Tuesday, September 13, 2011

So much Hate for teen moms?

As you may have read already and unfortunately know as teen mothers we experience a lot of side eyes, horrible looks and down right blatant disrespect by random strangers and often times even our own "friends" and "family".
I've been stared at, "spoken" to and lectured. I was fed up one day and decided to find answers as to why strangers and especially other mothers treat teen moms like second class or with such disrespect.
On Twitter I follow a mother by the name Rene. Rene is the creator of Good Enough Mother(G.E.M) a website dedicated to mothers and their perfectly imperfect parenting techniques. On her site she has a section entitled "ask Rene" so I did. I asked her why there is so much hate for teen moms and sent in this letter:

Dear Rene,
I am 21-years-old and have a five-year-old daughter. Whenever we go out I get people looking at me as if I have personally offended them by being a teen mom; some have even had the nerve to lecture me!  They say I selfishly placed a burden on society and my DAUGHTER. I don’t get that at all.
I was with ONE person, got pregnant and maintained a six-year relationship with the father of my child before I decided that the relationship was no longer healthy for the three of us. I stayed in high school and was a full-time employee, mother, fiancĂ©, step-mom, housekeeper, student and daughter; I even graduated with HONORS. I went on and earned my Associates degree and now I’m pursing my Bachelors.
I am not trying to sound like I’m the poster child for teen moms or make it sound easy, because as we all know being a mother at ANY age is difficult to say the least. However, why don’t “adult” mothers got the same RUDE treatment that I receive for no reason and why are “adult” mothers often the ones that dish it out the most?  Shouldn’t a mother get the same respect REGARDLESS of age?
In the end we are all trying to do the same thing;  raise healthy, happy, successful children.  So why all the hate toward teen moms?
Please help because I am at a loss.
Teen Mom NYC
  
 A few days later Rene responded to my questiong, posted it on her site and opened the floor for her readers to weigh in as well. To read the reply and the comments click -->here
Be sure to check out the site in its entirety is has really great info and stories!

Thank you for reading!
Posted by at 4:21 PM

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