Even though most Americans still believe that 25 is the ideal age for women to have children, new research suggests that mother nature disagrees. A mounting stream of epidemiological evidence is pointing towards a much lower biological optimum… as low as 15 years old!
Why 15? Because most data from research studies shows better and better outcomes the younger mothers get. Taken to it’s logical conclusion, this implies that having children as soon as the physical development of puberty has completed (between 15 – 17 for most girls) is likely when evolution geared human bodies to produce the best offspring.
So despite the myth that 25 is the ideal age, here are the top 10 real reasons why teenage pregnancy is the actual best biological ideal:
- Younger pregnancies are less likely to suffer a miscarriage.
- It’s commonly known that women who wait till their 20’s or 30’s face higher and higher rates of infertility with many women in their 30’s often never able to conceive at all.
- Numerous studies find that earlier pregnancies face lower risk of autism, birth defects, and ADHD.
- Mothers who delay having their first child until after 24 are more likely to develop breast cancer later in life.
- Younger mothers are more likely to succeed at breast feeding, which reduces postpartum weight retention and improves 28 different health outcomes for their children.
- Older mothers who wait till their 20’s or 30’s to have children are much more likely to never lose all the weight they gain during pregnancy — and therefore suffer from higher rates of diabetes and heart disease later in life.
- Younger mothers have better compliance rates at avoiding dangerous habits like smoking and drinking during pregnancy since they often haven’t even started these health damaging behaviors.
- Younger mothers are less likely to require c-sections. Health outcomes of both mothers and children who undergo c-sections are routinely found to be worse, with children succumbing to higher rates of acute and chronic respiratory illness and mothers suffering from months of reduced physical mobility and higher long-term obesity rates (with the attendant increased risk of heart disease and diabetes).
- Median statistics show that having children younger lowers a woman’s lifetime earnings. But this can be deceptive. The distribution has many bad outcomes but two distinct poles. Although having children early in life (when poor and underprivileged) can trap a young woman in poverty, the most successful women have also pointed out many times, that having children when you’re so old that you’re already out of college is actually the kiss of death for career advancement. Although it’s completely outside the societal norm these days, having a child at 15 leaves a woman free to immediately start her career after finishing college because her child will be entering school right as she leaves it. Assuming the mother enrolls in an elite online high school program, she could take one summer off to deliver and never miss a beat in her academic (and real) career.
- On a societal level, adding even a small “extra” generation could prevent demographic collapse of the United States. So it’s literally true that Uncle Sam wants you to do the patriotic thing and have a teen pregnancy for America.
Even though most people will continue to insist that “logic doesn’t really apply when it comes to timing a child“, it appears that there are strong reasons to prefer teenage pregnancy if at all possible.
So there it is. Don’t be a terrible mother: Get pregnant when you’re 15.
21 Responses to “15 = The Ideal Age To Have Children”
April 1
Laura A. BaurAnd who’s going to support these teen moms? Teen dads? ROFLMAO.
We don’t live on the savanna anymore. What is ‘natural’ has little to do with what is optimal anymore.
April 1
Aleksei RiikonenThe traditional way wasn’t teen dads, but more like marrying young daughters off to rich old men.
April 1
gholdenIn less affluent societies, the traditional view of an ideal male mate was/is one who was older, more mature, and able to support their ideal mate(s), younger females. Won’t belabour the point (pun intended), but it does seem tragic sometimes to see relatively mature 18 year old females infatuated with 16 year old skate boarders. Makes little sense to me, but belongs to an affluent culture where bulging muscles can trump bulging bank accounts. Males have access to mating without having to demonstrate any other ability other than being able to mimic the looks and behaviour of Justin Bieber. His financial and artistic success is not required. It’s no wonder that most pregnant teens have to raise their children alone.
April 1
Denise MelchinThis is very, very interesting. I’ve especially often thought about 9).
I did exactly what the article proposes: I had a child at 15, voluntarily. My daugher will turn 4 in June, I’ll turn 20 in July.
