*sniff*

[kyburg]

Still sick. But better, and will go back to work tomorrow.

I've said this, I'm sure of it - stop me if you've heard this one before.

I don't think anyone under the age of oh, 21/22 or so? Should try to have a kid by themselves. No, seriously.

I haven't met a 19-year-old yet I thought was prime parent material, me included.

When is a good time? Hmmm. Get all the school you want out of the way, first. Get a good handle on the kind of job you want to have (and if that means parenting children, that's honest) and make sure you can back it up with the kind of education you need (see former, capiche?)...and be in a stable relationship if you're making the kid yourself. Don't waffle or mince on the last statement. You want optimal, there's your mix.

Oh, and if you're not fabulous by 30, don't kill yourself.

I really think it's only fair you get to be a teenager as long as you're allowed. Make all the mistakes you can reasonably account for yourself, and learn from them - FIRST - before you drag someone else along for the ride.

And when girls start menarche at 11 these days, that's a lot of years you have to be aware of your fertility and managing it. At a time when you're least educated about just about everything.

I am a firm supporter of contraception, and believe that nobody gets pregnant with the express intention of having an abortion - so if you tell me you need one, I believe you need one. It's that simple.

We clear on this?

Please. Don't tell me you think you can care for a baby when you're not even old enough to sign contracts as a legal adult. Not in this world. Oh, and you're already living on your own, independent and all that? No? Children get taken care of by their parents. Not their parents being 'taken care of' by their children, if you get my drift. If - my respect means anything. You asked.

If anything in my adoption journey has taught me, it's that there isn't a shortage of children being born - and frankly, the adoption agencies that advertise "PREGNANT? WANNA SELL YOUR KID?" right next to the "ADOPTIVE PARENTS APPLY HERE" banner make me ill, but that appears to be the typical domestic adoption scenario. I can't blame anyone who doesn't think of that first - but think about it seriously, if you're single, unemployed and under 22. Okay? There are more types of adoption situations than the "traditional" kind - believe me, I've done the research. There's no 'giving up' in adoption these days, not unless you want to.

This is someone who waited - with good reason. It can be done, and you'll have a hard time convincing me it was a mistake.

If you want to toss "well, you're jealous because you haven't got any of your own," I will fucking plant you in the cornfield. While reminding you we weren't talking about me in the first place. Or the second. Maybe not even in the third.

I'm old enough - and the daughter of a nurse who retired after over fifty years in hospitals, before and after Roe - to have seen a long string of really young parents with no other visible support than an accidental pregnancy. Lemme tellya. It never went well. Yeah, there are survivors of the process - and they can get on okay - or not - but while you can plan and choose? Please do. And yes, that's asking a lot.

Parenting is a selfless act, by its very nature. If you can't think of anything but what you want here? Come on.

That's not a responsible parent talking.

Comments

No Life = No Quality Of Life

[bitpig.livejournal.com]

Where there's life, there's hope. Even a life of grinding poverty and parental abuse is better than getting yourself sucked into sink by a "doctor".

Re: No Life = No Quality Of Life

[dracowayfarer.livejournal.com]

I wanted to argue against your point, but all I could come up with was this question: Are you in favor of or against more informative sex ed programs in schools (or even at home) for young kids? This may or may not include making condoms (or other contraceptives) available to said young people.

Re: No Life = No Quality Of Life

[bitpig.livejournal.com]

Against.

Re: No Life = No Quality Of Life

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

Even a life of grinding poverty and parental abuse is better than getting yourself sucked into sink by a "doctor".

Really? have you experienced either of these options?

[yasha-chan.livejournal.com]

I don't see many people who are children of teen mothers advocating that kind of lifestyle. I can understand shit happening, but trying to have a kid? No thanks.

There's worse things than being sucked down a "doctor's sink". Such as being drowned by mommy in a tub, or beaten to death by daddy, or medicated to death by your parents and psychiatrist. Just sayin'.

[bitpig.livejournal.com]

I am a child of a teen mother. Of course I was born in 1965, thank God, in an America whre even the most inconvenient babies were still considered human beings instead of disposable Lebensunwerten Lebens as they are today.

