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Per WP, the typical-use Pearl Index of "Symptoms-based fertility awareness ex. symptothermal and calendar-based methods" is 24 (i.e. 24 pregnancies per 100 women per year), which is slightly worse than Coitus interruptus. Contrast this to a good method like IUD (0.8).
Awareness methods are only good enough if getting pregnant is not that big of a deal. For example, if you have access to abortions and no objections to them, or if you plan to have a baby with your husband in a year anyhow and would only be mildly inconvenienced by an earlier pregnancy.
For a teenager who is strongly pro-life, but not sufficiently abstinence-only that one can rely on that (which basically is most teenagers), relying on this method seems like a good way to end up being a single mom at 16.
Getting pregnant is not that big a deal. While I am glad my daughter did not have a baby at 16, there are so many other things that would have been worse. Her getting sucked into the alcoholic party culture was something I was significantly more concerned about at the time. Given a choice between my kid being an alcoholic or a teenage mom I am choosing the latter. She declined both.
I am not worried about my daughters getting pregnant as teenagers by itself. I would be overjoyed to have grandchildren while I’m still young and energetic. What worries me is them getting pregnant with inappropriate man. But, then again, I think it’s less bad when it happens when they’re teenagers than when they’re 30+. They still have a chance (though, of course, much reduced) to put their life together with someone more appropriate. When it happens to you while you’re middle aged, the pool of appropriate men that are interested in you is really tiny.
Assuming your daughter isn't fraternizing with men into their twenties as a teen, almost definitionally getting pregnant as a teen is with an inappropriate man. Let's face it, teenage boys aren't ready for that.
To add on, neither are teenage girls.
There have been plenty of societies with an average female age of marriage 16 or under. Our society isn’t one of them, and the median teenaged girl probably is not ready to be married off, but it’s not implausible that some might be. Very, very few where guys married under 20, or even 25. Far more implausible for a teenage boy to be ready for marriage, especially considering the man needs to pay the bills.
I was talking about raising kids mostly. Although being an equal contributor in a household in marriage is also something teenage girls won't be prepared for. Older mothers are far more sensible and better at raising children than teenagers. This has always been true, even in historical societies, simply because people are more experienced, worldly and have matured more when they are older.
I don’t believe in the ‘equal contributor’ bs.
Taking care of a baby/young child is well within the capabilities of a teenager. By the time this required an adult adult she would be one.
Our society isn’t set up that way, but it’s much more plausible than in the genderflipped case.
Working a fulltime job as a cashier, or barista, or whatever is also well within the physical and mental capabilities of a teenage male. That is enough to pay for a room or even a studio. And considering how many families throughout history have been raised in similar or worse conditions... it's really also a matter of our society not being set up that way, not of material impossibility.
In an alternate reality, we could end credentialed education at 8th grade like the Amish do, a boy would either start working directly or apprentice into a trade, then a couple of years later when he accidentally knocks up some girl at 16 he marries her at the point of a shotgun and is able to support both at a low standard of living until he finishes his apprenticeship or gets enough experience that he can find better work.
And, ideally, in that parallel universe we also build more fucking housing and train more fucking doctors so that our standard of living does not keep going down even as the economy becomes more and more productive, the way it does in this world.
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