Planned to fall pregnant age 15

[Karrotten]

I'm 25 now so this was a decade ago it's something I've never admitted to anyone not even my own mother. Only my husband knows that our first child was not an "accident" and was actually planned even though we were only 15.

Don't get me wrong I have no regrets with how how my life is and I love my child but I look back and think I must of been really disturbed to intentionally do that.
Every one else I know who had a child so young fell pregnant accidentally. Closest I've heard of it being planned is internet theories of young girls getting pregnant just for a council house. I did not even know what a council house or a mortgage was at 15 though.

Not sure what the point in this post is, just musing over something I can obviously never admit to in real life

What are you talking about?

I can’t think of many of us who I know from baby group who where teens had much more support than say the 20/30 year old there.

The one who did lost her child to the grandparent as she was the one who wasn’t ready to be a mum and from what I see on social media still isn’t now she’s in her 30’s. So the help was more granny protecting the grand baby really.

We had the normal of one side wanted to buy the pram and one side the cot. We got our own house and kitted it out slowly and cheaply. Our oldest didn’t sleep over at either grannies until a few years old and that was for a works party in fact in his whole life I think his slept at a grandparent under 10 times. He went to Nursery while I attended college and dh worked full time. Then I became a sahm for a few years while we finished expanding the family to save on childcare costs then I went to work around school hours.

I planned to have my daughter, got pregnant at 17 had her at 18, we didn’t get a council house, got our own place when she was 14 months old and lived with parents until then. I tell everybody that comments how young I was when I had her, that I had planned it. I am 24 now and don’t regret a thing x

I’m a child of a fifteen year old mother. I don’t know the circumstances. It was the 70s. My parents married when my mum was 16. None of it was good. My mum’s a child (she’s in her 60s but I grew older than her by the time I was 18). Please grow. Do what you can to grow as a person. ❤️

Being a teenage mother hasn’t got you a council house for the best part of 30
years, but i guess a 15 year old wouldn’t know that

That's irrelevant though. Today's equivalent of a council house is a private rental paid for entirely by housing benefit. Although housing in general is in extremely short supply and it seems the only cast iron way to make sure you can access any housing at all and have the taxpayer pay your rent for you is to make sure you knock out a couple of children at least, as a 'single' mother. Certainly the more kids you have, the greater chance of getting a house you have. That's just a plain and simple fact. And we wonder why people who cannot afford the children they already have keep having more.

I don't see "priggishness" - most people understand the reality of teen motherhood, the challenges young mums face. Some have a lack of support and in a lot of cases the relationships don't last.

It doesn't work out as well for a lot of people as it did for the OP and some other posters, but the reality is, it's tough!

But the teen mums know far more about it than someone who hasn't been one

You must really lack imagination.

I hear you. You are a warrior. So much weight on such young shoulders. Hers and yours, but you clearly bore it whereas she couldn't.

Well I say - well done you. Sounds like you’ve provided a stable home for your child (now children), you’ve been with your boyfriend (now husband) for a long time in today’s terms, you’re very committed to each other, and he’s been financially supportive. It’s worked out for you, and that is not just due to luck.

This thread has some great examples of how the real world is a lot messier than the adverts. I can't help wondering what some of the people who have an attack of the vapours when a Mum comes in here to say "Just found out my 15 3/4 yo daughter is having sex, and I'm not planning to have her 16 1/4 year old boyfriend put on the sex offenders register, AIBU" would make of it.

This is exactly it. Teenagers' brains are not finished maturing. They tend to be more impulsive than fully grown adults, more happy to take risks, without thinking of the consequences.

OP, we all do silly and immature things as teenagers. Perhaps some don't have the best role models or happiest home life or glittering future career mapped out and literally don't beyond their natural maternal urges.

Of the teens that I knew who got pregnant (& kept the baby) all have stayed in the place they grew up in and have gone on to have other kids and some became grandparents in their 40s.

i genuinely don’t know whether it was their desire to “settle down” to family life at an early age that drove that, or the resulting stalled education and time spent child raising which led to lower wages and not being able to financially leave their hometown or travel.

Even the ones that decided to go back to education at a later stage have stayed put, with parents, aunts, uncles, cousins etc all living nearby.

Out of curiosity OP, do you still live in the general area of where you were a teen? Or have you travelled more and lived in many areas?

What do you mean by got 'your own place'? You mean you got a private rental? That's not your own and it's especially not your own if it's paid for entirely by the housing element of universal credit.

This! I think OP had this feeling but actually went for it with her partner

OP it’s more common than you think, I remember thinking I was an adult at 15. I said yes to my boyfriend who proposed to me at 17 and was with him from 14 to 20 years old.

i’m 30 now and think… wow, I wasn’t an adult at all!

