to think that if soaps showed how having children affected peoples lives there might be less teenage pregnancy?

[Averyyounggrandmaofsix]

I mean people are always out and about in the pub, no one ever misses anything beacause they havent got a baby sitter

It's mad isn't it - all these invisible, unbelievably quiet soap kiddies.

I call them coat hook kids - and imagine them all hanging quietly by the scruff of their coats on hooks in unseen hallways on EE/Corrie

to be honest as the teen mom programme on mtv shows usually the grandmother takes over and the girls are out and about alot to be fair

however much you tell people they always think it will be different for them so i don't it would help

and also i don't think always showing teen mums living in a hovel with no money and a runny nose tot is realistic either as not all teen mums live like that

Maybe, but they'd have a lot more trouble getting episodes filmed to their tight schedule if they had to deal with children on the set a realistic amount of the time!

I agree OP.

The teenagers I have spoken to in the past who talk about having babies talk about how they will dress their babies, what branded shoes they have seen that look so cute, how they will put little alice bands in their hair, or Nike trainers on their tiny feet, because they look so cute.
They talk of having a little baby to squeeze and cuddle, to walk to the shops with in their swish prams.

They never talk about how they will cope with sleepless nights, multiple changes of outfits, the all consuming tiredness, the responsibility weighing them down, the bringing up milk all down their clothes, the difficulty getting a newborns feet into the cute shoes, the possibility that their newborn will have no hair to put into cute ribbons, the crying, the endless crying that some babies will do, the dirty nappies, the slippery squirming baby in the bath, the relentlessness, the loneliness, the washing, the financial implications that go on and on and on.

Whenever I brought up this side to having children, they replied with...'but they will be so cute.'

'Not at 4 in the morning after 3 months of very little sleep they wont'

Most teenagers I have come across do not want to hear the reality. They want to hear how cute and cuddly babies are.

I know this is not all teenagers, ime it is most but my experience is limited, I haven't spoken to most teenagers, only the ones I have come across.

they all go to boarding creche didn't you know

In my experience I find it is that same as maypole says. I know quite a few teenage mothers and none of them had to curtail their social life because of a baby. . Their mothers took over quite happily...

My friend's DD has only ever wanted to have babies, since she was 13. She is just one of the teenagers who has spoken to me about her desire to have a baby.

She is of the firm belief that all babies, without exception, sleep through the night every night by 5 months old at the oldest. Anything else is bad parenting.
She believes that if a toddler is left in a room surrounded by toys, while mum washes dishes or goes to the toilet, the toddler will play with the toys. She will not accept that once children are mobile, they may not play with the toys you have left them to play with, they may in fact decide to rip your letters up, pull your pot plants over to eat the dirt, chase the cat, or a variety of other things in just a few minutes, and ignore the toys.

According to my friend's DD, it is all down to the parenting and I am doing it all wrong apparently because my DD has done many things like this

It's not just teenage mums tgat they need to show, if they showed older parents, a couple in axstable successful life and what having babies did to them it might help.

Mind you they aren't interested in long term stuff just quick headline stories. All tge children sleep though cause you never hear about tgat either.

Another gripe with Soap Babies.
Disclaimer: I know they are not real but whenever they feature an issue, it causes a surge in people contacting helplines.

When Roxy was pg in EE, she necked alot of alcohol in the early days.
I know her screen baby was born early, but no-one mentioned the risk of her drinking.

Why do you just want to put teenagers off? 20s and 30s somethings still don't know what having a baby entails - because society doesn't portray it accurately.

If I'd known what it was going to be like.......

I think it's an excellent idea for soaps to portray having a baby / child / children as horrible. But they never will because it's a taboo subject.

Mum at 17
Didn't put my kid in Nike our see it as an accessory.
Didn't palm him off on family members so i could go spunk my benefits on fags and booze.
Still with the father- and he works

Why do young mums all get tagged as Vicky pollard. Surly most people are intelligent enough to realise stereotyping is shit.

Age has no bearing on being a good parent

I don't think it's quite that simplistic. Generally speaking and unplanned pregnancies notwithstanding, young women decide to have children for largely the same reasons older women do: knowing about the hard work involved doesn't prevent older women having babies so there's no reason to suspect it would discourage younger women.

