What's It All About, Alf

Oy. Here comes another teaching moment with Things 1 and 2 ... like any of three of us look forward to the awkward lectures that always seem to worm their way into what is (theoretically? hypothetially?) a mature give and take between father and child(ren).

This time the subject is the 13-year-old new dad, Brit Alfie Patten, who the story goes had one go at some unprotected sex with his 15-year-old gal pal. It is of course wonderful for a father to be close to his kid and able to relate to what s/he is going through, but this is probably pushing it.

It is of course possible this story is another media canard, somebody's idea of how to update the 1966 movie about Alfie Elkins and its 2004 remake focus on a ladies man who is suddenly forced to find a new way of life as a result of an unplanned pregnancy. Perhaps this Patten tale is being floated on its way to movie of the week status on Disney XD, the channel being started up to bring boys and dads together in tube time. But a dad at 13? Really....

Our teaching moment will revolve around relationships and sex and perhaps even movies and television. It could be racy and exciting and an extraordinary intergernational give-and-take. But it won't. Maybe — if I am real lucky and those are very unhatched chickens — it will have some long term impact because if history is any predictor, our discussion of boys and why one has to always be careful and unforseen consequences will be like that second movie, very painful to sit through.

Did Alfie's dad ever talk to him about stuff like this? Are they talking now?

Unmarried (Teen) Dad Smackdown

Among the newest paths to celebrity is fathering the child with a girl/woman to whom one is not married, perhaps not even with in a relationship.

What happened while I was sleeping?

New teen hearthrob Levi Johnston [Earlier: Teen Dad] discovered celebrity as father/groom-to-be for teen m-to-b Bristol Palin. While the hunky hockeyist may be very similar to BP's first dude dad, — and there is recent science again insisting that daughters favor the looks of their father — suddenly there is a possible smackdown for his celebrity.

"Kevin," an LA urban rap artiste claims via YouTube that he's the real spermmaker behind Bristol's bulge:



Call him, Bristol. Because if you don't, he's obviously a guy on the go (maybe not something to be said for LJ) and he still has time to step up and claim the paternal spot of Minnie Driver's baby daddy.

Teen Dad

In ancient Rome armed men were thrown into the ring against each other, unarmed men were thrown in against wild animals, and, basically, the ancient audience was constantly entertained by one or another man being torn apart or hacked to death. Sometimes, the man won.

And, with an admitted slight difference, the same ethic is often at work for dads today. Even as the people in charge of the Republican convention announce everyone should respect his privacy, they are dragging Alaskan impregnator Levi Johnston onto display for the nation. His MySpace page has already been deconstructed and his family laid siege to.

Johnston, of course, is not alone at being a teen dad dragged through media muck. But the question has to be why? Just for the public's amusement?