Many years ago, following the birth of Fisher Junior, I returned to the maternity ward to find a new mother-to-be in the bed next to me.

She was 17 (I was then an 'old' woman in my 20s) and I remember thinking that at her age I was still in school uniform and absorbed by my love for The Beatles*.

In the light of recent news that a 13-year-old has (allegedly) become a father, my memory of that teenage mum in the 1970s seems very outdated.

It really is shocking that a boy, who should be getting his excitement from football or Harry Potter, has instead fathered a child with a world-weary 15-year-old.

Nevertheless, I have probably been more bemused by how many commentators have absurdly blamed our much-maligned schools for this birth.

Pity the teachers who have been clobbered over the years for not giving enough sex education, giving too much sex education, or giving the wrong kind of sex education.

Too blunt, too wishy washy. Too sexy. Too much emphasis on STDs. Not enough romance. Dismay that homosexual relationships have been left out. Horror that gays are mentioned at all. Too much, too little. Too late, too soon. How on earth could they ever win?

Presumably staff should also have accompanied their pupils to parties and clubs armed with condoms and sex manuals in case they hadn't grasped the finer points of their sex education?

Don't blame the teachers. At least they're trying to help youngsters who have to cope with an increasingly complex, dangerous and ambiguous world outside school, where the only expectation is that they should grow up quickly.

And before anyone mentions the handful of cases where teachers have had sexual relationships with children, they too should be condemned.

Blame the immature parents who put their own desires first and can't be bothered to teach their children about responsibility and self respect; blame a society which has over-sexualised and coarsened everything children see, wear and watch, never mind giving them free access to the 'anything goes' internet.

This is not being priggish or po-faced. Children should be allowed to be children, not mini-adults, not sexual creatures, and certainly never ever, parents. 

* A survey once said that people from the swinging sixties often lie about seeing icons such as The Beatles perform live. I really did see them at Birmingham Town Hall but didn't hear them. We were all screaming too much!