It's easy to assert that "there's worse things than being sucked down a 'doctor's' sink when you've already been born.

But I'm not going to change your fabulously open and tolerant-of-all-points-of-view mind here on Kyburg's LJ, so I'll say no more. If you want to discuss it further, feel free to visit me on my own LJ.

times have certainly changed.

[redqueenofevil.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to see how times have changed over the years. You see, my MIL seems to think that it's over if you haven't reached 30 and had at least one child. That is horrible talk from the 70's showing there. My mom was 24 when I was born, and that was pretty late in our region (Rocky Mtns) for a first child. Her mom was 35 when my mom was born, but grandma had already 2 kids previously (one at 23, one at 25). And again, pretty late for her generation.

T was born when my mil was 20, and that's about average for the times in India. That said, there's still plenty of teenagers (we're talking 16 or so) in India who already have kids. Do I think that's too young? YES. But the system is also different there. Careers for women are non existent once they've been married. It's still very 1950 in India, despite the huge IT boom.

I'm not ready to go to grad school, but I am ready to have a kid. My childhood best friend worries that she's too old to start trying for a kid, and laments that she put her career first. We're both 32, and she's younger than me by just a few weeks. In truth, I have simply given up on trying to figure out when the right time to become a parent is, according to my education/career/etc, and go by feel. I will never (no matter what) be ready to become a parent. But I want to now, and that makes a significant difference.

Sorry, I'm babbling again... did you get the email about teaming up for Sakura Fest?

Re: times have certainly changed.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I've been sick in bed the last couple of days, only surfacing long enough to feed, check LJ and Sim a bit. Email? OH. Will check when I get home tonight.

[elizanikole.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I disagree with everything you've said. But I'm not sure I agree either.

I wasn't the child of a teenage Mother, but I was the child of a single Mother. Life was hard. Life wasn't fair. Life was painful most days.. but.. despite all of that - I turned out okay. I've also known a teen Mom or two, who were pretty darn good Moms all things considered.

I'm also a Mom myself. I am still in school, because until I had kids - I didn't actually know what I wanted to do with my life. It's not an easy decision for everyone. I don't feel that my going to school hinders my ability to be a good parent.. nor do I feel like my not having every single ducky in a row hinder that either. I'm not perfect. I'll never BE perfect. I yell sometimes, I cry sometimes. I get frustrated and disappointed with my kids. Having had them any later than I did (at 23 and 24), nor having all of my education in place, nor having a stable career would change that. It's human reaction. No parent is perfect, it's not possible and attempting to be so will create way more problems than you can imagine.

Now, all of that said - I refuse to go this whole parenting business alone. My husband and I have a very stable relationship. I love him dearly and vice versa. We make each other stronger as a team, and our weaknesses as a parent are the others strengths. We're a complete package.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I'm number three out of four of a single parent, after my father died of an accidental overdose when I was a month shy of 7 years old.

Let me ask you something. How did having children affect your husband? Did he also "get a clue" after the children arrived?

One of the things that really twigs my sense of fairness is that it's acceptable for a woman to say "I don't know...guess I'll just be a Mom" as if it were some kind of default setting for not getting on in life. Did you ever hear a guy say "I don't know...guess I'll just be a Dad?" You won't.

You want parenting to have any kind of respect, you don't toss it to the lowest common denominator as if it had no value at all, or required anything past a pregnancy. Most important job in the world, you ask me -

Perfect is for pansies - nothing in this world is perfect, it's just proof that we all carry that spark of the divine in us that can conceive of such a notion. Perfection only exists between our ears - it never happens in real life.

I said optimal - and that's what I'm asked. You short-cut any of it, and you're asking for a harder row to hoe, and that's only what you describe, neh?

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

*raises hand quietly*

That's not universal.

*celebrated her 33rd birthday and her daughter's 12th birthday this year*

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

*laughs* You'd like to think you're typical? You've got one thing going for you - and you already know what that is.

