BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids Young Mothers!!!

Freida - I third that motion!

Right wing political climate, celebrity pregnancies ie: Jamie Lynn Spears,and babies all over the media. Gee I would never guess why so many kids are having kids. My 26 year old niece has two kids with different baby daddies. Other niece, who is 22, has one kid. She can't keep a job longer that 2 months and is living back at home with my sister. Their 21 year old stepsister is due with her first one next month. What's wrong with this picture? Yet I am chastised for being cf.

No, I don't think you should force her to abort. She got herself into that situation and it is her decision to keep her child if she wants.

All I am saying is.....these young girls are not learning from each other and seeing that having children so young is not the best way to start a family..especially since most of them have to work several jobs and even sometimes quit high school and usually college is not even an option. It is just so common now for them..."So, how many kids do you have"? I listen to them talk and they are still just "young girls" with big responsiblity. Yea, having the child may have made them have to grow up a little more but it doesn't make you mature..that comes with age and life experiences. They think just b/c they are mom's now they know it all and are so mature now. Then they get out and date (like they are suppose to be doing b/c they are young) but they have a child now and their child is subjected to all these different guys in their lives. THEN...usually the guys they are dating have kids and these kids just see a mixture of disfunction and it never ends!

Anyway, that is just my opinion! Yes, thank gosh she does have you.

I wasn't sexually active as a teenager - I can't imagine how frightening it would be to find yourself pregnant at 17...
I know that these things happen even when parents are careful to explain the risks and don't "facilitate or encourage" sexual activity...
I think it's a difficult area - one of my Uni friends was furious to find out her 16 year old daughter was pregnant however, had allowed her daughter's boyfriend to "sleep over" at the family home...
I know that my 16 year old would not have been having sleepovers however, I understand that if teenagers are determined to have sex, they'll find a way...
I guess I'd try to emphasize the possible consequences of having sex - are you ready for the possibility of a pregnancy? I probably would have asked a lot of questions when a girl or boy arrived on the scene...
Still I understand neither guarantees there will be no pregnancy...in the end you can only guide and protect your children - you can't lock them in a room until they're 25...
I agree that it's great that you're standing by her - she needs your support more than ever...
I really hope she's able to pursue her dreams - gets to College etc.
It won't be easy with a child but with a supportive mother - you're giving her the best chance in life...
I cannot imagine how frightening it would be to also, find yourself without support at such a time...
Good luck to you both....

Lizzie,
Good for you for standing by your daughter. It must be very difficult for you to know that what she's doing will make her life so much harder, but I'm sure you're also very proud of her for taking responsibility for her actions.

My mom had me at 20. She was already engaged when she got pregnant, so they moved the wedding up. Back then (the 60's) no one in my family had attended college and she and her sisters were raised to be housewives and mothers, which all three of them turned out to be--at least, at first. My mother's two sisters married and had their first children even younger than she did.

My parents split up when I was 4. Mom moved in with Grandma (who was recently widowed), got a full time job and went back to school. It took her, off and on, about 9 years to get her degree, but she did it. Growing up, I was happy in my Grandma's home and the three of us were a loving family. I learned many lessons from my mom and grandma: to work hard for what I wanted, to save money for a rainy day and not to squander my money. I also learned that, even though my family may have been different than other people's, we were truly a family. Families come in all shapes and forms--even in families of two (plus pets) which we find ideal in my house.

We went through a lot of ups and downs, oftentimes barely scraping by, but (even as a child) I always knew I was lucky to have the love & support of these two incredible women. I wish for you, your daughter and your grandchild, the good life (and fantastic relationship) the three of us shared.

Cherry Red - enjoyed reading your post...
I read an Article recently about single mothers - women who choose to "go it alone" - one commentator said it was selfish to "deliberately commit a child to a fatherless life"...
I just wondered whether your father was involved in your childhood...If not, did you feel your life was the poorer without a father figure?
I understand your mother's situation was totally different...as a divorced woman.
Hope I'm not being too personal...

