Siring

Who says that it is the superior genes that survive? Doesn't seem that way. Perhaps once, in prehistory that was what occurred. When those capable of adaptation were able to pass on their genes because they were able to manipulate their environment or employ techniques that were imaginatively useful for survival.

The present-day reality is that it is not those who are genetically imbued with intelligence and rationality that successfully breed. Rather, it is the under-educated, the working poor, the riffraff and underbelly of society that somehow manage to have multiple offspring.

The new phenomenon of young, unmarried women still in their teens yearning to be mothers, to achieve some kind of warped social prestige by bearing children, even if they aren't aware of the most elemental needs of infants, to ensure they grow into healthy, well-functioning individuals, represents the prevailing psychosis.

What better such representative of absent fatherhood than those who go from woman to woman, girl to girl, impregnate them, then move on to other conquests, bored by the predictability of being monogamous, excited by the prospects of ever moving on, scattering seed, proudly achieving fatherhood, albeit with no intention of nurturing a healthy relationship either with woman or child, much less labouring to provide the necessities of life.

Last week a young man who lived in the Ottawa Valley died in a single-vehicle crash. He was the driver, the only occupant of the car. Days earlier he had become 'engaged'. He was 28 years of age. And he had had a succession of 'engagements', never consummated by marriage, but resulting in no fewer than eight children, his first born when he was 15.

Eight children in 13 years, with five different girlfriends to whom he was presumably 'engaged'.

He was irrepressible and irresponsible. And the young women to whom he was engaged and with whom he had multiple children? They too, irrepressible and irresponsible.

And place his mother in that category, as well, proud of her son, claiming "He loved women, and the women loved him". Although, in fact, she was quite correct, for that is precisely true, incredible as it may seem to those imbued with some degree of intelligence and responsibility.

He provided little or no child support, once he moved smoothly and inevitably on to another, and even while he was deeply engaged in a current relationship. His responsibility ended when the relationship with the mother ended.

And the women, peculiarly, felt no animus toward him, only a lingering regret, insisting that they loved him. Claiming him to have been proud of his children, irrespective of not seeing them very frequently. Or supporting them financially. The very picture of a free soul. Certainly an unrestrained soul, free of conscience.

Some sociopaths at one time in history notched their rifles every time they shot a man. Some men, evidently, mark a mental notch in their self esteem every time they sire a child. Don't children deserve better? And the irony is, of course, that someone of his ilk, his mentality, his juvenile disposition, his lack of responsibility, does spread his genetic inheritance about so generously.

Maddening, isn't it?