Niece chucked her life away - anyone experienced this pain?

[Corianm]

So my half sister has the most wonderful daughter who just turned 19. She is one of the loveliest girls to have ever walked the planet - she’s so kind, sweet, caring and hilarious in the most charming/endearing way. She has a lot of very young half siblings on her dad’s side and gosh the way she interacts with them is just incredible. She is adored by them.

I was always excited to see where her life would take her. My niece always expressed a desire to experience the world e.g. she hoped to live in Italy for a year and learn the language. The world was truly to be her oyster. I’m know I’m very effusive just out of a desire to convey her loveliness. Trust me my family have not been blowing smoke up her behind for the past 19 years. She very much is has her feet on the ground. Never placed on a pedestal or anything like that.

Anyway, niece recently told me she is expecting. Of course I congratulated her and expressed enthusiasm when she told me. But truth be told I am gutted. The father is a nice enough guy but is quite happy living quite an ignorant life. We once had a conversation which involved the bf arguing how boring art galleries are. I’m just heartbroken for my niece, she’s actually interested in the world and wanted to experience it. But she has completely changed her life plans (no uni now) for this boy.

I’ll always be there for her but my heart aches. It’s obviously her life to live. I’m very aware of not being inappropriate re boundaries.

Has anyone else experienced a similar situation?

This.

There are different ways to experience/enjoy life and no-one is saying any are right or wrong. The point is that it's not what the OP's niece had planned or how she had wanted to live her life.

It's not about infantilisation, it's about being sensible.

How many nineteen year olds do you know with stable accommodation that is suitable for child-rearing and a job that will earn enough to support them and a baby? How many nineteen year olds can afford childcare? You can't just ignore the practical considerations.

Yes, I had a friend like that who was very smart, was going to go into a medical field after uni and instead got pregnant.

Family life wasn't what she'd hoped it would be and there are a lot of people in the country worse off because she would have been brilliant in medicine. Her kids are in school so she has a part time job in a local pharmacy but it's not the life changing, potentially even world changing, career she dreamed of. And a waste of talent quite honestly, because she finds being a parent really stressful on a daily basis and laments how much her life and conversations have been dumbed down compared to before.

Given the reaction to this news, are you absolutely sure that her denying wanting children young wasn’t just a thing she said to deflect arguments.

What would you have said if she had always expressed a desire to become a teenage mum

Something tells me there would have been arguments and lots of trying to persuade her to have a different ambition

I am presuming the father is an apprentice and will be a qualified tradesman

Dc have friends who are now qualified trades people and they are the ones buying houses and getting on with their life.

I work with people who have a degree and a f/t job in their chosen field and are working shifts doing a minimum wage job at weekends to make ends meet

DD got pregnant at 19 and again at 20 I was gutted for her as she was so young. She had a lot of mental health issues following this and eventually had another baby and this time no mental health problems.

She now has a happy life, she has 3 children who love her, married the father of the children and she has a job she loves.

Life doesn't stay constant and something you have done wrong in the past can often be corrected.

I’m obviously an outlier but I would be hugely disappointed if my dd gave up her dreams to have a baby at 19. If it was with a boy who expects a traditional home set up (without the funds to support that) and spends all his time in the pub I’d be quietly devastated, as would dh. We have much higher hopes for our beautiful girl than that and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

My dd is from quite a privileged background and would always have the opportunity to do the things she wants at a later stage no matter who she procreates with (dh and I would make sure of it). But I’d still be sad that she’d spent her youth taking care of a child when she should have been out living her best life.

A distant relative of dh without the same opportunities had a baby at 19. She’s in her thirties still scrabbling to get the qualifications she should have got years ago but now with a secondary school age child and a different cocklodger in tow. Yes she made the decisions that led her here but I can’t help but think that if she hadn’t got pregnant and had got to experience life outside her hometown she might have a better life now.

