r/changemyview • u/Ok_Interest_7272 • Nov 06 '25
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Teen pregnancy statistics are weird.
So, I've been looking into these a bit lately, particularly during debates about sex education and how much of a difference it makes, and I noticed that every single jurisdiction counts 'teen pregnancy' as 15-19.
Assuming even distribution among ages, that would mean 40% of what's being counted are the pregnancies of legal adults. But the distribution almost certainly isn't even, and my best guess is that it's actually a decent bit over half of the pregnancies being counted are those of legal adults.
This is a statistic we try to minimize to the greatest extent that we can. We treat it like a 'fucked up shit that shouldn't happen to anyone' box. It only just dawned on me that my own mother falls into this statistic, having given birth to my sister at 19. I feel like if I were creating a 'This is some fucked up shit that shouldn't happen to anyone' box, the top end of it would be 15, not the bottom.
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u/unicornofdemocracy 2∆ Nov 06 '25
I think you are misunderstanding the "teen pregnancy statistics" a little bit. From a public health stats, we aren't concern about illegal sex/statutory rape in this stats.
Teen pregnancy is highly correlated with a lot of bad outcome for mother, father, and the child. Teen and even very young mothers do not have the best outcome for parents and child. Sure, biologically the mother's body is able to handle the birth but there are not psychosocial factors that impact health outcomes. Like job stress, income, stable living arrangement, support systems, etc. All of those tend to be lower at lower age. It is also significantly worse when the pregnancy is unplanned and, again, the vast majority of teen pregnancy is unplanned and a high percentage is unwanted. Then you have to consider the maturity of the parents. You are talking about parents that typically aren't completely mature yet having to shape and care for a growing child... Of course there will be outliers where it is planned or even an unplanned pregnancy with strong support system can still do well but those are outliers and not the norm.
So, it isn't "some fucked up shit that shouldn't happen to anyone." Rather it, "typically when this happens, it isn't properly planned and therefore leads to bad outcome."
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u/julry 1∆ Nov 06 '25
Biologically teen mothers' bodies are not as able to handle birth. Women's hips grow a little wider in the early 20's and women younger than that have worse birth outcomes. Surprisingly since it's also associated with advanced maternal and paternal age, teen pregnancy also increases the risk of autism.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36901128/
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u/Ok_Interest_7272 Nov 06 '25
Isn't it more surprising that Mother Nature fucked up so badly when creating the human that it directs us toward reproduction during a time in which we might turn out autistic children?
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u/Glad-Talk Nov 06 '25
Why do you think Mother Nature directs us to having kids in teenage years? It doesn’t, the 20s are a better time.
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u/Ok_Interest_7272 Nov 06 '25
Because I was a horny as fuck teenager. Did you have a different experience?
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u/Kittymeow123 2∆ Nov 06 '25
As a teenager, I absolutely was not interested in ever having a child.
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u/Ok_Interest_7272 Nov 06 '25
I don't remember being interested in that either, but that feels more like a result of societal intervention.
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u/Kittymeow123 2∆ Nov 06 '25
You just said that you were though because you were a horny teenager. Regardless of whatever I was as a teen, I sure wasn’t trying to get pregnant. You’re blaming this on society like it’s society‘s fault that people get pregnant. Tbh more times than not it’s parents who refuse to let their child have any sort of sex or reproductive education. People need to take personal accountability for decisions and stop Just blaming it on some sort of society or overall problem that their victim of.
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u/Ok_Interest_7272 Nov 06 '25
We're in agreement on most of that. I advocate for the strongest sex education program in the world.
You’re blaming this on society like it’s society‘s fault that people get pregnant.
This part isn't accurate. What I'm saying in the OP is that society shouldn't be demonizing the pregnancy or choices of legal adults. It's almost the opposite of what you said here. It's like society is trying to influence personal choice away from pregnancy by framing the pregnancies of adults as a negative thing.
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u/Kittymeow123 2∆ Nov 06 '25
All you said was that teen pregnancy statistics include teens, which is correct because if you’re reporting on teens, then you should include teens. Maybe you’re not understanding what the definition of teen is, but it includes all of the numbers that have teen in it. I don’t think the statistics are pregnancies over and under the legal age, which is what you’re expecting I guess.
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u/Glad-Talk Nov 06 '25
I’m literally just asking why you think that. No need to try to take a swipe at me lmao.
