After being offline for the night, I see that Diogenes’ post about the typo, and noting that teenage parents do not deserve insults. I would then like to apologize for any harsh tone in my previous response.
In that light, I think I understand the rest of his post, in that he feels that people who are still teens (even at 18-19) are too young to marry much less have children. However, I don’t think any of us have any business telling any teens that directly unless they ask for advice on the topic, or unless they are a very close friend or relative with whom you feel comfortable. Sure, some people on the street are being busybodies or jamming their opinion in where it hasn’t been requested. I’m hoping the rest are just exclaiming that without thinking about how it might be interpreted by young parents who have had to deal with too many nosy people.
I think everyone has strayed from the OP. SanibleMan is saying that it is his personal business, and not this random lady walking by. I agree. She needs to keep her mouth shut. No one needs people walking up to them and offering thier judgements on anything in thier life, including whether or not they were old enough to have kids.
My wife and I are 27 (Is that old enough). We both look much younger than that. People have made similar comments to us when they see us with our children. Not only are they wrong in thier assumption, but they are also completely out of line.
Who cares about the percentages of teenage parents who don’t do a good job. SanibelMan is in his 20’s and deserves to be treated with respect, just like the rest of us. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that doesn’t mean he and his wife should be subjected to those opinions when they are walking around trying to spend time together. People should consider someone’s feelings first, and thier opinions later.
I think everyone has strayed from the OP. SanibleMan is saying that it is his personal business, and not this random lady walking by. I agree. She needs to keep her mouth shut. No one needs people walking up to them and offering thier judgements on anything in thier life, including whether or not they were old enough to have kids.
My wife and I are 27 (Is that old enough). We both look much younger than that. People have made similar comments to us when they see us with our children. Not only are they wrong in thier assumption, but they are also completely out of line.
Who cares about the percentage of teenage parents who don’t do a good job. SanibelMan is in his 20’s and deserves to be treated with respect, just like the rest of us. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that doesn’t mean he and his wife should be subjected to those opinions when they are walking around trying to spend time together. People should consider someone’s feelings first, and thier opinions later.
I think people on this board, ever alert for an opportunity to fight ignorance, are especially watchful of generalizations, given their knowlegde of the fallacy of Hasty Generalization and that of the Unrepresentative Sample. A variant of the latter, I might add, is the problem here.
As a general proposition, what you say is true. But it’s not at all evident that your proposition has any value when applied to the OP.
You would never consider generalizing based on race or sexual preference, even though statistics support some general observations that are unflattering in each of those areas. We avoid those generalizations because we realize that they harm individuals who deserve to be considered as individuals.
So, too, with the age of parents. Many people are not equipped to be good parents at age 19. Some are.
The problem with making sweeping generalizations is that they refuse to take into account individual levels of maturity. I cannot see myself now (or possibly ever) as the mother of a child and I am well out of my teens. Other people I know are very mature at 18 or 19.
Well, i think that 20 is too young to be having children. But, personally, i also think that 30, 40, 50, and 60 are also too young to be having children.
But i would never say anything to someone in public about the issue. As long as people keep their kids out of my face in restaurants, and out of earshot in movie theatres, i’m a live-and-let-live kinda guy.
When I was pregnant I joined an email list of women due about the same time. One of them was young and just out of high school. She had her boyfriend had not planned on the pregnancy. However, they immediately started making adult decisions about it.
She constantly surprised me with her maturity. I am ashamed about my low expectations. She sounded like a great mom. She breastfed (that’s a pretty rare thing in teenage mothers) and made really informed decisions about introducing solids, treating illness, and so on.
All too often, however, she had reports of strangers saying shitty things to her when they saw her pregnant or pushing her son around in a stroller. I just felt terrible for her.
Maybe having babies that young isn’t ideal for most people. However, I think you have to respect and support young parents who are trying their best. Furthermore, you can’t really judge how someone parents just by their age. I was 31 when my son was born, and I suspect 4 days out of 5 my young friend would get a better parenting evaluation than I would.
