Prudie over at Slate had this topic a few weeks ago. Good letter; good response. Slate has a real active comment section called The Fray -- I post there sometimes under this same name -- read 'em if you want.
I remember very well being a 20-year-old & registering my oldest for kindergarten. And getting the "wow" response. I also remember cultivating a mature look & persona around that time -- short, businesslike haircut, wearing suits, introducing myself as "Mrs. Lastname" instead of Mary. I tried not to actually lie about my age but I certainly didn't advertise it if I could avoid doing so.
One funny thing I notice -- both from Prudie's letter writer's perspective & from my own experience -- I don't recall being so aware of the "wow" crap while I was an actual teenager. I was probably a little too self-centered to notice -- appropriate for my developmental stage at the time. I don't think we really do develop that sort of hindsight until we're a little older, whether we have children or not! Haven't we all looked back at the stuff we did when we were younger & "didn't know any better" -- and marveled at our own audacity?
This is not to say that teen women (& men) can't be good parents! Teenagers have been having babies since, well, there have been teenagers. How the heck old do you think Mary of Nazareth was when she had Jesus?????? Traditionally, she was "newly nubile" -- probably in her early teens. And I strongly suspect that little Family had the neighbors' tongues wagging just as much as Jamie Lynn & Bristol do today!
Couple more points:
Mother Nature wants babies!!!! And she seems to want them born to young, healthy couples. I know a heckuva lot of people -- including one couple in my family who would've made dynamite parents -- who waited till they were "ready" and found out it was too late.
Pregnancy is not an accident! It's what's supposed to happen. Yes, you can fool Mother Nature, and IMO each person/couple should practice birth control & child spacing as they see fit according to their own situation. And natural child spacing works if both partners are motivated, committed, & do it right! (See ecological breastfeeding info above)
If all or even most babies were "planned" -- well, lets just say there wouldn't be any lines at Disney World.
Assuming either the first or the second is an accident. We don't know that.Stupid is the one who, having just produced a child from an "accident", does not make Damn sure that another "accident" does not happen.
I used to believe that. In fact, I believed that until I had my 3rd child -- when I learned a neat little secret that parents of large families have always known.....namely, that two are easier than one!!!! (And three are no more trouble than two.) I went 12 years between my first 2 kids & about 2-1/2 years between my 2nd & 3rd. Guess what?? Two really were easier than one. Yeah, a year apart is spacing them a little too close for comfort -- my comfort, anyhow! -- but if you're not doing LAM/NFP I guess it can happen. I do have 2 sets of grandkids who are "Irish Twins" -- November 1995/October 1996, and September 1999/July 2000. In each case, the younger was a preemie -- a rather early preemie in the latter case -- but even if they'd gone to their due dates each one would have been darn close to their older sib's first birthday. And their parents managed, & everyone's happy & healthy now.
Oh well, I don't want to cite a bunch of studies & statistics -- that would involve looking them up, & it's late & I don't feel like it right now!!! But I do read & remember them. One rather cool study I did read a few years ago involved comparing marriage & birth records from our Great Country's colonial days -- it came to the conclusion that about 1 out of 5 marriages in those days was of the "shotgun" variety. Nothing is new! Well, some things like modern medicine & longer life expectancy are new, as well as the tendency to marry later or not at all. But biology and Mother Nature are old, and people are gonna be people.
One of the responders in The Fray (to the above Dear Prudie letter) stated that she & her husband married rather later in life & started their family at an even more advanced age than is usual these days. Her comeback to her "wow" judgmental twits is, "Oh, I guess we're just slow learners!" Her suggestion to the Young Mommies & the Young Marrieds is to tell the naysayers "I guess we're just fast learners!"
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BTW, I was told that I'm welcome to join Young Mommies Forum, even though my "young" days are more than 30 years in the past. But that's Karen's community & I don't want to horn in on her thing. I do read the public part of the forum once in a while to see what's new, & have noticed that Karen is wonderful about giving sensible advice & support to her Young Mommy peers. I'm pretty impressed! LOL -- maybe she'll be the next "Prudie"!
[OK, now rant over!]
