No bastard no deh again, everyone lawful…. Or so it was thought, being the intent of the “Status of the Children Act 1976” promulgated on November 1, 1976. This Act became popularly known as the “Bastard Act” and was meant to protect the right to inheritance of children born out of wedlock. It is now almost thirty years since its enactment with its unintended consequences that many times over.

Newton's third law: law of reciprocal actions

All forces occur in pairs, and these two forces are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.

The world has developed a notion that there are actions for which there are no consequences; it is not true. Both the bible and nature is replete with examples that disprove the lie. In fact the consequences are greater than the action as predicted by Newton’s second law, the law of motion. The acceleration of the force with the smaller mass will be greater than its larger counterpart.

Sex slave

An understanding of the role of (black) men during the period of slavery would have dissuaded the legislators from even contemplating the Act. There were no family units on the plantation, and men were encouraged by their masters (with some help) to grow the slave population by impregnating as many female as possible. Women therefore became the de facto head of the household without any supporting role from the male. Over the centuries a culture of “free sex” developed and hardly anything was done after emancipation to correct it.

Irresponsible boys to wild men

Women in leadership (of the household) have since done little to change the perception of themselves as sexual objects. They grow their boys in different ways from the girls and give unsound advice to their daughters like “boys can’t get pregnant” as if that is the only thing that matters. Not having real father figures the boys are not trained at home as providers but as donors and girls at too early an age replicate the role of their mothers in bed.

Over the last three decades the trend continues to be that more girls than boys are graduating from institutions of higher learning. Surprisingly, educated women who should know better have repeated the same fallacy. At a stage in their lives they often opt for a child caring very little about the support of the father. Those boys who hopped out of the educational system to pursue careless pleasures know fully well that at roll call women even of high status will need their services. But being less prepared economically to head households few men relish the thought of their women as bread- winners so while they are willing to act as sex partners they are not as inclined to commit to the family unit. The educated woman also experiences difficulty in finding single men of comparable status as to do otherwise increases the chance of conflict in marriage.      

Not thy will

Boys grow up to become men only to find themselves unprepared to earn their keeps. They therefore seek quick and risky ways to acquire material possessions. Crime and trickery becomes part of the course and void of the restraint of a stable family the animal spirit comes to the fore. Their vision of life is what Hobbes described as life in the state of nature: brutish and short.

In most societies it is men that are mostly criminals, and a significant number of the lot end up either dead or incarcerated. The Bastard Act, far from remedying has perpetuated the problem. Men without substance have very little to will to their offspring.

Nobody’s business

The moral persuasion of illegitimacy to caring men and the stigma as baby mothers to women, once removed by the Act, swung open the door to immorality. The first impact was on young minds in the place of learning, where those responsible for imparting society’s values bore children outside of marriage and lived lives almost as harlots. Schools no longer supplemented the family in its role of nurturing neither did the village, community nor the wider society. Somewhere between the ethos of Flip Wilson in “the devil made me do it” and Frank Sinatra “I did it my way” the society lost its conscience and gave in to action without responsibility.  

Immoral Act

A child may be legitimized by subsequent marriage of the parents; a pretty good incentive for parents to right their own wrongs. The Act sought to remedy at death and did nothing to ensure the welfare and support of the child during the fathers’ life. Perversely, women of that ilk have every incentive to actively seek the attention of men with wealth in the hope of securing a part for themselves and their children. 

Once again politics took center stage, trumping economics and morality in its wake. The legacy of the Act has fostered amongst other things crime, aids and a breakdown in family values. And while we cannot legislate morality we certainly can immorality.