Thread: should I feel guilty?

Actually a girl of 11 or 12 having a baby could be facing all sorts of problems, physical and emotional. Current research postulates that girls appear physically mature earlier than they are really ready to bear children safely, as a means of bringing them into the world of women to begin forming the communication and bonding with other women that they need to survive and raise children successfully in a more "natural" life (pre-industrial/agri) Young males actually achieve sexual maturity (the ability to impregnate) long before they start to look like a mature or maturing male. This allows them more time to learn and develop needed skills before they are perceived as competition or a threat by the mature males in their area or group, thus increasing their survival rate.

Research on brain development shows that a few 100 thousand years ago humans under went a change that truly differentiated them from others species. This is that in the teen years the brain under goes significant changes, these aren't completed until the mid 20's. So a human brain is not fully mature until then. The need to achieve this maturity is more important in the very complex world we live in. This development is what allows us to really reason, to look ahead and consider the results of our actions. It's an amazing process. Really Tolkien's Hobbits had it right, our "coming of age" would be more appropriate closer to 30 in terms of our emotional and mental maturity.

But I see nothing wrong with safe sex among teens, it's one of our strongest biological imperatives. Many social constraints were developed to suit the needs of a time when knowlege of reliable birth control methods were either unavailable or lost due to the destruction of cultures' medicinal chain of knowlege. Wars, plagues, colonization and witch hunts help lose that information. There are verbal records that indicate many Native American peoples had effective conception control methods but most of their healing and herbal knowlege was lost with the massive deaths due to exposure to European diseases that they had no immunity to or ability to treat.

Religion, cultural ritual and restrictions on sexual behavior were developed in part to control birth levels among the very young or those unable to support a child.