I got pregnant "by accident" at 16, had the baby 17yrs and 3months. I say accident but remember vividly putting my legs up against the wall so the sperm didn't come out 🫣 , so maybe not quite the accident everyone thinks. I went on to have another baby 5yrs later, have a professional career and now own my own business. I thought I was super super mature for my age but cannot tell you what I was thinking 🤔

My friend in school got pregnant at 14 and while I wouldn’t say it was planned, she wanted a baby and it wasn’t unplanned. Baby was born at 15 and she was living on her own at 15/16 (private rental, paid for by her parents, her dad was a hospital consultant so money was not an issue). I used to go visit her at her house and be so astonished that she did everything on her own, no support, no help from parents during the nights. Her boyfriend had long since buggered off literally never to be heard from again.

She went on to get married and have 2 more children in her early 20s, but her husband died when their youngest was a toddler. She had a 4th baby in her early 30s. They aren’t together, though I think he has some contact.

She’s literally raised 4 babies completely on her own. Her parents have helped financially, but not in any practical ways. She went to uni and then got a master’s degree. She has a good job. She owns her own home, possibly mortgage free now as her dad has died, so I imagine his estate would have been enough to pay for everything. She has raised the loveliest children. They are an absolute credit to her. Her eldest is 25 now and recently got married to a really lovely guy. She is the antithesis of the stereotype of a “teen mum.”

She certainly did have financial resources from her parents, but they were otherwise a bit shit and disengaged. Really on a very practical level, she did everything herself, without even having a partner around and she did a fab job.

Obviously, but they can only relate to their own experience if you want to look at it like that. There's not really been anyone saying what a terrible experience they had here has there? Yet we know that it happens.

I think we've all known/observed teen mums and are intelligent enough to have formed opinions!!

I did the same thing as you just a little bit older, still in the teens.
I love my children but I know now that I was just an insecure traumatised girl who thought having a family would cure her.

Tbf statistically the assumptions people make about teenage mothers tend to be correct. Of course in some cases it does work out but that’s unusual. Statistically teenage mums and their children tend to have much much worse outcomes than older mothers. That’s unsurprising as 15 year olds don’t tend to have the maturity or resources to support a child or even themselves.

The girls I know lives have gone something like this:

The teenage mums - stayed put in hometown, lots of family help, a few more kids (some stayed with the dad some didn’t). The kids are older now so they’re ‘getting their life back’ and socialise a fair amount, most have decent jobs which are secure if not ‘high flying’ (but then again not everyone can be high flying can they). They’re still surrounded by family/friends. They seem to have nice homes, none live in a cramped high rise or anything like that.

The ones who did things the traditional way - had a fab time at uni then spent a long time in the wilderness afterwards, working in a job they didn’t really like or found stressful while living in a HMO. Usually in an expensive city quite far from family etc. We’re mid 30s now and a fair few are still single, some have married but hardly any have kids although they say they want them at some point. The ones who do have kids are stressed juggling toddlers with their career with no family help around, the only real plus being they’re in a stable relationship.

Not sure which is best tbh I don’t think it’s as black and white as is made out on here

I know about SAHM with rich husbands but I've never experienced it so have no idea how it feels in that situation. But if I came up with a negative opinion then I'd probably get shot down on here

A friend's parents ( who married and had kids at 18 20 and 21) said that they grew up with the kids. And in a way it was easier as they'd never had an " adult" life without kids to miss when they were born

I wasn't a teen mum but I was 20 so not that far off. My best friend had a baby at 17. Then another 2 years later. After then splitting up with their dad she did an access course to get into uni then her degree. The kids gave her both the incentive and ability ( as childcare provided etc ) to continue her education and get a professional job. She's the only one out of her family who went to uni

'Falling pregnant' always sounded strange to me. Like it happened without active participation.

being academic and having a baby young are not mutually exclusive

In theory they are not, but in reality they almost always are. It's pretty rare for a naturally academic girl to want to have a baby so young and to go ahead with an unplanned pregnancy. It happens, but it's certainly not the norm. Most girls who have babies while they are still in school fall squarely into a certain social demographic. If it happens that they are naturally very intelligent, they have almost certainly come from a background where this has not been recognised, valued or nurtured.

You will still have made observations and have your thoughts or views surely? We don't exist in a silo!

My mother got married the minute she turned 18 and had me a year and a half later. My dad was quite a bit older. They were happy and had 4 children but my mother was always adamant that this was not what she would wish for her daughters.

I would have run a mile from a baby in my teens, and had very little interest in my 20s either. I've watched my children and my DNs grow up, and the idea of any of them with a baby at the age my mother was is unthinkable!