. But even then, a sensible approach is to make judgements using evidence, and often on a case-by-case basis. What’s silly is to condemn all teenage sex just because it’s teenage sex. There is no reason teenagers can’t have sex with no negative consequences whatsoever. The sex act itself is not the problem. It’s the baggage which is or isn’t attached that’s important.

Which brings us to an interesting point. Our society exhibits a bizarre hysteria about teenage sex. Most especially, there is an overwhelming hysteria about teenage girls having sex. We live in a world of paradox. Advertising, music videos, film and TV push relentless images of sexual availability in young females. Teenage girls are relentlessly encouraged to look available and attractive. Yet actual sexual activity by teenage females is viciously scorned and stigmatised. Adolescent girls are to look and act as though they are sexually available – but should they ever actually be sexually active and available, they earn the labels of slut and slag. (Boys, of course, are players and studs – a significant attitudinal difference, I would suggest).

It’s the bizarre, confused, quasi-Victorian mania about female sex and sexuality that largely animates Loughton and Harris. The blunt horror of even thinking about teenage girls having sex so overwhelms them that they forget that girls do not have sex alone. Teen mothers are vilified by Harris, while Loughton demands they suffer criminal penalties. The question of whether teenage fathers bear responsibility, or are worthy of our extreme moral disdain, or even our attention, never makes it onto their radars. That their attitudes are the norm tells us something important about our society.