Was that the first time a thread was locked because of a dispute (as opposed to the more frequent re-post/cross-post etc)?

Where's the original thread?

on the next page of this forum

Ok JV, take the blame if you want.

Personally, I think the conversation that Kirstie is wanting people to have, is a valid and important one. I'm 32, my girlfriend is 21. I have some personal debt, she has a small amount of savings. We both earn very little and work overseas in a situation that is highly unusual for most Brits (or anyone really). She has mentioned in passing that she doesn't want to have kids until she's 30. I think from a physiological standpoint, having kids in your 20s is preferable for women and the societal conditions that allowed that to be the norm have only really changed in the past 2 or 3 decades. But women's bodies haven't changed in that time.

As is often the case, nature/evolution is not keeping pace with our rapidly evolving lifestyle choices and this raises many questions for us as individuals AND as a society.

p.s. Who DOESN'T love boobies??

It's definitely a conversation that should be had. My point is, it should be had with your partner, not your mum. If you choose a partner for breeding purposes, that is not going to end well.

Physiologically, women are designed to bear children when they start menstruating. Nowadays this is under the age of consent and some kids are under 10 when it happens. Doesn't mean they're mentally/psychologically/socially ready.

I can understand the reasoning behind having kids early - the chances of conception are higher, the chances of error/mutations/miscarriages is lower. But the conditions have to be right. No point having children early if you can barely make ends meet. At the other end of the spectrum, there are people having kids so they can get more benefits. Certainly I know of teenage girls who deliberately got pregnant so they'd be classed as "vulnerable" and therefore get priority housing.

Saying "if I had a daughter I would say..." is a bit different to saying "this is a conversation you must have with your mother and you must chose a man for breeding"

Not sure where you got your point from



I take this to mean society should be discussing it, not particular people



lol

To your points Caz - 1) Yes and 2) I'm glad you agree

CW, medically speaking, are women at optimal condition for childbirth when their periods start? Or would they benefit from a year or two more for optimal conditions?

My girlfriend and I had a debate about Rolf Harris this morning. She is upset because she looked up to him as child. I posed the question that is it possible that perhaps a lot of people at the BBC 30+ years ago behaved the same way because it was the norm for them? I don't think it excuses the behaviour, but it does illustrate a point about the power of the majority in society to dictate what is, and is not, acceptable at any given point in history.

Childbirth and marriage at much younger ages has been common at points during our own history. Currently, it's not. Does this mean that it's wrong to discuss it? I think not.

The conversation might well be something to discuss between partners (potential, or long-term). However, I also think it's something worthy of discussion in a wider context with more people. Or do we not really talk about anything except X-factor (or Berlusconi over here) these days...?

redacted for overly angry post.

IIRC it does take time for things to settle. At menarche, the body is just starting and it can take a few years before things are regular. Doesn't mean a girl can't get pregnant as soon as she starts menstruating.


I read how lot's Rolf's work has been taken down/"lost"/defaced or denied. You can't wipe his impression on our history. Whilst I was reflecting on that, I did wonder what would happen if everybody famous who has contributed to the "history" of Britain was found to have molested children. You couldn't just wipe out a chunk of history or denied that person ever existed.


I think this is something I've raised (perhaps in real life or on other forums) but "paedophilia" is something that is only a recent term IIRC. The "age of consent" was introduced and redefined. In the past, it may well have been "normal" for a boy/man to wed a 12 year old girl. It may have happened every day and no one batted an eyelid. At some point, societal attitudes changed and suddenly it's wrong, immoral etc. Things may change in the future - we may get to a stage where it's only consensual if both parties are over the age of 21. The future would then look at us in disgust.

If it ever was common for 12 year-olds to wed, that would have been a pre-Christian thing in the UK (and most of the world in general). Very youthful weddings have only ever been common for dynastic purposes in monogamous societies. Which in essence means they were largely the preserve of royalty. Paedophilia may be a new word, and ages of consent a relatively novel legal construct; but the stigma is ancient.

Just as a little background, without any comment:

The 55 parties to the 1962 Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage, and Registration of Marriages have agreed to specify a minimum marriage age by statute law‚ to override customary, religious, and tribal laws. When the marriageable age under a law of a religious community is lower than that under the law of the land, the state law prevails. However, some religious communities do not accept the supremacy of state law in this respect, which may lead to child marriage or forced marriage. The 123 parties to the 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery have agreed to adopt a minimum age for marriage.

In Roman times girls had to be over 12 years to marry, but only with the consent of the bride and the father. The Catholic Church canonical law made radical changes to that in the 12th Century, it allowed for girls of 12 or over and boys of 14 to marry with or without parental consent.

