[ExI] flds raid, was general repudiation...

[Kevin Freels]

> me:
> >>  Teenage girls are exactly in prime-time to have babies;
> Anna:
> >Please state references.
> 
> Anna, there is a simple biological logic.  A girl can't 
> become pregnant
> until she reaches puberty. That is the peak of her fertility 
> because the
> number of her eggs when she reaches puberty is already on a 
> decline. For
> couples having unprotected sex, the teenage girls will beat the older
> women for ease of conception.
> 
> From:
> http://yourtotalhealth.ivillage.com/aging-infertility.html
> 
> "One of the most important explanations for age-related 
> infertility in
> women is the declining number of genetically normal available 
> eggs. The
> peak number of eggs (also known as oocytes) is achieved long before
> women even consider becoming pregnant: when a female fetus is 4-
> 5 months
> old, still in the mother's uterus, it possesses up to 6-7 
> million eggs.
> By birth, this number drops to 1-2 million and declines even further
> when, at the start of puberty in normal girls, there are 300,000-
> 500,000eggs. Several hundred oocytes are lost during the 3-4 
> decades a woman
> has regular menstrual cycles through the monthly development and
> ovulation of an oocyte. Many other oocytes are lost through triggered,
> natural cell death. When a woman reaches her mid- to late 30s, 
> when she
> has about 25,000 eggs left in her ovaries, the loss rate of oocytes
> accelerates. In addition, as a woman ages the ability of her 
> oocytes to
> divide and distribute the genetic contents normally declines. The
> likelihood that an oocyte with an abnormal number of chromosomes 
> will be
> fertilized increases with age."
> 
>
I wholeheartedly agree that the concern for girls having children at such a young age is much more a cultural concern than a biological one. I've already stated my thoughts previously about this. I just wanted to point out that the quality and quantity of eggs only benefits the baby from an evolutionary perspective. Once that baby is born it doesn't matter if the mother lives 15 or 50 years. There can still be health concerns when a very young girl has a baby at such a young age. For example, often the hips have not widened to a point where the baby can be passed easily which increases complications. Various sources put the ideal age from a biological standpoint ranges between 13 and 17. 

What I find interesting is that while our culture seems to be continually pushing the "prime" child bearing years towards later life and the population numbers are growing stagnant, the age of sexual maturity in women is actually growing younger. Girls now are maturing at much younger ages than they did just a couple decades ago and the prime age is of course decreasing as well. 
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