That being said the choice is hers alone and I don’t think you’ll ever actually be disappointed about a new baby when it arrives. You have the opportunity to continue to provide a different perspective and outlook which may prove invaluable to your dn. It’s not what you’d envisioned for her and your sadness and disappointment about that is perfectly valid, but she could still have opportunities with your support. Just be there for her.

@Corianm I think that you're being unfair slated here... I would feel the same way. Pretty much everyone I know who had kids younger than about 25 ruined their career and education chances for a long time and didn't stay with the fathers of their kids... often, I have to say, because they were incurious, boring boys who had trouble stepping up to the plate and being fathers. Let's be real, the boyfriends that many of us had at college, in sixth form etc at that age weren't the men that we would have wanted to spend our lives with; we were still finding ourselves and seeing what kind of partner was a good fit. And yes, some people do marry their first loves and stay married all of their lives, but I'd say that it's not the norm.

Of course, there are exceptions. A good friend of mine in secondary school got pregnant at 17, had the baby and still went to university- albeit a year late- worked hard and became a teacher. She's now in SLT at a school with another child, but one she had much later in her thirties and not with the father of her first child. He turned out to be useless and not that bright, only interested in his PlayStation and not a very good dad.

I also have a friend who had her first kid at 18 and they ended up married and had another kid... but she never worked until her kids were in secondary school because she had dropped out of her A Levels and only had GCSEs and didn't know what she wanted to do. She's ended up going to college, getting qualifications and now works in HR in her forties, but it was hard work.

Basically having a child young, potentially in the middle of your studies, or at the start of a career, means that you can't easily get a foot on the career ladder; it's also harder to save money to- for example- buy a house; It's harder to study if you need specific qualifications.

Of course she's an adult and it's her choice, a valid choice, but having a baby at her age makes everything harder, and limits your options. That's the bottom line: it's putting hurdles in front of your life path that didn't need to be there.

I don't mean this with any disrespect to people on this thread had kids young, I'm just talking about what I've observed from the women around me.

He works for his father (who presumably runs his own business) and finds art galleries boring (some are!). These things do not necessarily mean he either lacks ambition or education. He is a victim of the state system, however, which devalues the arts and humanities as worthless and of no use, whereas the private system makes sure its students come out with a rounded education including arts, sciences and humanities - and it is these children who go on to fill top jobs in industry, the arts, academia and the civil service.
Both my late DH and my DSS ran/run their own businesses. Late DH wrote and painted, enjoyed the theatre (until his hearing went) and also acted in amateur dramatics - and influenced his grandchildren and my children to do the same. DSS is interested in visiting galleries, as well as exploring the countries he can afford to visit on holiday (several times a year) - he is interested in education. You do not need to be in an office job of some sort to be interested in the world around you.

i understand what you’re saying and I would feel exactly the same.

What pisses me off is you talking about your niece like she os some tragic bystander on the whole affair, like the boyfriend has done this to her.

They risked sex, got pregnant and she is choosing to keep the baby. That is literally her choice.

What’s wrong with you? She hasn’t ruined her life it’s took a detour, she can still do all those things.
have you ever considered that your niece told you things she thought you wanted to hear?
I was a mum at 16, still in high school. It took a few but I figured things out, went to uni got a law degree and have a wonderful life with three daughters. Stop being so dramatic

Its not true that education is always there. It's really difficult to return to education as an adult, especially if you have kids, are the default parent, have a lower paying job and an unsupportive partner.

No. Do you want to explain why you think I don't understand? Go on. Why is that?

He isn't his family. She isn't getting into a relationship with his parents and brothers. She is also old enough to decide whether to remain involved or not. You're talking about her like she's not even got a brain. She's made this decision. It hasn't just happened to her.

Haven’t read the whole thread but surely the key here is choice. Yes, she had ambitions to go to uni, live abroad etc but presumably she met this lad, they chose to have unprotected sex (or contraception failed).

Either way, they have chosen to have the baby. It’s not the 1950s and she won’t have to marry him and live a life of servitude.

