For several decades, certainly when I was growing up, becoming a teenage mother was considered a tragedy. But is it? Certainly the scores of women that I know that have left getting pregnant too late (trying IVF desperately in their 40's, seeking sperm donors) would revise their opinion on that issue.
The right to bear children is a fundamental human right. Clearly there is an optimum age, biologically, to have children (between 18 and 35). In fact, even that has changed in my lifetime. You used to be considered an elderly mother after the age of 27. Now more 30-34 year old women have children than 20-24 year olds. In the West that is.
Even getting pregnant at 18 is considered ridiculously young. But why?
Anyway I've had this post on the back burner for a while...but this article puts the case against teen pregnancy being the new cool thing to do very well; particularly the writer's observation that in the film Juno, pregnancy is treated as no more problematic than a bout of acne.
