Its better that teenagers get pregnant than 55-year-olds

By Melanie McDonagh Published: 6:59AM GMT 01 March 2010

Comments 48 |

Romeo"s Juliet was not nonetheless fourteen

OK then, how old was Juliet, as in Romeo and? Hats off if you got it: she was not utterly 14. And how old was Juliets mom when she had her? Thats one for the know-alls, but the answer is, usually about the same age. In Renaissance Verona, or rather Elizabethan England, carrying babies at the age of fourteen was no big deal.

It competence be since shes outlayed multiform years steeped in this duration for work purposes that the Booker leader Hilary Mantel wonders if theres something to be pronounced for this approach. That, and her own experience of infertility: her ovaries were private in her late twenties since of illness.

2009 informative planner Raise a potion of ginger drink to Enid Blyton Ferries on a Sunday float roughshod over sensibilities Facebook revelations are annoying but frequency a security crack Rome and Juliet, Shakespeares Globe, examination

Now she reflects that we competence have got things the wrong approach turn when we think about the right time for reproducing. "Theres this multiply of women for whom societys calendar was utterly wrong. I was ideally able of environment up a home when I was 14. I competence have thought, "now is the time for carrying a integrate of immature kids and when I am thirty I will go behind and Ill get my PhD".

This, of course, is not utterly where everybody else is at on this subject. One of the Governments criteria for measuring the own success is shortening the series of teenage pregnancies. Its been bad at achieving it, as we saw with the total published last week, but the still trying, customarily by bombarding teenagers with recommendation on how to "access" contraceptives. But what if ministers are wrong and Hilary Mantel is right? Granted, shes overstating it. Having immature kids prior to the benefaction age of agree would get in the approach of GCSEs, but how about at seventeen or 18?

Plainly, girls are usually half the story. The odds of removing the fathers of their immature kids to solve down, get tied together even, in their late teenagers and early twenties, is probably slim; but theres regularly the probability that it competence introduce a low clarity of shortcoming in cruel immature men.

Its not as if the benefaction incident is wholly satisfactory: immature kids are sexualised early but usually the losers get profound young. As for middle-class girls, they put facsimile on hold until university, career and debt are sorted, a time that competence fit all solely their bodies. Last week, it was reported that women of 55 are "queuing" for IVF diagnosis at London infertility clinics to turn profound with alternative womens gametes. Thats unseemly. Given a toss-up in between teenagers carrying babies and grandmothers carrying them, I think Im with Hilary Mantel.

...

The publisher Christopher Hitchens is on a hurl right now, customarily for his harmful put-down of Anna Ford, after she dissed his crony Martin Amis, but additionally by trait of his new memoirs. Of his occasional lapses in to homosexuality at Oxford, he recalls that these enclosed "mild and softly enjoyable" flings with dual youths who after became members of Margaret Thatchers government. Cue for a pause, for the bad-minded between us to work out that Tory ministers were at Oxford with Chris H. But it wouldnt make a difference most if we guessed right. Once, being outed as happy would be domestic genocide between Tories. Now the flattering well a short cut for inclusion in David Camerons A-list.

...

Spare a thought for Christopher Chope MP, who currently submits a apply to for the postpone of Bellamys Bar in the Palace of Westminster that the House of Commons Commission wants to reinstate with a nursery/crèche at a cost of �500,000. It was refurbished not long ago at a cost of �480,000. That creates scarcely a million quid, dear reader, of the money. Somehow, the deputy of a good-natured celebration corner with a hothouse is a dispiriting embellishment for where were at.