Now that I’m 40 years old most of my friends are in their riper years. The women who are trying to have children in their late 30s and early 40s are going through torture. Hormones, needles, in-vitro fertilization, miscarriages, etc. Maybe teenage pregnancy isn’t such a bad idea after all. I wonder if in pre-industrial societies it wasn’t the case that the grandparents did most of the child-rearing that required judgement and experience. The teenage girl did the child-bearing but was still living surrounded by extended family so that her 30-35-year-old mom and mother-in-law could provide adult guidance for the baby. Perhaps we believe that teenage pregnancy is bad only because our family structures have been broken up.
34 thoughts on “Maybe teenage pregnancy is a good thing”
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Because we all know it takes a village.
Actually, you’re onto something here. Teenage pregnancy is risky in modern Western society because it reduces the opportunity for a girl to become a productive participant in the economy. But with child-rearing, you can easily spread out the work if you have a geographically clustered, trustworthy group. This is traditionally the extended family, a structure which is now rare but can perhaps be replaced by a more geographically convenient “adopted” family (as Christopher Alexander suggests in _A Pattern Language_).
Similarly, the abomination that is the factory high school is also mandated by the combination of nuclear families and economic convention. Proper consumer living requires both parents to work, which is only feasible when the kids can be supervised during the workday. It’s no wonder that teenagers, restrained in the artificial world of the suburban high school, often fail to learn that their actions have consequences and act out with violent music or crime. They don’t need to get the best tutors in India; just doing real work in any real town could teach them important practical and social skills far better than the years of health and speech classes.
Oh, you can also blame the disintegration of the extended family for suburban sprawl, the SUV, exploding health care costs, and epidemic overdependence on psychiatrists. Funny that the “family values” types are so worried now, as if there’s much more to lose.
I am not sure that teenage pregnancy is a good idea, but I do think we might be better off having kids in our mid-20’s. Yes, this really does call for a support system like an extended family.
I waited until I was 30 before my first child.
There is another aspect to extending the time between generations – mortality. The older generation will die sooner or later, and losing ten years or more of that overlap … well, it is simply a loss. I lost first my younger brother, then my mother in the last few years. Even my oldest child will have only vague memories of my brother. My youngest will remember little of my mother.
I reget this.
I have had the same thought. A couple years ago, the Wall Street Journal had an article about those dangling icicle Christmas lights. They were invented by a woman who ran a gift shop and she ran the icicle business with her daughter. The article gave ages for the 2 women, and they were only about 15 years apart, implying teenage motherhood. One assumes that she woke up to economics and didn’t immediately make more babies, but the one teenage birth must have allowed a good relationship between the two.
At any age, it takes a leap of faith to have a baby. Very young parents are foolish by middle-aged standards, but they are likely to make a healthy baby and they don’t squander the kid’s college money on fertility treatments.
I should say that I don’t make much money and have neither daughters nor grandchildren, so my opinion is that of a person detached from some of the realities. But the point is inescapable that the baby would just as soon be healthy and have young parents.
Philip,
The Emir of Kuwait clearly holds to this theory about teen pregnanciesto judge from the NY Times article you quoted in your post about Dubya being Iraqi.
I wonder what his IQ is? (Considering he is the top of a feudal system, presumably no assmptions can be made one way or the other). Then again, Bush is also the product of a hereditary nobility 😉 (how else to explain him being POTUS?)
I recall reading an article about the ELSI (Ethical, Legal and Social Implications) of health care research a decade ago or so, and the case of teenage pregnancy was mentioned as an example of a condition where the social implications trumped the health implications. It said that sound research showed that teenagers have the healthiest babies and the least complications, but due to cultural constraints it would be folly for health professionals to support teenage pregnancy.
May be think how to make modern american 18-year olds mature adults instead of crying babies. Then they can have kids.
Teenage mothers? Lots of them here in SoCal, mostly Mexican, 90% on welfare. “Teenage moms” have had a lot to do with the disintegration of the hospital system.
Eliminate welfare, and I’m all for teenage mom’s.
Philip, if you were a female, how do you think you would have liked getting pregnant and dropping out of school to raise your baby? You would be more or less screwed for life.
