Novelist says girls are ready to have babies at 14

By David Harrison Published: 9:00PM GMT twenty-seven February 2010

Hilary Mantel Photo: MARTIN POPE

The 57-year-old writer pronounced that multitude ran on a "male timetable" that commanded that women should have babies at an comparison age.

"Having sex and carrying babies is what immature women are about, and their instincts are suppressed in the interests of society"s timetable," she said.

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"I think it is that men"s lives have set the timetable. Men reach a sort of passionate rise when you are 20, a amicable rise when you are 40.

"There is this multiply of women for whom society"s calendar is utterly wrong."

Mantel, who won the Man Booker Prize last year for her novel Wolf Hall, pronounced that multitude was "incredibly hypocritical" about teenage sex and teenagers carrying babies.

"I was ideally means of environment up and using a home when I was 14, and if, say, it had been systematic differently, I competence have thought "Now is the time to have a integrate of immature kids and when I am thirty I will go behind and I"ll get my PhD,"" she said.

"But multitude isn"t nonetheless systematic with that kind of flexibility," she pronounced in an talk in today"s Stella magazine.

"We were being prepared well in to the twenties, an age when piece of us longed for to spin mothers, probably small pieces of all of us. Some were some-more driven than others."

Last night the writer"s views met with a churned reply between flourishing regard that Britain still has the top teenage conceiving physically rate in horse opera Europe, notwithstanding a 10-year Government debate to revoke the figures.

Sue MacDonald, of the Royal College of Midwives, said: "Having a baby is a life-changing experience and 14-year-olds have sufficient to cope with only being 14.

"Girls of that age can be physically grown up but not indispensably psychologically grown up to cope with being a mother. It is majority harder to be a primogenitor if your own childhood is not complete."

Norman Wells, of the Family Education Trust, said: "The genuine issue is not the age at that women spin mothers, but either they are tied together to a man who is committed to ancillary his mom by thick and thin.

"When a kid enters the universe but a fast family home and but both a mom and father, it"s in all not such a happy eventuality and that is the incident that majority teenage mothers find themselves in."

Juliet Hillier, of Brook, the passionate health gift for immature people, pronounced teenagers indispensable to be given "the support, preparation and skills" to have sensitive choices about relations and pregnancy.

A orator for the TaxPayers" Alliance said: "Taxpayers are endangered about teenage mums, and quite about a great complement that offers monetary incentives that inspire singular motherhood."

The Department for Children, Schools and Families pronounced the idea that girls should have immature kids at fourteen was "completely out of line" with Government policy.

A orator said: "Our plan is to revoke the series of teenage pregnancies and suggest age-appropriate sex preparation to immature people. There are no plans to revoke the age of agree from 16.

"Young people should check sex until they are ready. Teenage relatives and their immature kids are some-more expected to humour health, romantic and mercantile problems than their peers."

However, there was await for Mantel from Dr Claire Alexander, editor of a study, Teenage Parenthood: What"s the Problem?, published this month.

Dr Alexander, of the London School of Economics, pronounced teenage conceiving physically could be a force for great given most immature mothers were encouraged to spin their lives around to yield for their children.

"Young parenthood can have clarity and be valued and can even yield an procedure for teenage mothers and fathers to essay to yield a improved hold up for their children," she said.

Last week it emerged that the Government had unsuccessful to reach the aim of halving the series of teenage pregnancies inside of 10 years.

The ultimate figures, for 2008, show that 40.4 of each 1,000 girls elderly 15-17 became pregnant, a 13.3 per cent tumble from the 1998 rate of 46.6.

There were some-more pregnancies between girls underneath eighteen in England in 2008 than there were in 2001, and conceiving physically rates between girls underneath sixteen have been probably unvaried for 6 years.

The Government betrothed last week to enhance sex preparation and foster contraception, together with condom vending machines in colleges and schools.

Mantel, who was innate in Derbyshire, was left incompetent to have immature kids after pang from a debilitating and unpleasant seizure during her twenties.

It was in the future diagnosed as a serious form of endometriosis and the writer is right away enthusiast of the Endometriosis SHE Trust.

The novelist, who was awarded a CBE in 2006, pronounced that women should be means to select either to have immature kids when they are teenagers or aspire to a career and have immature kids after in life.

"If there were a little bliss for women both those models would be valid," she said.