A Healer’s Geste

“Let’s Have More Teen Pregnancy!”

This is a great article. Teen pregnancy is not our problem, unwed pregnancy is — wedded teen pregnancy may be best kind. :) The whole article is excellent, but here is the abridged version if you don’t have the time or inclination to click the link. :)

True Love Waits. Wait Training. Worth Waiting For. The slogans of teen abstinence programs reveal a basic fact of human nature: teens, sex, and waiting aren’t a natural combination. Over the last fifty years the wait has gotten longer.
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But teen pregnancy, in itself, is not such a bad thing. [...] Both may have better success at the enterprise than they would in later years, as some health risks—Cesarean section and Down syndrome, for example— increase with passing years. [...] A woman’s fertility has already begun to decline at 25 — one reason the population-control crowd promotes delayed childbearing.
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Younger moms and dads are likely be more nimble at child-rearing as well, less apt to be exhausted by toddlers’ perpetual motion, less creaky-in-the-joints when it’s time to swing from the monkey bars. I suspect that younger parents will also be more patient with boys-will-be-boys rambunction, and less likely than weary 40-somethings to beg pediatricians for drugs to control supposed pathology. Humans are designed to reproduce in their teens, and they’re potentially very good at it. That’s why they want to so much.
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But we no longer think of children as adults-in-progress. Childhood is no longer a training ground but a playground, and because we love our children and feel nostalgia for our own childhoods, we want them to be able to linger there as long as possible. We cultivate the idea of idyllic, carefree childhood, and as the years for education have stretched so have the bounds of that playground, so that we expect even “kids” in their mid-to-late twenties to avoid settling down. Again, it’s not that people that age *couldn’t* be responsible; their ancestors were. It’s that anyone, offered a chance to kick back and play, will generally seize the opportunity.
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The trend toward older, and presumptively more mature, couples didn’t result in stronger marriages. Marital durability has more to do with the expectations and support of surrounding society than with the partners’ age.
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A pattern of late marriage may actually *increase* the rate of divorce. During that initial decade of physical adulthood, young people may not be getting married, but they’re still falling in love. They fall in love, and break up, and undergo terrible pain, but find that with time they get over it. They may do this many times. Gradually, they get used to it.
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Young people are not intrinsically incompetent, but they do still have lots of learning to do, just like newly-weds of any age. In generations past a young couple would be surrounded by family and friends who could guide and support them [...] Closely-looped, mutually supporting generations must have been a common sight, in older days when young marriage was affirmed, and young people were allowed to do what comes naturally.

Of course, do understand that this is about the cultural trends and generalities, and not target at any older couples or older parents (of whom I have several as good friends who have great marriages and are raising godly children). The target is the cultural norm that encourages singleness, that judges late marriage as best, that thinks a 19-year-old uncapable of making a wise choice (And, Matt made his choice several years before that!:). Marrying late is the cultural norm. Irresponsibility is all that’s expected from 20-somethings. Generally, people live up to expectations. We will expect more from our boys; we will train them for more.

Personally, as long as it is a legitimate child, I would consider becoming a grandmother at 40 (I was just-turned 21 when Hans was born) an honored blessing. I don’t expect it, but I do plan to raise boys who’ll have initiative and take responsibility and a wife early on. There are plenty of girls ready young; I have the advantage in having boys. Prepared young men are not as common as prepared young women. Yet, it is not good for a man to be alone. So, I do think I’d better be a grandma by at least 45! :) I have to beat my mom by at least a year! :)