Wednesday night’s Moral Maze discussed the question of whether worries about teenage births are really worries about class. I wasn’t able to hear the programme, but I do not doubt that the answer is, in large part at least, a resounding Yes. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I, coming from a long line of teenage mothers myself; my own mother was the exception, waiting until the advanced age of 24 to have me, there was a war on & her country needed her. I failed in my ambition to carry on the family tradition, missing the deadline by 8 days.
At the time I entered my child bearing years there was no doubt, all the statistics supported it, that to give birth at any age over 30, & especially over the age of 35, was to invite disaster; all the bad outcomes, ranging from maternal death through congenital deformity rose with the age of the mother. You were classed as elderly prima gravida from the age of 27. My obstetrician told me that, in his opinion, from the physiological point of view, 18 was the ideal age to have ones first child.
The first women of the Baby Boom – taking that as those born in 1945 – reached the peak of their fertility at the age of 23 or 24 – nearly 1 in 5 women of that age gave birth in each of those years. But their daughters reduced their fertility to about half that level – only about 1 in 10 gave birth at the ages of 23 or 24. They made up for it later on however – they gave birth after their 35th birthday at almost three times the rate that their mothers had done. Obviously they no longer felt that they were doing something very, very dangerous for the health of themselves or their child.
(Giving rise, incidentally, to the odd phenomenon of a woman who has just qualified for a bus pass out gallivanting with her own mother, still hale & hearty in her eighties, while her daughter has so far failed to make her a grandmother)
All the bad outcomes are still associated with the mother’s age, but this time it is youth that is dangerous.
The fertility rate for girls aged 16 in 2008 was more or less the same as it was for those born in 1945 – 1 in a hundred. Birth rates for 18 & 19 year olds (as well as for women in their early twenties) are running at no more than half their 1945 level.
Medical science has no doubt done much to reduce the dangers to mothers (and their babies) at any age, & abortion is legal now. But we should also remember the social class differences.
Before contraception became freely available to all on the NHS in 1973 the women giving birth at older ages were disproportionately likely to come from the lower classes & to be producing their 4th child at least; nice middle class girls (& their husbands) organised their lives more responsibly. These days women who can be educated & have careers are in a much better position to decide at what age they wish to have their children. And so it is that those giving birth at older ages are disproportionately likely to be drawn from the educated middle classes, who have decided that mature women make the best mothers. If they do have the misfortune to fall pregnant before their education is complete or their position on the professional ladder secure, social pressure, if not their own feelings, make sure that the mistake is dealt with.
In the 19th century the middle classes were alarmed by the rampant fertility of the lower classes because the Condition of the Working Class & the Irish famine seemed to confirm Malthus predictions about the consequences of lack of moral restraint, & because they were chronically worried about whether their income was secure enough to educate their sons & provide for their daughters they generally kept their own family to a reasonable size.
By the early 20th century this had changed into worries about the effect of differential birth rates on the average intelligence of the population. Serious projections proved that the average IQ in London could fall below 100 if the parents strike of the 1930s continued. This, rather than race, was the focus of the English eugenicists.
The children of young mothers are not doomed to a life without achievement or value.
