19 Year Old Doesn't
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Dear WWWFM,

I am a 19-year-old male and I just have to say that my generation is lost to this advice and that most women my age have already had children with boys that refuse to raise kids because they are not grown up. What drives women to go after guys with whom they know there will be no future? And then when they are older and have kids, they want a more solid relationship.

Dear Zeb,

Most 19-year-old women you know have already had children? Wow! Your comment prompted me to look up some statistics. According to the Annual Summary of Vital Statistics: 2005, the teen pregnancy rate is at an all-time low at 40.4 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19, which is the lowest rate ever recorded since data has been collected starting about 65 years ago. Obviously this statistic doesn’t apply to where you live.

I don’t have an answer to your question about why young women hook up with men who inevitably don’t take responsibility for either the relationship or the children they fathered. Assuming the girls you observed haven’t been raped or pressured to have sex (which apparently is common), teenagers just aren’t very good at thinking about consequences.

The advice on our site (you must have read our page on FATHERHOOD ) is geared toward an older, more mature crowd – men who are in long-term relationships and marriages or men who want to have a serious relationship – although the advice also holds for younger people in their 20s and 30s.

But you bring up a big issue, namely, that some women who got pregnant at a very young age are stuck in bad relationships with irresponsible partners. True, they chose the men with whom to have children, but at age 19, your ability to make wise, far-reaching life choices is limited by nature. These women have to decide if they are willing to stay in bad relationships or move on and find more mature, loving, and responsible men to be with. Easier said than done, of course. They have to be able to support themselves and raise their children alone, no easy task these days, especially if they have limited job skills.

As for the men in these ill-fated relationships: one hopes they will mature as time goes on and become the best fathers and partners they can be. If you didn’t have any good role models growing up or had a tough childhood for any other reason, the fathering job is even harder. But everyone has choices, no matter how bad the economy is or how rotten your own childhood might have been – being there or not being there for your kid and your partner is a choice. Stepping up to the plate and accepting responsibility – or not – is a choice.