Lapset ovat hyviä synnyttäjiä

Picard (in a Paris thesis) has studied childbirth in thirty-eight mothers below the age of sixteen. He found that, although the pelvis is certainly not yet fully developed in very young girls, the joints and bones are much more yielding than in the adult, so that parturi­tion, far from being more difficult, is usually rapid and easy. The process of labor itself, is essentially normal in these cases, and, even when abnormalities occur (low insertion of the placenta is a common anomaly) it is remarkable that the patients do not suffer from them in the way common among older women. The average weight of the child was three kilogrammes, or about 6 pounds, 9 ounces; it sometimes required special care during the first few days after birth, perhaps because labor in these cases is sometimes slow. The re­covery of the mother was, in every case, absolutely normal, and the fact that these young mothers become pregnant again more readily than primiparae of a more mature age, further contributes to show that childbirth below the age of sixteen is in no way injurious to the mother (Havelock Ellis: Studies in the Psychology of Sex)