Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Some folks are encouraged to start early by their parents, who want grandchildren to enjoy while they are still young enough to enjoy them...I've seen that, esp when the potential grandparents started young themselves...
This thread should not be titled why do people under 30ish have kids but why do unstable people not able to support themselves have kids. There can be a young couple or individual who is perfectly capable of raising a family, and there can be an older couple or individual that is not. Wide generalizations never work.
I am 25 and my husband is 27 and our daughter is 15 months old. We own a 2BR townhouse in the valley, we are about to sell it actually and upgrade to a single family house with a yard in Glendale (finally!). We both have good, stable careers and live very comfortably. (My daughter has enough toys & clothes to stock an entire daycare. Not that toys are the most important thing in a child's life. There is love, comfort, security and ability to be creative & learn.) I have been with my company almost 7 years. We have family nearby that watches our daughter while we are at work. I am able to work from home 3 days a week and my daughter is with me then and my sister-in-law helps out. My husband and I met as teenagers, and got married 5 years ago. We have both always been mature and ambitious and family-oriented.
Age is just a number. The actual maturity and capability of the couple is much more important. I have co-workers in their 30s who are not even ready to touch parenthood with a 20-foot pole.
Not that long ago the question would have been "why do people OVER 30ish have kids?" Getting married at 18 was the norm.
In other words, it'll work if the parents heads are on completely straight.
If they're ready to do it and know it will work out despite some of the obvious challenges, then go right on ahead.
If there are too many surefire indicators around that will knowingly make it all crash and burn(ie,. mental illness, criminal history, failure to hold any type of employment for extended periods of time) it should be stopped immediately.
Why sure, doing things the correct way is a sure fire way for success. Being young is not the problem. Being young and having kids before getting married is closer to the problem that seems to be pointed out within this thread.
Ideally a couple that gets married at any legal age and makes goals to stay married and raise a family under that specific set of goals should do fine. Chances are they would have their mind on the long term and not the here and now.
I have friends that have charted such a course and it has worked well for them. One couple that had dated during their high school years ended up leaving for differant colleges. When they were back together during Christmas break they realized being apart is not for them and they ended up gettin married and both ended up at the same school. She went on to become an RN and he went on to earn a degree in Business. By the time that they had finished school they had a couple boys. They moved back home and added a couple daughters to the mix. Now here it is 24 years later and the oldest son is working on his Masters degree. The second son will graduate with his degree at another school. The oldest daughter is in her second year of college, the last daughter is a high school senior and has been accepted to another University. Four kids at four differant schools.
Kids do need to realize that they need to get an education and for the majority I would not suggest getting married early and having kids. It is hard out there. Still, time and time again, it has shown that it is posible to make it in life at any age.
Premarital sex becoming so acceptable is a big part of the problem. And I'm not moralizing here but what GOOD did the sex revolution it do? Endless streams of boyfriends, but seldom a husband. Numerous fatherless children and parasitic women living in poverty. SDT's, some fatal and some chronic are as common as squirrels in parks, out-of-wedlock babies are as well, causing a burden on society and generations of fatherless children. These of the poorly educated and low-income people will repeat the mistakes of their parents (some do pull themselves out of the morass for a better life).
Why aren't these young ladies NOT taught about protecting themselves from pregnancy and disease and men who only want them for sex? How can they be so stupid, to blind to think because a man takes them to bed that he loves them? Apparently the parents and churches are not doing their job.
And lastly, why do so many young mean feel nothing for the children they father? No love for the children and no sense of responsibility? When they (most of them, not all) hear the girlfriend is pregnant they take off, knowing society will be forced to raise their children. What kind of parents raise sons like this?
It's a huge issue and there are no simple answers but I wonder about this all the time myself.
Yesterday, as I was making the short trip to pick up my 15 year old son from school, I saw two high school girls (in school uniforms) walking. Each holding a baby. Then when I arrived at my son's school, there was a girl getting her baby out of a minivan, and he mentioned that he knew her. She is a junior.
