To ask what you'd think about someone who had a baby at 14

[Applestrawberryblackcurrant]

Would this make you want to give the person a wide birth? Or would you not be bothered. Asking for friend.

Thanks for listing the names Yass. I know of a few celebrities that were teen mothers, but didn’t know of the mothers you listed in your post. I’m currently reading their bios and it’s amazing !

You know what the funny thing is ? My DS doesn’t view me as a silly, young teen mother. He will see me out in the street, point to me and goes “Yeah, that’s my Mum”. The mother who gets him ready for school, the mother who comforts him if he’s having a bad day, the mother who reads him a bedtime school. The only opinion I care and should care about, is my sons.

Sorry expact I didn’t understand.

@yassqueen thanks, most of it is under the bridge now and im in a nice happy place where i can talk about my first child without needing a stiff drink but at this time of year I'm slightly more defensive than normal.
I do know though that if my 4.5yo comes to me in 9/10 years and tells me she's pregnant I would talk to her about all options but it would be a 1 time conversation where her decision would be final and that's the end of it and if she chose to continue with motherhood she would have just as many opportunities to follow any dreams as she would if she made a different decision
X

I would think shocked and think eek, that was early. But I wouldn't assume rape, abuse, bad parenting or that she has no future.

Of course her future will be different and more difficult. I think there is a lot of stereotyping on here. I know two people who had babies by the time they were 16. One went on to university and had a successful career, the other was the stereotype of living off benefits right up until her child was 18. The difference was their backgrounds and the support they received and their education. I suspect they would have taken similar paths whether they had a baby or not.

You do realise the reason they list these fantastically successful women who had babies in their teens and kept them, managing to combine young motherhood with a stellar education and a very successful career is because there are so few of them, don't you?

If they were not the very highly visible exceptions to the rule we wouldn't be reading about them in the media.

so sorry about the loss of your daughter mommy2018

I don't blame parents who don't want their young teens to have babies and encourage them to have an abortion. As well as the effect it will have on the teenagers life, it will massively affect theirs. A 14 year old cannot independently take care of a baby, both practically, financially and emotionally. Therefore the parents of the teenager will have to expend significant time and money to help raise the baby. That is a big ask of people who thought they were done with the baby/toddler/young children years and were looking forward to more freedom now their own children were older.

BeverlyHillsBillie I think they list them to challenge negative stereotypes towards teenage mothers. Not because it isn’t rare.

I'd love to know how these teenage mothers would feel if their 14yo daughter announced she was pregnant.

I'd hazzard a guess it would be one of disappointment knowing what they had gone through and sacrificed themselves. (Except the ones with parents who took over and paid for the parenting themselves).

As already said, statistically

.The sons of teen mothers are 13% more likely to end up in prison.
.The daughters of teen parents are 22% more likely to become teen
mothers themselves.
. Teen mothers less likely to finish their education
.Teen mothers are likely to have a second birth which can further
inhibit their ability to finish school or keep a job.
.Children of teenage mothers have lower birth weights, are more likely
to perform poorly in school
.Sons of teenage mothers are more likely to end up in prison.
.Teen mothers more likely to end up on welfare.

Why don't you ask them, Gin?

There's quite a few on this thread.

LifeBegins

Correlaion does not equal causation.

I suspect many of those things on your list (you have sons more likely to go to prison twice btw) may be attributable to to fact that teenage mothers are likely to have lower socioeconomic status, for whatever reason - associated lack of aspiration, more wealthy mums marching their children to the abortion clinic....

correlation

Well. Ex teenage mothers.

I wouldn't be happy if a child of mine got pregnant at 14. I wouldn't write them off either.

Ditto.

But our lived experiences don't apparently count on this thread.

I went to school with a girl who was 14 when she had a baby, it was not rape, they were both in a relationship for around a year when she got pregnant. She is now 31 and her daughter is around 16.
She had it tough at 14 as her mom kicked her out and disowned her. She went to live with her aunty who luckily helped her.
I must say her daughter is lovely and has done brilliant at school.
She now has something to do with her mom who ironically she has to help and support after she likes a few to many to drink through out the weeks.
She now has another daughter who is 8 and is also lovely. She is very conscious of what she used to do and what happened to her and she now hold a pretty tight leash on her daughters and she doesn't want the same for them.

