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I think nature makes us all horny in our teens because it wants reproduction of the species. That does not mean that it's a good idea for fifteen year old girls to get pregnant and have babies. I also don't think there are a host of eighteen year old boys dreaming of the day they can graduate, get married, and be a father by the age of nineteen.
I admit, I'm prejudiced by what I see of the types who are parents by nineteen. Such as "I need a day off work, because the godfather of my kid got shot (because he's a drug dealer)" and "We met in the mental hospital where we were both in-patients and now we're having a baby! yeah, we're not married, neither of us are in stable employment, and we struggle with mental health issues, but it's a great idea!" and "I had my first kid at nineteen, then my three other kids, all by different fathers, none of whom ever married me, during my twenties".
Now, if you have got examples of "I was married at twenty, had a decent job, and am a happy father of a family of eight" guys to counter all that experience, I'm glad. But I don't think the responsible types are getting married and settling down straight out of high school, and the ones who are fathering kids are not the responsible types.
Thank you, I see much more where you're coming from with this. I broadly agree with your analysis of
though I see it as being broadly downstream of a cultural expectation of what responsibility looks like. For example, 100 years ago it was quite different. Teddy Roosevelt married his first wife when he was 21 and she was I think 16. She got pregnant at maybe 17 or 18 (and died, which devastated him).
Apart from the death (obviously) this seems like a broadly healthy dynamic.
Man finishes university and meets wife at 21 and is married around 23, devoting himself to earning money for his family for the next 10/15 years rather than an extended adolescence or almost-always-unneeded supplementary education like PhD. By the time he is 35 or 40, the physically hard bit of raising children is over and he can devote himself to career, personal aspirations or fun dadhood as he chooses.
Woman meets husband at 16/17, marries by 19. The age gap is less because teenage girls are hot or for fertility reasons, and more because women seem to be impressed by and attracted to men who are a little older and more put-together than they are, so IMO this bumps up serious relationship formation rates a lot. She raises her kids for 10/15 years and then by 30/35 the hard bit is mostly over and she can go for further education / charitable work / career / momhood as appropriate.
I think a lot of the responsible types including myself (this was when I was still an atheist) would have broadly gone for this. Maybe the expectations would be too high, I don't know. But I don't like that we seem to be doing everything possible to discourage relationship development and parenthood amongst the most responsible while letting 'er rip for the deeply irresponsible.
Obviously there are practical issues with the above life plan.
Socially, some men legitimately won't want this and will play around (a smaller percentage than you believe IMO) as will some women. The structure makes women broadly dependent on male providers for 10 years, which is the most dangerous part IMO. It's natural not to want to be that vulnerable. Some of the types you see might do better with more rigorous societal support/restraints and some I fear probably fall into the 'too reckless and thoughtless to prosper under any system' category, but you have more knowledge in that area than I do.
The economics have to work out also. Partly we have to push rates of further education down especially MAs and PhDs. As the proud owner of entirely too much education I don't believe most of it is really required or gave me much that I wouldn't have got from a considerably shorter period of higher education + industry experience. We also have to compensate fathers appropriately, which is done in many cultures. In Japan it's an open secret that in big Japanese corporations you can expect a considerable pay rise per child because you will obviously need it.
Sorry, this is a lightly-drawn sketch to just try and show where I'm coming from.
Oddly enough I only know one guy who sort-of took this route. Met his girlfriend in first week of uni, moved in with her in week 2. But he breaks the script everywhere else - they didn't marry until 25 when they were confident in their income, they are completely non-religious to the point of refusing to marry in a church, and as far as I can see they have no interest in children. Lovely people, very high income, Fabian society types.
The days of "married at eighteen" for women were when there was no other career path, if I can put it like that. Lower-class women would work, and if servants, then marriage was far in the future (if at all). Which is not to say no working class women got married, of course they did, but work was as likely to be part of their married lives as pure domesticity. It might be "working as a lodging keeper with your spouse and family", but there wasn't the same division between "the man will earn all the money and the woman will be the angel in the home".
Middle to upper class women would be running households, and except for the exceptional few, not going to college like their brothers. Work was not for them, unless a drastic downturn in family fortunes meant the necessity to find work as a governess or paid companion or the likes. EDIT: And in that situation, 19 year old girl marries 30 year old man was more likely since the man, of course, had to make his way in the world before being ready to support a wife and family while the woman just had to wait to be plucked like a blossom.
Reading a lot of 19th to even early 20th century fiction, I am very struck by "here's a young woman who is pretty much waiting around at home for a man to marry her". This is different nowadays. So the days of "getting married at 16 to your 21-25 year old beau" are mostly over (not completely gone, but attitudes are very different now).
I don't object to 19 year olds getting married, but let's be practical here: at that age, they're probably still going to be living with parents or in-laws or some arrangement like that, rather than moving into their own house with baby. I really would prefer "married at 19 and then baby" to the current situation we see so much of; it's not your friends who are likely to suffer in this situation, it's the people lower down the rungs of the ladder, and while the underclass has always existed and has always flouted social norms, having it become widely accepted and then widespread that "marriage isn't necessary; kids aren't necessary" is where we get into the entire vexed question of "what do women (and men) want?" of today, where there's neither the societal push for "marriage or disgrace" and yet the promised liberation and joy from cutting off all those branches we were sitting on has not, in fact, happened and people are still having drama around relationships, sex, children, marriage, and so forth.
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