When my older son was in 9th grade, one of his classmates was bringing her newborn to school with her. When he was a junior in high school he had a classmate who had two kids at home already.
He is 20 now, about to be 21 in March, and he joked about starting a Facebook page with the title "People born in the early 90s that don't have kids yet" because he says almost EVERYONE he knows / knew from high school now has at least one child. Even the girls he thought were especially smart or talented or the boys who seemed to have more ambition and plans for the future. He doesn't even want a girlfriend, he says, but he also says that if he was looking for one he'd be hard pressed to find one in this town hat didn't have at least one child! Crazy. It blows me away and I don't understand it. In 2009, my city was rated third highest in the NATION for teen pregnancy rates.
I think that these girls are believing a fantasy about love and babies but more so than that, they are having babies so that someone will love them unconditionally. Not the father, but the baby. They are using children to meet their unmet emotional needs.
Also, it is cultural. It seems to be the case here that with young Hispanic girls, it's no big deal if they have a kid in high school. It's not considered to be a tragedy. I grew up here but on the more "Anglo" side of town and the attitude was very different when a girl got pregnant. It was treated as a very unfortunate thing and your life was "over". Other girls would tsk tsk about the one who got knocked up and it was considered very sad and shameful. It's not the same for other cultural groups here. It just doesn't carry the same negative stigma.
Many of these girls stay in school, which is good, but when I was a teen, in a different sort of neighborhood, it was understood that you were screwed, literally, if you had a kid. No one was home to watch the baby so you could finish school. A baby meant dropping out and working to pay for daycare and your baby's needs. There was no extended family for many of my peers who were raised in typical suburban households with 2 working parents, no Grandma or Aunt around to help.
It seems to be much more common with Hispanic girls to rely on family to help with a baby, and then having another baby is not a big deal either. I think many of these girls are not particularly religious themselves but there is the religious factor at work here too, with their parents influencing access to birth control due to religious beliefs. At least once a week, I am out and about in town, and shocked by some kid calling a woman "Grandma" who looks like she cannot possibly be any older than me (I am 41).
Then you have the whole teenage way of thinking where they believe they are invulnerable and it "won't happen" to them. In Texas where we still push abstinence over birth control education, well, then that's what you get in the end.
I say all of this and I was a teenage parent myself. Well, technically. I got pregnant while in my second semester of community college and I was 19 at the time, but 20 when I had my son. I was not married. I made the decision to have and keep my baby but I always saw it as a big deal and something NOT to do again until I was married and financially stable...I never saw it as "no big deal" and I had a very clear picture of how much it would change my future. My mother and Grandmother both adored my son but they very much had the attitude of "you made your bed..." they were supportive but they certainly did not make it easy for me in any way. Both my mom and my Grandma had been single parents (due to divorce, not unwed pregnancy) and knew very well how hard it was, and I heard all about their struggles, as well as witnessing my Mom's struggles personally. I never would have dreamed of taking the risk of pregnancy after that and I was actually celibate for a long time after having my firstborn, until I married when he was four.
So what saddens me is not just that it seems so prevalent, but that the attitude about it is so casual. My son, in some ways, saved my life, because I was on a very self-destructive path, and he was loved and cherished from the day he was born. I do not have any regrets (he is the most awesome guy!), but it certainly put my life on a very different path.
Also, it is cultural. It seems to be the case here that with young Hispanic girls, it's no big deal if they have a kid in high school. It's not considered to be a tragedy. I grew up here but on the more "Anglo" side of town and the attitude was very different when a girl got pregnant. It was treated as a very unfortunate thing and your life was "over". Other girls would tsk tsk about the one who got knocked up and it was considered very sad and shameful. It's not the same for other cultural groups here. It just doesn't carry the same negative stigma.
I grew up on the same side of the same town as you and the girls I knew who got pregnant either went to stay with a relative until the baby was born and adopted it out, had an abortion, or (in one case) got married.