"They never talk about how they will cope with sleepless nights, multiple changes of outfits, the all consuming tiredness, the responsibility weighing them down, the bringing up milk all down their clothes, the difficulty getting a newborns feet into the cute shoes, the possibility that their newborn will have no hair to put into cute ribbons, the crying, the endless crying that some babies will do, the dirty nappies, the slippery squirming baby in the bath, the relentlessness, the loneliness, the washing, the financial implications that go on and on and on."

To be fair, I don't know all that many older parents who think much about that stuff, either. I speak to my friends (late twenties to mid thirties) who are planning babies, and they mostly witter on about their imagined cosy family life and baby music classes and pushing the Bugaboo around the park and decorating the nursery and baby names and how much fun BLW is going to be. No doubt they'll be great parents, but the struggle and monotony and financial implications are going to get them down doubtless.

I've worked with young mums in the past and very often they don't see much in their lives beyond leaving school to go into low-paid work and for many young people from disadvantaged backgrounds home ownership can seem about as likely as a trip to the moon; thus many of the things which make many women decide to delay motherhood such as progressing in a career, buying a house, having the ability to travel the world etc don't seem relevent to them. They've generally always planned to become parents at some point anyway, so why not now?

Tbh if they showed what it was really like having a baby, the birth rate amongst all mothers might half overnight! Sometimes I think younger mums cope better than those of us like myself who had them a little (ahem) later in life. They can certainly cope better with the lack of sleep!

But yes I do get annoyed at the invisible babies/toddlers in EE.

To clarify, I don't mean the last paragraph to suggest young parents have a negative attitude about it - just that many of the young parents I've known have been matter of fact about it. They want to be parents and can't see why they'd want to delay it.

Also being am at 17 was a breeze compared to having ds2 last year at 26. I had alot more time for my first and alot more patience.

I didn't only mean teenage mums to be honest, the whole thing annoys me, they even do it to a lesser extent with pets. I know soaps are not real but they claim to tackle real life issues and kids, pets and not enough money are reality for the majority of families.

yes don't get me started on where all their money comes from in EE! I know it's all fictional but it's silly if they are trying to portray "gritty reality" when no-one seems to work more than a few hours a week and then they spend all their cash on fry-up's at the caff and gin n tonics (in wine glasses) in the Vic....

I was really annoyed with Corrie when Katie was out for a night with the girls within a week of parturition. Not specifically because of its possible impact on teenagers, though I agree it's an unhelpfully unrealistic example; but because I don't like soaps being so riddled with inaccuracies (Corrie's been getting for too many things wrong of late).

But I do wish that a pregnant soap character would mention piles, heartburn and spreading feet.

I blame Alexander McCall Smith. It's just encouraging 40something yo women having babies from one-night-stands with their niece's ex and thinking they will have a housekeeper and the baby will sleep while they write pretentious philosophy articles for journals. Or wait, maybe fiction is unrealistic and men have no real perspective on jobs that women mainly do? Could that be even a vague possibility? Have you thought that teenagers may not base major life decisions on what they see on sodding eastenders but rather on whether they have other chances, hope for the future of having more stability and money rather than just debt and crappy partners all their life, whether they have a loving family in the first place so don't feel the desperation to be loved, etc etc?

oh is that Isabelle Daglish you are referring to Wibble. I read the first one, she has a very enviable lifestyle. Wouldn't we all love a one night stand.

Is it the guy who she always cooks for?

wibbly How lovely some sense.

I did not plan a baby because it was on a shit soap, can't say i have ever met a mother who has as it goes.

littlemiss i haven't a clue where to start with how pathetic it is you took a thread about soaps (which should be about all soap parents, did anyone see Roxy's kid before it nearly drowned?) and put in a load of irrelevant crap about teenagers and there dressing up baby's, must be something you have wanted to say for a while you should have started a thread 'teenagers only have baby's to buy small shoes and headbands'

I now feel suitably ashamed for watching soap operas rather than reading Alexander McAll Smith....

My favourite EE line is the one about 'once you hold your baybee in your arms, it will all be alright and nuffink else will matter'.

If only that were true- social services would cease to exist...