At 12:13 PM 4/29/98 -0500, you wrote:
"" I have a feeling that there is something
that I am not
taking into account... and that there really is a sound, reasonable reason
why this happened. ""... and discussion.
Hi Marge, There must be several answers to your questions. I believe one
of them is that in the old days as in the present time, that was a "good"
way to catch a husband. So, they waited until they were sure that she was,
indeed, pregnant. Even then, if she were pregnant, she could have lost the
baby, as is also very prevalent in the first born.
The third reason, I believe is the girl tried to hide the fact, or in
common terms practiced denial. She didn't want to believe it and therefore
didn't do anything about it. She had been told, maybe, the facts of life
and should have known there were only 9 months involved here. But, when
you think about it, after she found out, and a lot of women credit the
first absence of their menstrual cycle as an irregular one, she would
already be six to ten weeks along before she even realized there was
something "wrong".
I doubt very much in those days if the practice of sex education was even
considered in 99% of the households. If you took a survey of well funded
families and their poorer cousins, I believe you would find the better off
ones had less of an instance of unwanted pregnancies.
One reason, they were more closely watched, servants, nannies, governesses,
etc. and they would be more diligent in their charges whereabouts. In the
poor country girls, they didn't know much about it and had no education to
help them at all.
I hope my thoughts help, I'd appreciate your response to my answers.
Kay