It does have some social negative consequences. E.g. while I was a glowing ball of happiness during pregnancy, noone else was with me. The responses were very hurting. The most positive first reaction I got during pregnancy was “Oh it’s great you didn’t go for abortion!”. True story.
Also, everyone thinks you are absolutely crazy. “YOU? But you are so… smart and gifted, WHY?” In their imagination, only deprived poor people have their children voluntarily at that age. Actually, most people just didn’t believe that it was a planned pregnancy. Depending on the environment, I don’t even dare say it, because that’s way too far outside the box.
People also will be all looking for pathologic reasons why you did this. The same reason other people have children in their thirties (because raising children is great) apparently doesn’t count if you’re under 20.
There’s another problem: You don’t usually have a long-term-partner at that age, so you’ll be a single mother by choice. Another societal norm violated, people aren’t too happy about that and it is much more difficult. And because of that you face another problem: How would you get pregnant? AFAIK sperm banks don’t give sperm to minors. In private people aren’t that willing either to donate sperm to 15-year-olds. (If they are, they are unfortunately most likely a person you don’t want to get sperm from.) That doesn’t leave many options. (You could have randomly unprotected sex with someone who you think has good genes, but that unfortunately poses high STD risks. Also, same problem again – do you really want to use the sperm of someone who’s willing to have unprotected sex with minors?)
So one of the more interesting points is 9). That your child will already be pretty big when you actually start your career. (And that age is also the one when they’ll actually become expensive, toddlers and babies are pretty cheap.) I think this is a very good point and one reason I’m very happy I started so early. But. You are disadvantaged. Massively, right from the start. Having my child early stopped me from going to a good university for my undergrad and doing awesome extracurricular activities and internships that I all really should do, I just don’t have the time and energy. This is one thing that makes me very scared about the future. Though people are telling me constantly I worry too much, I was and am quite ambitious and that endeavour is much more difficult now and I’m extremely more likely to fail. I mourn this a LOT and worry a lot about it.
I think this is only a good idea for women in a very privileged position who maybe shouldn’t be too ambitious. Then it’s possibly better to start later, or you should have more support than I had.
Now to the advantages: It’s awesome! You’ll have much more time in your life to spend with your child because you had it earlier.
Also, you can skip a adolescence phase that I don’t think is worthwile at all, the cool partying phase. You also mature faster. Most people consider this a disadvantage, I disagree, I think people are better of when they are more mature.
You can spend more time with your child. People do have more time when they aren’t busy with their careers yet, especially in school age.
You grow and mature together with your child more than older parents do.
A child is cheaper when you have it young. When you’re older, you have all those societal norms putting pressure onto you to buy expensive stuff, otherwise you’re low status. But noone thinks under-20s have low status because they have little money.
April 1
Aleksei RiikonenTo continue from my earlier comment: I’d of course personally much rather have a more rational eugenics-like system/competition, where the government would each year offer generous “teen mom grants” to a surprisingly large amount of deserving candidates (screened for all the things one would expect a eugenics system to screen for).
Failing this, privileged families should just get into the habit of supporting their own daughters that want to do the patriotic thing. Privileged people should be having more kids anyway; one of the beneficial results is their wealth then diluting to a larger next generation, leading to a more equal distribution of wealth in society.
April 1
Joshua FoxYou mean ideal according to Mother Nature. We don’t always want to play along with her.
However, even from a personal psychological/economic perspective, some have suggested (I think Robin Hanson mentioned this) that if women have children early, they could then build a career when the children are a bit older.
April 1
Ron CallariPhysically it may be the time that produces the best human specimen – but psychologically no mother or father at 15 has the mental or spiritual maturity to raise a child – let alone financially!
April 1
João LourençoThe support the cited studies give to these statements is thin at best. I also find some of those points mildly irrelevant, like the ability to not retain the weight gain. Not considering social perception a major factor would be a mistake also, since this will modulate the level is social support. Finally, I would be really surprised if the evidence supporting this is stronger the the very good evidence supporting that earlier pregnancy is bad. Life history theory would need severe revisions, a fast life style ought to correlate with higher mortality, risk taking, lower education and so on.
