On The Spot (Part IV) Our high unwed birth rate speaks volumes, but what does it actually say? ( Part II)

Our high unwed birth rate speaks volumes, but what does it actually say?

Our astonishingly high unwed birth rate speaks volumes, but what does it actually say about us as a society? Should we be concerned that only two out of every 10 babies in St. Kitts and Nevis are born to married parents? What does this portend, if anything, for the future of our families and communities?  

I spoke with community members to find out what they think. They gave me a variety of perspectives; all of them thought-provoking. Excerpts of these interviews follow.

Women are rationalising that they are not going to get security

Dr. Patrick Martin, Chief Medical Officer: “It is unsustainable! The family structure that we have will lead to certain fallouts because it takes two to tango. Parenting is not for cowards.  Parenting is not for children. In our context, we have too many cowards and too many children as parents. So we should not be surprised with our level of juvenile delinquency, juvenile violence and juvenile crime. I’m not surprised because we have known that certain families will produce certain types of children.  

“In the 1960s, the teenage motherhood rate was 20 percent. In 1976, it was 36 percent; that is the highest I’ve seen. It is now down to 15 percent, but you can see that there has been a cycle of kids raising kids. Now, those kids are grandparents. The maturity level of some of our parents is at such a low point that they cannot handle the children – especially the boys with certain personalities – and they give up very easily,” he said, adding that, “We have an epidemic of child abuse.”

In response to the survey, which shows that St. Kitts and Nevis respondents among the 25 to 49 year old age group report the highest rate of sex and the highest rate of multiple sex partners, Dr. Martin said, “I am not surprised. We seem to have the highest rate of everything: teenage pregnancy, families headed by single females, homicide and male incarceration.”
I asked: “What does that speak to?”

“This speaks to a decay in the social fabric, not the entire fabric but part of it. We have a section in our society that has continued to produce social problems. There is a section in our society that believes that women are fresh meat and that young girls are even fresher. There is a section in our population that regards children only for the money they can bring into the house for child support. When the boys start to give a little trouble, they wash their hands of them and stand up in front of the court and say, ‘I cannot handle him. Send him to the Harris’ Home.’ There are persons in our community who target girls as soon as they start to show signs of puberty,” the Chief Medical Officer said, adding that, “Things are not going to get any better until men keep their penises in their pants.

“I believe women want to get married. Women want security. I think women are rationalising that they are not going to get it,” he said, adding that, “Some people are not prepared to suffer the humiliation and the indignation to have their man cheat on them. The women in this country know that infidelity on the part of the man is tolerated. 

“I am struck by the fact that women are making decisions knowing that they are not prepared to suffer through the indignity and humiliation of being in a broken marriage. I think that is part of their calculus, and they are justified in doing so because look around the society; where are the exemplars!? 

“Some women want the child so they are going to get the child and raise the kid by themselves.  Some people can do that. Other people find out after they have the child that it is not so easy. If these women get laid off, they will have a problem. There are many men standing by to solve their problems for them financially, but they have to give something in return: something for something. Next thing they know, they will end up with two or three children.”

A lot of men don’t make the necessary commitment because women will never negotiate       

Reverend Father Isaiah Phillip: “It speaks to the fact that the Church’s message is like a voice in the wilderness because everything else around them is not carrying this message that the Church is carrying, [such as] that you need responsible sexuality; you need to understand that sexual intimacy must be a celebration of something deep, responsible and committed.  

“A lot more institutions such as the media need to carry the same messages that we are carrying.  It is so heartening to hear businesspeople talk about the importance of family life. So we are on our way. 

“Part of those institutions and individuals that need to support the Church’s message is our own women folk – to have personal standards in terms of their relationships and how they are going to bear and care for children.  

“When I challenge men about getting into a stable, committed relationship within the proper bonds of the Church, very often they would tell me to talk to the women. Sometimes the women are the people who are really not on in terms of moving forward in the relationship. Mind you, sometimes when I talk to the women there are a lot of other issues. The men want to move on, but they want to move on partially – they will marry you, but they want to have the girlfriend on the side still.