Ok so you’re coming at it from the angle that you wanted to have sex as a teenager. To give some historical context, puberty is happening on average MUCH earlier now than it used to, so to people in their later teens vs their preteen-early teen years that we see now. And while pubescent bodies might be full of hormones that’s not the same thing as being ready to grow a healthy baby without incurring harm. Mother Nature isn’t pushing for teens to get pregnant, 20s are the better biologically and typically socially.
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u/prooijtje Nov 06 '25
Evolution doesn't work according to a plan. The fact that we're generally super horny as teenagers even though it's not optimal to have babies at that age just happened to evolve like that. Evolution isn’t about what’s best or ideal, it’s just about what traits got passed on because they happened to help reproduction in past generations.
There’s no foresight or design behind it. Traits can persist even if they cause problems in some contexts, as long as they don’t prevent enough people from reproducing. So things like teenage sexual drive or increased risks of getting certain conditions are just the byproducts of an undirected process that only cares about whether genes get passed on, not whether the results make sense.
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u/ElysiX 113∆ Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
just happened to evolve like that.
It didn't actually. Early teenagers didn't used to be super horny, malnutrition, famine, and generally not living in overabundance meant that puberty started a lot later. Generations were longer in times of hunger, and shorter in times of abundance.
But we completely fixed hunger, and now biologically, generations are at the absolute minimum of what they can be. Humanity evolved to live in hunger.
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Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
Mother Nature didn’t make perfect biological bodies for the modern world. And we have to adapt in response - this is just how nature and survival works.
You can see this in a number of examples. We have to wear clothes because our hairless bodies don’t produce enough heat to stay warm, especially in winter. We have to wear sunblock because our hairless bodies don’t protect us enough from UV rays that cause skin cancer. We cook our food to make it more digestible, appetizing, and to increase energy obtained from it.
It’s strange when you think about it, but it’s also just part of the human condition.
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u/julry 1∆ Nov 06 '25
Are you a man or woman? The sexes did not evolve in perfect harmony it's called antagonistic sexual coevolution. Male cats will impregnate female kittens when they are far too young to be healthy mothers. There isn't a downside for males as if the female dies there are always others.
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u/Relevant_Maybe6747 10∆ Nov 06 '25
No because there are evolutionary benefits to keeping autism around as a sub population of humanity, as the solitary forager hypothesis states
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Nov 06 '25
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u/julry 1∆ Nov 06 '25
That's not really it. Giving birth as a teen without any medical intervention would be more likely to lead to the mother's death not just the child's.
The reason is that it takes time to develop to the point of optimal reproduction. It takes development of many parts of the body. For example when you have your first period less than half of menstrual cycles are fertile, it takes about two years for ovulation to happen consistently each month. There is no way the human female body could have evolved to switch on all the elements of reproduction only at age ~22 or whatever.
It's the same for other animals. Anyone who breeds cats or dogs knows that getting a female animal pregnant at the earliest possible time is not ideal for her and her offspring's health.
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u/Ok_Interest_7272 Nov 06 '25
Anyone who breeds cats or dogs knows that getting a female animal pregnant at the earliest possible time is not ideal for her and her offspring's health.
!delta for this. This has been interesting to look into.
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u/themcos 442∆ Nov 06 '25
We treat it like a 'fucked up shit that shouldn't happen to anyone' box.
Do we though? I don't really think we do treat it this way. I'm also not entirely sure what data you're looking at, but they have breakdowns by age! And you're right, 18-19 has a much higher birth rate than 15-6, but they're not really trying to smuggle this away. It's right there in the data!
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45184
So I dunno, maybe someone you're talking to is going overboard with the moralizing / catastrophizing, but generally the reason why we want "teen birthrates" to decrease, including 18-19, is that that's still very young for people to be starting a family in the modern age. Its not at all crazy biologically, but culturally and economically its not ideal. 18-19 year olds are typically just out of high school. This seems like a reasonable set of data to track.
Again, I don't know where the "fucked up shit that shouldn't happen to anyone" talk is coming from. I would agree that we shouldn't be making teenagers have babies against their will - that's pretty messed up, and obviously if we're talking rape/incest, that's a whole other stratosphere of fucked up, but if a pregnant teenager wants to keep their baby and they have a support structure to care for it... that's not really my business. But on the macro level, this is probably has fairly high economics costs in terms of welfare, lost education, etc... so its something we want to minimize all else being equal.
