On American Teenage Pregnancy

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Yup - it is in our nature to be influenced by nurture.

seandr on January 13, 2012 at 10:59 AM

Is he really saying 50% of raw-foodist women don't menstruate?? That sounds fucked up.

sirkowski on January 13, 2012 at 11:17 AM

Plus, we're pumping our pre-teens full of hormones from milk and meat, so that may well account somewhat for early menstruation.

Throw in "abstinence" education (no real sex or contraception education), restrictions on abortion and Plan B for teens and you have the perfect storm.

Red states have a higher rate of teen pregnancy, although they also may be plumping up their teens on more high fructose corn syrup, too.

judybrowni on January 13, 2012 at 11:23 AM

So we're feeding our girl children well, but failing to educate them. Interesting set of priorities we have here.

I had not considered nutritional abundance as a factor in teen pregnancy, but it makes sense. The increase in the instance of breast cancer as compared to say 200 and 300 years ago is similarly attributed to 'better' nutrition and the resulting earlier onset of menstruation: the earlier periods start, the more cycles, plus fewer children and lower rates of breastfeeding (suppresses ovulation) equate to more cycles and somehow results in more breast cancer. Sorry that I can't point to specific research, I'm using my phone and Verizon 3G sucks ass.

catballou on January 13, 2012 at 11:35 AM

Charles,
Echoes what John Donne (?) once remarked "No man (or woman) is an island". I believe that is true biologically as well as philosophically.

However, I take great issue with your phrase "Americans are always taught to forget". That's simply not true. Like other humans, when taught well we remember much.

I disagree with you and Hrdy as well. Morality does play a role in "American Teenage Pregnancy". I believe there is much more at play including the role of the behavior of boys and men and the conventional family.

On the other hand, I do believe, body fat may play a role in women's fertility. But, much more discussion is needed.
It is quite a complex issue.

lark on January 13, 2012 at 11:39 AM

Hmmmm, so food makes ya pregnant....;-Q

pupuguru on January 13, 2012 at 11:58 AM

Anorexics rarely menstruate as well. Menstruation can also cease in situations when women engage in extreme sports. Breast feeding women don't menstruate from approx. nine to 24 months. It's a form of conservation of energy. Ovulation is "costly" in terms of caloric intake. Given the amount of nutrients required to successfully carry a pregnancy to term, it makes sense that the process would quiesce when greater calls are being made on the body.

thatsnotright on January 13, 2012 at 12:05 PM

There's no way raw foodists get enough fat and protein. The problem may not be lack of calories so much as lack of fundamental macronutrients, which is something we, as a society, have forgotten thanks to the promotion of low-fat/high-carb "diets".

keshmeshi on January 13, 2012 at 12:30 PM

Wrangham's point was that the actual caloric content of food, the calories that are available to the body, are not as stated in the standard nutritional literature, but depend in many cases on cooking. Raw food isn't nearly as digestible, so people who eat it exclusively, even if they eat a lot of it, are malnourished.

He also points out how virtually no one in the nutritional field, or in any other field, really, is even the slightest bit interested in this fact. Nutritionists are idiots for the most part, of course, but seriously, no one knows or wants to know how the body uses cooked food? It's kind of weird. The more research he tried to do, the less he found.

Fnarf on January 13, 2012 at 12:34 PM

It's worse than that they're not interested, Fnarf, it's that they actively propagate a model that is so simplistic as to be detrimental: counting calories. The caloric value of food is determined by burning food in a crucible and measuring the energy it gives off, as if our stomachs are crucibles and we shit ash. There's lots more, like how certain foods are more easily digested (and so more energy comes from eating an equivalent caloric value of some foods than others), but it's a nice, smooth, informative read. Worth picking up if you've ever said or thought "Losing weight is easy; calories in, calories out." It's not quite as simple as that.

Mike on January 13, 2012 at 2:07 PM

@7 I don't think it's so much that ovulating is costly (although it does have some cost), but that pregnancy is very expensive and dangerous. It's not worthwhile for a woman's body to try for a pregnancy if it isn't likely to have the resources to deal with it reasonably well. Pregnancies leach resources from the mother when there aren't adequate resources for both. If the supply is really short, then it's a big investment for no gain as the baby is not going to be likely to live. It's just sensible to not allow a pregnancy to happen when the body can't afford it. It's like a biological budget. Better to wait for a time when resources may be more plentiful, and that way you may have a living baby, a living mother, and even be able to raise that baby to a point where it can function on its own.

In short, it's not just the cost of running a menstrual cycle, but that the whole point of ovulating is to get pregnant, and if you can't afford the pregnancy, then why bother? (Sadly, we cannot consciously make this choice for other reasons easily and just flip a little off switch on menstrual cycles with no health consequences.)

on January 13, 2012 at 2:25 PM

Let me see if I understand. Rates of teenage pregnancy are rising not because of "moral decline", but because girls begin menstruating earlier in life? That sounds a lot like "guns don't kill people; people kill people." Hrdy gives no evidence about rates of unprotected teen sex, so she presumably has no idea whether "moral decline" (I hate that phrase) actually has anything to do with rising teen pregnancy rates. Looks to me like she has identified an additional unrelated factor in the rise of pregnancy rates, without eliminating the "moral decline" factor.

Can someone explain to me how we're so sure that abstinence education has caused a rise in teen pregnancy rates? I understand the correlation, but no one has ever advanced to me a convincing case for causation. In India in the 70s, after all, my parents had basically no information about sex, but teen pregnancy rates were low as hell. It seems to me foolish and premature to assume that cultural values and mores have had no effect on rising teen pregnancy rates.

dchari on January 15, 2012 at 6:04 PM

On American Teenage Pregnancy

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