Alfie and Chantelle are the British couple that just had a baby together. They can't get married yet because they aren't legally old enough. Chantelle is 15 and Alfie is 13. Alfie is small for his age and looks and sounds even younger, although he is obviously not too underdeveloped around the crotch where puberty had already set in when he and Chantelle consummated their sleepover in Chantelle's bed with parental consent. However, as of this date, a DNA test has yet to confirm if Alfie is the biological father, being that four other boys apparently had sleepovers with Chantelle as well.
This story has made international notoriety only because of the culture the two kids come from. Baby-makers of their age from traditional indigenous societies don't make the headlines. In Mexico, for example, some indigenous communities and regions have autonomy from the Mexican government. The Mexican press recently publicized how the Triqui Indians of Oaxaca still exercise polygamy and wives can be as young as 13, which is why 12 is the legal age of sexual consent in Mexican Indian country.
Indioheathen was born to a then 17-year-old mother and 20-year-old father, and my paternal Mexican Indian grandparents had their first child (my eldest uncle) when she was 15 and he was 20. I never wanted any biological kids of my own and thus never had any, although I took in a nephew from his somewhat troubled single-parent home for a few years during his early teens.
Even though most kids are biologically capable of producing kids of their own by age 12, those from non-indigenous societies are generally not emotionally let alone financially prepared to exercise child-rearing because their societies are more complex, and their cultures do not prepare them for the responsibilities of adulthood when puberty sets in as do most indigenous societies. Nevertheless, all kids by the time they reach 12 should be taught about the use of condoms and other artificial birth control, and encouraged to use them whenever their hormones get the best of their willpower for "abstinence". Most European countries recognize that by having reasonable age of sexual consent laws set no higher than 16. Spain has the lowest set at 13.
Across the Atlantic, though, the colonized, industrial societies of the Americas, and particularly the United States, have basically created a puritanical social and legal war on puberty with their high age of sexual consent laws (18 in many) and the abusive and broad out-of-control interpretations and prosecutions of "sex offenses". Consenting but nevertheless underage teens are always portrayed as "victims" by police, prosecutors, and the mainline media even though in many cases its the horny teen who solicited the adult for sex. And when they send nude photos of themselves to their peers over the internet or by cell phone, they can be charged with distributing child pornography even though they are the "child" depicted. The way the law treats this is sadistic, irrational, and disgusting.
I really have nothing more to say about this or the situation of Chantelle and Alfie that has not already been well-written about by my friend "CLS" of the Classically Liberal blog. Click here.
