I was pregnant at 17 years old; my daughter was born after I turned 18, though. I would never say I regret having my daughter, she’s one of the best things to ever happen to me, but I will say that my life has been far from easy, and I would never recommend that anyone follow the same path I did.
And I was one of the lucky ones… I was lucky that I was far enough through high school when I got pregnant that I was able to finish and get my diploma before my baby was born; I was lucky to find my husband, who had no problem treating my child as his own, and who was even willing to adopt her when her biological father gave up his rights; I was lucky that I had family willing to help me out, parents who did not kick me out of the house and were able and willing to loan me money when I was in need, a brother who was willing to fix my car for me when it broke down, a sister who was willing to baby-sit for me so that I could work.
What happens to those who don’t have all of that? How do they get by?
I know everyone has problems, and I know that lots of people have difficult lives for a variety of reason, but teen pregnancy is entirely preventable. A little education, a little caution, and it can be avoided. So why let it happen? Why do young girls allow themselves to be in that position? Why did I?
I can tell you why I did… I was young and stupid. I thought I was invincible, and I had myself convinced that it wouldn’t happen to me. So, I was careless. And as a result of my carelessness I have been playing catch up for the past seventeen years. In debt, and without any skills to get a good paying job, I found myself working a variety of low paying, go-nowhere jobs… Walgreens, Target, Pizza Hut… sometimes working two at a time, and still I was unable to keep up.
It helped that I had a husband with an excellent work ethic who was happy to work hard to support us, but when I found myself working at a Walmart snack bar, with two children at home, and unable to pay my utilities, I knew something had to change. That’s when I started taking college classes, which led to years of struggling to work while maintaining my GPA and caring for a family.
We’re doing alright now, in general. We both have good paying jobs, we can pay our bills and afford some of the extras, and we can put a little aside for savings here and there. That’s all nice, but would you believe that seventeen years later we are still playing catch up? We are still dealing with bad credit as a result of never having had any money, we are still paying back people who have loaned us money over the years, we have a huge amount of student loan debt, and I just bought a bike for commuting to work on.
I’m happy about the bike, and I think it was a good decision. It will get me to work, it will add a good amount of much needed exercise to my day, and it does save us a lot of money as opposed to buying a second car, but it’s a bittersweet purchase. On the surface it’s fabulous, but underneath is brings into focus how we ended up here… young, stupid, careless… I would have thought that by the time I reached 35 years of age that I would be well established, financially secure, with savings set aside and good enough credit to be able to get a loan if I needed one.
But, when you’re seventeen you’re not thinking of that. The inability to think that far into the future is probably part of the problem. If more young girls really understood the consequences, I think we would have less of a problem with teen pregnancy.
I cringe when I hear a young girl say that they want a baby of their own… here I am, seventeen years later, and I am still dealing with the consequences.