re: why you don't want to be a statistic in wikipedia

To all you teen girls, those statistics ARE NOT LIES. they aren't bias, they aren't bull smurf, they're real. You're young and you haven't dealt with this yet, please, take care of yourselves and think about birthcontrol and having help from freecycle and all. 2 and 3 and 4 kids by the time you're 20 is worrysome, and so hard. I am/was a 20 year old nyc student with the clothes and the style good grades and a killer night life. I'm giving it up because i'm taking responsibility for what has happened, that is a life I'll get back to ASAP but for right now I have one priority. BUT i need someone to help me get help from the govt. I need the assistance to get through the tough times and finish school and support my new family. If anyone/including Mara, has any advice, please help. Much love, take care of yourselves, and your children.
xxxx
Lux

luxmeanslight wrote: To all you teen girls, those statistics ARE NOT LIES. they aren't bias, they aren't bull smurf, they're real. You're young and you haven't dealt with this yet, please, take care of yourselves and think about birthcontrol and having help from freecycle and all. 2 and 3 and 4 kids by the time you're 20 is worrysome, and so hard. I am/was a 20 year old nyc student with the clothes and the style good grades and a killer night life. I'm giving it up because i'm taking responsibility for what has happened, that is a life I'll get back to ASAP but for right now I have one priority. BUT i need someone to help me get help from the govt. I need the assistance to get through the tough times and finish school and support my new family. If anyone/including Mara, has any advice, please help. Much love, take care of yourselves, and your children.
xxxx
Lux

I'm turning 20 and i'm going to be the mother of two. Dose that make me a bad person?? NOOOO!!! I am a woman, I can have 40 kids if I want, and no one can say no, because I, not anyone else, me, I, make my choices. A book can't tell me i'm a bad mother because some are. MORE ARE NOT! MORE ARE THE MOST CAREING MOTHERS IN THE WORLD!! Everyone can take the book and shove it up their butt. People make decisions, and live with them the rest of their lives, and LOVE their choices, and wouldn't change it for the world. My daughter smiling at me evert minute of every day, laughing with me, learning with me is worth it all. Put me in a book I don't care, but i'm not a damn statistic!!!!! I'M HUMAN!!

Teen pregnancy is hard on everyone. It's hard on the kids, it's hard on the teens, it's hard on the families of the teens. I was a teen mom. I hope my daughter will not make that same choice.

Once you've done it you know how hard it can be. Be responsible. Use protection.

By reading most the thing posted on here about statistics and everything honestly i dont understand why so many people seem to be getting angry over it...im 17 and im expecting in march and i dont think that anyone is saying its a bad thing i mean things happen in life and you have to deal with it as it comes but yes back year and years ago women were getting pregnant at an earlier age and then usually did their daughter my mom got pregnant when she was 15 but the time was different that was in 1962 BUT her daughter(not me) ended up pregnant at 14 and forces to have an abortion and then i also got pregnant early i do believe that some of the things apply to a lot of women such as what i mentioned but i also believe that if someone tries hard enough they can make it through although not everyone does but i dont think that has to do with age but age raises the chances of something like that happening....but as im sure most of us have seen on the news older women arent capable of raising kids as well as teenagers i mean i cant even remember how many older women have been on tv because they killed their baby but Life does move on and i believe anyone who accepts their responsibility realistically has a better chance of making it through

I ate lots of fruits. I craved them and ended up with gestational diabetes because fruit has hidden sugar in it and so does milk and cheese. so lol. but the rest of that is something to think about. I know a lot of teen moms who have more then one baby and they haven't even hit senior year.

I WONT BE A STATISTIC. [/u]

Specs06 wrote: To start off I think all of those statistics are biased. Oh, and probably almost everyone's grandmother on here was a teen mum. Either a teen mum or had her first baby at 20, 21 or 22. Did the ENTIRE generation before us preform poorly in school? That's just plain pulling things out of the air! My mother had me in her teens and I was in honours classes. My mark was always in the top five of my class all through high school. (FYI: My mum has severe mental illness so she's not allowed to legally have children.)