You don't color inside the lines. You draw the lines yourself first. You make clear, deliberate decisions, planned carefully and thought out to the nth detail, even the "crazy" stuff. You don't negate any possibles - but I've rarely seen (thinks, hmm, no) you take off half-cocked until you had something concrete to work from. (We can talk about the POV stuff until the cows come home.)

You got pregnant, you got a plan together. You did a lot of things that said you wanted the job and were willing to do a lot for it. Forever.

Hon, I wish to God your experience was more universal. We'd get rid of a lot of jails and legal system if it was - because we wouldn't need them.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

There's also regional differences going on here in some of the comments, some of which I find personally repugnant. There's class and style differences. There's differences in family resources and willingness to share the load of having a kid with you.
Some people, the same night their pregnancy is known, are booted on the street. It happens a pretty fair amount.
Such girls don't have the resources to support themselves long enough to be *pregnant*, certainly not long enough so they can give up a child for adoption. If they're lucky, and maybe they live in a very church-based town, they might find some kind of charity to support their lily-white asses until they do have it, but after that, they're on their own. But if they aren't white, tough luck.
I've mentioned in various places that you cannot make your rent on a minimum wage job in most of the state where I live. If your self-righteous parents are beside themselves with horror that their abstinence parties failed to take (as they so often fail) and kick you out on your own resources, you're homeless.
This is not pretty in a town where the pimps hang out by the bus stations, waiting for you to *want* to be recruited. They don't have to work very hard at recruiting, usually.
And you're not going to be camping out in your van in the street for very long, the way so many spoiled upper-class kids so casually assume you could do (don't doubt that, because I've had them tell me so). This is because the cops will roust you and have your vehicle towed (which means effectively confiscating the vehicle for lack of licensing and insurance) and *not* do you the favor of arresting you so you can be clean and dry and fed in jail.
They may assault you, depending where you are (that luck thing again) but they won't arrest you unless you're a clear danger to others.
LA has 80,000 homeless people, at last approximate count. There's neither resources nor sympathy to help enough of them out. Those surveys also find they're not all coming in from Nebraska, about 80% are entirely home-grown, and many of them actually do have jobs, they just don't get paid enough for the prevailing rents in town. In a lot of towns, you're competing with folks who came over the border and will work 18-hour days for *nothing* just to survive another day. They line up out on the sidewalks as day-labor, they often get paid maybe six to ten bucks a day as long as it's light outside.
We're not talking that you chose, by being careless or unlucky or the victim of abusive parents, to have a harder life. We're not just talking narrowing your options to microscopic-size. We're not just talking about losing touch with your peers who went on to college, and you dropping rapidly in economic class to the bottom of the ladder, boo-hoo.
We're talking about working dnagerous dirty jobs where you get hurt a lot of the time and will never be able to support yourself. We're talking living in dangerous camps by the river where nobody in authority cares how or when you die, and your fellow homeless people have no voice at all in what happens.
I don't know why the abstinence people think it's a piece of cake.

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

I don't know why the abstinence people think it's a piece of cake.

Some know it's not a piece of cake, but that's not good for their argument, so they ignore it.

Others are just dumb.

[turandot.livejournal.com]

I haven't met a 19-year-old yet I thought was prime parent material, me included.

Heh, I think the only thing I had going for myself when I was 19 was being entirely too selfish to want to contemplate having children ever.

If I have anything to add to what you said, it is that 11 years old can be mature enough to manage your fertility if you are given age appropriate, accurate information about what having a period means, and about the consequences of not waiting until you are ready both physically, emotionally and psychologically to have sex. I don't know what planet the abstinence crowd lives in, but most abstinence plus programs (abstinence plus=programs that teach children and teens about sexual activity postponement, but also how to protect yourself if you can't or won't postpone the onset of sexual activity) stress that point, along with the point that said kind of complete readiness may not come until long after one is willing and/or able to get married.

But no, those kinds of parents hear the word "contraception" and are ready to assume the worst about their own kids' ability to use that information responsibly. That kind of mistrust, IMHO, says more about the kinds of shortcomings abstinence only parents have when it comes to parenting than all their outward show of care they might put on for the sake of appearances.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I got "the talk" at age 9 - and by 15, I was convinced I wasn't going to have anything to do with sex until I had an income to support the habit.

