Lay Off The Teenage Mums
By Dean Craddock
Next time you see a news article about a pregnant school girl and complain about a ‘morally corrupt youth’; or you see a pensioner holding her new born baby and complain about the ‘unnaturalness’ of it all, maybe you should take a step back. Just consider for a moment that they’ve got science and nature on their side and that it's your attitude that is a little bit irrational.
Teenage mums
Teenage mums are simply obeying nature’s law and the negative attitudes society expresses are outdated and need to be brought in line with a more rational and scientific point of view. Nature has intended for women to have their babies early and for their fertility to decline as they raised their children.
Programmed by nearly two million years of evolution, peak fertility for female humans is around their teens and early twenties, and it is only very recently in evolutionary terms (150 years or so) that woman are living for many years past the menopause.
If you criticise and condemn pregnant teenage girls then you are not seeing their behaviour in the wider biological context and you fail to understand such actions in terms of the evolutionary process.
This is a view shared by Dr Shaw, the deputy medical director of the Bridge Centre fertility clinic in London who, when addressing the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (Eshre) in Prague, said:
"Before we condemn our teenagers for having sex and becoming pregnant, we should remember that this is a natural response by these girls to their rising fertility levels".
Geriatric mums
You may think that if you accept girls should get pregnant in their teenage years that you’d be safe in criticising women who become mothers in their 60’s through fertility treatment – but you’d be wrong again.
It was fairly recently that life expectancy for a woman was between forty and fifty years of age, giving a twenty-year-old mother 20 or 30 years to care for their offspring.
Nowadays, sixty-year-old woman in many industrialised countries have a life expectancy of 80 or 90, giving them the same 20 or 30 years to care for their offspring.
Dr Shaw had someting to add about this as well: "Before we criticise 62-year-old women who want to have babies, we should remember there is no difference in terms of the length of their survival after the birth of a baby than there would have been for most of human existence."
Previously, declining fertility and the menopause were positively useful in evolutionary terms as they meant that women of a certain age were unlikely to have more children of their own, and so they would be free to help their daughters rear their babies.
While nature has programmed women a certain way, attitudes within society, modern industrial pressures on women and medical advances have meant that women have many more options open to them and more flexibility when choosing to become a mother.
Before we make judgments as a society, it is important to recognise the multitude of factors that have shaped, and continue to shape women's choices regarding parenthood in the 21st century.
Your Say:
"Excellent article! No one objects to the teenage mums who have planned their pregnancies in a secure relationship. It's the single parents and the ones under 16 that we worry about. Additionally are today's teenagers as emotionally mature as those in the 'olden days' ?
Liz Roberts
Teenage mums
Teenage mums are simply obeying nature’s law and the negative attitudes society expresses are outdated and need to be brought in line with a more rational and scientific point of view. Nature has intended for women to have their babies early and for their fertility to decline as they raised their children.
Programmed by nearly two million years of evolution, peak fertility for female humans is around their teens and early twenties, and it is only very recently in evolutionary terms (150 years or so) that woman are living for many years past the menopause.
If you criticise and condemn pregnant teenage girls then you are not seeing their behaviour in the wider biological context and you fail to understand such actions in terms of the evolutionary process.
This is a view shared by Dr Shaw, the deputy medical director of the Bridge Centre fertility clinic in London who, when addressing the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (Eshre) in Prague, said:
"Before we condemn our teenagers for having sex and becoming pregnant, we should remember that this is a natural response by these girls to their rising fertility levels".
Geriatric mums
You may think that if you accept girls should get pregnant in their teenage years that you’d be safe in criticising women who become mothers in their 60’s through fertility treatment – but you’d be wrong again.
It was fairly recently that life expectancy for a woman was between forty and fifty years of age, giving a twenty-year-old mother 20 or 30 years to care for their offspring.
Nowadays, sixty-year-old woman in many industrialised countries have a life expectancy of 80 or 90, giving them the same 20 or 30 years to care for their offspring.
Dr Shaw had someting to add about this as well: "Before we criticise 62-year-old women who want to have babies, we should remember there is no difference in terms of the length of their survival after the birth of a baby than there would have been for most of human existence."
Previously, declining fertility and the menopause were positively useful in evolutionary terms as they meant that women of a certain age were unlikely to have more children of their own, and so they would be free to help their daughters rear their babies.
While nature has programmed women a certain way, attitudes within society, modern industrial pressures on women and medical advances have meant that women have many more options open to them and more flexibility when choosing to become a mother.
Before we make judgments as a society, it is important to recognise the multitude of factors that have shaped, and continue to shape women's choices regarding parenthood in the 21st century.
Image: Rick Hawkins
What do you reckon? Let us know using the form below.Your Say:
"Excellent article! No one objects to the teenage mums who have planned their pregnancies in a secure relationship. It's the single parents and the ones under 16 that we worry about. Additionally are today's teenagers as emotionally mature as those in the 'olden days' ?
Liz Roberts
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