[npteljes]

>There’s a reason biology makes you capable of having children at a young age

Biology and evolution doesn't really have a huge baseline. You basically have to survive until you reproduce successfully. Successfully here meaning that the offspring also has to do the same. If this is sustainable - the species is viable.

But, us humans like to know better. That's what the entire civilization is all about. And on the path of knowing better, we found that getting pregnant early actually is a detriment to the individual, their immediate surroundings, and society as a whole as well*. So, we do things like birth control and education and things like that.

Which is far from bizarre, if you look at human activity as a whole. Basically every facet of life goes against "biology" or rather basic nature, if you think about it. We augment ourselves and distance ourselves from it to a very large degree - stay indoors a lot, use clothing, learn abstract knowledge, look at screens, eat processed food, observe the myriad of societal rules. Which all are kinda weird - but they also aren't, if you consider the history of humanity.

*https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/adolescent-...

[Aeolun]

> we found that getting pregnant early actually is a detriment to the individual, their immediate surroundings, and society as a whole

You are citing a source that talks about unintended pregnancies (often as a result of sexual abuse) in developing nations. With nearly half of those being prematurely aborted in some (medically safe or not) way.

I’m inclined to believe that the support system throughout most of history was better than what these girls get.

[coldtea]

>But, us humans like to know better. That's what the entire civilization is all about.

You mean the kind of knowing better that led us to destroy the environment, and appears to be removing whole populations from the gene pool with way below subreplacement rates?

[npteljes]

Exactly that kind of knowing better.

It's a bit tongue-in-cheek because of the multiple interpretations of "knowing better". On one hand, we "know better" in a way that we, as in all humans, constantly try to control nature and the natural flow of things. Our entire civilization and way of life is a result of that.

On the other hand, I mean it a bit sarcastically, because I'm not convinced on a philosophical level that this kind of living is morally, ethically, humanely superior than that of ancient people's living. Often it looks like that progress is just for the progress' sake, an eternal power struggle, a Prisoner's dilemma. In short, when I ask myself "is progress good", I don't feel strongly toward any answer. I meant to encapsulate this by phrasing it as "knowing better".

But the drive to "know better" is there for sure, even though the results vary. I do believe that good can come from it, and that many efforts actually resulted in lessening human suffering, which I consider a good thing. I mean here efforts like equal rights movements, reproductive health and education, and proper access to medical help (to stay on topic).

[navane]

And now, while preventing and tabooing teen pregnancy, society is about to collapse on itself by lack of reproduction. We coddled our kids to extinction.

> Successfully here meaning that the offspring also has to do the same. If this is sustainable - the species is viable.

[npteljes]

Raises the moral question of what kind of living is worth it, and on what level is it okay to impose on one another. Looking at how families from teen pregnancies fare*, I'm absolutely positive that mitigating these is far from the biggest contributor to "societal collapse". Doing anything to raise this number is not going to do society any good, even if it results is a larger number of children on paper. Taking proper care of this situation is not any kind of coddling, more like basic human decency.

* https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10002018/

[Aeolun]

That was a very interesting read. Even if it leaves me feeling like the reason teenage pregnancies are ‘bad’ is mostly because society is not set up for/condemns them. A teenage mother in a healthy family unit that drops the child with their parents while they continue to attend school will have significantly better outcomes.

I’m fairly certain a teenage pregnancy in Japan would work out more or less the same, because society is set up to facilitate people working 9h/day and dropping the kids off at daycare basically from several months of age. Of course, that’s combined with massive social stigma, so it wouldn’t on the balance really help things.