babies shouldn't have babies

Interestingly enough, in biblical times men didn't generally marry until they were in their 40s. This assured that they were mature enough to handle the responsibilities. The women, however, got married in their late teens.

 

i think people keep on pointing it out because it's not just individual sporadic cases. maybe not a majority, but a large number of teenagers are doing ok as parents.

are reckless and irresponsible teenagers reckless and irresponsible?

...

plenty (not just a smattering here and there) of teenage parents do fine, maybe not phenomenal, or even average, but their children grow up and know how to take care of themselves.

what is your idea of the "right environment"? (this isn't meant to argue anything, i just want a clarification)

not enough, but i thought we were talking about 18 year olds who are legally (in the United States) recognized as adults.

 

Because generalizations don't have babies, individuals do.

 

I wonder where you got that from, because it certainly doesn't relate to my statement.

Generalizations don't eat food, individuals do. Generalizations don't wear clothes, drive cars, buy real estate, fly in planes, go partying, have meetings, do business; individuals do.

Great universal smartass response.

 

There you go impugning my intellect again.

I was being sincere; it's the crux of the issue we seem to be having. When a rule has limited or no applicability and frequent exceptions, it's not a good rule.

 

each family and teen pregnancy (in my limited interaction with them) really is an individual and unique experience for each one. maybe there is a patter to all of them, but if there is, i don't think that teen pregnancies with a negative outcome have been around long enough to make any definitive statements about them, especially when there are so many that turn out with a neutral/positive impact.

 

Ecological fallacy, ftw. Replace "teenagers" with "black people" and many of these same generalizations will be generally true in a general sense. Generalities are generally meaningless.

 

i dont know about that. there's alot to be said for observing and acting on trends. if some guy has a habit of doing coke once a day, the trend dictate's he'll probably be snorting snow the next day too. teen pregnancies have only recently gotten tons of attention since Juno made a bunch of dumb girls think that pregnancy was a pot of gold at the end of a nine month hormonal rainbow. before that, i don't really remember it being in the spotlight.

 

A personal cocaine habit is hardly general and people quit coke everyday. Plus, I'm not sure if your assertion about the effect of Juno is entirely accurate.

 

so trends are purely academic and have no practical use? maybe i can't come up with a good example but i hope i'm getting the point across

 

Trends have practical use, and that is in talking about trends. As long as your trend is drawn from a representative sample, it can give you an idea of what you maybe should expect. A trend doesn't necessarily give you any idea of what you're going to get.

 

well we've hit the "yes huh, nuh-uh" part of the argument. i'm done here

 

"Like" is occasionally inadequate.

 

I was going to mention abstinence-only sex ed as a more likely explanation than Juno for any recent increases in teenage pregnancy, but the forum was doing this weird double-post overwriting thing. I totally agree.

I don't think the fact that adult teenage parents are teenagers is necessarily the reason why some of them are bad parents. Humans are at least partly a product of their environments. A more useful focus for speaking in generalities about potential parenting success might be whether potential parents come from "broken" homes or whether they have support from extended family- these are things that come into play for all parents. There are many more factors that come into play. The only value age has is that it may be correlated with other, more relevant factors.

 

A more concrete example of ways generalities can be useless: generally speaking, risk of down syndrome increases with birth order. It's pretty clear if you look at the data. If you are your mom's fourth kid, you had a higher risk of being born with down syndrome than any of your older siblings. So, knowing this and speaking from a region of generality, one could say "I just don't understand those irresponsible people who have 4 children. Don't they know that risk of down syndrome increases as a person has more kids?" And we could all sit around and feel superior to those foolish four-child-having mothers. Why, couldn't they just keep their legs closed for once? I mean, COME ON?! Probably on welfare too. Amiright? Amiright?! Yeah! *fistbump*

In actuality, the correlation between down syndrome and birth order doesn't exist when one accounts for the mother's age.

Here, dealing in generalities without considering context leads a person to the wrong (but still "generally" correct) conclusion.

 

okay i have to admit, everyone DOES make stupid decisions. teenagers AND adults. I make dumbass mistakes too. But some of are smarter about the mistakes we make, if that makes sense?
Here's an example; this past weekend...a teenager died. He was drunk driving. He flipped his car into the woods, and it burst into flames. And sadly, he burned to death. It is clearly a horrible tragedy. (I know this is sort of completely off subject, but I thought we could discuss something else but yet stay in the lines)
So anyway, obviously this was a hugely poor decision on his behalf. What's even worse is that there was a passenger with him. And he didn't die but he was seriously injured. In the newspaper it said he wasn't drunk at all. SO here was an even more stupid decision! A completely sober person let a completely drunk person drive a car. And look what it cost them. I just think they should've used their brains alot better. It doesn't help people believe us teenagers (or adults) when we say, we can make smart decisions. Cause clearly...this shows we can't.
Plus, I just kinda wanted to rant about this. Because people are pissing me off about his death. And i needed to vent.