Friday 28 February 2014

The children of the biological revolution

Every time I board an overcrowded sardine tin, more commonly known as the tube, I am confronted with something of great concern.

To avoid committing the mortal sin of looking in the general direction of another human being, passengers spend the duration of their journey reading and re-reading various posters for anything from life insurance to charity campaigns urging commuters to donate their entire life savings to the welfare of orphaned guinea pigs with levels of interest generally reserved for the likes of 50 Shades of Grey.

And I follow suit.

London’s impersonality led to my latest bugbear, in the form of a poster which seems to crop up more than any other. Targeting single women reaching the end of their childbearing capabilities, the general gist is: “Biological clock ticking so loudly it has become to men what a whistle is to a dog? Fear not, let our clinic impregnate you with an illegitimate child.”

It would be cheaper for said women to drink 241 bottles of Blue WKD to oblivion down at their local Inferno or other such classy all-night cattle market, linger around on the dance floor at throwing out time and go home with whatever reprobate is lurking in the sidings desperate to dip his unprotected penis inside whatever gaping chasm presents itself.  

But I don’t suppose following in the footsteps of a typical Stoke-on-Trent teenager is strictly the soundest of advice to offer females due to expel their final egg at any given moment. Ill-educated teenagers have already contributed to an influx of just short of 400,000 children currently being used in a vast game of human ping-pong, tossed between the fostering population of the UK.

Single women, homosexual partnerships, even straight couples desperate to rescue one of the country’s more unfortunate children from a future of special brew and Jeremey Kyle, have battled with the authorities since records began.

And with figures for the bi-products of a post-club scuffle up an alleyway, leading to mothers who have no recollection of the conception and claiming to bear the second-coming insurmountable, the number of children soon to be taken into care should be of grave concern.

But having a phantom baby is fast becoming In-Vogue. Intelligent, caring, upstanding, financially sound women are opting to take the easier route of artificial insemination over attempting to convince the authorities to extract a child from a squalid existence and give them the chance for a better life that they deserve.

If children spiral into an identity meltdown when their adoptive parents have “the talk,” I cannot even begin to imagine the head-fucking impact that clinics advertising down in the depths of London’s underground network will have on the children of the future.