San, you might as well get used to people inviting themselves and their obnoxious opinions into your life 'coz it’s always going to be something. If you have kids, you’re too young. If you wait to have kids, you’d better snap it up because you’re not getting any younger. If you have one kid out of diapers, you should have another to keep that one company. If you have a second right away, you’re spacing them too close together. It never stops. Ever. Hell, I don’t even have kids and I’ve seen all of these in action.
Didn’t most parents get married and have children young many years ago?
It was common then.
Everyone didn’t get messed up from that right?
My parents had me at 40 and 44 and they were lousy parents!
Guess its just whatevers popular and considered normal each generation or so.
I knew a girl who had her son (unmarried-the guy took off) at 14.
She later married and is probably a grandmother by now.
Also knew a girl who married at 17.
I don’t know if she still is married.
My mother married at 20 and had her first child at 24. While she was in labor, she was scolded by the labor and delivery nurse for having children so young. What possible point could there be to that? What are you going to do, say, “Oh, I guess you’re right. I’ll just check out now and keep it in here for a few more years until I’m ready.”? And as it happened, she wasn’t really too young, anyway. She just happened to look about 18 at age 24.
People need to know that there are times for keeping their mouths shut. No matter how reasonable or unreasonable it may be to believe that teenagers are too young to be parents, that doesn’t excuse telling complete strangers what’s wrong with their lives.
I was polite to her. I smiled and agreed and nodded. And you’re right, he was conceived when we were 18. I think moejuck got the point of my OP - she wasn’t trying to be mean, but she didn’t understand what she was saying, or at least how Natalie and I would interpret it.
And I know what you mean about people giving their opinions and even touching pregnant women… when Natalie was walking to class at KU, a woman actually came up to her, clutched her belly, and said “God bless the mother and the child!” in a very dark tone, like she was drawing out the evil or something. Natalie called me in tears. :mad:
Gee Diogenes. Wouldn’t you think your sampling data is a bit lopsided? Like a doctor observing most everybody seems to be sick?
I don’t know how it is in American, but around these parts the “morning after pill” is not something you can have laying around - it’s strictly prescription.
Naturally it’s easier when you’re two, but I don’t see how taking formal marriage wows in any way have any bearing on the subject. And I’m not at all sure older couples last a longer time than younger.
Also in my book a 19 year old woman (or 18 for that matter) does not go under any category of child.
I’m appalled that you’d put abortion up as the moral superior choice, much like calling all abortions murder. It is a fact that many women regret the choice bitterly (of course many others do not). Encouraging abortion would increase this number dramatically.
My personal generalizations coming up:
My experience is that younger parents often seem to cope better than older parents. Often older parents, having waited so long, want everything to be absolutely perfect. Perfectly following their own preconceived imagery script which they have planned out to the smallest detail over the years, and when reality comes knocking they have so much more problems adjusting. Younger parents often have a more relaxed attitude about the whole thing, taking things as they happen. Giving the child the breathing space needed to grow without having to live up to the parents’ unreasonable sky high expectations. Also having a child is not always a dance on roses (though it often is!), you’re going to go for long stretches with no or broken sleep, it’s often emotional or physical exhausting, it takes time and energy, all things which younger people are so much better at handling. And on the physical side of things, there’s the fact that the mothers body is much more capable of the strain of pregnancy and birth without complications (I think you’ll find caesareans skyrocket with age), and so much quicker to mend afterwards. Also the fact that the chance of harmful genetic faults in the child rise with age, and that the risk of either or both parents die before the child is itself an adult, let alone to be anything but an extra burden when grandchildren come along, speaks for something I think. All this not to say it’s irresponsible to have children when you’re in your 30’s or even 40’s, there are other things that speaks for older parents (economy for starters) just that I think it’s very wrong to claim younger parents are invariable or more often bad. Perhaps one of the reasons young parents has been so harangued is the old litany of education before children. But many women have realized that, unless they want to forego children entirely, having their children while being educated is often a better choice, career wise, than having them while employed or seeking employment.
And for all the young parents here:
Congratulation with the children. Anyone having a child is richer that the riches man on earth.
Oh yeah, and I agree. I’d write the woman’s remark of as harmless surprise, nothing wrong with that. Loosen up.