The French monarchy and the Lutherans found this abhorrent and wanted to change it, but had little success in the 16th Century.

Germanic tribes usually allowed marriage a little later and both partners had to be around the same age. Visigothic law would probably have seen women in their early 20 as the right age for marriage.

13th Century statutes in England made it an offence to 'ravish' a woman of age, which was defined as 12 years. European Canon Law at that time saw the age of marriage to be after puberty (12 - 14 years old) and a girl was considered old enough to consent at 7. Still, in most of Northwestern Europe, marriage at very early ages was rare. One thousand marriage certificates from 1619 to 1660 in the Archdiocese of Canterbury show that only one bride was 13 years of age, four were 15, twelve were 16, and seventeen were 17 years of age while the other 966 brides were at least 19 years of age at marriage.

In France, until the French Revolution, the marriageable age was 12 years for girls and 14 for boys. Revolutionary legislation in 1792 increased the age to 13 years for girls and 15 for boys. Under the Napoleonic Code in 1804, the marriageable age was set at 15 years for girls and 18 for boys.[12] In 2006, the marriageable age for girls was increased to 18, the same as for boys.

There has been a movement in recent years for the marriage age for girls and boys to be equalised, and for that age to be set at 18 years. In jurisdictions where the ages are not the same, the marriageable age for girls is more commonly two or three years lower and that for boys.

Looking at the information above misses out on several additional factors, such as high mortality rates in the young and that in many areas 30 was very old. Therefore if you waited until you 20s to have a child a) you were likely to be dead before you had a child and b) if you did manage to stay alive long enough to have a child, you would probably die before it reached the age of puberty.

Living conditions and medical advances mean that the average lifespan of a human has increased drastically over the last 200 years. We also have equality to build into the equation. In modern society we seem to have to competing forces fighting over child birth:
1. The biological, which hasn't caught up with the advances of medicine and means that women are physically best prepared to conceive and give birth in their teens or early 20s.
2. Social and capitalistic expectations that you are expected to make your way in life and once you have built a nest egg, then you should have children. Add to this the career ladder and the fact that women also want to be taken seriously in business and not seen as "a resource that is going to bugger off after a couple of years to have sprogs, wasting time and money on training them."

With the introduction of the age of consent of 16 at the end of the 19th Century, the time to have children was essentially pushed into the late teens or early 20s. With equality and 'jobs for women', this has been pushed even further out by society, so that young people looking to have children are often seen as social pariahs.

Our society is not set up for the safe continuation of the species, it seems, from reading, that women often feel pressured to build a career for themselves and put off the conception of a baby until the last possible minute, when it is more dangerous for them.

As per CWs comment, many younger women have children to get on the social security step ladder, which blackens the name of young mothers in general.

Would society be better, or at least would families and women's health in general be better if young families were supported by their parents or the state until their children were of an age where the parents could 'repay' their debt by going back to work?

Here, in Germany, it is certainly the case that younger couples have children and are supported by their parents (depends on community and background). The 'Russian Germans' certainly group together to pay for the family, all piling in to help build houses, finance cars and furniture etc. to get the children started in life. The state also allows for the father to take a year off to stay at home with their new child.

What is needed is a change in society, where it is not seen as unusual or wrong to have children when you are ready for them, not when society thinks you are ready for them. Then it is up to the individual to decide what is right for them, without feeling pressure from society or being seen as a pariah.

Given the population continues to increase I'm not sure you can say it's a genuine problem. I'd suggest that the idea that women have to forge a career before having children is a particularly modern one - maybe even only the last 30 years or so. Definitely up to the 70's the idea still generally was the 'traditional' family where the man was the one who worked for money and the woman was the one who worked at home to maintain the family. Thus the idea of waiting to have children simply didn't occur as it wasn't necessary. Due to the change in society's values it is now considered an unfair division of labour & reward but in terms of simply 'a mechanism to raise children' it was probably a pretty efficient way to do it.

If someone wants to have a career, that's great. If they want to have kids, great. But the notion that you can do both at the same time is, to me, a rather idealistic notion. The bare fact is doing so is really, really, really hard and no matter how much we think that's how the world should be, it doesn't make it how it is. And this applies to both sexes equally.

A push for paternity leave to be easier or affordable childcare and rent control would dramatically increase pregnancy rates. I know that if I had a kid right now, I probably would struggle to afford going back to work due to costly of housing and childcare. When it take 2 incomes to pay rent/ mortgages people just cannot have kids.
And it seems people forget that working can be fun!


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