I was adopted by my biological mother's mother at the age of two. She fell ill when I was ten and I had to go live with other family members. When I was fifteen I was thrown out on the street and had to go to work, working over 45 hours a week in order to be able to afford a room and food. My adopted mother died when I was sixteen, she was 64 years old. I had to quit school because I was so exhausted and failing because I had to work to support myself. No one else in my family cared to help.

So people go on and say ooh teen mums are the source of most (if not all) our problems in terms of the over use of social assistance and childhood behavioral problems. Well NEWS FLASH people are having children in their forties. After I hit five my adoptive mother had no energy to play with me. She was fifty-two. Most people's health starts to go down hill in their forties and fifties. So these people will be in their sixties trying to raise teenagers... WOW that makes so much more sense! Have kids really late so they'll end up on the street when you get too old to look after them!

So the world critisizes teen mums yet the government allows people of advanced age to go through medical procedures to allow women and men of advanced age to have children. People of an age that who aren't physically able to become and sustain pregnancies the natural way. YET people have the nerve to pick on teens. Like someone said as least we're taking responsibility for our actions. Unlike all these people on thier high horses, which I'm sure at least some of them had abortions. That's what all that data is, it's pushing abortions.

It would be nice if you searched teen pregnancy and it gave you some tips. For example: You'll need five servings of dairy per day instead of four because you're still growing. Organisations such as www.freecycle.org is a great way to get free stuff you'll need for your baby. 1 800s for government programs such as the prenatal benefit plan. Maybe a chart with how much you should weight for your height based on age and months gestation. The legal responsibilities of the baby's father and any legal procedures or paper work you may need to fill out.

We don't need... "well hardy-harr-harr you're pregnant! Both you and your baby are set up to fail! HAHA. You suck. Here are the stats to prove it" How does that happen? I feel that it's more of a danger to a child to be born to old people than people that aren't quite old "enough". My question is WHY NOT LOOK DOWN ON THEM FOR BEING SELFISH instead of looking down on us for being young?

So I don't know her but I pretty much LOVE this girl. You definetly made that rude woman sound like an idiot and I appreciate it because this is not a place to judge people.

i agree

Specs06 wrote:

ZachRyansMommy wrote: I am a second generation teen mom. My mother fullfilled most of those statistics. She had my brother when she was 18 and me when she was 19 almost 20; there is 19 months between us. She dropped out of high school, lived off welfare, and ended up trapped in an abusive relationship. She didn't eat right or take care of her body so in result me and my brother were both a little over a month early. My father stuck around, in a sense, but only because his family threatened to disinherit him if he didn't marry my mother. He was a drunk (still is) and was very abusive. HOWEVER...
I did graduate, have never failed a grade, am in college, have a 3.75 gpa, and two immensly intelligent sons. I have never been in trouble with the law. I do have some learning diabilities but you know what? 1 out of every 7 people does. I am still with the father of my children. We are married. We are NOT on welfare. Our families were not very supportive. And you know what?
You CAN NOT classify all teen moms into one lump. True there are good and bad sides to this but your story doesn't end until you DIE. My mother has gone onto have 2 more children, divorced my father, took care of me and my brother on her own without welfar for 4 years. Remarried a wonderful man, and has everything people always said she wouldn't have.

Here, here! 3.75   That's amazing.

Another thing I'd like to point out: Jason's cousin just had a baby. She's 27 years old. She eats McDonald's everyday and did throughtout her entire pregnancy. She was thinking about having her labour induced 2 weeks before she was due. Luckily we talked her out of it. Instead she was induced on her due date. Because of the induction there were several complications, she had to have a C-section and her baby was in the neonatal unit for a week.

