Re: child birth
 

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it always seemed weird to me how easy it is for a women to get pregnant considering that humans take care of children for 18 years and its such a drastically life changing event.

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Taking care of a child till their 18 is a modern concept. The reality is at some point the children give more than they take from the clan. The number of years a child is a liability to the clan is usually measured in single digits. The number of years a child/person is an asset to the clan usually requires double digits to measure. A child doesn't have to be very old at all to earn its keep.

When you think about these problems think about them in the context of a human family that lived 10,000 years ago. Looking at it from a modern paradigm will only screw you up.

Stu

Re: child birth
 

But if we accept this, then we have to recognize that humans are "ready" for sex at a very young age. There might be psychological consequences, but these are probably a result of cultural influences (as it wouldn't make sense for early sex to be the biological tendency if there were any kind of long-term negative consequences - natural selection is rarely that sloppy, usually only when there's no alternative).

This implies that the "you can damn well have sex when you're 18" folks are fundamentally in error (to say nothing of the "you can damn well have sex when you're married" folks).

Re: child birth
 

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But if we accept this, then we have to recognize that humans are "ready" for sex at a very young age. There might be psychological consequences, but these are probably a result of cultural influences (as it wouldn't make sense for early sex to be the biological tendency if there were any kind of long-term negative consequences - natural selection is rarely that sloppy, usually only when there's no alternative).

This implies that the "you can damn well have sex when you're 18" folks are fundamentally in error (to say nothing of the "you can damn well have sex when you're married" folks).

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This is very true. Our culture (and most other cultures right now) treats young people like children for much longer than at any other time in history. Delaying adulthood to age 18 is a very new phenomenon. People forget this, and that's why we're so horrified to see children working from sunrise to sunset in Africa to survive. It shouldn't be as big of a shock as it is to us.