I live on a side of town now where it's very common to see pregnant teenagers. I have a neighbor who started her family when she was 12. The high school girl who lives across the street from me used to spend most nights having sex with her boyfriend in his truck parked in front of the house, now she has a baby. I took my daughter out of the school in our neighborhood because the boys were talking nasty to her in fourth grade, asking if she wanted her cherry popped, things like that.
On the one hand, it's nice that the parents of these teenagers aren't kicking them out when they get pregnant. It's a cultural thing to value family more than you care about how people will think of you or your pregnant teen. On the other hand, it would be so much nicer if they would teach their kids about birth control so it didn't happen.
Also, I'm glad I had my kids in my 20's. My sister is in her 30's now and trying to have a baby and it's just not working for her.
My husband was born with a serious heart defect when his parents were in their late 30's, so he wanted to have kids early because he thought there was a better chance of having healthy babies.
I grew up on the same side of the same town as you and the girls I knew who got pregnant either went to stay with a relative until the baby was born and adopted it out, had an abortion, or (in one case) got married.
I live on a side of town now where it's very common to see pregnant teenagers. I have a neighbor who started her family when she was 12. The high school girl who lives across the street from me used to spend most nights having sex with her boyfriend in his truck parked in front of the house, now she has a baby. I took my daughter out of the school in our neighborhood because the boys were talking nasty to her in fourth grade, asking if she wanted her cherry popped, things like that.
On the one hand, it's nice that the parents of these teenagers aren't kicking them out when they get pregnant. It's a cultural thing to value family more than you care about how people will think of you or your pregnant teen. On the other hand, it would be so much nicer if they would teach their kids about birth control so it didn't happen.
Yes, I knew many girls in high school that had abortions.
I think you are right; I would certainly not want these girls to be tossed out on the street or worse. My own father cut me off financially when I was pregnant. I managed to hide my pregnancy from him for a very long time with baggy clothes and avoiding seeing him too often. I was living on my own and he was helping pay for school. When he found out I was pregnant he stopped helping with school, as punishment, and I ended up dropping out (community college). Took me sixteen years to find my way back to college!
I also knew girls who would have literally had the crap beaten out of them had they ended up pregnant, so that is certainly NOT the direction to take, but there needs to be a middle ground... an atmosphere of shame for the teen mom is not conducive to helping her being a good mother but there's the other extreme of "it's okay, Grandma will raise your baby, go have fun" that isn't helping either! It's just so sad.
I had my daughter at 22. She has always lived an upper middle class existence and we have never relied on public assistance. I also went on to grad school, we have traveled the world, and basically belied the notion that 20 somethings cannot successful parent or be married.
Finally, enough of this welfare mythology. No one is living large on public assistance. A welfare beneficiary is eligible for a TOTAL of five years. It has been that way for nearly 20 years. Nothing changes that, not having more children, nothing. Can we have a teensy bit of reality. No one is having children to make a profit from the government.
The idea of people waiting till 30 or more to start families is a very modern idea. Forty years ago it was common to get out of high school, marry your highschool sweetheart and have kids This is no longer acceptable, now it is expected that careers be fully established and a large bank account on hand or you are not "being responsible" What is considered ok now however is spending those 12 years between 18 and 30 hopping from bed to bed, and living the "wild" life. I think we were better off getting married young. Our society and economy are very different today I know, good jobs are a thing of the past and low wages have become normal for the young. This is not going to change in the world of offshoring and free trade, and expecting them to not have families because of it just simply is not going to happen. Better to start examining why they cant get good jobs when they get out of school (and fixing it) would be a better use of our efforts then discouaging them from getting married and having kids. No one will stop them from doing that, good jobs or not. I know encouraging them to live like Snooki untill they are 35 is not good for them, or for society.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
In Texas where we still push abstinence over birth control education, well, then that's what you get in the end. 