Please, don't throw us the BS of only teenage mums are irresponsible.   (Directed at Google and Wikipedia)

I just like to say I agree with this. I am a teen mom 2 be and am very offended by these older women trying to critize us for mistakes we made. Even in a child is a mistake you would never consider then one. I have the support of my family and I am working and finishing high school.

I'm 16 and pregnant with my first baby.
I have been to councilors with my boyfriend under my fathers advice, and she has said we were "Two really mature and emotionally stable people" and even said we were more prepared than most people of 30 - 40 are.
My mother had me when she was almost 40 years old, now she's almost 57 and has had enough of being a mother. She treats me like I'm an intruder, and like it's rude of me to hang around. She treats me as if I was 20 or so and makes out that I should be taking care of myself, moving out and getting a job. I hardly see this way of parenting as ideal, and if anything it's worse than having a young mother.
My great great aunt was a teenage mother of 16 at the turn of the LAST century, which just goes to show that teenage pregnancy is nothing new. People go on and on nowerdays as if it's not normal to be a mother as a teenager, and like it's some kind of new fad. In all honesty, this is the perfect time for women to be having children, it's just society now that's made this whole process harder for us.
My grandmother was a young mother of about 20 or so, and although they were very poor, she did marry her partner and they did raise what is now my uncle, aunt and mother. My mother isn't exactly ideal, but she's a stable and well educated human being like my uncle and aunt.
My great aunt was also a young mother, although I don't know much about her.
My only aunt on my Fathers side was a teenage mother, and she was one of the unlucky ones. She got pregnant as a way of forcing her parents to allow her to marry her boyfriend. Her husband later became deeply abusive towards her. She had two daughters who are both now prostitutes. She thankfully remarried however to a man who loved her. Unfortunately, she passed away fairly early in her life, and I can't say much about her as a person because I never met her.
Out of a large number of generation after generation of teen mothers, only one of them was unfortunate enough to suffer abuse and have her little girls turn out badly. So it can't be all bad, right?
I think and feel I am personally and emotionally prepared for my Daughter, and my Partner is too. We may not be financially well placed, but we have alot of support from his mothers family and my father. I can't really say anything on wheather we're good parents or not yet, but I can say this; we damn well aim to be.
Yes I'm a drop out, but I was before I was pregnant.
The father is still around and as far as I can tell has a positive attitude to becoming a Dad. He's still in education despite being so pressured and having people nagging at him to get a job. I really admire his strength as he's the worst off in this whole thing.
I have no qualifications or good job prospects, but that is not due to me being a teen mother, it's due to the fact of other people being unable to accept who I am and bullying me to the point where I cannot continue with my education.
I applied for community college, I hope to do so again in the future.
I looked for jobs, I also hope to do so again in the future.
I will not be victimised by how society thinks I should be. I will not lay down and die.

putting all teen moms into ONE category is just screwed up. Dont do that. Yes. Alot of teen moms have struggles, but doesnt EVERYONE? 'She' is just singled out because shes a teen mother. Its crap.

- oh and, a female body is meant to have babies between the ages of 17 and 25. why no singling out the mothers who have babies at 35, 40, and 45? Oh. Cause most of them are married.... people crack me up.

I think that while some teen mum's are living off welfare and there parents there are a lot who aren't. I'm 15 (16 next week) and pregant but I would never dream of dropping out of school and I'm going to college next year, where they have daycare.
I actually know someone who got pregnant just to get benefits though, and I agree that's disgusting and shouldn't be done.
Also with the whole "teach them contraception" thing, well they do, in fact the sex education here is very good due to the incredibily high teen pregnancy rate. (highest town in the UK and probably Europe)
I used contraception, three types of contraception. (though admitly with the pill I forgot to take it a few times) and I still got pregnant, so it's incredibily patronising to be told "how to use contraception" most teenagers know.
Though I am slightly worried aobut my diet now, haha.

