One could argue that teens end up pregnant due to hormones, rebellion, religion–or even lack of religion. While I am sure these are factors in some cases, I think another huge factor is "lack of information."
Of course, even with the best information, "things can happen in the dark" that seem less pleasant in "the light of day."
I will seemingly digress from the point of this post for a moment–but I promise, the conversation will all come back together soon enough.
Of course all of this discussion, so far, of teen pregnancy, ignores the fact that Evolution wants it that way–and the younger the better.
One can get an idea of how Evolution thinks in the following examples. If Evolution can conjure up a pregnancy by the age of 13, before the girl "knows any better," just think of how many more reproductive years there are ahead and how many more pregnancies can happen.
These "early-pregnancy" genes get looked upon very favorably by the reproductive process.
Working closely with Evolution (and perhaps part of Evolution) are the long standing religious prohibitions on even preventing pregnancy–let along ending them.
On the other hand, if a woman holds off until she "knows better," or until she has a career, or if she never gets pregnant, or she only has one or two children, those "fewer-pregnancy" genes quickly go out of favor as counter-productive–or better yet "counter-reproductive." Perhaps the few that choose to have fewer pregnancies are merely overwhelmed by all those that "choose" more pregnancies. Of course I use the word "choose" in the widest of contexts.
And of course the boys–we cannot forget the boys–after all it can't happen AT ALL without them. They are equally a part of evolution's insidious little scheme, and they are wired perfectly for the job. To make it even more complicated, it is often considered a right of passage for boys to have sex at an early age.
The big problem with kids however, is that "age" and "willingness-to-acquire-good-information" are at odds with each other.
Add to this the fact that some parents, and society itself, deliberately withholds good information and we have a recipe that plays right into the hands of what nature wants. It seems that parents think that the less the kids know, the better (more good planning on nature's part).
Even the culture we live in is on Evolution's side. Just look at the advertising aimed at pre-teen girls. We would love to think that we can intellectualize the problem away, but Evolution has a grander plan, and frankly favors the "uninformed." In a sense favoring the "stupid" in us all. It will be interesting to see if, as a species, we can "rewire" mother nature–or will we find that religions that frown on birth control had it right all along. For thousands of years some people have tried to figure out how to rewire Nature's plans. I think there was a time when this "grand plan" was necessary to human survival–now we seem on the verge of having too many trees in the forest.
But now to come back around to the point of this post.
This whole teen pregnancy scenario is almost exactly analogous to buying houses.
Buyers are like wide eyed, hormonally driven teens as they run uninformed and unprotected into the house buying process–throwing all caution to the wind.
Uninformed buyers get themselves "in trouble" all the time. Ruining their own lives is not uncommon.
On the other hand, it is easy to recognize an "informed" home buyer (or teenager for that matter) when you see one. They know what questions to ask–and they ask them. They may be shy, but they don't let their nervousness–especially if it is their first time–get in the way of getting what they need.
For example, not only do they know before hand that they want a home inspection–they know what the home inspection should look like–they are not about to get caught with their pants down because of what is going on in all the "dark places" of the home. They actually want to do it out in the open–where everyone can see–in the light of day. They want transparency.
The current economic crisis has shown us that keeping people uninformed, and careless, has resulted in a huge number of unwanted house ownership failures and gotten a lot of people in trouble.
Informed buyers now are less likely to be fooled by a "pretty face," and will recognize the "lipstick" on that flip, for the money pit it really is. They are mature enough to actually be able to wait for the right one to come along and are not easily swayed by silver-tongued suits, in spiffy cars and greased back hair putting the moves on them.
They don't rely on the "parents" involvement or lack of involvement. They fully expect their agents to take care of them and they know what being "taken care of" looks like.
They are informed.
They are protected.
They are after all……….expecting!
By Charles Buell, Real Estate Inspections in Seattle