Stephen: I graduated from college at age 18. So I could have been been a teenage mom, had I the appropriate chromosomes, without dropping out of school. And, as the original posting suggests, if a teenager is living with an extended family there would not be any need for her to drop out of school. Her grandparents might need to take some time off work and/or one of them might have to switch to a night shift. But overall for the family this should be less costly and risky than the girl waiting until she needs to go to the fertility clinic. (I actually got my aviation medical at a fertility clinic and the folks in the waiting room did not look happy.)
You know it gets to a point where your parents are through with raising kids. Its time for the next chapter in their lives. I think its absolutely selfish to think that if you start having babies when your 16 that your parents will just help you look after them.
Are you old, looking for some extra money, and don’t have any local grandchildren of your own? Gary North has a good idea.
The Abolition of Grandparents
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north263.html
Philip, you are mixing up “controlled” teenage pregnancy vs. “un-controlled” — big different. Today, it’s “un-controlled” specially in the west for various reasons, and in my view, the parents must share good part of the blame.
Paul, the actual cost (not price) of health care for those Mexican moms you so despise is much lower than that for a fully insured 45 yro white professional women who needs special fertilization and statistically is more likely to have a complicated delivery and need intensive postnatal care for her baby. But the Mexican mom will be billed tens of thousands of dollars, unless she is smart enough not to work in which case she can maybe qualify for lower MediCal prices negotiated and paid for by the government.
The white woman, meanwhile, has a great chance of having to pay only one or two $20 copays to her HMO or PPO health insurance sponsored by her employer.
Instead of complaining to HR that the company and thus your salary is subsidizing the lifestyle choices of well off mostly white and asian professional women (because who wants that lawsuit), you holler at your assemblyman until the state cuts off aid for the poor Mexican girls.
Brilliant.
In the above comment, Ryan wrote: “Instead of complaining to HR that the company and thus your salary is subsidizing the lifestyle choices of well off mostly white and asian professional women (because who wants that lawsuit), you holler at your assemblyman until the state cuts off aid for the poor Mexican girls.”
After the recent sexual-discrimination settlements at Morgan Stanley and Boeing, complaining to HR about your female co-workers is the last thing a sane professional man would want to do. Run for the hills!
Is it possible for you to post something without an obvious logical flaw? In this case the bait and switch from 30-somethings to teenage mothers was just so obvious. Did you not get laid at all in your twenties?
Actually, teenage mothers are much more likely to have complications during their pregnancy (like preclamsia). My wife works in a observation ward for pregnant women, and most patients are either in their teens or late thirties/early forties. The ideal age for getting pregnant is around 22 – at that age it is easier to get pregnant, you get less trouble during the pregnancy, and you have a much better chance of having a healthy baby.
Phil, since you do not seem to be implying here that the sperm banks should be the go-to place for this teenage pregnancy, then we should not ignore the fathering aspects in this discussion. One of the many possible explanations to delayed motherhood could be that the fathers are not ready for / not interested in this lifestyle until their 40’s (and even then only after they get their helicopter pilot licenses). I’m sure that whatever your personal reasons were for postponing this stage of your life for 22 years since the time you could’ve done it without any hardship or a significant impact to your academic or financial success, the women you saw in that fertility clinic could give you same exact answers why they didn’t do it by the age of 20 or 25.
The fatherhood’s bell curve may look a bit different from the motherhood’s one, but oftentimes the 40+ partners of the women you see in the fertility clinics have to go through some unpleasant procedures as well. Yet, just as many men postpone it until later years as the women. On the bright side, the anecdotal evidence attributes more sexual stamina to the aircraft pilots vs. retired MIT profs, so your options now may be better than ever 🙂 Old-fashioned MA residents who prefer to be known as the father or mother of the child instead of spouse # x / caregiver # y, may want to have their babies before the Mass. supreme court propagates the changes in the forms.
On a personal note, it’s kinda sad to think that you could be now a happy grandfather working nightshifts to help your teenage PhD student daughter take care of her baby. Well, let’s hope that “the best is yet to come” 🙂
In other societies where the family unit is much more close-knit, this is how its done. One example I remember reading about in a ge college class was about a romanian village that had the family structure setup where this took place. the parents went to work and their parents or parents-parents took care of the children. they would see them after work, some cases it would only be on the weekends, and it worked.
Mostly, this question comes down to how you want your children raised and in what kind of family structure. I agree that it would be better to have children younger, for reasons stated above among others, if you or your family are able to raise the children well. But yes, our family structures have broken up and are very different from those of old or other parts of the world.
