BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids Young Mothers!!!

Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating going back to the "Dark Ages" of sex ed, but I just think it's sad that when a girl get's pregnant at an early age, society just says, "eh". Maybe I have a biased view based on my experience, because as frieda pointed out, it wasn't as prevalent in her neighborhood.

We had 2girls in my class who had babies. One got married at 17 and had her baby. She's now married for the third time and has 3 children in all. The other left school and gave hers up for adoption. She did come back and graduate with us. I think in some ways these girls were looking for someone to love them. Sad.

This is an interesting subject for me. My 17 year-old daughter is pregnant right now and we're expecting the baby at the end of May.

I wonder what you think our choice should have been? Would it have been better for me to force her to abort? Should I have segregated her from the world until I could force her child from her arms and give him up for adoption (this is what happened in the good ol' days)? What would be the better option?

I choose to support my daughter and her child. I don't want her or the baby to grow bitter and always wonder what could have been. I've made sure that she's taken full responsibility for her pregnancy and that she understands that she's not a kid anymore. Welcome to motherhood. But I won't throw her or her child out of my house. What good would that do either of them?

There are a million different scenarios that can be playing out privately in the lives of these girls. I think it's harsh to pass judgment on them all based on what life was like back when. And, really, 20 yrs old isn't too young to become a mother. That's a choice every woman makes for herself. Should she wait until she's 35 to have her kids? Then spend her golden years raising them?

It just seems 17 is so young. She's still a kid herself. Was adoption ever a consideration? What would your daughter do if you weren't able to help her? I'm not trying to be judgmental, but I know that at 17, I was in no way capable of raising a child. It just seems that adoption could give the baby a great life with a couple who wants a child, and your daughter could finish growing up and take advantage of other options that wouldn't be as easily available to her with a baby to care for.

Cindy

To Lizzie -- I think you are doing the right thing by helping your daughter. She's lucky to have you.

ETA - Obviously, having a baby at 17 is not ideal. But I think that if a person has support it is possible to give the child a good life. Stuff happens, life happens... not saying I condone all teenagers going out and getting pregnant and having their parents help them out, but life isn't always that black and white. Of course, I will never agree with those who do that sort of thing over and over.

I suppose that what strikes me about pregnancies at such a young age is how easily they could have been prevented. There are so many contraceptive options these days that it really isn't difficult to prevent an unwanted pregnancy (yes, I know no method is 100% effective, but I maintain that most unwanted pregnancies are caused by carelessness, not contraceptive failure). There has to be more education on the subject, shifting the focus from abstinence (which doesn't work) to educating people on how to have sex responsibly.

To Lizzie: I agree that your daughter is lucky to have you - I'm sure that your support will prove a huge help to her and the baby. Still, I can't help but feel sorry for her for being saddled with such a huge responsibility at her age, even if the choice was hers.

The choice of adoption or not was up to her. I would never force that decision on her as long as she's mentally capable of making that decision for herself. She's choosing to keep her child. I'm choosing to be supportive of that decision.

Is she capable of raising a child? I don't know. I know that the baby's father is involved, that she's taking parenting classes and that I'm trying to help her take responsibility for her choice. I know that she's planning to attend college, obtain her degree, and continue to live her life. Will that all happen? I'm confident that her path will be a struggle, but she'll make it.

You ask what my daughter would do if I weren't there for her, and I can't answer that. The fact is that I am here for her. I choose to take responsibility for my own decision to be a mother and continue to mother her as best I can- including teaching her how to be a good mother. There's no way I would alienate her at this time. I made the promise to parent her when I chose to carry her to term. I'm not going to go back on that promise because she made a decision with which I may or may not agree.

Manatee,


What should I have done? She knew the risks of sex when she engaged (an argument that I hear so often) and she made the decision to carry to term. I did my share of crying and teeth-gnashing, but in the end it's her choice.

I think that there should be a lot more done in regards to sex education as well as parenting education. Scare these kids into either abstaining or getting a more effective form of birth control. It doesn't matter how hard I tried to prevent this from happening (she had bc pills, by the way, and I personally taught her how to use a condom) it still happened. Someone said that pregnancy is sensationalized and I agree with that. Too many young girls becoming sexually active too soon.

But in this particular thread there's a lot of "They need to go back to the way things were" talk and that's not really realistic. If we were living in 1950, I would have shipped my child off to a nunnery, pretended I didn't know what she was going through, and made sure her child was ripped out of her hands before she came home- where we would all pretend it never happened. That's just not realistic.

I know of a case where a 16 yr old girl got pregnant and wanted to go the adoption route and her mom objected and said that she couldn't bear to see her grandchild given up for adoption. The girl (probably feeling she had no choice) carried the baby home after giving birth and it's been a battle royal ever since between her and her mother!

The teen wanted to get back to her life, her education and her friends and her mom wants "help with that baby she didn't ask for". But she DID ask for it, didn't she? I know that the mom felt like she did because she probably could not imagine what it would have done to her to have given one of her own up to another family, but she was still raising a houseful of kids herself.

I think it's very sad the way things turned out; mother and daughter are battling it out because grandmom doesn't feel that mom is shouldering her share of the parenting. On the other hand the daughter probably feels like she got tricked. I have heard that she has taken to disappearing for days and weeks at a time which is probably very confusing and setting to the baby who didn't ask for any of it.

The family was already having problems with the teenager and her lack of responsibility, so when they demanded that no adoption take place shouldn't they have been willing to take total responsibility and get ready to expect nothing from the young mother but more of the same? It's my opinion that for them to fuss about her lack of involvement in the baby's life at this point is futile and only makes the situation worse.

Lack of the use and or knowledge of effective birth control has had a negative effect on an entire family.

I think most people are just saying that there needs to be more shame/embarrassment and less sensationalism associated with teenage pregnancy. I don't think we really want the nunnery thing to happen again. The phrase about teens "wearing their pregnancies like a trophy" sticks in my mind. I know if I had become pregnant as a teen, my parents would have made sure I was PLENTY embarrassed, and I would know I had badly disappointed them. It was never spoken of, so I don't know what they would have actually done about it. I would have wanted to give the baby up for adoption. My parents are Catholic, so abortion would not have been an option. I didn't abstain, but I was VERY careful!

Lizzie, good luck to you and your daughter with her baby.

Cindy