I know this is not the case for everyone but I think out of a situation that is not good at all for a 14 year old she has done really well!

“But our lived experiences don't apparently count on this thread“

Of course it does.

Do you think that your lived experience is typical of a girl who had a baby at 14?

I would not be happy if my daughter got pregnant at 14. I would cry. However, we are in this together and I will support her to the best of

my ability. If I was rich, this would be a bonus because I will pay someone to look after the baby whilst she’s studying. But yes, I will make sacrifices and support her.

Sometimes, I think some parent fail to realise that when we decide to have children, we have to come prepared that their lives/ experiences/ dreams may be completly different for what we envisioned for them. I realised this when DS was diagnosed with SEN.

Ingot halfway through this thread but after 30 minutes of reading and realising I should probably be doing something else I get very sad.

I love my son unconditionally, I hope that never changes. If in 6-10 years time he comes and says he is going to be a dad I will actually vomit (actually vomit ). But I would support both of them in their decisions and be a mother. Being a mother does not stop if your child does something you don't like, if they don't have the abortion you think they should. If your child has a baby and your child is just a child of 14 themselves then you have to just suck it up, it's your responsibility to financially support your 14 year old and their baby, you take the risk of having a child you take the ups and downs that come with that. Then at 16 if you are so inclined you can kick them the the street to fend for themselves and then come on here and moan your DD has gone NV and you don't know why

I doubt this post makes much sense but this whole thread made me sad and angry in equal measure.

NC not NV

They’d be a victim of child sexual abuse so I’d treat them with respect.

Wondering why teenage mums are held to the standards of 'they're not likely to be oxbridge educated, career high fliers' and thus are written off as 'wasting their lives' - and yet the countless middle class SAHMs of MN who 'didn't earn enough to justify carrying on at work/my job wasn't high flying like DH's' etc are beyond reproach.

Most people in life aren't super high flyers, most people have pretty ordinary lives, aspirations & achievements, most people just try to do their best within their own circumstances.

Not typical of the girls I know/knew, but not a complete aberration either. In their turn, the girls I met through being a teenage mother myself didn't fit the stereotyping I see on this thread. I can only think of one girl who really, really fucked up in the long run, and she is the daughter of a heroin addict and a prostitute. The poor girl never had a chance to begin with. Of the others, they're all fairly ordinary. Hairdressers, nursery workers. No high flying jobs, but that wasn't going to happen anyway.

When I was at university I knew two girls my age who also had children, however I met quite a few mature students who were coming back to education.

Sorry, I'm not very coherent because I'm trying to stain my dressing table before going out for lunch but what I'm trying to get at is, a teenage mother won't always be a teenager. A snapshot of her life at 14,15,16 will be different from one aged 25, 45. She won't always be a slaggy, Tommee Tippee wielding tabloid nightmare

And there's never been that many to begin with. I think that's what negates the stereotype.

Oh come on Yass!
We need far more examples of supposed 'success' on here to satisfy the DM smug brigade. Especially now we are having stats produced.

We seem to have gone off track on this thread now.

The question actually was - would you give someone a wide berth? Or would you not be bothered?

Well you'd have to be a special kind of stupid not to be bothered wouldn't you?

Reading this thread has made me think many would give the young girl a wide berth though. And that saddens me.
Teenage pregnancy is not just for the working class. Maybe middle class girls are frog marched more to abortions because they are all earmarked for glowing careers. Whatever.

But a wide berth? Really.
It's not contagious. If I knew someone I certainly wouldn't isolate them . They already have a long hard life ahead of them.

My only comparison is a lovely girl I knew at 16. She had a tough time. Her religious parents forced her to leave school in shame. No capacity in those days to study elsewhere. Long term boyfriend eventually no support and went.
Some years later married a rich man who eventually cheated on her with a younger model. Went back to study, became a mature student and is now a teacher, as is her daughter.
But I think back and she just vanished. It was very sad.
Caught up with her at a reunion last year and it was great to see her. I think of all the people who gave her a wide berth back in the Eighties and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

And what about the 14 year old dad to be?
Would we give him a wide berth to the same extent? Would he just be another statistic too?
Would you be happy for him to hang around your children if you knew he was a young father or had got someone pregnant at 14?