She didn’t have to continue the pregnancy, that is a choice.

He’s living with his parents and earning £6 ph because, I assuming he’s a teenager doing an apprenticeship. He could be a lot worse.

She has made her choices, you may not agree with them but you ought to respect them.

Sounds like you don’t actually know much about what was going on in her life and what she really wanted if this has come as such a shock to you.

You can't just ignore the practical considerations.

I'm not, and I've also been there, done that, and got the T-shirt and the hoodie - and if one of our daughters becomes pregnant in less than ideal circumstances, we'll support her to make the best choices for her about it and work through practicalities as they arise.

It's not the comments about the practicalities or the potential issues with the relationship, or the adjustments she'll have to make, that I'm against. What bothers me a lot is the OP's general attitude, and those of a lot of people on the thread, and I feel for the pressures of expectation and the inevitable disappointment that you will project onto your children first and foremost, as well as other women who aren't exactly like you.

I have friends who had/have parents etc. like this about the 'right' uni and the 'right' careers and the 'right' timings for everything, and partners and whether to move away and this and that and the other and pressure to have kids or not have kids and when and how and how many and how to raise them and so on and on (there are a lot of threads about this sort of thing on Mumsnet!), and for many of them, this has stifled them or lead to mental health problems.

OP's niece is a woman not a child and she, perhaps with the support of her parents who are hopefully not like the OP, and her partner, can work through this and achieve a good outcome which will look different to the imaginary one, but can be as fulfilling for her as anything else in the long run. But y'all need to actually believe that and not just pretend to young women like OP's niece, because otherwise we (as I was) can tell.

have you ever considered that your niece told you things she thought you wanted to hear?

Maybe she did, but it's unlikely. The niece had firm plans for a long time about going to university and I don't know any late teenage girls who would want to combine a full-time degree with bringing up a child.

I would be absolutely devastated for my daughter if she got pregnant at 19. She wants to travel, go to Uni and having a child at that age would alter her plans. So I completely get where you are coming from. My advice and what I would do would be to support her as much as possible so she can reach her full potential.

I think a lot of posters who had children young or know someone who did are talking about a radically different financial landscape than the one we have today. I doubt many of you were living on a crime ridden London council estate with the same cost of living crisis and housing costs that this young woman is facing. When I bought my first flat in the Midlands in the late 90’s it was £32,000 and I was 27 with a degree and a job that was OK. What is the OPs niece going to face? So yes I’d be very disappointed for her.

i also don’t think many parents would be excited if their sons came home and said they weren’t going to University because their girlfriend was pregnant.

That may be true but it's still the women who suffer the consequences disproportionately in terms of physical health and career limitations, and we all know that it's usually the woman who, in the case of a broken relationship, becomes the default parent.

But if she decided she didn't want to suffer those consequences she could choose to get a termination. But she hasn't. That's her choice isn't it.

As someone who grew up on a rough estate and got pregnant at 20 I get it.

Unfortunately hormones are strong at that age and for her love is overriding everything else.

Her relationship may last , it may not. All you can do is support her.

I got my degree at 35. Still waiting to travel though.

Yes absolutely it's her choice.

The thread is making you ill? Now that’s dramatic!

You know full well from what else I've written that that is a turn of phrase, but a number of you are coming across as deeply narrow-minded and judgemental people, many of whom unfortunately have daughters, nieces etc. who may end up on the wrong end of your opinions, and that is a little nauseating. To me.

Many of you are probably actually not that secure and happy in your own life paths, possibly not enjoying parenthood all that much, and are desperately justifying what you have done as the only right way, or you wouldn't be quite so judgemental about others and use the language about it all that you do. Just lift up other women, eh? Instead of whatever this is.

The fact is that DN is having a baby with a boy who, from the sounds of it, has not had female role models with educational and career aspirations. It would also appear that the males in his life have not been modelling 50/50 parental mental load, cleaning, cooking, laundry, etc. This does not bode well for DN.