Tennessee Sex Education to Combat "Gateway Sexual Activ

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Uh? No, their bodies are still growing. Being a teenager and giving birth vaginally will make it more likely for complications to happen, such as... dying.


Sure they did. Those who managed to live past infancy were generally able to live into old age.


Just because they don't need to "seek a career", doesn't mean that they have nothing to do all day. Pre-industrial life isn't easy or boring, it's a very intensive full time job in itself. They don't have washing machines, stoves, or other tools to make life easier.


You're right, but having children while they're teenagers is not the solution.


It's not just pregnancy that's a problem, sexually transmitted diseases are a big problem. Even people who have been educated about safe sex practices still sometimes make mistakes that they regret later. Even when having oral sex, you're supposed to have protection, yet many people think it's safer than vaginal sex.



Very much agree with you...

You might be interested in the book Ancient Bodies, Modern Lives.

I think there is a lot of peer pressure for teenagers to have sex.

Well, pregnancy seems to be the problem that is getting the most attention.

Maybe issue every boy a fleshlight, and every girl a sybian, at his/her confirmation or bar/bat mitzvah.

Tell them to entertain themselves and avoid intimate contact with others until the honeymoon.

I don't personally like the idea of frivolous sex, but trying to control teenagers with this sort of BS while failing to educate them about birth control is stupid and wrong. Teenagers are supposed to have sex, otherwise nature wouldn't have equipped them with the sex drive and the capability to reproduce.

My Dad had told me how, when he had been going to high school in the thriving metropolis of Elk, Washington (sarcasm) in the 1940's, that among the children of the God fearing holly rollers who had made up the majority of the school body, half the girls in his class had never graduated because they had gotten into the family way.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Had they received no instruction on the evil consequences of vaginal coitus?

I suppose not. Obviously, kids can figure things out.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

All female mammals have sex and get pregnant as soon as they reach sexual maturity, and in all cases, their bodies are still growing. Female cats, for example, get in heat for the first time between 5 and 9 months of age, and are fully grown at an age of 2 years.

As for humans: Historically, girls were married between ages 8 and 14. Which is horrible of course. But if it was incredibly risky for teenagers to give birth, humans wouldn't be quite as populous. As far as the health of the offspring is concerned, 16 year old girls are a lot more likely to give birth to a healthy child than 35 year old women.

Of course I'm not saying that they should, but people shouldn't have children at age 40 anymore either. If someone wants to have children, the ideal time is probably between 20 and 30. From age 30 on, the risk of birth defects increases considerably, and so does the risk of miscarriages.



The life expectancy at birth was 33 in the upper paleolithic, and went down to 20 in the neolithic period. Even in the early 20th century, people only had an average life expectancy of 31.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expec ... _over_time

Of course some people managed to live into old age (whatever old age meant in their case. Without access to clean drinking water and clean, balanced food all year round, people age a lot faster due to greater oxidative and bacterial stress). But living to celebrate one's 60th birthday was a lot rarer than it is now.

The sad thing is that this last sentence is supposed to be the sensible counter-opinion. Of course comprehensive sex education is a good thing and the only way to reduce teenage pregnancy, but why is it supposed to delay sexual intercourse? I don't think that it does, and I'm not sure if this should be the goal.

Teenagers are going to have sex. They always did, and they always will. Educate them, supply them with condoms, and make it as simple as possible to get oral contraceptives.

The sad thing is that this last sentence is supposed to be the sensible counter-opinion. Of course comprehensive sex education is a good thing and the only way to reduce teenage pregnancy, but why is it supposed to delay sexual intercourse? I don't think that it does, and I'm not sure if this should be the goal.

Teenagers are going to have sex. They always did, and they always will. Educate them, supply them with condoms, and make it as simple as possible to get oral contraceptives.

But "sexual maturity" is not the same as "as soon as she gets her period". Young girls who already menstruate have anovulatory cycles most of the time.


Keyword being "anymore". In populations who eat healthy foods, a 40 year old woman is much healthier than modern women and is able to have healthy children. I saw this a lot in the country I was raised in (before they started eating crap like USA).


"Life expectancy" is not the same as "age that most people live to".
Even the link you give says: "Life expectancy at birth takes account of infant mortality but not pre-natal mortality."
What does that mean? That when calculating life expectancy, because most babies die, the average is skewed to 30. A better way would be to see the life expectancy of those who survive infancy.
See the comment next to the first item: "At age 15, life expectancy an additional 39 years (total age 54)"

While anovulatory cycles are common for young girls, they are also often interspersed with ovulatory cycles. Historically, girls got pregnant at disturbingly young ages. Even today, there are many records of 9 or 10 year old children giving birth. Here is a very unsettling list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_yo ... th_mothers



Physical health is not the same as reproductive health. No matter how healthy and fit a 40 year old woman might be, her fertility (both ovum quantity and quality) will nonetheless have started to decline at age 27-35, while the risk of miscarriages and fetal chromosomal abnormalities greatly increases with age.



I'm aware of that. That's why I added "Of course some people managed to live into old age". But dying in one's sleep from a heart attack (which also occured earlier in life in historical times, due to greater environmental stress) wasn't the norm.

Many men died in wars, many women died giving birth or from post-birth complications, and both sexes died as a result of diseases, wound infections, food poisoning, accidents, natural disasters, famines, blood feuds, or violent crime. Just consider how many people had an appendicitis at some point in their life. None of them would have survived prior to the late 18th century. I think the life expectancy at birth gives a pretty good idea at which age people died on average, despite the high infant mortality rate in historical times. Which wasn't quite as high as you make it out to be:



I don't think there was any point in human history where most babies died, other perhaps than during a bubonic plague epidemic. I've read that in medieval Europe, approx. 1 out of 3 children did not reach adulthood. Humanity would long be extinct if human children had ever had a survival rate below 50%.

I find it funny and don't care.

I don't think there can ever have been an age in which the average person only lived to 20.
There would have been young orphans everywhere, being eaten by wolves.

Not if the ladies practised unprotected coitus.

Imagine a typical Catholic family with 18 children. If only half survived, that would be 9 new adults in the new generation.

Actually there was. I think I remember Prof. Philip Tobias, one of South Africa's most respected palaeoanthropologists, saying on the radio that, on average, people only lived to age 25 during the palaeolithic period (though maybe not in the late palaeolithic era). This actually does not mean that most children were left to fend for themselves. After all, girls can have children at 16, and even get pregnant as young as 13 years old.