Yesterday, I was in front of the TV while my husband was watching a war film. He slept, I didn’t, and I found myself watching a documentary about a school for teenage mums. Barely teenage, I should say, because the girls were 13 (meaning that some of them were not even in their teens when became pregnant)
Well, nothing new. But I felt that the documentary corroborates something that I have always said – that these girls don’t get pregnant by accident or lack of information. They simply do it because they have no reason not to.
Their mothers got pregnant in the teens too. Their friends have kids already. It’s a whole ecosystem that leads them to that direction.
It is hard wired in a lot of girls’ brains to want to have kids. Blame hormones, instincts, whatever, but when I was 18 I badly wanted to have a baby.
BUT I had good reasons not to: I wanted to finish university, I wanted to find a guy who could raise my kid with me, I wanted to work, to travel. And I didn’t want that kind of responsibility at that time.
So I postponed the plan of becoming a mother.
But IF I had no plans of going to college, no role models of people in long relationships raising kids together, if my friends had already had babies, and if I was working in a McJob knowing that McJobs would be my life, WHY the hell would I postpone this urge to be a mother? I wouldn’t.
And does it all have to do with science? It has a lot to do with education.
How can someone convince these girls to wait a bit more and study? Is it possible to have an influence that is stronger than the environment they live in?
Shouldn’t policy makers offer them something in exchange for the motherhood experience? What could that be?
If people offer other possibilities, a professional career, a more comfortable life and such, couldn’t it be understood as a negative judgement of their mothers, extended family and friends?
Does it all make any sense for you? In the end, this blog post ended up being more of a rambling. But I wanted to know how people feel about that, and if maybe my ideas are just nonsense.
There is a scientific backdrop to all this. It’s well known from evolutionary studies (sorry – no time to look for references – I am typing this comment while being savaged by a Dangerous Wild Animal)
A Dangerous Wild Animal, yesterday
that creatures in threatened, dangerous or resource-limited environments will reproduce sooner than those in environments that are safer and in which resources are more abundant. The payoff is in a higher incidence in health problems later in life and reduced life-expectancy.
This seems applicable to human societies, too: we know that poverty is associated with early pregnancy, increased need for health provision, and reduced life expectancy.
The tragedy seems to be that education can alleviate such problems immediately, especially if it is directed at women. Women who are more educated will be wealthier, have children later, and live longer, healthier lives.
I’m sure Henry is right because he knows about such matters, from the evolutionary perspective.
My take is more pragmatic. It’s the family influences that are so critical (I think you are saying this in your post). Why do my children read, when they have no restrictions on their TV, internet access, etc? Probably because they live with parents who read in their spare time.
I think it is all too easy to blame organisations such as schools or “society”, often done by those who do not have children under the age of 18, but I think that a far stronger influence, from day 1, is that of the behaviour of the people in your immediate family. “Schools” are not a glorified babysitting service as I have seen so many people assume.
I have a stepdaughter aged 24 who does not seem to have any inclination to want a baby: she is enjoying life, working, travelling, entertainment, etc. My elder daughter is 17 and has shown no interest in the parenthood department at all, though of course everyone tells me that teenagers moods can change with the wind. However, what interests her at the moment are her school topics (very engaging to her), her friends (mainly female), music, Internet, TV, etc.
From seeing these girls and their friends, I deduce that there are a lot of young women around who are quite happy to postpone or even reject parenthood while they have an unencumbered life. I offer no value judgement on this, it is just an observation.
Your ideas are not nonsense, Barbara. Mentoring and education from an early age – including unhindered information and access to contraception – empowers young people with a sense of self-worth, and more able to resist what is a very powerful force, namely peer group pressure. We’re often very much products of our environment.
Er—what when the peer-group pressure is to have babies at 16? Plenty of people I know and see where I live fall into this category—and know/knew all about contraception, et al.
I do agree with Lee though in that the environment of the immediate family is fundamental.