What's it all about Alfie?

The name Alfie always seem to provoke some reaction. We are often asked if its really Alfred (no ... unless he's pushing his luck!) and whether he'll turn out like the Alfie made famous by Micheal Caine in the movie of the same name! Last week there was plenty of Alfie related discussion! However the more the world learns about pre-teen dad Alfie Patten and his 15-year-old Chantelle Steadman, the worse it gets.



... (the baby is the one at the bottom!)

The Dominion Post in New Zealand writes.

Alfie, the British tabloids report, is not Chantelle's only admirer. Several teenage boys in the Sussex town of Eastbourne have ventured the opinion that they might be the father of week-old Maisie. Behind them, parents dazzled by the lure of tabloid pounds are pushing the claims of their offspring.

If this were the plot for a television soap opera it might be amusing. Alfie, all 1.22m of him, is promising to stand by Chantelle and Maisie even though he doesn't know what "financially" means, and doesn't get pocket money. Chantelle is insisting Alfie is her one and only love "there has been no one else" and Alfie's dad, who left his mum for a teenage friend of his stepdaughter, has revisited the family home wearing a devil mask to see if he can cash in on his son's notoriety.

But this is not a soap opera. Alfie, Chantelle and Maisie are real people adrift in a society in which notoriety is mistaken for achievement and success means seeing your picture in The Sun. What is more they are all children.

The sinners here are not Alfie and Chantelle, but those around them who have failed to do what good parents do protect their children till they are old enough to look after themselves.

Alfie and Chantelle, like, Nadya Suleman, the Californian woman who gave birth to octuplets last month, are now international figures. Unlike her, they have been robbed of their childhoods. While others their age are still kicking balls in the street, fretting about what to wear to the school dance and nervously anticipating their first kiss, Alfie and Chantelle have become members of the adult club. They comprehend the mechanics, if not the responsibilities, that go with that club.

Worse they've got there without the anticipation and the excitement and the setbacks that should accompany such things. There's something dreadfully matter of fact about the way Chantelle describes the events that led to Maisie's birth. "I love Alfie. I lost my virginity to him. We decided to start a physical relationship because we love each other."

And they've arrived at parenthood without the tools they need to do the most challenging and important of jobs. Once the novelty wears off, once the tabloids stop banging on the door and once they stop seeing their faces on the six o'clock news, they'll find themselves like every other parent, being woken in the middle of the night, elbow deep in nappies and having to make sacrifices for the good of their child. But, unlike most other parents, they won't have the resilience acquired from dealing with the ups and downs of growing up to fall back on.

Chantelle is about to discover that just because Alfie "held my hand and rubbed my back" he is not ready for the responsibilities of fatherhood.

Alfie is about to discover he'd probably prefer to be hanging out with his mates than hanging around in a poky council flat listening to a baby cry.

No amount of backrubs is going to change that. Maisie's future looks as bleak as her mum's.