Is early pregnancy physically beneficial to women?

Women become fertile long before physical and mental maturity. Is it to a woman’s physical benefit to become pregnant sooner rather than later?

For instance, is a young mother better able to recover from pregnancy? Does early childbearing beneficially adapt her mature adult form?

Other implications of early pregnancy - such as the social, genetic, and financial implications - are beyond the scope of this thread. Let’s keep this GQ-based as to the physical aspects only.

A young mother is obviously better able to recover from pregnancy, physically. Teenagers pop out babies like crazy and get back into shape before next Tuesday.

No. Pregnancy at young age is more dangerous for both the mother and the child. Many of the risks are shared by later pregnancy, but elevated in younger individuals, alongside additional complications of cephalopelvic disproportion, where pelvic growth is incomplete. See here for concise review.

The whole article just has a tone of some old militant feminist telling women they shouldn’t have kids. I dunno, that’s the feeling I got. Anyway, it goes on to admit, “These risks are higher for young women not only because of their age but also because births to younger women often are first births, which are riskier than second, third, or fourth births. Socioeconomic factors, including poverty, malnutrition, lack of education, and lack of access to prenatal care or emergency obstetrical care can further increase a young woman’s risk of pregnancy-related complications,” so it’s made no attempt to answer the OP’s question of physiological factors only.

Looking at the references, I see many studies of poorer countries. Perhaps I should recast my OP: given good nutrition and medical care, is early pregnancy physically beneficial to women?

For example:

What about a hospital in the West?

I can’t find anything within this century regarding adolescent childbirth in first-world countries on the WHO site. It does seem that most of the issues are in regards to low and middle-income countries. There are some that may be more relative to age, such as “Up to 65% of women with obstetric fistula develop this as adolescents, with dire consequences for their lives, physically and socially”. From here. The same link states that the U.S. is one of the 7 countries in which 50% of all pre-20 births occur. That’s sort of scary in and of itself. “Half of all adolescent births occur in just seven countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and the United States.” The U.S. is on par with Ethiopia and Nigeria for this? shudder

I would think that many of the issues related to younger mothers either have to do with physical size and development, such as the small pelvis of a 14-year-old girl; and the socio-economic impact, such as said 14-year-old leaving school, being kicked out of the house, having financial difficulties and the resultant lack of prenatal care, etc. There seems to be a dirth of information on these issues in first-world countries, specifically here in the U.S. This is possibly because of the social stigmas already mentioned. Trying to separate the physical difficulties from the social difficulties may be impossible, based on things like access to care, which can have significant impact on mother and baby safety in older women. Honestly, if prenatal care makes that much difference in older ladies, then I can’t imagine that it would have no significant difference in younger ones.

With menarche arriving as early as 10 in some girls now, I don’t think anyone will argue that a 10 year old body is an appropriate pregnant figure. This is completely outside social stigma, and based solely on the “childish” bone structure of the average 10 year old. The difference in regards to a nearly-adult teen? I’d think it was fairly negligible, but then again, I have no evidence other than my opinion and average observational skills. The pelvis of a 17 year old girl is far larger and more appropriately shaped for childbirth and child-carrying.

Captain Awesome’s link made me realize that the people who are interested in exploring this question have an agenda to justify their demonization of early pregnancy and their support for contraception, etc. So that might explain the dearth of actual information (which would most likely show, as you suspect, that reasonably early birth, all else being equal, is healthful).

“Reasonably early birth”, in this case, would have to be related to properly formed and sized physical attributes, and have little to do with age, for me to support it. Baldly stating “young women aged 15 and up, if they have access to medical care and no social stigmas attached, are just as healthy giving birth as older mothers,” would not gain my support. “Any female with a fully and properly formed pelvis, regardless of age, has a generally better prognosis the younger they are, because of factors x and y,” I could get behind.

IANAD. I think it depends on how you define “early.” As someone said earlier, a very young teen or pre-teen is most likely not really done developing herself, and is more likely to have physical problems.

However, all else being equal (which it usually is not), a young woman in her late teens if is probably physically just fine when it comes to being a mother. Emotional maturity and financial security are another thing altogether.

With respect, the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health report linked to had nothing to merit your description of it being unsubstantiated feminist propaganda, and I’d imagine Ann P. Mc Cauley, Ph.D., and Cynthia Salter, M.P.H. (Master of Public Health), would take offence at the accusation, not least because they likely know a great deal more about the subject than you do, and have evidence to back their position.

Increased risk in pregnancy at a young age occurs regardless of the degree of available medical help. These risks may be mitigated, but not eliminated. Even given good nutrition and medical care it is not beneficial to carry an early pregnancy. There are numerous available peer reviewed studies to support this fact, even in the context of the developed world, e.g. the USA,

(Friede *et al.*1987)

Do you have any evidence for this assertion, given the overwhelming weight of medical evidence to the contrary?

Thanks for the information. I am going to print this out and show it to my colleagues, who are convinced that any pregnancy after your mid-twenties is unspeakably dangerous. You should here them snicker “Oh, she is pregnant at 28! It is so bad- so dangerous!”

Unfortunately I can’t find a cite, but I recall reading some years ago that at least some scientists think there may be long term benefits on a biochemical/hormonal level to pregnancy while young, but that any such benefits are overshadowed by the less subtle stresses involved with pregnancy & birth. And if research proved this it might be a good idea to duplicate the effects of pregnancy with hormone treatments on young girls; this was clearly speculative, though. I have no idea what if any research has gone on in this direction since, however.

I have no suspicions one way or the other.

The definition of early is pretty loose. There is no doubt that there has been a sort of low level concensus in medical circles - perhaps more annecdotal than supported - that suggests that women who have at least one child in their early 20’s benefit. That is of course a great deal different to the idea that a young girl that isn’t physically mature would benefit. My mother had me when she was in her mid-30’s I’m the eldest.

Just one aside. The Johns Hopkins quote is curiously odd. To wit: but also because births to younger women often are first births, which are riskier. Which is verging on the nonsensical. If the birth to a young woman is her second of later child, she must already have had a first birth - which is more dangerous. It isn’t as if she can elect to have her safer second childbirth now, and have the less safe first birth later. I’m not doubting the conclusions they make, but the logic of the prose is quite odd. It would have benefitted from some serious proof reading and editing, something that would probably help to remove some of the strident tone as well. (Not that my prose is anything wonderful.)

In a nutshell: pregnancies between 12-19 are better than preg’s 31 or higher, but preg’s between 20-30 are the best.

The issue of first births is interesting. Can we adjust the statistics to remove the first-birth bias?

Well, then they would have utterly fainted to hear about me, pregnant at 39 and giving birth at 40. Not that there aren’t risks with “maternal age,” but really – it’s not like I climbed Everest or got a job commercial fishing in Alaska! A reasonably fit and healthy “older” (ahem) woman isn’t going to keel over just from being pregnant.

(oh, and my kid turned out fine too!)

It was years ago, but I read some studies that showed that teenagers who became pregnant had a lower incidence of breast cancer when they were older.

It’s quite possible that early pregnancies can have both positive and negative risk factors.

Well, my wife is pregnant at 40, and her OB said that she will almsot certainly have to have a C-section, because at her age her contractions may not be strong enough to push the baby out. So that indicates that late pregnancy is not so good.