“Part of the reason why people don’t marry is because they are not prepared to make that ultimate commitment – to be committed to a single partner. They can always say [to their other woman or a prospective lover], well, I’m not married, and that is acceptable – to have two girlfriends.  

“There are some women who would tell you, ‘I know what I have and I could live with all the shortcomings.’ They have unintentionally got sucked into something that they really didn’t bargain for, so they have weighed the situation and worked out that, well, this is better than whatever the unknown [with another man] is.  

“A lot of men don’t make the necessary commitment because of the fact that women will never negotiate the kind of relationship they want in that situation.”

I know of a lot of young ladies who thought they were in stable relationships

Azilla Clarke, social worker: “We need education about relationships because I know of a lot of young ladies who thought they were in stable relationships. They had long-standing relationships and as soon as the sperm impregnated the egg it was a whole different story.  

“So we need relationship counselling because the new generation of late-20s, early 30-year-olds are like, “I don’t need you. Give me some stress and I’m going to leave.’ There are also the younger ones who cling so they give up a lot of themselves in order to attain it [security].         

On dating, Clarke said: “It’s almost taboo for you to date in St. Kitts when dating is a way for you to understand what you like and don’t like. So instead of jumping into bed with a man to figure out if you like him, by going on a date you’ll observe his mannerisms, the way he speaks, the things he likes, and you might say, ‘Aw, man, you’re not for me, boy,’ and move on.  But in St. Kitts, every time you step out with someone, you “dear” with them.”

I followed up with, “And you are not only ‘dear’ with them, you’re going with them. And, you know, ‘go’ in St. Kitts means like you’re ‘riding’ them. So a lot of women don’t want to open themselves up to that either.” 

“Well, that’s the dialogue,” Clarke said, adding that, “Our society is moving so fast that it will come to a point where it is going to force us to talk about these issues. Unfortunately, what is forcing us to do so are all negative things and are all minuses to our culture, such as the youth drug and violence situation.” 

Most times people are having sex with people they don’t really want to settle down with 

Dr. Garfield Alexander: “It shows the masculinity of our society and the male chauvinistic aspect of it. I find Kittitian men, and let me say we, we get intimidated by women, we get intimidated by pregnancy and we get intimidated by fatherhood. We just don’t have examples.  So when we’re faced with that situation, we wonder: ‘What can we do?’

“I’ve seen too many pregnant women and women with newborns who, when asked ‘Are you and the dad together?’ nine times out of ten they say ‘no’. Most people have good relationships up until that point when they get pregnant.  

“One of the problems is that most times people are having sex with people they don’t really want to settle down with or people they don’t want to have children with; we’ve got to face it: that’s just it. I didn’t want to say that people are having casual sex, but really that’s what it boils down to because once they are having sex with people they don’t see themselves spending the rest of their life with or even see themselves starting a family with then there must be unwed births if they are not practicing safe sex.”  

I said, “Sometimes men don’t want to use condoms and they say, ‘Oh, it feels so good.’ They might not want to settle down with a woman, but they may like her enough to want to feel it [the sensation of sex] bare,” adding, “What do you say to the woman who feels pressured, who feels that if she says ‘no’ to not using a condom she’s going to push away the guy?”

“She has to build her self-worth. She has to know, sex or not, she’s a package to begin with; the woman has to know, irrespective of how responsible the man is, she has to bear that child for nine months. She’s the one who is going to be branded because we as males in this society have a pardon. We are allowed to do as we like. It may sound unfair, but the onus is on the woman because she will bear the brunt of the responsibility and most times she will have the calmer head in that situation.”

“It’s the woman who puts up the fight that we more than often run for,” he added.

On what Dr. Alexander calls the “Mommy’s Boy Syndrome," he said: “Most Caribbean men idolize their mothers. Yet, they see their mothers go for most of their lives unmarried, maybe sometimes with more than one partner. So they grow up with a complex that is maybe subconscious.  

“They have their mother as the woman – no woman can cook better than her, no woman is prettier than her. So when they grow up and she never gets married, no matter whom they get as a partner she could never measure up to their mother. If no man saw their mother as having the worth to get married to, they themselves will see no woman having that worth.”