The way it works, dot is this:
Chantelle (the 15 year old mother), lives with her mother, jobless father and five brothers in a �rented� (i.e. free) council house. All eight of them are maintained by benefits. As has been pointed out, Chantelle will not (yet) receive benefits in her own right. Instead her mother�s benefits will be increased to accommodate new arrival Maisie.
And thereby hangs the rub. If Chantelle�s parents were working, her father Steve could not have gone to his employer and said �My stupid 15 year old daughter has just had a baby. Can I have a rise please?� They would have had to accommodate the new child from their existing income. So whilst the occurrence of underage pregnancies is not exclusive to families on benefits, it is more prevalent among them because the financial effects are not so severe.
As I said earlier, the 13 year old father will be unaffected by this and he and his eight siblings (at least that�s the number his father is said to have sired) will go about their business largely undisturbed.
I don�t actually hold that �society� is responsible for all of this. Nor do I blame manufacturers for marketing unsuitable clothes for children (after all, they only make what people buy). Parents are responsible for bringing up their children and for buying their clothes. If they don�t know what their children or up to or they buy totally unsuitable apparel for their children, that�s their fault, not mine. But I do blame successive governments (of all persuasions) for making this type of lifestyle so attractive.
It seems a number of people responding to this question agree with my outrageously harsh stance (for a change). Could the credit crunch finally be having some effect?
I think I�ll go for a lie down.