Family Forum / Parenting / Mothers / July 2008

no. in the US teen pregnancies are down, but i would hope that
if a teen did have a child & choose to keep it, that her
family would help her raise the child as she continues her
education.
it is possible that teens are adopting their unexpected
children out to other family members as well, but i don't
think there are any statistics about it. one of my son's
friends is an in-family adoption (but his mother wasn't a
teen)
lee

Does anyone else thing this post might be scam?

More young girls?  No.  Where have you been for the past 50 years?
Before the "sexual revolution" of the 60's-70's the girl's mother often
passed the baby (grandchild) off as hers.

Girls taught to respect themselves don't have to have sex with every
date.  Men taught to respect women see them as human beings and not just
sexual objects.  These take family involvement starting at a very young age.

A lot more access to birth control and education about what it takes to
be a parent might lessen the number of unwanted pregnancies. Easier
access to adoption might give unwanted babies to families who truly want
them.

gloria p

Actually, the rates have been dropping lately for unmarried women under 18 as
far as pregnancies.

As for as being raised by family - in generations past, many a "little sister"
was actually a daughter.  It's in the past few decades that young girls have
been raising their babies.  When lifespans were shorter and death more frequent
(and I mean only going back as far as my father's generation), many a child born
*in* wedlock was raised by aunts or grandparents.

So how is extended family raising a child abandonment??

Is there a specific situation you have in mind?

Banty

No, actually.
I had very few friends and classmates that had a child as young as I did.  I
find that most school mates and friends my age are just now starting their
families - and I'm mid-20s.  Also, a lot of them are even waiting - a number
of people I know my age are just coming around to the marriage stage.
My baby brothers are 19 and 22 now.  Neither of them have children (that I
know of, anyways LOL j/k) and I have yet to hear either of them talk (now or
even when they were even younger) about whatever friend(s) having babies.
I also haven't heard of "a lot" of them being raised by family (I assume by
this, it would mean the biological grandparents, aunts/uncles, great
aunts/uncles, older sibling, etc)  My oldest son was adopted in open
adoption to a fantastic family that I absolutely love and are not part of my
biological or through marriage family.  I think I've only heard of one woman
placing her child for adoption to her biological mother.  I, personally,
have noticed quite the opposite.
More and more people seem to be much older when they start having children
(planned or unplanned)  I hear about people in their late 30s and early 40s
having their first child more often than I hear about a 20 year old having
one.
I also, personally, have come into direct contact with more people that have
made the choice to have someone out of their family raise their child, as
opposed to someone in their family.  Both do happen, though.  I don't see
how it is abandoning a child, though.
If a child is truly abandoned, then that begs me to wonder why you say it is
the mother that abandons their children... It takes a mommy AND a daddy to
make a baby.  It also takes that same mommy and daddy to actually abandon
it.