The current debate about these actually refers to three different types of situations:
- The man and woman are both teens
- The man is a teen and the woman isn't
- The woman is a teen and the man isn't
So when social scientists point to statistics that show that teen pregnancy leads to bad outcomes, it's a generalization, but whereas most generalizations are empirically true, this particular generalization obscures some very important details.
The first (and currently the most prevalent type) was very prevalent throughout human history, if you consider that "middle-age" in the middle ages probably meant 20 or 25. One reason is the lower life expectancy (however...). However it's important that when we talk about the first type, we distinguish between then and now. Males were ready for fatherhood much earlier in the past. Still, even in their teens, the man was almost always older than the women. Nowadays male "adolescence" often extends into the 20's and 30s.
The second type of pairing was never anything more than a rare anomaly at any time in human history. The reasons can be found in evolutionary psychology. Women's fertility has always depended on age (fertility decreases with age). On the other hand, men's fertility has also mostly depended on age but in the opposite direction (male fertility, as in status, increases with age). This meant that women were drawn to older men, and men were drawn to younger women.
The third type of pairing was the rule rather than the exception throughout all of human history. What actually happened over the last 100 years, is that the third type of pairing became less prevalent. One of the reasons probably has to do with the recent taboo of older men marrying younger women which is compounded by delayed male maturity. So now this is an almost nonexistent demographic. Which is unfortunate because this is actually better than the other two. The high divorce rates of today probably can be traced to women marrying relatively younger men as one of its causes.
If we look at actual numbers, we can see why the claim that "teen pregnancies" is bad is misleading. Suppose that:
- there are 100 of the first type, and the child outcomes of these pairings on a scale of 1 to 10 is 4.
- there are 10 of the second type, and the child outcomes of these pairings on the same scale is 6
- there are 10 of the third type, and the child outcomes of these pairings on the same scale is 8.
- there are 1000 of the "normal" type (neither man nor woman are teenagers), and the child outcomes of these pairings is 8.
It's obvious from the above that the stability of the family has always depended on the quality of fatherhood. So "teen pregnancy" isn't the problem. "Teen marriage" is also not the problem. "Teens marrying teens" is the problem. More precisely, "teen fatherhood" is the problem, or even more accurately, "adolescent fatherhood" is the problem. A man in his 20s without a job who plays video games all day and lives with his parents doesn't magically have fatherhood potential just because he isn't a teenager any more. A child of an adolescent male, no matter the age of the mother, is almost always at risk.
Consider that that before a couple of hundred years ago, a person's age wasn't even an issue. Most people didn't even know how old they were. Most people couldn't even count past 10. They got married when they were ready. The only reason a woman waited at all for marriage was to wait for a man with high status. She didn't wait just because she was a teenager. Men too married when they were ready (able to support a family). They didn't wait until they were 18 or any other age.
Very well written, the only thing I would say is that teens marrying teens isn't necessarily bad either. It's more our culture where teens are more interested in getting into an R rated movie or playing the latest video game rather than preparing to become a spouse/parent.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, but generally speaking, a girl's family would be loath to let her marry a young man in his teens because even if he did come from a very good family, the bottom line is that he is unlikely to have a job, a career, a house, car, etc. In other words, no way to support a family. An equivalent man in his twenties has much better prospects. If I had daughters I would advise them against marrying any man who couldn't properly provide for a family, and generally speaking most teen and early twenties men fall into this demographic. This is not always true, because some men may choose to forego higher education and become tradesmen. This is a totally respectable way to earn a living, and if they have a modest house and living, and provided he ticks all the other checkboxes like "good values" etc, that's enough for me to consider him as a worthy son-in-law.
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