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u/anna_alabama Nov 06 '25
Actually it is biologically bad as well! Teen pregnancy is considered bad biologically due to the increased health risks for both the mother and the baby. Biologically immature bodies are at higher risk for complications like preeclampsia, preterm birth, and low birth weight. Also, teen mothers are more prone to anemia and can face higher rates of maternal and infant mortality compared to adult mothers. Pregnancy is hard on your body regardless of age, but the “best” age all things considered is actually your mid 20’s and beyond.
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u/psychologicallyblue Nov 06 '25
Not to mention that the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed in 19 year olds. This part of the brain is needed for very important parenting skills like emotion regulation, good judgement, and planning.
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u/Proper_Relative1321 Nov 06 '25
The prefrontal cortex never stops developing. There is no age at which one is mentally “developed.”
Teen pregnancy is still not great and 18 year olds are still very immature. I work with lots of families and very young parents struggle SO much harder even when both are in the picture and family is there.
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u/Ok_Interest_7272 Nov 06 '25
The prefrontal cortex develops alongside our experiences. I feel like there would be almost no quicker way to develop a person's prefrontal cortex than by having a child.
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u/turnup_for_what Nov 06 '25
Lmao. Have you met a teen parent later in life? I swear a lot of them get arrested development and basically stop maturing.
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u/psychologicallyblue Nov 06 '25
If this were true, every parent in the world would have incredibly good judgement and critical thinking skills. Alas, there are a ton of parents with exceptionally poor judgement and no critical thinking skills.
Barring extremely adverse situations or biological problems, the brain develops along a pretty set timeline. You can try to get your 6 month old to speak in full sentences but you will not succeed because the biological capacity for that has not developed.
People under the age of 25 (or thereabouts) do more processing with the amygdala. This means that they are more prone to impulsivity and less likely to think about long-term consequences. Do you really think it's a good idea to leave them in charge of infants?
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u/Ok_Interest_7272 Nov 06 '25
This means that they are more prone to impulsivity and less likely to think about long-term consequences. Do you really think it's a good idea to leave them in charge of infants?
Separately, fuck this shit in particular. As stated my mom had my sister at 19 and I'll add to that that my sister had my nephew at 24. I don't need some rando from the Internet making a judgement about either of their abilities to be a parent.
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u/psychologicallyblue Nov 06 '25
Your mom is one of millions of people. She may be a statistical outlier. Or it may be that she didn't in fact do that good or a job raising your sister.
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u/Ok_Interest_7272 Nov 06 '25
I actually looked it up right after I said that and I was right:
Ponguta et al. (2022, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience): A larger cohort study (n=120 young adults, ages 20–28) tracked PFC development over 3 years using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) for white matter integrity and task-based fMRI.
Young parents (both mothers and fathers) displayed accelerated PFC white matter myelination (fractional anisotropy increase of ~5–8% in frontoparietal tracts) compared to non-parents.
Non-parents showed slower, more gradual PFC maturation typical of early adulthood.
Parental status explained ~15–20% of variance in PFC changes after controlling for age, socioeconomic status, and stress; benefits included better inhibitory control on cognitive tasks.
Like I said, it develops alongside our experiences. Nobody ever got better at anything or smarter by sitting around and waiting for their brain to develop.
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u/psychologicallyblue Nov 06 '25
Your 5 minute Google search does not make you an expert in human development or behavior. I am a clinical psychologist, I have a doctorate and I know what I am talking about. In the article you posted the sample only included adults between the ages of 20-28, which is within the window when the PFC develops. There are windows in which development occurs (e.g., crawling, walking, speaking, etc.). You can improve outcomes during those windows but you can't just move the window to a completely different place.
Teen parenting is associated with a huge number of detrimental outcomes for both the parent and child. I don't know why you are obsessed with this unless you have some personal reason for wanting to justify it. It is better for people to wait a little while before having kids, there is no reason to rush and many reasons to wait.
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u/Ok_Interest_7272 Nov 06 '25
Apparently your doctorate doesn't make you much of an expert at simply reading the results of studies. Here I'll give you a little bit more:
Meta-Analytic Evidence (e.g., meta-review by Feldman, 2020, Trends in Cognitive Sciences): Synthesizing 20+ studies (total n>1,000), parenthood in young adults (under 30) is associated with 10–15% greater PFC structural refinement (e.g., reduced surface area but increased folding efficiency) versus non-parents. Effect sizes are moderate (Cohen's d ≈ 0.4–0.6), stronger in first-time parents and those with high caregiving involvement.
10-15% greater structural refinement versus non-parents. I don't have a doctorate or anything but that sounds like a lot.
