A Question to Everyone (hypothetical)

[FanChan]

Well, I just watched an absolutely beautiful movie on, believe it or not, Lifetime. Crazy place to find a good movie, right? Heh. Anyway, it was called Too Young to be a Father, and I started watching it expecting a bunch of the usual liberal nonsense, but I was pleasantly surprised to find one of the first - that I’ve seen - genuine looks at the boy’s side of a teen pregnancy situation, that ended in just about all of the right decisions.

I won’t go into detail about the movie, in case someone wants to look it up and watch it themselves.

The question I want to ask is if you wound up pregnant as a teenager or young unwed adult(girls, as well as those guys who fathered the hypothetical baby), would you jump on the idea of adoption? (I’m going to trust that everyone here would never have considered abortion. And if you would have, for the sake of this thread, let’s say that abortion didn’t exist.) Or would you keep the baby?

It seems to me that everyone is pushing adoption as the best alternative to abortion. “Teenagers can’t support a baby” everyone says. And okay, so maybe that’s true, but a teenager isn’t alone in the world, right? That teenager’s got a family, parents (or parent) and often many have siblings of working age as well. Many families are tightly knit with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all within a short drive, some with them right down the street. Why is it families are close until a teen pregnancy comes along? Suddenly, that teenager is the only person on earth fending for herself/himself and her/his baby.

With the family involved, that kid’s life doesn’t have to ‘end’ with the baby as the world would like us to believe it does. Parents and grandparents can look after the baby while the new parent/parents finish school and get themselves ready to start their lives safely and securely. The baby doesn’t have to be whisked away and given to some other family in order for the kids to have good lives.

If it were me, and I’d found myself pregnant due to sin or the unfortunate event of a rape, I’d have clung to that baby. But then, I’ve known since I was thirteen (when a classmate of mine was raped and forced to give her baby up for adoption) that I wanted nothing more than to be a mother. It’s an easy choice for me. I’d like to hear what other people think they would’ve done (or, if there are any of you out there, what you did do when the situation arose).

 

[Feanaro_s_Wife]

**I think it is up to each individual family to decide. And I firmly believe that whatever is done it should be done in ****the best interest of that unborn child. Sometimes keeping the baby is the answer and sometimes adoption is the most sacrificial loving act a mother (and father if he is involved) can do for that innocent little life.

I think that adoption is often the better solution because that baby would be placed in a loving, stable, two parent home. It gives the baby a great chance at a great life and gives a couple a child that they may have not ever been able to have by any other means.

Not to say that there aren’t young or unwed parents who are able and willing to step up to the plate and have great family support, but I think it’s rare. I think of what may have happened if I had been an unwed teenage mother. I would like to think I could have provided well for that child but in all honesty I don’t think I could have given that child all he or she deserved (and I am not speaking of material things). I would have done my absolute best but I am afraid it would not have been good enough.

I pray for all of the young or unwed people facing this situation. I pray for the unborn babies. I pray for infertile or otherwise childless couples or those looking to add to their family through adoption. It is not an easy or desirable situation and I pray that God’s will be done.

malia**

malia

 

[SilenceISgolden]

Personally…I had a heck of a time becoming a first time mom at 30!!! If I were 15 I probably wouldn’t be smart enough to make the right decision but I do believe adoption would be best.

Granted there are families that could help but is that a suitable substitute for 2 adult, loving, ever present parents? Personally, I don’t think so. I’m sure that there are people that do it and make it work, I’m simply saying that I don’t think that is the ideal. Typically teenagers are selfish and are concerned with nothing more than who is hanging out where this weekend. There isn’t anything wrong with that…this is the time of their life that they are supposed to be stepping out and becoming their own person seperate from their parents. The problem comes when you have this little baby who is EVEN more selfish (and rightfully so) than a teenager, relying on said teenager for the basic neccessities of life.

GOD FORBID that happens to one of my kids, I will not force it, but I will strongly encourage adoption.

 

[BlestOne]

Well considering I almost adopted an abused infant at 21… yeah I can say, I would have kept a baby.

