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The Cameron new baby

2010 at 07:49 by Liz Hodgkinson

 

The world is, apparently, excited and thrilled that Samantha Cameron has had a fourth baby, delivered by Caesarean section at Truro Hospital. It is a girl, weighing just over six pounds (amazing how they revert to old weights at these times)  and David Cameron is on record as saying he is a very proud dad.

Cue gushing from such as Sarah Brown (‘lovely announcement of the new Downing Street baby’) and congratulations from both the powerful and the powerless.  But let’s unpick all this for a moment. Firstly, should a responsible world leader be setting an example by having four children? Isn’t two more than enough in today’s world where there are not going to be enough jobs for everybody and food and other resources are simply not going to meet our fast growing population?

Secondly, what’s so marvellous about having a baby? Any female creature can reproduce, it takes no qualities of character, judgment, personality or education to become pregnant and in fact, sensible women try to avoid it these days.

Thirdly, and most importantly,  I’m worried that all this fake gush and congratulatory messages may encourage daft girls to get pregnant thinking that by so doing they too will be loved, congratulated and admired.  Wasn’t there also a new Clegg baby fairly recently?

In my day, forty-plus was considered old to be having a baby; not now, it seems.  We felt sorry for women approaching and over 40 who had another baby; now they have to be congratulated instead.

No, the person we should be congratulating and admiring is Julia Gillard, the proudly childfree Australian politician. Gillard, daughter of ten-pound Poms, has risen to be Australia’s first female prime minister entirely by her own efforts, intelligence, determination and strength of character – and not by marrying a powerful man or taking up time, money and resources bringing yet another unnecessary person into an already vastly overpopulated world.

Then, technically, a C-section is NOT ‘giving birth’. It is a surgical operation requiring anaesthetic, cutting, stitching and a fairly long recovery period. David Cameron alleged that the baby just ‘popped out’. Of its own accord?  Hardly. So was  it an elective or emergency C-section? We should be told.

Please, let’s have less of the gush and more reality. 

 
 

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