Hilarie: Katie Price is the worst kind of role model

Nov 21 2009 by Hilarie Stelfox, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

In this case a 17-year-old single mum from Liverpool was parcelled off to stay in a strict Mormon household in Salt Lake City.

The teenager had been living the party lifestyle – out until all hours, getting hammered at every opportunity, tarting it up and generally being a wild-child.

She could see nothing wrong in the way she behaved because, she said, it was her right to enjoy herself.

The rights of her baby didn’t seem important. Her own mum, left holding the baby, appeared too sad and defeated to do anything about it.

We live in hedonistic, celebrity-obsessed times, when someone like mother-of-three Katie Price, thought it was fine to flaunt her barely-dressed body in public and be seen drunkenly cavorting with other men shortly after her break-up with Peter Andre.

She’s a role model for girls who think they can also have babies and party all night.

A social worker once told me that having a baby is perceived as something ‘nice’ and ‘grown-up’, a way to get other people to make a fuss about them.

“The baby will love me,’’ a 15-year-old mother once told me.

But who will love the baby, I wondered, when the novelty wears off?