FUN? You gotta be nuts.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Oh boy, your last paragraph there, right on the nose. Very, very good point.

[tomlemos.livejournal.com]

If you are old enough to be sexually active, you should be old enough to decide the consequences of your actions should you be part of a pregnancy.

I sure wish people did a better job of educating their children, because it isn't the job of society to do it for you.

Too bad you don't have to take a test to become a parent.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

You do if you adopt! BOY.

[riverheart.livejournal.com]

This is just about exactly how I feel, too, and no, it's not jealousy because I can't have my own. My medical reality is that I will die and the kid will die with me, which is probably why my body has shut that part of itself down flat.

You want an open adoption? You want the child to know who his or her birthmother is right from the beginning, and to honor you as his or her parent along with us? Just fine with me. Want to stick close by and have actual time with your kid, not just be a parent in name only? Just fine with me! We'll work it out so that everything is mutually satisfiable, to you and to us. We're pretty flexible. We just want the best for the kid, and that will be what we put first and foremost: what arrangement is best for the child?

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

We just want the best for the kid, and that will be what we put first and foremost: what arrangement is best for the child?

What if next year you decide it's "best for the child" not to see their birthmother anymore? Or for you to move to another state where she can't follow? That birthmother has no rights after adoption, she can't make adoptive parents honor agreements.

Any birthmother who goes into an open adoption with any reliance on it continuing to be open is deluding herself. She's at the mercy of the adoptive parents.

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

I used to agree with this, but I don't anymore. Now that I know what it is to desperately want a child, I can't feel it's right to pressure women into giving up their children. Obviously women can cede their rights to parenthood by abusing their children, but just being young doesn't constitute abuse.


There are more types of adoption situations than the "traditional" kind - believe me, I've done the research. There's no 'giving up' in adoption these days, not unless you want to.

In most open adoption situations, the birth mother has no legal rights. While in the negotiation, the adoptive parents may promise all kinds of things, after the papers are signed they can do whatever they want. birthmothers is a closed community now, but when it was open, I read a lot of heartrending stories.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

In my experience, you can just about write the rules yourself - and if you make it a requirement, you make it.

Of course, legally? The last case to truly test the waters was Baby M, who is what, college age now? And that case actually had DNA links to enforce it.

In all honesty, an open adoption is a means by which a biological child has access to a biological parent - no more, no less. How friendly that relationship will be depends on the parties involved - and much like any other kind of non-legal bond - and YUP, that's what it is. Giving up forever? No. Definitely a change in status? Big time.

Take a specific kind of head to get around that one - but I can't imagine a better attempt to take some of the loss out of adoption.

[zakipu.livejournal.com]

Sometime I really should read the comments that happen while I'm reading a post. Truly amazing replies. Wow. Not what I'd originally replied to, and as such, what I did reply with needs to be ignored. I've seen parents on both sides of the selflessness. And I totally agree with your conclusions. Yay :) I'm going to leave it at that until I'm a parent and stuff.

~Z

Wow

[djdig.livejournal.com]

I like your post Donna. It reminded me that I'd forgotten to take my BC when I woke up this morning. (I'm not sexually active anyway so being a few hours off for the dose won't be a catastrophe.)

I'm 22 and even now I have no desire to be a Mom, nor do I think I could responsibly.

I have a friend who got pregnant at age 18 when she was a freshman in college and the father was still in high school. She confided in me years later that she thought she was preventing pregnancy by using the pull out method. *head desk* She went through the same sex ed classes I went through in high school and it scares me that evidently she wasn't listening.

Thankfully, the husband grew up and joined the Marines to support the family. Also thankfully he is stationed on a base in HI in charge of their communications and can not be sent to Iraq until 2009 if he re-enlists. They now have 2 children, the prior mentioned child is 3 and their new baby is 4 months.

While my friend is an amazing Mom, she's all ready wishing she finished college.

It took the father 2 years to start acting like a Dad. Before my friend went to the Marines herself to talk about her husband's pay, he was wasting it on video games rather than helping to take care of the child or his wife.