Teen pregnancy is not a horrible thing, but some teenagers are not ready to take on that responsiblity. Speaking from a teenagers’ perspective, I know I am not emotionally or mentally stable enough to take on such a great responsiblity. I think having children in your 20s would be a lot better.

I got married, graduated from MIT, and had my 21st birthday in the same week. I’m 43 now (my wife is 42) and our kids are almost-16, 12, 8, and 2. Fertility goes down precipitously after age 35, it is a terrible idea to wait until then to have a kid if you are already married. (30 is as late as I’d recommend for a first child, so there is time to have 2 or 3 before it becomes much harder). After Kid3 was born when we were 35, we suffered through several miscarriages and other difficulties before our next baby was born (due on my wife’s 40th birthday, but arrived a week late).

People shouldn’t criticize Philip, or anyone else they don’t know intimately, for not being married yet — the relationships he has had were with unique individual women, and can only be criticized on such a basis. I will advise Philip, though, that if he is currently unattached he should start taking very active steps to meet younger women.

Fun? It’s not that much fun anymore.
Stuff? Stuff gets stuffy.
Respect? Power? Admiration? You are already taller than all the people who are shorter than you are.
Those magical relationships? You will be half of any pair you participate in.

You may already have noticed how many ‘keeping my options open’ young men turn into breeders in their mid-forties.

Just wanted to offer the view from the ‘other side of the coin’.

I am 40 and my oldest kid is 19, pretty close to teenage parent, eh?

There are some definate benefits:
Healthy babies, able to have kids at will and I am able to interact with my kids in a vigorous manner.

Now let’s get into the downside…

In order to provide for this ‘early’ family I dropped out of college, attended a trade school and worked an endless series of slave-wage jobs. This led to many years of two jobs, night school and endless confrontations with my (ex) spouse about why ‘life just wasn’t any fun’.

My parents were much more interested in pursuing their AARP-endorsed retired lifestyle and were of no help at all with child rearing.

My children were raised by ‘complete amatuers’, as a result my oldest child has had a childhood that resembled a lab experiment.

Expecting a lifelong commitment out of a partner at the age of 18 is pretty difficult. As a result I have been a single parent for the last 8 years.

And to top it off, when I meet an attractive, professional lady that I would like to get involved with, 80% of the time they are hearing the biological clock ticking and are in a hurry to start breeding.

So, as a conclusion, I am glad that I had my kids early, but I *STRONGLY* encourage my kids to finish college and get an established career before even considering it. Hell, I am way to young to be called PAPA.

“congrats for starting this project when you and the wife were early 30s rather than late 30s!”

Thanks. We were definitely sensitive to the risks of waiting too long (not so much infertility as Down’s or other chromosome abnormalities). I have to say that what really fills me with dread is the thought of the teenage years.

By the way, one further consideration against teenage motherhood being the norm in pre-industrial societies is that the age of puberty has been dropping in Western societies (something to do with nutrition, I think). It would have been physically impossible for a 15-year-old to get pregnant in a pre-industrial society.

It’s fairly recent that women expect both to have a high-powered career and to raise children (and it may be more common in Boston than out here in Vancouver, which tends to be more laid-back in general), but I have this vague idea that it may also have been more common in the past for high-achieving *men* to eschew marriage and children, based on the idea that domesticity and intense focus on achievement weren’t compatible. I don’t recall where I read a reference to this. If I find it, I’ll post it on this thread.

“Hmm… it is a difficult decision.”

Sounds like you may not be ready just yet.

More seriously, as I said, what really makes a drastic change in your level of responsibility and your personal freedom isn’t getting married, it’s having kids. No matter how independent your wife is, once you have small children, you both need to know where the other person is. And making big changes to your way of life (e.g. relocating to another country, even temporarily; changing careers) becomes much, much more complicated.

I think the question really is, do you feel like settling down? If you feel like you’re on vacation right now, and that eventually you’ll get back into doing something intense, right now might not be the best time to answer that.

Perhaps you need an independant woman who doesn’t like to check in with you. There are plenty of women out there that like their own space. They are probably right in front of you.
KSM

Russil: Thanks for the insight and congrats for starting this project when you and the wife were early 30s rather than late 30s!

Did I say that I preferred death to marriage? Hmm… it is a difficult decision. Remember though that all of Narcissism Today was intended ironically (mostly as a jibe at my parents for sending out their very first New Year’s form letter).

I don’t feel that I have anything more pressing to do right now than take care of a dog or a kid. So in that sense I’m ready for marriage. On the other hand whenever I am with a married friend and he picks up the phone to call his wife “just to check in” I feel that this might not be my scene

My wife and I have two children, 2 years old and six months. The key thing to remember about having children is that it’s a lot of work! As a friend puts it, when you get married, your life doesn’t really change that much. What really changes your life is having kids. It’s hard for me to even remember what life without kids was like.

Fortunately, compared to software development (where you’re always running into new problems), taking care of infants is repetitive: change diaper, feed, put back to sleep, repeat two hours later, around the clock. So you get used to it quickly. But you become much more aware of the tragic nature of life: your infant could have an accident and die, or could die for no reason at all (crib death). This has happened to parents that we know.

Jared Diamond explains why humans are (mostly) monogamous in “Why is Sex Fun?”: because a newborn human is so helpless, compared with newborns in other species, you need two parents to ensure that the offspring doesn’t die shortly after birth. It’s important to have a stable marriage before having kids. Grandparents can help out, but they’re no substitute.

With all these things in mind, teenage pregnancy is a bad idea. Teenagers are still growing up and going through major personality changes, so they’re not ready to get married and settle down with each other for life. They’re not ready financially or emotionally for the responsibility of taking care of an infant, or for dealing with potential tragedy.

Abby and I are in our mid-thirties, and having kids in our thirties has worked out pretty well for us. In particular, we’re financially stable, and we can afford for Abby to stay home with the kids. We’re mature (well, more mature than we were when we were younger, anyway , so we’re better able to deal with day-to-day problems. Fortunately, we didn’t run into any fertility problems.

Philip, I remember you saying in one of your “Narcissism Today” issues that you’d rather kill yourself than get married. I assume that means you didn’t want kids, either. Have you changed your mind? (If it’s a touchy question, feel free to ignore it.

Infertility is not he only problem – having kids around thirty or later means an increased risk of the Down syndrome. There is no cure for the Down syndrome, other than abortion. Now, I don’t want to make this a discussion about abortion, so let me just point out that 1) some women won’t have an abortion for religious reasons 2) for those who don’t view it as unethical, it still is an extremely stressful decision.

Last but not least, where would soccer moms be without foreign nannies, usually illegal?