The humane future of our species depends on having fewer babies period, teen or middle-aged moms aside. All the kids have to look forward to is less as it is.
A better solution would be to have kids while in college! Of course, that might mean doing college at a slower pace, e.g. six years instead of four. By the time you graduate, kids would be ready for kindergarten and wouldn’t interfere with your career. Having grandparents around would help too.
Of course this in conflict with the idea of college as the place where you go to “have fun”.
This subject reminds me of this interesting article from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/20/national/20BOOK.html?ex=1090641600&en=a364bf97533ecf21&ei=5070
I think it was Jared Diamond who suggested that menopause was a way to provide childcare for the productive mothers who could keep busy gathring food while the older women took care of the little ones.
Our society does not promote child birth at a early age any more. The old barefoot and pregnant stereotype gave way to the professional career yuppie image of the late 70s and 80s. I saw “Baby Boom” last night with Diane Keaton and found it now very out dated. This yuppie stereotype of the eighties has been replaced with the cloned working soccer mom. That has kids around thirty after they have built job security. Kids again rank number one over job advancement, husband, and money! They(kids) are a constant.
Generally, early US family women in our pre-industrious agrarian era had lots of kids at a early age to help in the home and work the farm. We no-longer have thousands of family farms in the US. No need, no rush!
Infertility is not he only problem – having kids around thirty or later means an increased risk of the Down syndrome. There is no cure for the Down syndrome, other than abortion. Now, I don’t want to make this a discussion about abortion, so let me just point out that 1) some women won’t have an abortion for religious reasons 2) for those who don’t view it as unethical, it still is an extremely stressful decision.
Last but not least, where would soccer moms be without foreign nannies, usually illegal?
My wife and I have two children, 2 years old and six months. The key thing to remember about having children is that it’s a lot of work! As a friend puts it, when you get married, your life doesn’t really change that much. What really changes your life is having kids. It’s hard for me to even remember what life without kids was like.
Fortunately, compared to software development (where you’re always running into new problems), taking care of infants is repetitive: change diaper, feed, put back to sleep, repeat two hours later, around the clock. So you get used to it quickly. But you become much more aware of the tragic nature of life: your infant could have an accident and die, or could die for no reason at all (crib death). This has happened to parents that we know.
Jared Diamond explains why humans are (mostly) monogamous in “Why is Sex Fun?”: because a newborn human is so helpless, compared with newborns in other species, you need two parents to ensure that the offspring doesn’t die shortly after birth. It’s important to have a stable marriage before having kids. Grandparents can help out, but they’re no substitute.
With all these things in mind, teenage pregnancy is a bad idea. Teenagers are still growing up and going through major personality changes, so they’re not ready to get married and settle down with each other for life. They’re not ready financially or emotionally for the responsibility of taking care of an infant, or for dealing with potential tragedy.
Abby and I are in our mid-thirties, and having kids in our thirties has worked out pretty well for us. In particular, we’re financially stable, and we can afford for Abby to stay home with the kids. We’re mature (well, more mature than we were when we were younger, anyway :-), so we’re better able to deal with day-to-day problems. Fortunately, we didn’t run into any fertility problems.
Philip, I remember you saying in one of your “Narcissism Today” issues that you’d rather kill yourself than get married. I assume that means you didn’t want kids, either. Have you changed your mind? (If it’s a touchy question, feel free to ignore it. 🙂
Russil: Thanks for the insight and congrats for starting this project when you and the wife were early 30s rather than late 30s!
Did I say that I preferred death to marriage? Hmm… it is a difficult decision. Remember though that all of Narcissism Today was intended ironically (mostly as a jibe at my parents for sending out their very first New Year’s form letter).
I don’t feel that I have anything more pressing to do right now than take care of a dog or a kid. So in that sense I’m ready for marriage. On the other hand whenever I am with a married friend and he picks up the phone to call his wife “just to check in” I feel that this might not be my scene 🙂
Perhaps you need an independant woman who doesn’t like to check in with you. There are plenty of women out there that like their own space. They are probably right in front of you.
KSM
“congrats for starting this project when you and the wife were early 30s rather than late 30s!”
Thanks. We were definitely sensitive to the risks of waiting too long (not so much infertility as Down’s or other chromosome abnormalities). I have to say that what really fills me with dread is the thought of the teenage years.
