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Not to mention that a teenage girl with experience caring for a younger sibling will think twice, three times, and maybe four or five or six times before hopping into bed with a boyfriend and making a baby of her own. She begins to have a clue about how much work is really involved.

Excellent points here, Campion!

In my own experience, though my immediate family is small (just us two kids), the extended family is HUGE, and being one of the oldest of the scarce girls in the family (we are strangely top-heavy with boys, by a ratio of at least 4:1), I had TONS of practice caring for babies and young children while I was growing up. By the time I had my own kids (AFTER marriage; I was no dummy), I was practically an old pro.

As for "thinking twice about making a baby of my own" before I had a responsible and caring husband to help me...well...you ain't just whistlin' Dixie, Jack. I certainly did, as did all my cousins, too. No one out of 73 made that particular mistake (though we made plenty of others). It didn't hurt that I had a 6'6" Daddy who insisted on "meeting" any dates brave enough to come around, either. LOL

Regards,

PS: My uncle and his wife are the proud parents of 12 children. They hold the title for "largest single family" in our Family. They lived in a 2 bedroom house, where Aunt and Uncle had one bedroom, the 2 girls had the other, and 10 boys shared a barracks that was created in the basement. The other half of the cellar was the playroom. From watching how that family was run, I have come to the following conclusion: You don't need a mansion, you need ORGANIZATION. Auntie had it in spades.

a teenage girl with experience caring for a younger sibling will think twice, three times, and maybe four or five or six times before hopping into bed with a boyfriend and making a baby of her own

I've often said that nothing puts a young woman off the opposite sex like changing a 3-year-old brother's diapers.

(However, doing laundry and cleaning bathrooms for six males is close.)