I should start this post by saying I’m not advocating for teen motherhood.
But I will say that this article about how timing in our culture for mothers is all wrong struck a chord with me. And I’ve recently been having lots of thoughts about how this extended childhood we sanction in our society is ridiculous. People turn 40 and still live as if they were 14, albeit playing video games in their own basement instead of their parents.
Teens can be very capable. We coddle them in our culture. They could be out and about contributing much earlier than we let them. Or than I did, to be very blunt, by pursuing many multiple very important degrees.
Now I can see how one would not win big on the lecture circuit with this point, highlighted by the Globe’s Leah Maclaren of all people, but based on the ideas of one Hilary Mantel who I know not. But not wanting to be outdone on the unpopularity file, I will say this. If teens are going to be moms and dads, they should get married first.
(This moment of political incorrectness was brought to you courtesy of the one who thinks Sarah Palin actually is an advocate for women. Know your source, they say, know your source.)
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I work at a school, and assure you that they are extremally well coddled. The staff are afraid of them, because we know that a single accidential touch could very easily turn into an accusation of abuse. There’s an assumption in child protection today that every adult is a potential pedophile or abuser, and must be treated with suspicion accordingly.
Historically, teen motherhood was perfectly normal. Commonplace. But that was a time when life was shorter – and, for women, a lot less complicated. Find a husband, and he’ll take care of everything. That was the social order. In today’s more complicated world a higher level of education is needed just to handle day-to-day living and finance. History doesn’t apply as a guide after circumstances change, so it would seem that early motherhood isn’t such a good idea any more.
Women get the bad side of the reproductive partnership, unfortunatly. All the risk and inconvenience of pregnancy is theirs while men hardly have to do a thing. That’s just how the biology works, it can’t be helped. Nature is unfair. It’s true that there is no good time to have children, but that is the cost of having gender equality. Would you rather go back to the time when the only occupations open to women were wife and prostitute?
This is one of my hobby horses. Maybe not teen motherhood but we live in a culture where – for middle class women certainly – even having children in your twenties is regarded as too young. I remember a friend of mine telling me she wasn’t mature enough at 26 to have children. This woman is a doctor! If you’re mature enough for the responsibility of diagnosing cancer you are capable of looking after a child. It’s not that difficult!
One of the abiding memes about having children later is that whilst you are physically more tired (oh yes) you are more mature. But maturity is not primarily about acumulating years on the clock, it’s driven by the experiences you are put through. If I’d had a baby when I was 23 I would have had some fast growing up to do. That would not have been a bad thing.
As a result we have an epidemic of infertillity which is primarily driven by leaving it too late. Yes, when I was in my twenties, I didn’t want to give up my freedom. But had I been told the alternative was to spend my thirties trying, with extreme difficulty, to get pregnant, I wouldn’t have been keen on that either.
In response to the previous comment, no, I don’t want a situation where women could only be a wife or a prostitute (not that I’m sure that situation ever existed) but we don’t have gender equality for women if in order to compete on an equal basis with men at work, we have to play russian roulette with our chances of having children.