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

Well seeing as those " kids" are all successful professional people in their 50s now I guess it wasn't too bad a start for tgem

Am I the only one who picked up on the fact you're now married to your childhood boyfriend? That's so sweet 🥹

OP out of curiosity, how would you feel if you became a grandmother in 5 years?

I’m not convinced many men want children at all, regardless of their age. As I said in my post up thread many of my friends are being strung along by their 37 year old partners who ‘just want to wait another couple of years, then we will DEFINITELY have a baby’. They so clearly don’t but will probably give in at very last minute.

Do your parents know you deliberately got pregnant?

No. Not a soul knows except my husband (father of both my children)

Turning it on it's head, biologically speaking, you're more fertile when you're younger, have more energy to raise children, are more likely to still be young enough to enjoy and help with any grandchildren, and let's face it - have a much higher sex drive to facilitate.

Actually an argument could be made, that women (and men), denying themselves having children when they want them, spending their best years slogging away in uni / working (many people don't enjoy this), then ending up needing fertility treatments, is far more "disturbing".

To each their own, and not everyone will enjoy the same things. But I wouldn't say it's particularly worse to have children young. I started trying at 28, and really wish I had started earlier.

i had my dds in my late 30s/early 40s. Physically I was in great shape (finally started to pay attention to my health and cut down on drinking). I also was a homeowner with a good career of a house in a good area. The advantage of being more senior in my career is that it’s easier to ask for flexible working as by this stage I’m trusted to make my own diary.

if I’d had children as a teen I would have been unlikely to be able to build my career at all or buy my house. I just couldn’t have afforded it plus childcare. I would have been left in rented property on a lower wage job topped up by benefits (like friends/family who took this path).

That’s not to say that teen motherhood doesn’t work out for some but statistically for most, it doesn’t work out for them or their children. I don’t think it’s something we should encourage. Thankfully it’s much less common now

I think some do.

What percentage though, who knows.

Others are ambivalent.

Alongside that ambivalence is a later biological clock than women's typical biological clock.

If women could potentially have babies almost indefinitely (I know there are issues with men's sperm over 39 and they increase with age, but they can still potentially have kids almost indefinitely) ...we would probably be looking at a lot of women whose biological clock didn't really go off til 40s or 50s too.

28 is not bad, TunipTheVegimal24 . You didn't leave it until 38 like some! Most women are pretty fertile up until 36, and youthful with it. After that it tails off.

I think the op is to be congratulated on managing a baby at such a young age and everything seems to have turned out all right. However I doubt many of us would want out our kids to have kids when they are in their teens.

I became pregnant intentionally in my teens, too.
It was a combination of wanting to love and be loved (not unusual in people from the care system/adoption) and being love bombed by my first H, so I was sort of swept along.
I didn't understand that it was a way of keeping me confined and controlling me until some time afterwards.
It wasn't even about council houses, because we bought a tiny house; they were cheap in those days.
I don't regret how it all turned out, apart from the DV, but I managed to get away from that disastrous marriage in short time. My lovely DS made up for it all.
I caught up my life and went to Uni as a mature student years afterwards and ended up with a good career, a better remarriage and DS2.
I don't know anyone else who did it purposefully, either.

A great aunt of mine fell pregnant as a teen, didn’t tell anyone and ended up having a baby in her bedroom at home. The baby was with a black man too, which was sadly frowned upon then. She kept the baby and her mum and dad supported her.

Not as young but I remember when I was about 20, I was in a really toxic relationship, my mum had moved away and I was desperate to get pregnant. Not because I wanted to keep him - he had no drive to go anywhere so I wasn’t worried there, but I think I was just desperate for love and to have a family. Now I have two children with a lovely man and I thank god everyday that I didn’t get pregnant with such a horrible person and think I must’ve been completely mad and beyond stupid to have wanted that so badly.

Did you have a happy childhood?

I'm going to be honest and say I think it's actually really sad imho. To actively plan to have a child when still a child yourself just seems very wrong..
My childhood best friend had a child at 15 and I remember being really shocked by it, we grew apart rapidly because of it as we then had two very different lives.

It felt bad though - we needed IVF for our first.

Have recently turned 36 too 😭Very, very grateful for my two. But would have loved a third. We're not financially in a place to have one now, and I can't help but think that if I'd started younger, there might have been time to recover financially and then try again...

There are definitely pros and cons both ways.

But you would be much more likely to be able to afford to rent (without benefits) or buy your own place if you hadn’t had kids young. Education and early career is hugely time consuming- really tough with a kid. Also if you need space for a kid, you can’t live cheaply to save to buy your own place.

it’s fun to move out of your parents when young and I know a couple of girls at school that got pregnant for that reason. They’ve never been able to build a good career or buy a house though- they both still live in council properties.

Really not necessarily. It depends where you live. Like I said all my ambitious classmates moved to London/Oxford/Bristol/Cambridge and can’t afford much at all despite really good salaries. If they’d stayed in our hometown they could’ve bought a reasonable house for £250,000.

Ok, sorry, I hadn't realised you had posted earlier in the thread.

That must have been tough. TBH I suffered a bit too from having a mother who was really too immature to have a child. She beat the crapola out of me for years but didn't with the younger ones because she had figured out how to be a mum by then.

Hugs x

I remember feeling very broody at that age too. It’s a strong urge and at 15 you often don’t have the emotional maturity to realise it may not be for the best. I didn’t follow it up as my mother would have made my life hell and I had nowhere else to go, but I married young to someone totally unsuitable as I was desperate to have a child. It was my sole ambition at the time.

Not necessarily re teenage parents getting on with things. The ones I’m acquainted with (who have had babies while still living at home with their own parents) have continued to act like children and expect the grandparents to run around picking up the pieces.

Tbh it sounds okay to me. In Scotland you can get married at 16 and have a job and a flat and a family, so you didn't jump the gun by much.

I think part of the problem is that the expectations of the education system are way out of kilter with the natural urges of the human race. I wanted to marry and have children at 18, but I didn't actually finish education until 25, didn't get a boyfriend until then and then got dumped at 27. Took me years to actually have a child and then only just in the nick of time at 35. DS is now 14 and I'm absolutely knackered and his grandparents are all in their 80s.

If you managed all that at 15 then I take my hat off to you. I bet you'll be an absolute superstar granny when you're in your 30s, if the moment comes. Good luck to you and well done.

12 would have been too young. I knew a couple who had a baby at 12 and they were very responsible about it, but 12 is definitely too young.

All I wanted at that age was a baby! We also met at 12 and married. No children yet and in our 30s! We often talk about how it was instilled into us that we wouldn’t last, childhood sweethearts “never last”. We shouldn't have children young because we had to go to uni, and having children would ruin our lives! We are now planning on having a baby and we are so scared 😂 Over two decades of negativity is really hard to drown out!

I have always maintained, I would have been a better mother at 15/16 than I ever would be now. I was so maternal, didn’t care about nights out. Now I’ve spent my entire life obsessing over a career for myself and I’m selfish.

I also got pregnant young, I was 16 but it was planned. I was lonely, bullied at school, had no friends and wanted someone to love unconditionally who loved me back. I didn’t want to stay with the dad and I was a single mum until my child was 13 then I married and had 3 more. I don’t regret a thing as I’ve still got no real friends and they are my whole life.