By the way, one further consideration against teenage motherhood being the norm in pre-industrial societies is that the age of puberty has been dropping in Western societies (something to do with nutrition, I think). It would have been physically impossible for a 15-year-old to get pregnant in a pre-industrial society.
It’s fairly recent that women expect both to have a high-powered career and to raise children (and it may be more common in Boston than out here in Vancouver, which tends to be more laid-back in general), but I have this vague idea that it may also have been more common in the past for high-achieving *men* to eschew marriage and children, based on the idea that domesticity and intense focus on achievement weren’t compatible. I don’t recall where I read a reference to this. If I find it, I’ll post it on this thread.
“Hmm… it is a difficult decision.”
Sounds like you may not be ready just yet. 🙂
More seriously, as I said, what really makes a drastic change in your level of responsibility and your personal freedom isn’t getting married, it’s having kids. No matter how independent your wife is, once you have small children, you both need to know where the other person is. And making big changes to your way of life (e.g. relocating to another country, even temporarily; changing careers) becomes much, much more complicated.
I think the question really is, do you feel like settling down? If you feel like you’re on vacation right now, and that eventually you’ll get back into doing something intense, right now might not be the best time to answer that.
Just wanted to offer the view from the ‘other side of the coin’.
I am 40 and my oldest kid is 19, pretty close to teenage parent, eh?
There are some definate benefits:
Healthy babies, able to have kids at will and I am able to interact with my kids in a vigorous manner.
Now let’s get into the downside…
In order to provide for this ‘early’ family I dropped out of college, attended a trade school and worked an endless series of slave-wage jobs. This led to many years of two jobs, night school and endless confrontations with my (ex) spouse about why ‘life just wasn’t any fun’.
My parents were much more interested in pursuing their AARP-endorsed retired lifestyle and were of no help at all with child rearing.
My children were raised by ‘complete amatuers’, as a result my oldest child has had a childhood that resembled a lab experiment.
Expecting a lifelong commitment out of a partner at the age of 18 is pretty difficult. As a result I have been a single parent for the last 8 years.
And to top it off, when I meet an attractive, professional lady that I would like to get involved with, 80% of the time they are hearing the biological clock ticking and are in a hurry to start breeding.
So, as a conclusion, I am glad that I had my kids early, but I *STRONGLY* encourage my kids to finish college and get an established career before even considering it. Hell, I am way to young to be called PAPA.
Fun? It’s not that much fun anymore.
Stuff? Stuff gets stuffy.
Respect? Power? Admiration? You are already taller than all the people who are shorter than you are.
Those magical relationships? You will be half of any pair you participate in.
You may already have noticed how many ‘keeping my options open’ young men turn into breeders in their mid-forties.
I got married, graduated from MIT, and had my 21st birthday in the same week. I’m 43 now (my wife is 42) and our kids are almost-16, 12, 8, and 2. Fertility goes down precipitously after age 35, it is a terrible idea to wait until then to have a kid if you are already married. (30 is as late as I’d recommend for a first child, so there is time to have 2 or 3 before it becomes much harder). After Kid3 was born when we were 35, we suffered through several miscarriages and other difficulties before our next baby was born (due on my wife’s 40th birthday, but arrived a week late).
People shouldn’t criticize Philip, or anyone else they don’t know intimately, for not being married yet — the relationships he has had were with unique individual women, and can only be criticized on such a basis. I will advise Philip, though, that if he is currently unattached he should start taking very active steps to meet younger women.
Teen pregnancy is not a horrible thing, but some teenagers are not ready to take on that responsiblity. Speaking from a teenagers’ perspective, I know I am not emotionally or mentally stable enough to take on such a great responsiblity. I think having children in your 20s would be a lot better.
I am a teenage mom, raising my son with only the help of my family, and when i found out i was pregnant i was devastated i didn’t think that i was ready. I didn’t want a baby, I just wanted to live my life and have fun. But the minute I had my son who is 3 now I can’t imagine my life without him he taught me to be responsible and to care for someone other than myself. Before i got pregnant i was into drugs and alcohol and i believe it with all of my hear that if i didn’t get pregnant I would have still been doing the same thing maybe even worse, My son has saved my life. And i strongly believe that if a teenager is ready to have unprotected sex they are ready to take responsibility for their actions. Moreover, A Girl no matter what age will not know if she is ready to have a child until the motherly instincts kick in.