parenting ages

[burntcopper]

Just read an au fic where Merlin pretty much adopts Mordred while still in Ealdor and the village colludes with him to say that the mum ran off to the city so that no-one'll be able to point at Mordred as a druid boy (Merlin fortunately having the same colouring as Mordred so it's plausible). Merlin is 19 and Mordred is 5-ish.

I didn't think anything of it. the comments, on the other hand, had quite a few americans going 'seriously? that young?'. thinking about it, I've seen quite a few fics where american readers are going 'underage teens having sex and babies? WHA?' whilst the Brits and Europeans are going 'They're teenagers, it happens, let us show you the stats on underage pregnancy in the UK'.

Am I just getting to see a very innocent sector of fandom or is it merely that the rest of the world is far more matter of fact about the issue of teens and pregnancy? (yes, the tabloids are obsessed, but everyone else is generally resigned to it happening as a fact of life)

Comments

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

And the teenage pregnancy rate is actually higher in the US than the UK.(This data is from 1998, but teenage pregnancies went up in the Bush years.) So, actual reality and cultural acceptance are different things, I suppose...

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Oh, hang on, no - that's not teenage pregnancy rates, that's births to teenagers. The rate of abortion for teenage pregnancies in the UK is over 40%, I think, so...