Hi Deborah,

No. Not too personal. My father was not in my life. He remarried and lives on the east cost of the US. He visits me about every 5 years for a weekend. As a child I visited him once, but then he threatended to keep me and mom almost lost me, so I never visited him again. He always came to us after that.

As a child, I really didn't miss having a Dad. YOu can't miss what you don't have, right? It was probably easier because he was nearly completely out of the piicture VS. an every-other weekend visitation type of situation. That would have been stressful and chaotic for me, I think. It was weird when they had Father/Daughter things at school or whatever, but other than that, no.

It hit me pretty hard when I was around 19 or 20. I can't really say why. I'd see a father and a little girl and I'd burst into tears. Part of it is because he remarried and had more daughters. As a kid I had no interest in them, but at around 20, I started writing to them. One of them writes to me on occasion, the others don't--though we share no hard feelings. I got the chance to meet once, which was pretty cool since I'm an only child. We all got along quite well.

It's great that you have met your stepsisters and get along...
I can understand that it would probably be easier in some ways to have an absent parent than the to and fro of access arrangements and the hassle and arguments that often accompany it - less upheaval in your life...and you still have a father and see him from time to time...
It is no doubt harder when the father is unknown - leading to identity issues...
It's interesting that many people born as a result of donor sperm are now trying to trace their biological fathers - it seems we all need to know our heritage, our biological family - even if he's not the man who got up to you in the middle of the night...

I agree that teenaged pregnancy has become far more acceptable over the last 20 years or so. We do such extremes in this country - for so many years, girls were sent away to have their babies only to have those babies ripped away and then were forced to go on with their lives like nothing happened at all. Now, although teen pregnancy has dropped in recent years, there still seems to be a complete lack of reality of some younger girls and women in regards to having children - they think is going to be all sunshine and roses. We don't do a good job overall of teaching sex ed. and we definitely do a rotten job of teaching kids the important lessons of life. We focus on reading, writing, history and math (and we do a rotten job of even those topics these days), but we never focus on things in life like how to balance a checkbook, how to understand the proper way to own credit cards, why getting into a huge amount of debt is so bad, and that children are HUGE 24/7 responsibilities. Schools should have classes about how everyday life is as an adult. Heck, teenagers should probably be required to live with a family that has a baby/young children for 3-5 days so that they can see how much work is involved with raising children. That alone might up the abstinence rate.

All of these things bother me, but what bothers me even more is how boys/young men are not required to "step up" and take responsibility. It takes two to have sex and make a baby, so why are only the young girls saddled with the baby? I HATE....absolutely ABHOR parents who do not make their sons take responsibility for the babies they help make. I get SO sick of seeing mothers of sons acting like their sons have no responsibility for what they helped create...talking about the girl like she was a slut. Why isn't the boy a slut, too?! He had sex just like the girl - so why doesn't he get looked down on? The boys get to go on with their lives as if nothing has happened. It is SO WRONG! We teach these teenage boys that they are entitled to act like jerks because they're male. If a teenage girl gets pregnant, then the teenage boy who got her pregnant should be forced to be involved every step of the way.

Snooks,
I agree with you 100%. It's a two way street and why is the girl always the slut? You only have to have sex one time to get pregnant, hardly a slut in today's terms anyway.

Was it on this thread where pregnancy rates were being discussed? As far as the US goes, under Bush's "abstenence only" education policy, the pregnancy rate for teens is up again. It was down under Clinton.

With the nearly non-existant sex eduactaion program at my school, we still didn't have a lot of pregnancies, but this was the 80's and they talked about condoms even on TV shows and PSAs. And people were fearing AIDS then too, so maybe that could be a reason.

Pregnant girls were not allowed to attend my high school. They were forced to attend (I don't even know what you'd call it) the district high school where all the screw-ups went. All the kids who were kicked out of school for causing problems. This never seemed fair to me because the teen fathers got to continue going to school with us.

Also, in the conservative county I live in, some of our schools discrtics are actually breaking the law by not teaching sex education as completely as they should. I've volunteered at the local Planned Parenthood, so I know this for a fact.