What went wrong?

My thoughts have crystallised over the past few days. Welfare alone can't be blamed for the underclass that creates tragedies like the deaths of the Kahui twins. But it has a damn lot to do with matters;


A teenage Maori girl had just miscarried. It was suggested her mother made sure she was given contraceptives to prevent a recurrence of another unwanted pregnancy. "No point," came the answer. Why? Because she won't use them. Her and her mates are mad on having babies.

The girl has no job, no qualifications, no partner, no secure home. Her own family distrusts her because she is a compulsive liar.

But as sure as summer yields to autumn, this girl will become a mother. From her viewpoint it's a rational decision. She can sign up for the DPB, get priority for a state house and play mum. Of course, she'll still want to party with her mates of both sexes. She knows none of the discipline or sacrifice that bringing up a child requires. She has never learnt either.

This one is not going to be a good mother. Yet around the late 1960s an idea developed that all children, without exception, are better off with their birth mothers. The wave of opposition to adoption grew. Taking babies away from their birth mothers came to be seen as almost barbaric.

During the fifties and sixties a young mother could choose to keep her child. There were emergency sickness benefits which covered her for a few months while she breastfed the baby. But ultimately she would need family support, or work to pay for childcare, in order to keep her child.

From 1968 to 1972 a benefit called the domestic purposes emergency benefit became available. The social security department could grant this at their discretion. But in 1973 that benefit became statutory, which meant any single parent qualified - no questions asked. The reason for their single parenthood no longer had any bearing on whether the state would assist them.

Adoptions plummetted. Homes for unmarried mothers were no longer needed. The ex-nuptial birthrate soared. This was the new utopia feminists had pushed for.

By the early eighties street kids started to dominate the headlines. Hundreds were reckoned to be living rough in Auckland, in parks and derelict buildings. Many turned to crime and girls often became pregnant.

By 1982 the National Council of Women were advocating adult guardians for teenage mums whose own parents had abdicated any responsibility for. The first generation of children kept by mothers without the emotional or financial wherewithal to parent properly was already repeating the cycle.

Many of the worst cases of violence against children happen to those born to very young mums who continue to have a series of partners and more children by them. Their homes are chaotic and unkempt as are their children. The parent and her mates go on living just as they did before they brought the babies home. Their role as "carers" is a total misnomer because very little caring is going on. Often gang members are involved, tagging on to the mother's steady benefit income and cheap housing.

The lifestyle isn't confined to Maori although it seems to hold more appeal to this ethnic group than others. Newborns going into these "homes" are the acutely vulnerable. Researchers who analysed data from the nineties found children from DPB homes were four times more likely to become the subject of a CYF care and protection notification.

Everybody who works in the social services area can provide too much anecdotal evidence that the cycle of deprivation and depravation is driven, in part, by policy that encourages children to bear children. The idea that all birth mothers, without exception, are the best people to bring up their babies has had tragic consequences.

We must reconsider. While adoption might not have been ideal what we swapped it for has proven far worse for too many children.