On a more”cosmological” worry, I find it hard to believe civilization would be at this point if we followed the reproduce as soon as biologically feasible recommendation. Cultural development implies spending a whole lot more of time with your offspring than what biology might dictate, and if your offspring is already having one of their own this makes teaching them a lot harder.
April 1
Bernadette Young(this popped up on my feed after Denise commented) this is literally terrible science! There are actual studies done showing that you can’t just extrapolate backwards and say ’20 is good so 15 is even better’. Also that article is citing discredited or controversial statements as ‘fact’ (for instance, fertility difficulties are more likely to be enountered by women trying to conceive over 35 at least partly because these women have not yet fallen pregnant, and are therefore a population enriched for sub-fertility). There are lots of factors in pregnancy timing, but the last thing women need are more unscientific lies to muddy the waters! http://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Abstract/2000/12000/Obstetric_Risks_of_Pregnancy_in_Women_Less_Than_18.18.aspx
April 1
René MilanWho cares how old one is once artificial wombs become available ?
April 1
Matthew Bryce DeutschI decided it’s easier to not have children. We only need them to compensate for dead people, and that’s ending soon anyway.
April 1
João LourençoAlso, what Bernadette said.
April 1
Ingrid KhadijahHmm interesting, makes sense though. Just because our society has changed doesn’t mean our bodily functions change with it!
April 1
Aleksei RiikonenAlso, I might get even more serious in my comments and suspect this post is about it being April Fools Day today.
April 1
João LourençoOk, you got me there! Well played.
April 1
Aleksei RiikonenThough I personally would really, in all honesty, recommend a culture where people have more children earlier, *if* they have suitable conditions for it. There really is a case for responsible people becoming teen moms.
April 1
Tom YoungEven if (and it’s a big if) 15 is the ‘biological optimum’, that in no way means that getting pregnant at 15 is a good idea.
Still, since this is probably a poorly conceived April Fool’s post, I’ll make one final comment.
Nice try, nimrod.
April 1
Sarah ConstantinFertility rates start dropping with age beginning in your teens, it’s true. But not by much. The difference between 15, 20, and 25 is only a few percentage points. It’s in your thirties that fertility drops accelerate. Basically, you’re trading a *little* physical performance for a lot of economic performance.
Someone who gets rich very young should probably consider having a child early. But for anybody else, it’s a rotten deal.
April 1
Chris HallquistI totally thought this was for real until I read Tom’s comment… but even then, totally believable as “oh, someone in the rationalist community is being contrarian again.”
April 1
Robert MushkatblatI’m still not sure it’s not real.
April 2
Samo BurjaOnce you control for the kind of people who chose to become teen parents, the negative effects of teen parenting basically disappear. The negative effects are there because of the people who have those children, not the time. If you could magically make sure all of them were married and 10 years older, this might have positive externialities for society but the children would basically have identical life outcomes.
The best information we have tells us that parenting in general does next to nothing on life outcomes and that genetics is the thing that makes children end up in similar places to their parents.
Actually considering the issue of genetic load ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_load) which Gregory Cochran suspects is tightly connected to IQ variance in humans. As you age, and this ironically hits men harder than women, your sperm and eggs will accumulate more stray mutations.
If he is correct a society with old fathers and mothers is a society with more birth defects and a lower IQ than otherwise. IQ and conscientiousness are the two psychometric stats that no matter how you slice them correlate strongly to basically all the nice things in life from health, happiness to income.
Parents do take an economic hit for having children early. They take a big economic hit when having children at any age. The children don’t seem to lose and society seems to win. Having a child at 20 will likely do more to help his long term life outcomes than having an extra 300 000 USD would if you had him at 30. But income does impact the parental quality of life.
Maybe we should institute a 50% 10 year tax break for those who have children in their teens.