07/15/2007 Ageism And Anything Called Romance

07/15/2007 Ageism And Anything Called Romance

Writing recently about sexual subversion, I have started thinking about the assertion of evolutionary psychologists that the most sexually attractive females, and the most likely to contribute offspring, are females of the age of 14 or so. This, they argue, would be the most logical age to couple with a mate (in an evolutionary context, of course. They know that it's not necessarily workable with the ethics at large). The last book I read even went so far as to suggest that females of that age feel a stronger romantic attachment to the males they couple with at that time then at other times in their lives. So I am thinking about this...

If a 14 year old girl were to have a child, this would be a child having a child. Is a fourteen year old too young to be a mother? No one in today's society would say yes, I would guess. It's true, however, that once upon a time we expected more of younger people. When 14 year olds were expected to work, to be wives, to act like adults, they did so. It is hard to know whether or not the current level of immaturity we assign such children manifested itself then in ways that I am not aware of or were not written about in history.

It reminds me of a friend I had as a child. One day we were walking to school. He was telling me that this other kid had moved to Alaska, and that they allow kids our age (13) to drive there. We both laughed at the thought of this kid driving around, endangering all kinds of creatures. I don't know if that was true or not, but it makes me think. You could have given me a license at 13, I would not have been in an accident. I was super-responsible back then. I never really felt like a child. You could have given me a Mack Truck to drive and I would have been less likely to get in an accident than a lot of 50 year olds driving around right now.

So tell me; isn't that wrong? Isn't that ageism, to deprive a capable driver of the same opportunity that you give an incapable one just because of his age?

So much of our society bases judgments on age. We advance kids a grade because of age. Some kids graduate high school still functionally illiterate. Others read at college levels before they hit 12 years. We do not allow work based on age. We draft our athletes after a certain age. We select mates largely on the bases of age. We allow people in the army at a certain age. We vote at a certain age.

But despite the fact that we believe ageism to be wrong, we think of the idea of a 14 year old girl as a mom is horrible. But is the idea of a responsible 14 year old girl being a mom more horrible than a 35 year old drug addict being a mom? Because there's nothing stopping a 35 year old drug addict from having a child, is there? And we would consider the idea of rendering her infertile to be cruel.

Is the idea of a 14 year old having sex as horrible as a 30 year old having sex if that 30 year old is incapable of supporting a child? No, it's true, I would never trust a 14 year old to raise a child, but I would point out that there is no actual lack of responsibility or wisdom at that age which would justify this policy. It's true because we believe it's true. And we believe it's true because it's what we want. For the child, she will believe that she still has years of “fun” left, she may feel deprived of a childhood. But she may feel it more meaningful and fulfilling to become a parent, if she were in the right environment. The parent wants to shape the child into the person that the parent wanted to be themselves. They will still have several more years to do that. Any talk of the child having a child of her own would be quickly shot down as the parent does not want the extra responsibility. But it might be better that way.

I mean, if the teenage girl were to have a child, she would learn responsibility early on. The sabbatical from school would only cost her a few months or years. She would benefit from having a family in place to fall back on, and whatever level of wisdom her own parents have from raising their own children. A planned pregnancy in the early stages of a girl's life would allow the girl and the parents to choose a father who would have the financial resources to support the child, and who would likely make a significant investment of time and emotional support. Men willing to give such support would not be so limited in the number of children they give it to. The choice of the father would be separate from the idea of romantic love and therefore a more logical choice could be made.

The girl, then, would have the child young, and not feel the pressure to start a family when she reaches adulthood. She doesn't have to push for commitment in her romantic relationships, and there would be fewer bad marriages as a result.

And remember, this relationship is already happening in high schools everywhere. There are teenage girls dating guys in their mid-twenties all over this country. Often, the resulting pregnancy causes family strife. And the girl sometimes has to go on welfare to support the child. Children, though it is not politically correct to say so, are a strain on the financial resources of any family. And one reason families split apart is often money. And it's true that poorer areas tend to reproduce more than richer ones. That means that a lot of the children that are born are continuing a cycle of poverty. Planning a pregnancy early allows for proper preparations, and shifts the burden of providing resources onto the people who have resources.

The downside of all this might be that there will be an emerging market of young girls being “peddled” by their parents to rich candidates for fatherhood. That seems strange, if not evil, though all this remains logically to the betterment of society and people's happiness in general. And it is all a logical next step to the transformation of marriage and coupling from a political based decision to unite two families and also to control the sexual desires into a quest to find the person you're “destined” to be with. The needs of a child, and the mom, are very practical and need to be separated from anything called, “romance.”