Stone Age Bodies

Okay, for the purposes of this discussion, puberty is defined as the time when you become physically capable of performing the sex act. Well, that's just for the guys, it's a little more complicated for the girls. I think that, for the girls, we should define it as the time when they are physically capable of becoming pregnant.

Of course the original purpose of sex was to make babies but, from early on, humans, unlike the other animals, have tried to make more out of it than that. I really think that all the religious restrictions that have been imposed on sex were intended to keep, or restore, it to its original purpose. Making a baby, however, is only the beginning, then you have to protect and nurture it until it becomes old enough to make a baby of its own. If people hadn't done that, the human race would have become extinct a long time ago. In primitive societies, the father took care of the protection part and the mother took care of the nurturing part. Nowadays, it seems to take a whole village to raise a child, probably because a kid has to learn more skills than fighting, farming, and fucking to become a successful adult.

Puberty comes to different people at different ages, but the average age is about 12. In ancient times, kids got married and started working on their own families at about that age. The men were usually somewhat older than the women, but that's about the average. Nowadays it would be unthinkable to encourage procreation at that age but, in those days, people didn't live as long as they do now, so they had to get an early start if they wanted to ensure that their kids would be old enough to take care of themselves before the old folks kicked off. If you had two kids by the time you were 14, by the time the last one grew up, you would be 26, which was about the average human life expectancy in the Stone Age. When people started living long enough to raise three kids, that's when the population started to increase. Of course it's way different nowadays, and that's the problem: We are trying to live in the Space Age with Stone Age bodies. Theoretically, evolution will solve that sooner of later but, if we don't want to wait thousands of years for that to happen, we might think about giving Mother Nature a little boost to speed things along.

Puberty is useless without sex. It consumes time and energy that could be used for other things. We can't all cure cancer, but we could all use a little more time to develop the skills necessary to be successful in the modern world. Separating sex from procreation might be a step in the right direction, but why not just put the whole program on hold for a few more years? A few years might seem like a long time to a kid, but that kid will likely be old a lot longer than he was young. So what's the hurry?

From what I have heard and read about the Chinese one child policy, they don't exactly force people to have abortions. What they do is offer young couples a bunch of benefits, like better jobs and living quarters and better education for their kid, if they will sign a contract agreeing to have only one child. Then, if they screw up and have a second child, they have to reimburse the state for all those benefits. Under those conditions, abortion must seem like the only logical alternative to many couples. Another thing they are doing is aborting many of the girl babies so that their one child will be a boy. This has resulted in a shortage of women in the country, forcing many men to bring in mail order brides from other Asian nations. If you have one child, and that child brings another person into the country, the net population gain is still two, the same as if you had two kids in the first place. What I heard on the news, though, is that China is reconsidering the policy because they are having a hard time filling all the job openings in their booming industrial economy. Hence, my somewhat sarcastic assertion that they are running out of cheap labor.