Tim Worstall

Madeleine’s Surprise.

Madeleine Bunting pulls something of a surprise today. It’s almost as if she’s read an economics book at some time (something of a first for Groan columnists) for she seems to have grasped, in the context of teenage pregnancy, the concept of opportunity costs.

So when a girl at 17
decides to go ahead and have a baby, there is no tragedy of lost
opportunity other than the local checkout till waiting for her low-paid
labour. Why is it that in Labour’s crusade against teenage pregnancy,
it can’t recognise that some of these teen mums are making reasonable –
even moral – decisions about what they value in life, and what they
want to do with their lives? How did opting for baby and motherhood
over shelf-stacking ever become a tragedy?

If only we could get her to recognise such concepts when she tackles other subjects, and her sorry crew of co-writers to recognise it at all.

In

2 responses

  1. Tom Fuller Avatar
    Tom Fuller

    The only reasons to delay pregnancy past the age of 14 or 15 are economic. The average age of birth was around or below 15 for most of human existence. It is still there in most of the developing world. I believe that 20 years ago, the average age of the mother at time of giving birth in India was around 12.
    The economic reasons in developed socieities are, however, valid. That just makes it more important to present common-sense arguments to teenage girls, rather than cloaking it in pseudo-moral mumbo jumbo.
    If I were in the business of advising society, I would counsel structures that improve the life chances of young mothers and leave off telling them how to live their lives. Make sure they understand the consequences, make sure they have alternatives and know of them, and make sure that early pregnancy is not a lifelong sentence to dreary labour. But don’t make the choices for them.

    Reply
  2. Antonia Avatar
    Antonia

    I’ve linked to you from my blog – there’s a few posts about this topic you may find of interest.
    best wishes, Antonia

    Reply

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