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Many women in the United State postponement marriage to chute - start their careers , but women in numerous other country tend to follow ancient tradition and espouse young , sometimes too young . A late report by Boston University School of Public Health research worker Anita Raj and workfellow take that half of Amerind women aged 20 to 24 had been Saint Bridget when they were under 18 , the effectual age for marriage in India ; and more than 22 pct were married before age 16 . Although young marriage might be accept in India and frowned upon by other cultivation , the real problem , the study shows , is that the body of cleaning woman that age are but not quick for replication , and so they suffer . Reaching menarche , that is experiencing amenstrual period , is often considered the leaping to fair sex for daughter . But that leap is much slower than a monthly period might indicate , and not really a planetary house that a human female is ready to regurgitate . or else , all young woman experience a fourth dimension of " adolescent sterility " during which they have period , but no ovulation , or when conception is a risky business enterprise because the reproductive organ are not yet fully shape in cattiness of menstrual cycling . Interestingly , the same sort of time where female bodies seem adult , but are not , occur in our non - humans primate cousins , the scallywag and imitator . Young female macaques might exhibit big ruby-red swelling on their backsides that in adult females signal ovulation and the possibility of conception , but in young female monkeys it ’s just exercise . These " fiddling young woman " might also be in the throe of hormonal urges , but behavioral enquiry shows they have no approximation what to do with their urges . A young baboon with her first swelling will take the air up to a male , gift her shining Bolshevik behind as if she is quick for sex , and then lead away yell . Underage monkeys do become pregnant , but when they do , but they are sometimes inadequate female parent , and their bodies take a farseeing time to multiply again . Although mating and pregnancy are the nitty-gritty of generative achiever ( and development ) , nobody said it was the perfect system in any species . Instead , it ’s a process , and pushing that operation only asks for trouble . The girls in Raj ’s study whomarried youngexperienced more unwanted pregnancies , they terminated their pregnancy more often , and more than 13 per centum opted for sterilisation . No wonderment . Marriage under age 18 in India means no contraception and at least three babies born two years asunder , a generative agenda that would exhaust any woman , under or over 18 . Many of those pregnancy also do n’t turn out well . The March of Dimes report that babies of teens are more at risk for premature birth and low birth weight , major health topic , and these babies expire more often than babies of older mothers . No matter the land , women are plainly not ready to regurgitate until they are adults , and that means after age 18 or even sure-enough when the body has had a few years of menstrual cycles under its belt and has become fully woman , rather than girl . Culturally , we can push reproduction all we desire , but biology let ’s us acknowledge the bound .
Meredith F. Small is an anthropologist at Cornell University . She is also the author of " Our babe , Ourselves ; How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent " ( link ) and " The Culture of Our Discontent ; Beyond the Medical Model of Mental Illness " ( liaison ) . Her Human Nature column appears each Friday onLiveScience . [ Human Nature Column Archive ]
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