# Am I behind for my age? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 28, 2025, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-behind-for-my-age/1024365 "2025-10-28T15:57:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2025, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-behind-for-my-age/1024365/41 "2025-10-29T11:42:16Z")
(Can’t believe I’m giving dating advice to a 14 year old…) I was in the same boat as you at your age. As I look back on my high school years I realize that the main reason was that I lacked confidence. If you want to date, start asking girls to date. To go out for a coffee/soda. For a bike ride. To a show. I realize you go to an all boys school, but search out where coed hangouts occur. Parks, teen clubs, wherever. Start talking to coed groups and after you get to know a girl, ask her out. Just be prepared to get “No” for an answer. Eventually, someone will say, “Yes,” and you’ll be able to build on your experience - positive and negative. The kissing and sex will come later. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2025, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-behind-for-my-age/1024365/42 "2025-10-29T12:03:42Z")
I was the same at 14. Now happily married for 27 years. It’s best not to chase some things. Love will come to you. You won’t recognize it until you see it. It looks different for every single person on this earth. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2025, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-behind-for-my-age/1024365/43 "2025-10-30T00:04:51Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > > > Romeo and Juliet were legally married. > > I didn’t name the laws 🙂 What’s more, Romeo and Juliet wouldn’t be legally allowed to be married, without parental authorization, in any US state. (Or in Spain, for that matter.) As I’m sure @Wendell_Wagner is aware, a “Romeo and Juliet law” is intended to protect sexually active minor teenage couples from legal penalties for statutory rape if one of them is under the age of consent. Not to confer on them a right to get married without parental or judicial authorization as the original Romeo and Juliet did. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2025, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-behind-for-my-age/1024365/44 "2025-10-30T01:52:04Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Not to confer on them a right to get married without parental or judicial authorization as the original Romeo and Juliet did. Ah, sorry, @Wendell_Wagner may have been aware, but I was not. It’d been decades since I read any Shakespeare, and it was only the Cliffnotes version, at that. Say, @SaSaLeLe2011, do they even still teach Romeo and Juliet in school (in any country)? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2025, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-behind-for-my-age/1024365/45 "2025-10-30T07:23:19Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > do they even still teach Romeo and Juliet in school They teach it in 93% of American high schools in the freshman year: > **[Shakespeare in Liberal Arts Education | Whittier College](https://whittier.edu/news/mon-11042013-1043-am/shakespeare-liberal-arts-education)** > > by Jonathan Burton   ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2025, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-behind-for-my-age/1024365/46 "2025-10-30T15:46:11Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > They teach it in 93% of American high schools in the freshman year: And [it seems to be working](https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45184)! 🤣 > [@](#): > > Since the 1960s, the U.S. teen birth rate has generally been in decline, with the rate reaching a record low in 2023 (the year for which the most recent data are available). ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2025, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-behind-for-my-age/1024365/47 "2025-10-30T16:21:53Z")
It was already common to teach _Romeo and Juliet_ in the freshman year of high school in the U.S. when the parents of Baby Boomers were in high school, so reading _Romeo and Juliet_ was common among the people who caused the birth rate to increase for the only time in the twentieth century. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2025, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-behind-for-my-age/1024365/48 "2025-10-30T16:30:26Z")
Duly noted, thanks, silly joke withdrawn. (To be fair, and a bit more serious, a lot of the spike in the teen birth rate in the 1950s was caused by pregnancies among teenagers who **were** legally married with parental consent. [In 1960 the median age at first marriage for women was about 20](https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/hemez-distribution-age-first-marriage-fp-20-09.html), meaning that nearly half of all first-time brides were literally teenagers. So that’s not really the same thing as the much-lamented “teen pregnancy epidemic” among **unmarried** teens of subsequent decades, which is what I was jokingly suggesting that the dire warning of _R&J_ was intended to combat.) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2025, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-behind-for-my-age/1024365/49 "2025-10-30T17:19:48Z")
Birth control pills were approved (to be sold in the U.S.) by the FDA in 1960. In 1962, 1.2 million American women were using.them. By the early 1970s, it was pretty standard for college women (married or unmarried) to know that you had to be using birth control pills if there was a significant chance you would be having sex in the next month. Even if you didn’t think that you had a significant chance of having sex in the next month, even the chance of being raped gave you a reason to use them. The percentage (of American woman) who had unmarried teenage births peaked in 1957. The percentage is now less than one-third of the percentage in 1957. ---
**Author:** ![Jaycat.again](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat.again/32/11525_2.png) [@Jaycat.again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaycat.again)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2025, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-behind-for-my-age/1024365/50 "2025-10-30T22:10:03Z")
When I was 12 I lived in Tunis. My dad was with the foreign service. If you think learning Spanish to talk to the native gals is tough, try Arabic! ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2025, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-behind-for-my-age/1024365/51 "2025-10-31T00:31:16Z")
Did you go to a school where the teacher and the other students spoke English? Did you have courses at that school for English speakers to learn to speak Arabic? If so, how well did you learn to speak Arabic? ---
**Author:** ![BippityBoppityBoo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bippityboppityboo/32/5745_2.png) [@BippityBoppityBoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BippityBoppityBoo)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2025, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-behind-for-my-age/1024365/52 "2025-10-31T00:38:47Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Even if you didn’t think that you had a significant chance of having sex in the next month, even the chance of being raped gave you a reason to use them. I challenge your assertion here. I was a young woman in high school and college during those years. No one was taking birth control pills to prevent pregnancy _in case they were raped._ BC pills were hard to get unless you were married and your husband approved, they were expensive, no one was pursuing them and taking and enduring the side effects just in case of rape. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2025, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-behind-for-my-age/1024365/53 "2025-10-31T01:07:48Z")
What can I say? At the college I attended from 1971 to 1974, it was assumed (correctly or incorrectly) that any couple who were “romantically” involved were having sex. I never heard anyone discuss abortion. There were certainly people there who weren’t having sex, but none of them were boasting about the fact that they would never have sex outside of marriage. Having sex wasn’t a big thing to discuss really. ---
**Author:** ![Jaycat.again](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat.again/32/11525_2.png) [@Jaycat.again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaycat.again)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2025, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-behind-for-my-age/1024365/54 "2025-10-31T11:32:51Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Did you go to a school where the teacher and the other students spoke English? Did you have courses at that school for English speakers to learn to speak Arabic? If so, how well did you learn to speak Arabic? Yes, no, and N/A. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-behind-for-my-age/1024365.md?page=2)