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Interesting article I found on a speaker's site that is in FAVOR of early (even teenage) marriage
It begins:
Quote:
True Love Waits. Wait Training. Worth Waiting For. The slogans of teen abstinence programs reveal a basic fact of human nature: teens, sex, and waiting aren’t a natural combination.
Over the last fifty years the wait has gotten longer. In 1950, the average first-time bride was just over 20; in 1998 she was five years older, and her husband was pushing 27. If that June groom had launched into puberty at 12, he’d been waiting more than half his life.
If he *had* been waiting, that is. Sex is the sugar coating on the drive to reproduce, and that drive is nearly overwhelming. It’s supposed to be; it’s the survival engine of the human race. Fighting it means fighting a basic bodily instinct, akin to fighting thirst.
HAHA, that's just stupid. Sex has little to do with reproduction, let's be honest. Yeah from one type of sex, intercourse, you can get a girl pregnant, but that's not even close to the only sexual thing you can do, and that assumes that somehow you're stupid enough in 2009 to let biology win. We have condoms. We already triumphed over nature. Now we can do something fun that feels good without having something stupid and undesirable come from it.
It's not at all difficult to fight doing something things, you just simply don't do it. End of story.
As an old fuddy-duddy who married young to an even younger bride (20 and 18), I'm not in favor of it. We were both "mature" for our ages and both had jobs that could (and did) turn into rewarding careers. But we both changed so much before we hit age 30 that we weren't the same people, and neither of us got the education that we'd planned. We just didn't have the time for it (jobs, military service, kids). I always thought we'd beat the odds, but we didn't.
My daughter married at the age of 18. She and hubby both planned to attend college and had the finances for it, but he dropped out before completing the first semester, became a pot and alcohol abuser, and the marriage ended a couple years later. They didn't beat the odds either. Most don't.
Bad idea. People undergo many changes over time, especially between 18-22. On one hand at that age one tends to be optimistic about life and love, but a few years down the road and tinges of reality start to set in. I dont have as much a problem with the reproduction as who will support the child. Too many kids on the government dole already. I wonder if we really cut back on the welfare program if that would cut back on the single parent households. I know more than a couple women who got pregnant and didn't give the baby up because they would get help from the government.
What do you all think? Certainly an interesting and rarely heard idea.
While I do agree our kids need to wait longer, they NEED to wait longer if they are to have a happy, healthy and stable life for both them and their children. A stat not mentioned in your post (may be in the article as I haven't read it yet) is girls start puberty sooner today. My mom was 16 before she started her periods, I was 14 and my oldest was 11. Given the PMS symptoms we see in my youngest, she won't make it to 12. So not only are we asking our kids to wait longer they're maturing sexually younger BUT this is not an excuse to decide to have kids younger. Sorry, but getting through college makes such a difference in life that you just have to set your sights on that goal and hope you make it no matter how many years post puberty kids have to wait to have kids.
While it is true it's easier to get pregnant when younger, that's not a reason to have kids when you're younger. Results are better if you wait even if that means some won't be able to have kids. It's worth the wait because the outcome is so much better for those who do have kids.
Interesing stats in your post though WRT my family. We're just going back to the way things were. Both of my grandmothers had their first child after the age of 25. My mom was 18. All of her kids had their kids between the ages of 27 and 38. I do worry about my girls. I had them at 36 and 38 and, according to the experts, this increases their odds of having fertility problems Let's hope by the time the're 25 they've perfected ways of freezing eggs or that they follow in their mother, grand mother and great grandmother's footsteps and maintain fertility later in life. Grandma had her last at 46, my mom had her last at 36 and I had mine at 38. Let's hope that's a genetic trend.
It's funny, I know in fruit flies, if you limit reproduction to only the offspring from eggs laid the last day of a fly's life, in only a few generations, you double their lifespan. Now that would be an experiment worth trying but that one means waiting and only those who are blessed with long lives and late fertility being the breeders. Unfortunately, there is evidence that links advanced maternal age with fertility problems in the next generation. We might breed that out in a few generations but there would be a lot of couples not having kids.
With my girls, I keep pointing out the lifetime earning differences for someone with a college degree and pointing out how hard it is to be a teen parent. Unfortunately, there are plenty of real examples of that for me to point to. We'll see where we end up. They're 11 and 13 right now
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 01-25-2009 at 05:22 AM..
Condoms aren't 100% effective. They break and malfunction all the time. The failure rate is higher for teens because they don't know how to use them properly. Birth control is also highly regimented and most teenaged girls probably can't keep up with taking the pill the exact same time every day. Also doesn't work if the girl isn't exactly afraid of having kids. If she gets pregnant, no big deal for her she eventually wanted kids sooner or later.
The only true method is sterilization. However condoms and birth control is about the best protection you'll get if you don't want sterilization. You just gotta play the odds and hope you don't hit the snake eyes.
I think the bottom line is to decide if you want kids or not early on.
If you want kids: abstinence until you find the right person
No kids: sterilization
Well, I think the author makes an excellent point, even though I disagree with the conclusion. It used to be that people typically got married at age 17 or 18 less than a century ago. Now, we've pushed back the age of marrying to 27-28 for most people.
Now, the last thing I want is my daughter getting married or getting pregnant at 17. At the same time, I just think it is delusional to expect people to remain virgins until the age or 25 or 29. It is cruel to ask people to deny their urgent biological needs for 12-17 years.
Having sex and reproducing at an early age (<18 yrs.) may make sense biologically, but we live in an extremely advanced industrialized society which places huge emphasis upon skilled employment and self-motivated economic advancement. This all-important context constrains that which nature may find appealing since this context emphasizes education and skill acquisition, which develop as we age and are made much more difficult by child rearing.
Bottom line: in a prosperous society having babies young be a good idea from a biological perspective, but its usually a pretty lousy idea socio-economically speaking.
Having sex and reproducing at an early age (<18 yrs.) may make sense biologically, but we live in an extremely advanced industrialized society which places huge emphasis upon skilled employment and self-motivated economic advancement. This all-important context constrains that which nature may find appealing since this context emphasizes education and skill acquisition, which develop as we age and are made much more difficult by child rearing.
Bottom line: in a prosperous society having babies young be a good idea from a biological perspective, but its usually a pretty lousy idea socio-economically speaking.
Hooray for birth control!
True. But, on the other hand, I think the way we educate youth today actually contributes heavily to the problem. For the average child, education is a 14-year slog from kindergarten to high school graduation, followed by another grotesquely expensive four years of college. Instead of pushing kids through the educational system as quickly as possible, and providing incentives for rapid assimilation and mastery of material, we instead continue to run our schools like 18-Century textile mills, with the bright and motivated marching along in lockstep with the stupid and lazy. It's an incredibly bone-headed and wasteful system that guarantees that, unless a child and parent manage to negotiate the bureaucratic equivalent of razor wire to completely buck the system, no child makes it to college prior to the age of 18.
A century ago, particularly compared to the educational standards of today, a high school diploma was an accomplishment. Today, because the standards have been so lowered for a high school diploma, you're really not considered to be marketable for most higher paying jobs without a college degree. My grandfather started as a salesman for United States Steel when he was 18. How many could do that today? In today's workplace, when administrative assistants and receptionists are beginning to need college degrees, and when an MBA is becoming a de facto requirement for career advancement in business, what we're really seeing is adolescence being pushed into one's mid 20s. And it's wholly unnecessary.
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