Quote - > Quote - > Quote - I meant that if they thought it would look like that afterwards it would be a further deterrant.

What, stretch marks on their bellies isn't deterrant enough?!  Obviously there is something more at stake here!  I understand that a lot of them simply want to hold in their arms a 'Living Doll'!  

Perhaps also there is an unconscious biological imperitive here: Historically, girls became women and were married by age 13!  Look at Julliet in the Shakespeare play, she was 14 and considered very marriagable.

I don't think biology had much to do with it. The biology of girls has changed since then. If you look at the diaries of 17th century Puritan girls, you find that the average age of the onset of menses was around 17. Compare that to today...

The young girls getting married were mostly of among the aristocracy for whom marriage was largely a political consideration. At much of the time that 13 year old girls were commonly married, men of this class often did not marry until after age 30. Again, I doubt this was due to biology. Among the lower classes, marriage occurred quite a bit later, keeping in mind also that, given the later menses, teens could happily engage in all sorts of hanky panky without babies appearing until a bit later than they would today.

ETA: The possibility of a future death from smoking does not deter many teens (and many adults). The possibility of death from from drunk driving does not deter some of them (and many adults either). If death is not a deterrent, stretch marks and mutilated genitals surely won't be. Besides, as I said earlier, you have to really believe that sex leads to babies. Despite the fact that we've known this for quite some time, it seems to require actual personal experience to convince some people.

ETA2: It's my understanding that menses among Roman girls was more like it has been in the 20th century (though I'm very weak on classical history). Nutritional status has varied widely from one time period to another, and that no doubt has an effect. I think Roman youths may have married quite young. To me, in many ways late Roman culture seems closer to our own than the Renaissance culture of Shakespeare.

 

I think it's a combination of biology and society. Today teens are just little kids for the most part - not all but the majority - have little to no comprehension of responsibility or consequence, they live for the now. Centuries ago teens were much more mature, and seen as young adults. They had a lot more responsibility on them at very young ages. The further back in history you go the more young teens there were running farms and plantations/estates, or entire armies and kingdoms/empires. Think about it, Alexander the great was only in his 20s when he conquered pretty much all of the eastern world. Joan of Arc was 16 or 17 when she defeated the brits.  

Plus people lived much shorter lives - the average life expectancy was late 30s to mid 40s. Today it's pushing 80. So if we're living longer, and "letting kids be kids" longer, maybe the psychological impact of that has an effect on biology. Even in the US, in the early to mid 1900s girls were getting married and having kids in their early teens and it wasn't a big deal. My great grandfather's first wife died when she was 15 from being kicked by a horse, and she was 6 months pregnant with twins. 

It's only pretty recent that we, as a society, insist on treating teenagers like children for absolutely no logical reason. 

 

~Shane