The fact that you are trying to tell us that we're having a "Real Baby" and that we have to take care of it forever really offended me. Do you honestly think we do not realize that? Do you honestly think that any of the things you are trying to tell us are not an issue for older mothers as well? Since the beginning of time most woman have been having children in their teens. Every new mother is new at having a baby whether they are 16 or 35. Im not sure exactly what you were trying to do by leaving a post like this but Im sure all you wanted to do was start drama which is very immature. Which is kind of funny considering you are the one who claims to be better fit to be a mother. GROW UP!

Mara wrote: Duvalmomma,

it's not bull-- these facts are real. you're one of the lucky ones-- b/c you did have your friends and family behind you, you had the emotional and financial support to do things right. you should be proud of yourself for facing your challenges and succeeding in spite of their difficulty. the posting is not to chastise teenage girls, but to make them think about what's coming down the line, what they're going to need to be prepared for. obviously, you did that already.

what really tears my heart out are the young girls who come on here pregnant at 14, 15, 16, etc. whose parents have kicked them out for being pregnant and won't even talk about raising the kids. their boyfrieds have abandoned them, or worse yet are abusive and/or addicted to drugs. these young mothers need help and emotional support desparately and they're not getting it from the people closest to them.

this isn't about a lack of faith either-- the facts are what they are, i just want those facts to change. i want more women like you coming on here and proving the facts wrong.

and finally, i will never believe that the best way to start a family is while you're still in the throes of adolescence, figuring out who you are and what you want out of life, as well as finishing a basic education. it's too much to ask of a teenager. it's no surprise that so many of these women who don't receive any positive support from their family and friends, fall apart when it comes to parenting on top of all the other demands they're going through.

thank you someone puts credit towards the girls like me. im 15 and my family kicked me out. i was luckey enough for my new boyfriend(whos not the daddy)'s family to take me in. but i have friends who sleep in their cars outside of their parents house and watch their parents leave so they can go inside to get some food for the day

I actually have replied to this before but i have too again.
Many ppl here know that im a mom of three and i just turned 20!
Oh jesus shot me now like. I had my first child at 17 when i was engaged i had my twins a few months ago still engaged to the same person shock horror. Im one of those awful irresponsible ppl you seem so convinced to put down. But you know what im not and neither are any of these girls. In fact i believe were better moms. Were all makikng HUGE sacrificies in our livese for our kids and are willing to do anything for them. Espically putting up with smurf from ppl like you.
I go to college ill be a qualified lawyer in 2 years. My fiance and i own our own home we both work and support our kids WITHOUT WELFARE or support from families. And get this the twins WERE PLANNED. Yes i planned to be a mom of 2[didnt think it was three!] at the age of 19 and i dont regret it. So what if i want to be a young mom. so what if i want the energy to run after my kids and not embarrass them by looking like their granny at school meetings. Last time i checked it was my decision and my body.
Anyone who comes onto a forum thats here to support young mothers to lecture us and tell us what to do is totally out of order. We dont need you to patronoise us or tell us what to do. Were all perfectly capable of supporting each other and the advice i got on here was far better than that of any "adult mom".
Our decisions our our own not yours. Back off give us some space ok??
IM PROUD TO BE A TEEN MOM!

[Sorry for being so angry!]

I realize that you probably werent trying to be "mean", but it might have come off like that. Not trying to be rude but maybe you should have used a little more of encouraging words because we are put in a difficult position and I think that most of us do realize that. I also think that us teenagers just having our babies instead of turning to abortion just show that we are brave and willing to take on such responsibilities. Furthermore, I am pretty sure that teen mothers arent the only ones who have these kind of statistics. I hear about thirty and forty year old mothers drowning their children and throwing their babies away. I dont think that anyone is ever really ready for their child, because it is something new and it does mean giving your whole self to someone else, but I dont think that age should define the way we are going to parent our child, because I believe that with experiences you grow, its not always your age that makes you grow up.