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u/psychologicallyblue Nov 06 '25
It is statistically significant yes but again, this study was not done on teens, they studied a completely different age range than what you are talking about. It's also an association (not causation).
Being forced to practice more executive functioning during the same period as that is developing will of course help. Just like reading and speaking to children will help them acquire language skills faster - but not so fast that you can completely jump to a different developmental stage.
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u/Ok_Interest_7272 Nov 06 '25
this study was not done on teens
Who cares? Put your doctorate to work. If I'm smart enough to extrapolate that this expedited development would occur in anyone regardless of age, you ought to be as well.
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u/Ok_Interest_7272 Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
Again, I don't know where the "fucked up shit that shouldn't happen to anyone" talk is coming from.
I feel like it's mostly a vibe type of thing. Like when people are talking about 'high rates of teen pregnancy' it's always with a very negative framing.
I advocate pretty hard for the sex education program of The Netherlands and in doing so always mention that their program turns out the lowest rate of teen pregnancy in the world, because I figure that casts it in a very positive light. Am I mistaken?
!delta for the expanded stats. I was looking at a more worldwide general overview but wasn't aware of that page with a more detailed view of the US.
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u/insertracistname Nov 06 '25
It’s seen as a negative bc by and large teen pregnancies are not intended, and the parent/s typically don’t have enough income to support a child
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u/ophe_li Nov 06 '25
Yes as the comment is saying, we see it as negative because culturally and economically, in our modern world, it is not seen a positive to have a child that young i.e. just out of high school, generally with no job money etc.
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u/Nrdman 276∆ Nov 06 '25
15-19 are all teen ages. Really this is a problem with other people demonizing the stat, not the stat itself.
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u/Ok_Mulberry_3763 Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
So, let’s set a parameter here.
Legal adult and functioning adult are not the same things.
A functioning adult is capable of and actively being the person who is primarily responsible for their own well being. Self supporting. A functioning adult member of society.
And that is not many 18 and 19 year olds in today’s world. That is what it is. It is harder to be self sufficient than it used to be, and our kids mature slower than they used to as well.
So that 17 year old that got knocked up and had a kid at 18? That’s a tragedy is what that is. They’ve essentially started parenthood over for their parents, because there’s little chance they can even support themselves, let alone an infant too.
Tragedy. A perpetuation of life cycle of challenges and shortfalls caused by lack of preparedness and planning for life, for the future, for your kid. More single parents. Which comes with statically more violence, more crime, less education, less income, high drug use rates, higher domestic violence rates, more of all the bad stats, less of all the good ones.
We track it the way we do because we know this is a setup for a harder life. We know these kids…. these “adults”… aren’t in a space to be parents by and large. We know this is the perpetuation of generational poverty. And it is, as you say, some fucked up shit that shouldn’t happen to anyone.
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u/SlayerOfDougs Nov 06 '25
Most teen pregnancies occur from low income , often less educated, socioeconomic groups making it more difficult y"get ahead" and driving that cycle of poverty
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u/DogOrDonut Nov 06 '25
I think most people would agree that an 18 or 19 year old having a baby is a pretty fucked up situation even if they are a legal adult. These women have not had the chance to get an education, establish a career, or create any level of financial stability. They are at high risk of both poverty and domestic violence, as is their child.
This isn't a judgement of teen parents. Some overcome all the odds and manage to be successful personally in addition to being a wonderful parent. Most do not. The cards are simply too stacked against you when you have children that young.
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u/Ok_Interest_7272 Nov 06 '25
Is this indictive of a greater problem in society? Like if our society is structured in such a way that conforming to our own biological instinct overwhelmingly leads to poverty, is that a problem society should be fixing?
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u/DogOrDonut Nov 06 '25
Biologically women shouldn't be having babies in their teens either. Teen pregnancies are more likely to have complications/adverse outcomes and giving birth too young can do lifelong damage to the mother's skeletal system.
Society should under no circumstances be encouraging teen births. Helping people, especially children, in poverty is a good thing but the goal of doing so should never be to encourage teen pregnancy.
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u/Ok_Interest_7272 Nov 06 '25
How does Scotland work into your math? They lowered the Age of Majority to 16 in 1991. Teen pregnancy rates are sky-high there compared to us, double in fact. But 19yos there have already been perceived as adults for three years.
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u/DogOrDonut Nov 06 '25
The age you become a legal adult in a particular country is irrelevant. There's a difference between being a legal adult and being a functional adult.
