Am I being paranoid or does society look down on young mums?

[clouisewood]

This is something that I am always really conscious of...I'm 22 (so not the youngest mum but still fairly young) and I feel that people have a negative view of young parents. What does everyone else think? Do you feel there is a right age to have children or that younger parents don't make good parents? (I'm new to MN - isn't it addictive!!) XxX

Even now, when passing acquaintances see me in the street with ds (14), they look at me and go 'Oh didn't think you was old enough to have one that age'

Oh another time we get the looks antenatal appointments. DP has decided that as we live in a different town to the hospital and I have to go to the special unit every two weeks that he will use his holiday (he has been told to take 15 days by June or something due to how much he has taken so he doesnt lose it) to come with me.
Now we turn up me, DP and DS and there are all these people looking at us as if we shouldn;t be having a child.

Go along with DP when he has taken half a day rather than the whole day and is wearing his suit and people smile about my bump instead!

I do get curious looks when I'm out with mine. But at least half of that curiosity is due to carrying ds2 in a sling under a babywearing coat. I think people see this small, young-looking woman with two young children and one of them peeping out of a voluminous red coat and just feel the need to gawp I'm always getting offered seats on tubes and buses. When I was pg I was usually invisible

Berolina: I'm new to this. What is FWIW? Is there a MN dictionary?

'Acronym list' under useful stuff at the top

FWIW = for what it's worth

Welcome to MN

For What It's Worth.
Yes there is a (sort) of dictionary, you'll pick it up as you go along.

I think society does look down on young mums. Certainly when I got married (both me and DH were 23) most of our friends were horrified that we were getting married so young! DH was told he was throwing his life away and I was asked why I would want to do something so stupid!!!!!! Nobody was at all interested in our wedding (apart from our families who were happy about it). This has all changed now that most of these people are around 30 ish and planning to get married themselves!!

The great thing is that you're one step ahead of your peers and it's great to see how naive people can be about having a kid. They go into wearing their 'rose tinted specs'. I don't mean to sound awful; it's almost sick where I get my kicks from these days lol!!

Interesting point. I agree with louise about the 'Vicky Pollard' thing. No doubt many ignorant people lump all young mums into the 'get pg at 15 to get a council house & excuse not to work & lifetime of being supported by the State' category.

There may also be a bit of a throwback to a time when young ladies waited until after marriage to have a baby - that's how I was brought up. People assume that you've got pg by accident & that you're either stupid or to be pitied. What a shame, for all concerned. It's just ignorance.

I live in an area thats notorious for teen moms.. even though i had my DS when i was 25 and had been married 2 years, i still feel like i get stared at disapprovingly by older people when i'm out with him....

I had my DS when I was 18 and definitely felt as though people were looking down on me. People assume so much about you when you are a young parent. I had no friends with babies, and found the older mums too intimidating, so sadly DS didn't really have any friends until he started pre - school. Now he's at school, my age is never an issue, and I have friends of all ages. Becoming a mum second time round at 27 has been a totally different experience!

How times change.

When my mother had my sister at the ripe old age of 31 (in 1984) she was considered an 'older mother' and had all sorts of extra care and was made to have her in hospital, rather than a specialised maternity unit.

A someone has said, you'll be judged for some reason, your age (old or young) is just another thing for people to disapprove of. People are so, so different and mature at different ages, there really is no 'right' age.

. One of my Mum's friends had her only daughter at age 43 or so in the mid-seventies. Women used to start having babies about 18 and carry on until they literaly couldn't have them in the olden days.

I think so.... im not even a mum...

im a nanny but people who see me in the street dont know the babies / children arnt mine

not quite so bad now im a bit older (27 but look about 20 and IDed always), but 7 years ago when i looked about 15 yes yes yes!

I'm 25 & have two DDs, 18 months & 3 months and I've found older neighbours & passing acquaintances are friendlier now than when I didn't have kids. They stop & chat (mostly about the DDs!) but before we would just say hi and that was it. Maybe they think I'm a proper grown up now & worth talking to?

icklelou, you sound exactly like me! I had my ds at 18, and definitely felt I was looked down on, (especially on the bus, for some strange reason - more opinionated oaps probably!). All my friends didn't have children, and being quite shy, I too found older mums a bit intimidating as they tended to group together. I even went so far as to dress older and do my hair different, so no-one would notice me. I also piled on loads of weight, I was quite depressed and looking back I think this was another way of becoming invisable, ironically. (One day though I just had enough of being unhealthy and started to eat better - I lost nearly 5 stone and got down to a healthy weight and a size 12!) I am now expecting no2 (2 weeks to go, eek!) and feel completely different, definitely no dodgy looks as I waddle about my business!(I'm 26 now, 27 in march.)

don't you think its strange how you can be told your throwing your life away, by having children before your 30s yet its fine to do a dead end job and wait till your whats deemed as old enough then go on to have a children?

spotty, I also said to DP the other day, I am now 27, my eldest is 7, by the time I am around 33 I will be qualified to teach, which is what I ultimately want to do, my DD will also be 13, by the time I am 35 she will be 15, plenty old enough not to need a babysitter. I will have my life back, to a point and will still be yong enough to enjoy it, I couldnt imagine now having qualified to what I want to do and only just thinking of starting a family.
For some, it is the right choice I suppose, but I certainly wouldn;t say I have thrown my life away, in the slightest, if anythign I'll have more of my life to myself than someone who starts to have children at my age rather than has her last.

I couldn't have imagined waiting to have a child until I was 'deemed old enough' as spotty said. I'm in my second year of a primary education degree and am glad that I already have my DD. What if I had completed the degree, got a job, worked for a few years and the whole time wanted children with my DP and then found out I couldn't have them...it's a struggle finding the time to do anything other than coursework/family things/house work (even more of a struggle since joining MN and not being able to get off) but I love things just the way they are!!

Spot on spottyzebra! So much of the media seem to imply that everyone is scaling some kind of amazing career ladder in their twenties/early thirties, yet from the evidence I see around me, most of my friends who so far have done the uni, travelling, relationship blah blah thing the "right" way don't seem to be setting the world alight, or necessarily have a more fulfilling life! My DS wasn't planned, and DH and I have struggled financially (off our own backs I might add) until the last couple of years, but as VictorianSqualor points out we'll have our time too, just the opposite way round.

Scaryhairycat you sound like me too - I packed on the weight, got my my confidence back and lost it all again, and now had my DD four months ago. I think it's interesting your point about trying to become invisible. And my birthday's in March!

my sil had my nephew when she was 17, and has always been an inspiration to me. She was, and still is amazing!

I don't think that all young mums are a sad case or whatever, but in our town, as is the case in many i suspect, there seems to be hoards of young mums who sit at the bus station smoking and swearing with friends, and their poor babies are just sitting in their prams being ignored. I think it's just that the bad young mums are so visible, and unfortunately all get tarred.

I would have been a crap mother if I had a child at that age!!