🚀 go-pugleaf

The high numbers of girls in their early teens who become mothers,
especially in American cities, are responding to a pattern in human
evolution that induces people growing up in extremely stressful
circumstances to bear children early and often.  This controversial theory,
drawing on sociobiology, posits that teenage mothers are implementing a
reproductive strategy which, from an evolutionary viewpoint, is a wise
decision.

Jay Belsky, a psychologist at Pennsylvania State Univ., who is the leading
formulator of the new theory, believes that children who grow up in
dangerous conditions are encouraged to increase the chances of having their
genes survive into the next generation by choosing earlier sexual relations,
earlier motherhood, and more children.  One of the more noteworthy
predictions of the theory is that girls who grow up in households where
there is great emotional stress, and especially where the father is absent,
will undergo puberty at an earlier age than other girls.  We propose that
the time of puberty is regulated and influenced to some extent by these
earlier experiences, rather than being a fixed biological given, said Dr.
Belsky.