Postcards from the Edge

Goodbye to gymslip mothers

Teenagers stayed at home more during the pandemic – and had fewer children. By Mary Kenny

It’s so true, what old Harold Macmillan said: change happens because of ‘events’. And not just in politics either.

Among other changes COVID has wrought is the end of the rebel teenager, a stereotype we’ve cherished since James Dean broodily gazed out from the screen in Rebel Without a Cause.

Lockdown brought adolescents back to the old days – when children were often educated at home. According to the Education Policy Institute think tank, some became thoroughly comfortable with it. Studies find that, for the most part, youngsters like being with their parents and their parents like being with them. Family harmony!

Teenage drunkenness fell, as did teenage pregnancies. So did sexually transmitted disease among teens. Conceptions were declining anyway, and some ascribed that to better sex education. It seems teenagers turned into old-fashioned homebodies, snuggily ensconced with their parents. And, of course, with their mobile phones.

How well I remember the concerns over ‘gymslip mothers’, which began rising in numbers in the 1960s. There was the conservative ‘Lock up your daughters’ school of thought, to halt teen pregnancies. Societies in Latin countries had long provided chaperones for nubile young girls. Then there was the liberal ‘give them sex education and the Pill’ argument. Even public conversation about the 1967 Abortion Act often centred much more on fears about ‘gymslip mothers’ than on choice.

The gymslip is no more: and social media, plus time spent with families, seem to be proving better deterrents to teen pregnancy or too-early sexual experience – which is surely a good thing.

‘Events’ brought about the altered state.

French intellectuals have changed too. They used to be left-wing Marxisants – Marx-ish if not fully Marxist. Now some of the leading French philosophers are angry reactionaries, delivering two-hour speeches on YouTube about God and civilisation.

My cousin in France has put me on to Michel Onfray, a currently fashionable philosopher. He is that strange paradox, an atheist who says we must nevertheless have God, because without the framework of Judaeo-Christianity the West will collapse.

Very much on-trend is Michel Houellebecq, who denounces sexual liberation, moral decay, feminism, ‘leftist scum’, individualism and the market. He considers the world without God ‘a horror’, although he is not a believer.

I have bought Houellebecq’s latest novel anéantir (‘annihilate’ – yes, lower case), which is said to expose with withering clarity the conditions of modern life. By the time it is published in English in the late spring, I will be all set to engage in a pretentious conversation about its meaning.

It’s a pity Éric Zemmour turned out to be a bit of a rubbish candidate for the French presidency, as he was a sparkling, provocative and knowledgeable journalist, writing weekly in Le Figaro. And something of a TV star, too – Piers Morgan crossed with Blaise Pascal.

I thought it was a little edgy when he began saying that children born in France should compulsorily take a French forename, such as Jean-Pierre. Some people suspected he intended to disparage the name Mohamet for French-born infants, and maybe he did. But he also said that French parents should cease giving their sprogs ‘American names like Kevin’.

I beg your pardon! Kevin is totally, utterly Irish! St Kevin, Abbot of Glendalough (died in 618, feast day 3rd June) was the founder of a school of Celtic monasticism, whose ruins lie in the beautiful Wicklow countryside. The Prince of Wales, who likes monastic sites, has visited it on several occasions.

As the Irish monks inspired St Bernard of Clairvaux and French monasticism, ‘Kevin’ is a perfectly suitable alternative moniker for little Jean-Pierre.

I have a new portmanteau German word: Verantwortungsgemeinschaft. It means ‘community responsibility’ and it forms part of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s programme to enhance rights for gay and transgender people. The plan is to spare LGBT+ folk the bother of the complex bureaucracy they’ve had to endure in the past, such as consulting a doctor before formally identifying as transgender.

Very innovative for Germans to do away with bureaucracy!

I love pronouncing these long, Teutonic words – a compensation for the fact that in real life I could never get much beyond ‘noch ein Kaffee, bitte’.

My favourite compound still remains Verschlimmbesserung – ‘the improvement that makes things worse’, since that seems to relate to so much of everyday life. Such as BT replacing cable-based landline phones with digitalised systems as an ‘improvement’, which will ensure some people will be completely cut off when storms blow.

A perfect example of VSBR.