I always read you name as CrankyAssOldMan (:eek: ) for some reason. So you can see how I needed to read that sentence a few times.
Individual exceptions don’t change the fact that most teenagers aren’t mature enough to get married.
Obsidian Flutterby
Yes, you have the ability to make mistakes. I don’t see what your point is. I think that there’s nothing wrong with pretty much anything that only involves consenting adults, but this involves a baby, who has no choice in the matter. While I don’t think that your family should be hounding you, you should realize that pregnancy should be something you take steps to avoid (and I don’t know to what extent you did so).
SanibelMan
So you don’t expect 33 year olds, on average, to be better parent than 13 year olds?
However, I’d like to make it clear that although I don’t think that teenagers should be getting married or pregnant, I also don’t think that strangers should be casting judgement on them.
I always asked about the abortion option up front. If a girl said she wouldn’t get an abortion I wouldn’t have sex with her. I still used protection every time but I wanted to know that if the condom broke she wouldn’t have a problem with abortion (paid for by me, of course). Fortunately, this crisis never happened for me and I’m sure that a woman could have changed her mind. In that case I would have pushed for adoption. If she refused that, I would have taken on my financial and parental responsibilities as best I could. I also know that I would have been lousy at it when I was twenty (that’s not a judgement of you, it’s a judgement of me at that age).
Never. I would have taken full responsibility no matter how unpleasant it would have been for me. I have absolutely zero respect for guys who abandon their own children and you deserve praise for not doing it.
SanibleManI’m with Crazy Cat Lady here: you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I’m 23, and one of my best friends (who’s just a few days younger than me) will be celebrating her 5th wedding anniversary this October. Lots of people thought she was too young (I’ll admit that I was one of them), but they’re making it work. And she says she has lots of people asking them when they’re going to start a family.
Obsidian Flutterby I really admire you for sticking to your guns. My mom had me a week before her 20th birthday party, and she married my dad about a year later. One of the big reasons they married was due to the pressure their parents were putting on them. Needless to say, it didn’t last long and it was a messy divorce. I’m glad that I was born, but I wish my parents hadn’t rushed into marriage because it was “the right thing to do.” Maybe they would have done better with a civil, but unmarried, relationship, much like you’re doing with the father of your child. I hope things go well with you.
Nice, but it isn’t the same. Sometimes you want sex you know? Two bodies moving as one and all that.
Yeah, because there is such similarity between expressing your love with another person and killing an unborn child. :rolleyes:
Actually, reading this thread, I’ve come to realize that Diogenes the Cynic is just a rampaging moron who doesn’t really merit the effort of lifting my fingers to respond… so I shan’t be doing that again.
Most people who were paying attention would have noticed that SanibelMan described two ends of a spectrum and said that most people fall between those extremes. In what purple-polka-dot universe does that mean “stereotyping”??
And I’ve met women who fit that description, by the way. I rember the girl in 8th grade who had already had two abortions. We went on a school trip and I was roomed with her. She took guys into the bathroom one by one in our hotel room. The guy waiting would sit on my bed looking nervous. She just considered abortion to be sort of like maintenance.
“Expessing love” means taking responsiblity for the person that you’re fucking. Having unprotected sex as a teenager is not loving, it’s fucking stupid…and there’s no such thing as an “unborn child.”
I think I expressed what Diogenes is saying only in a more diplomatic way - waaay at the beginning.
The thing I want to add now (speaking from a country with one of the highest teenage pregnancies in the Western world) is that many of the responses here seem to come from people (and ofcourse I’m making an educated guess here) with education, educated parents or money or supportive families or supportive friends or all or some of these combinations.
Your experiences as teenage mothers and fathers is probably going to be very different from those who don’t have any of the above who have become a nightmarish problem in Western countries.
Why have they become a nightmarish problem? because young people are having unprotected sex and at younger ages, thinking they are adults at younger ages, drug availability etc etc and they are the product of poor teenage mothers and fathers themselves, mostly single teenage mothers who have had no good role models, or who have not even been given a base level of values and beliefs from which to grow up with and who think that they have ‘rights’ to do what the hell they choose.
As I see, you are not adding to the problem.