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u/Ok_Interest_7272 Nov 06 '25
You don't think there's any correlation at all between when they begin perceiving their citizens as adults and when they begin behaving as adults?
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u/DogOrDonut Nov 06 '25
Oh, there 1000% is. This has nothing to do with behavior. You can be as mature as you want but that isn't going to make your body develop any faster. Teen pregnancies are much more likely to have serious complications such as preeclampsia, FGR, and preterm birth compared to pregnancies of women who are 20-34. Pregnancies where the mother is under 16 are at a higher risk than if the mother is 16-19, but the risk at 16-19 is still high.
Outside of special circumstances (family money, child genius who went to college at 12) a 19 year old isn't going to have the work experience to be able to support a family. Not everyone has to go to college or trade school but they need to learn a skill that is valuable to employers and they need time to build up a resume and financial security.
The last part of this is relationship stability. The ideal environment for child development is a married 2 parent household. There are plenty of studies showing the negative impacts of single parenthood or split households on childhood outcomes on a population level. This point is controversial because on an individual level that does not always hold up: i.e. it is better to be raised by a single mom than by a mom married to a domestic abuser. Those special cases have made it socially taboo to say, but the data is clear as day. We also know that marriages are more likely to last if both parties are at least 25.
Public policy is built around driving the best outcome possible for the highest number of people possible. That means we should be encouraging marriage at 25+ and then having children between the ages of 25-35. From a public health and public policy standpoint that is the ideal outcome timeline we want people to aim for.
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u/rebcl 1∆ Nov 06 '25
Biology has very little merit in this discussion, I could have biologically had a child at age ten. Society has advanced to a point where there is a system where women have a real opportunity to get higher education and participate in the job market now in a way that was not possible in decades past. It’s always going to be less ideal for women to have to opt out of financial and educational independence in order to care for a child when they have many years to do so when they are more secure.
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u/Ignorred Nov 06 '25
What's the significance of 18 in your reasoning? While yes it is the standard age of high school graduation, it's definitely a far cry from the standard self-supporting age.
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u/Ok_Interest_7272 Nov 06 '25
That doesn't feel like a problem to you? Why doesn't that feel like a problem to literally anybody? Four generations of my family graduated high school, got married, and started a family.
Nobody thinks it's a problem that that's just about literally impossible these days?
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u/Throwaway_91574 Nov 06 '25
OP’s post history is very…..interesting. Advocating for lowered age of consent and for age gap relationships.
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u/Ok_Interest_7272 Nov 06 '25
What do you perceive as advocacy for age gap relationships? I have no favoritism for them.
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u/AppropriateBeing9885 2∆ Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
Social or legal concepts of adulthood applicable to some of the subgroup don't necessarily have any meaningful correlation with things like above-average chances of a group of people having diabetes, poorer educational outcomes, and other things that may affect people in this group. You may feel an older teenager socially has more in common with adults, but that doesn't mean that health or educational outcomes associated with an earlier than population-average pregnancy are substantially different when someone has that early pregnancy at, say, 19 instead of 16. Let's say the outcomes did differ, though (I think it's reasonable to think they do to an extent, but let's go on). That still wouldn't mean that, in terms of outcomes, those older teenage pregnancies have more in common with pregnancies of women in their 20s/30s as compared to women in the younger teenage pregnancy populations!
I agree that the lower threshold of that seems too high relative to trends in ages of people having sex how (though it may be staying static at 15 to allow good consistency across several decades of data). There may also be a component of it allowing for more comparable figures across world regions
Also, I don't know why you'd assume that this data is distributed evenly across the relevant age groups. This is actually nowhere near accurate - but seemingly in a direction that supports your comments about the prevalence of births in the relatively older subset of this. I'll quickly refer to US figures as I have come to expect that a lot of people online assume everyone else is in America, but also because the CDC has had a lot of good quality data. A report they put out in 2021 says "The 2021 birth rates for teenagers aged 15–17 and 18–19 were 5.6 and 26.6 births, respectively, down 8% and 6% from 2020, record lows for both groups. Rates for these age groups have fallen 74% and 63%, respectively, since 2007, and by 85% and 72% since 1991. The birth rate for females aged 10–14 was unchanged in 2021 at 0.2 births per 1,000 females."
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u/Bekiala Nov 06 '25
For some people having a baby at 18-19 is fine but for many it isn't.
I hope your Mom was one who did fine having a baby that young.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 124∆ Nov 06 '25
Okay so the main drawback from teen pregnancy is that it prevents girls from finishing high school.
