PUBERTY AND LEGAL AGE 'CONFUSE' SOME OLDER MEN

PHOTO: FORMER GOVERNOR OF ZAMFARA STATE AND NIGERIAN SENATOR, SANI AHMED YERIMA, WHO IS ACCUSED OF MARRYING A 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL.
PHOTO: FORMER GOVERNOR OF ZAMFARA STATE AND NIGERIAN SENATOR, SANI AHMED YERIMA, WHO IS ACCUSED OF MARRYING A 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL.


Nature determines the age of puberty and increasing number of girls are reaching that age sooner than their mothers. It is the same in boys but they do not get pregnant so it is easier to hide their promiscuity. If the girls are tempted by boys their age groups, it is a problem but a disaster if taken advantage of by older men. Unfortunately, some older women have also been caught with boys under age because they feel they are mature.


It may be a conflict between nature coming alive well before these girls and boys are ready for the big league and community standard or law that demands education and grooming of our children before they get into sexual relationships with anyone. The line between nature as in the age of puberty and legal age must not be crossed however thin it may be, unless someone wants to risk community shame or banishment in jail.


The cost of teenage pregnancies weigh heavily on girls since educational development and time to be a kid are interrupted or lost in many cases. It deprives them the chances of contributing as leaders of the future. Old men or teenage boys are not the only ones that should carry the blame; ranging hormones, sex on television and peer pressure to be cool contribute their share. There are also shady businesses disguised as motherless baby’s homes encouraging and willing to take the babies for adoptions and sale.


In order to answer the real question of what really attracts older men to younger girls, it is important to take the sexual span into consideration. Nature can be fooled by both animal and plants. We see plants and crops growing during unusual periods as in drying season when we have rain fall that seeds need to grow. For those in cold climate, you may see flowers come alive in the winter during mild days just like spring.


Children that are well fed balanced nutritional diet, or those exposed to growth hormones in beef and chicken tend to get bigger than their parents. So we see bigger boys thinking they are men already and girls developing most of their endowment early as well. Some mothers have to warn ladies that their sons are teenagers and must stay away. Of course the son may not like that from the mum that gives out his age.


The consequences are greater in girls because early development also leads to early menstrual period meaning they can get pregnant at that early age. It is usually hard for the father to let go his daughter at any age and can kill for his teenage girl. It does not prevent the same father from playing that double standard of looking away when his son starts looking at women desirably. Some fathers encourage their boys on his 21st.


This quality of early development is what some older men also see in teenage girls. During the slave trade, once a black girl had her menstrual period, the mother has to tell the man. What the man did to these girls is history but the evidence remains in the blood and skin color of their descendants forever. This voracious appetite while illegal, still remain with men of all shades and colors up to this day.


If the law of nature is strictly followed as some religions do favor for procreation, they use it to explain reasons for some men’s attraction to girls who have reached the age of puberty and can get pregnant, even when they are not ready biologically because of pelvic size, and legally too young to have a baby. By their reasoning, God created sexual span for men and women within which sexual relationship can take place to procreate only. That is why they do not believe in abortion or birth control. But we also know that women sexual activity goes way beyond the span they can give birth.


Culture is sometimes lagging behind modern developmental stages. In the days when girls are fully grown before they reach puberty, introduction to men that are ready to marry them may be acceptable, but not today that the stage is reached barely as a child. In the days most of our religious books were written, age of puberty was older than it is now. So holding on to the age of marriages in these books is nothing short of excuse for primordial urge. Both Christian and Muslim religions are guilty of early virgin marriages.


Mary, mother of Jesus and Mohammed’s wife Aisha were too young, in those days. Unfortunately, it is not rare to find men traveling out of their communities or countries in search of sexual relationship with teenage girls with the blessing of religion or power of money. These men are aware of the consequences as the practice is against the law in some of the countries they travel to, yet they take the risk. Out of religious belief, vile, poverty, ignorance; and custom they say, parents of these girls give out their daughters.


However, it is different in boys and men. They are capable of making babies throughout their lives with some limitations as they get older. This does not give them license to seek anyone within reproductive span to have sex with, especially when they are not capable of taking care of babies with their partners. Unlike animal kingdom, humans are supposed to exercise discretion and not give in to sexual fantasy easily.


As soon as they marry these girls home and the girls realized the man is a pedophile, they know they had been taken advantage of. A teenage wife later becomes a matured wife that may not interest the husband anymore. On the other hand, if he has slowed down, the teenage wife may want to make up for all the years lost and turn on him for younger men. This is usually the beginning of the problem in their relationships. We have had cases of these young wives complaining that they lost their childhood life and want to make up for it by starting over with a younger man after their reproductive life.


The days when relationships between opposite sexes are for procreation alone have also passed, because relationship can be for recreational purposes. There are couples that enjoy their relationships without the wish to have children. So are women that are over the age of giving births but are still very sexually active. In the age of birth control pills or devices and Viagra, sex has become more casual than it used to be in traditional culture and religions. So sex education at puberty is apt to combat transmitted diseases.


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