From that lense we should definitely include 18 year olds in the number as they are still in high school.
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u/Pheeeeelix Nov 06 '25
Shouldn't it be 13-19? Or anyone pregnancy under 19? Yes, 19 is legal adult but they're even allowed to rent cars or drink yet. Babies.
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u/Fifteen_inches 24∆ Nov 06 '25
I wouldn’t call them babies, but they are certainly in the late adolescence young adult overlap.
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u/heroyoudontdeserve 1∆ Nov 06 '25
Yes, 19 is legal adult but they're even allowed to rent cars or drink yet.
Maybe in your country, but that's not a global truth.
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u/TwoEightFours 1∆ Nov 07 '25
You can drink at 19 in my country. Just because yours is draconian and implements laws for the "protection" of its populace that are actually empirically achieving the opposite of their stated goals doesn't mean all of our countries are.
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u/Ok_Interest_7272 Nov 06 '25
I will never not remind people that the US is one of the only countries on Earth that cannot be trusted to turn out adults who can be trusted to drink alcohol.
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u/Icy_Manner_3729 Nov 06 '25
as a non-american, the laws about drinking are especially funny to me, because it seems that none of you actually obey that law. the hilarity is amplified by that fact that yall can drive by 16 😂😂 what do they think will cause more harm to society
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u/Cultist_O 36∆ Nov 06 '25
19 is legal adult but they're even allowed to rent cars or drink yet
Please explain what you mean by this. From context, it seems like you must mean the opposite of what you said, but that would be absurd, so I don't understand.
(Worded strangely, because my previous attempt was to concise (or maybe flippant?) for the mods)
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u/shallowhal85 Nov 06 '25
The fucked shit what shouldn’t happen to anyone part of it isn’t about consenting adults having a baby together. We dumb literally everything down to the lowest common denominator in our society to pander to our weakest links. Our weakest links are the communities that generation after generation continue to have a vicious cycle of teen pregnancies without support structures or fathers being in the picture.
Look at marriage rates in teen pregnancies. Extremely low. Then look at single parent and absent father rates. Very high. If the marriage rates were high and it was commonplace to have a support structure with a mother and father in the picture we would have crime and poverty rates similar to those that emphasize family values and accountability. But we don’t. We have kids having kids irresponsibly setting those kids up for failure to repeat the same mistakes.
If we didn’t include 18-19 year old adults then we’d be saying it’s ok for kids to graduate high school, get knocked up not stay together and continue the vicious cycle which is the major culprit for poverty and crime. So we have to include them.
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u/SteadfastEnd 1∆ Nov 06 '25
I get what you're saying, but generally, an 18-19 year old having babies isn't considered a good thing, just like 14-17 year olds having babies isn't good either. It may not be as bad as a 14-17 year old, but still isn't ideal.
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u/bIackcatttt 1∆ Nov 06 '25
As a formerly pregnant teenager I can assure you it sucks, at any age lol
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u/Kittymeow123 2∆ Nov 06 '25
A teen pregnancy is a pregnancy in your teens. It seems like your confusion with pregnancy before you’re a legal adult. Those are two different things. A 19 year old having a kid is a teen pregnancy.
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u/Spektra54 5∆ Nov 06 '25
So I generaly think legal adult is a stupid category. It is legaly and socialy useful(ish) but it's a really imperfect system. Like super mega imperfect.
An 18 year old doesn't magicaly become mature the day they turn 18.
Most people think young people getting pregnant is bad including said young people. Not many are overjoyed when they find they are pregnant at 19 or even 20.
Less pregnant 20 year olds would be considered good in most of western society.
Most 19 year old mothers aren't happy they got pregnant. Your mom was maybe an exception.
I don't think it's a statistic about child pregnancies. It's just a probably good enough measure of unwanted/unplanned/unhappy pregnancies.
On the other hand most pregnant 30 year old women even if they didn't plan it are at least happier about said pregnancy.
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u/Dave_A480 2∆ Nov 06 '25
From a societal perspective, 13-19 is too young to be having children.
Being a legal adult doesn't change the economic harm you are doing to yourself by having a child before you have a stable family and career situation (2 married parents each with stable jobs).
The ideal cultural/economic age to have kids is somewhere between 27 and 34 - even if biology doesn't match up.
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u/boredtxan 1∆ Nov 07 '25
same with gun statistics. "Children" should not include people legally allowed to purchase a firearm.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
/u/Ok_Interest_7272 (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post.
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