Actually the almost adoption was a strange story… A friend of my then soon to be husband had a baby and was addicted to drugs. She and the baby’s father were homeless and the 3 of them were living in a car in the winter in PA! So she started making a habbit of showing up at my apartment at dinnertime. I fed her and her boyfriend and I jumped at the chance to care for the baby… I would feed the baby and change diapers… because the mom would just prop the bottle and ignore the baby. Anyway, the baby was admitted to the hospital at 6 weeks old for pneumonia. The day the baby got out of the hospital, mom took her to a party and handed her to someone who was totally trashed. That person dropped the baby and the baby hit her head on a coffee table. At dawn she took the baby back to the hospital and they took x-rays. She (the mom) overheard them talking about calling social services and grabbed the baby and took off. She came to my place. I could tell the baby had a concussion and I spent the day taking care of the baby (didn’t know the whole story at the time). The mom left for a few minutes and went out and got high… then she took off and left the baby at my place. After a day, I called the police and asked what I should do as I had no way to contact the mom and I really didn’t want her to care for the child wasted. I had called anonymously from a public place so they couldn’t trace. They advised me to call social services and go for custody. I called social services and inquired what would happen to a child under these circumstances… they said they would try to place with a relative like the girls mom. I told them she had confided in me that her mom had beaten her up when she was pregnant and then kicked her out. I asked about adopting. They told me the guidelines and it appeared I could qualify with a few small changes in my life. My soon to be husband and I could get married sooner and even though I had a stable job and my htb as well, I had signed up to go into the military so I had to check on that. Military said no problem, but social services had a problem with it. I was willing to give up the military for this but next thing I knew, the cops show up at my door and are going to accuse me of kidnapping! :bigyikes: :bigyikes: I got that all straightened out but then just because of the accusation I was ineligible to adopt.

If I was willing to do that for a baby that wasn’t mine… I am pretty sure I would keep my own baby.

 

[Star_of_Night]

While in retrospect I can say adoption would be the best thing if I had gotten pregnant as a teenager, it probably wouldn’t have happened that way. My mother would have encouraged me to either keep or have an abortion. She got pregnant at 19, in 1966, and gave the baby up for adoption. She had such a horrible experience with it that she when got pregnant again later out of wedlock, she chose abortion rather than got through the horrible experience of adoption again.
(Please do not judge her too harshly, she was is not Catholic, and was orphaned at 14 and pretty much left to fend for herself by relatives who didn’t want the burden of raising her.)

She would have encouraged me to keep the child, but supported me if I chose to abort. I think I would have kept it, but I wasn’t raised Christian, so who knows. My best friend had an abortion when she was 14, so she and her Mom may have influenced me that way as well. (Though she got pregnant again at 19 and after she gave birth, well, she’s been nothing but remorseful for that abortion ever since).

Thank God I was never sexually active at that age!

 

[OutinChgoburbs]

Some females and males are together enough, and have supportive family, to make the choice of keeping the baby a no-brainer. They are indeed young men and women ready to make that sacrifice. There are also those very brave young men and women who are willing to sacrifice for their unborn children, and make the choice for adoption.

Some are girls and boys, immature ones at that, and their babies should be placed in loving hands someplace else; in fact, too many are immature and don’t understand, don’t want to understand, what is about to happen. To those who try to point them in any direction that would lead to their own well-being and also their babies’ they offer verbal abuse and defensiveness. They have been treating their parents badly for a couple years, and now that they are pregnant, they use it as an opportunity to milk it for all they have. Sadly, those babies tend to have unstable lifestyles during their growing up years. If they are fortunate, a grandparent or relative will intervene.

I’ve seen that movie, FanChan. It is indeed a Kleenex movie.

 

[puzzleannie]

It seems to me that everyone is pushing adoption as the best alternative to abortion. “Teenagers can’t support a baby” everyone says. ).

I don’t know who you mean by “everyone”. Adoption is very much a minority decision among unwed teen parents at least in the US where the overwhelming numbers of those parents decide to keep their babies to raise themselves, or with the help of family members, or the family members take over the parental duties w/o formal adoption. I am in my 50s, I cannot think of one of my lifelong friends my age who is not raising grandchildren alone or with parents who conceived as teens.

 

[bluerose]

My son’s birth mother was 17 and positive that her baby deserved a much better life than either she or the birth father would be able to provide. She herself did NOT feel ready to raise a baby and her parents (she was the youngest of five) were getting ready to move to a new place and start a new business as soon as their daughter graduated and went off to college.

She (the birth mother) said almost everyone around her kept urging her to keep the baby although the birth father and his family had a history of drug and alcohol abuse and neglect (his sister, who lived with him and his mother, had 3 children, all under the age of five, all with different fathers). Many people implied that her parents should put THEIR lives on hold to help her raise the baby.

Very few of her friends understood her decision, but she stuck with it and she chose us, herself, to be her child’s adoptive parents. She wanted a closed adoption (although we have kept in touch and when our son is older, if he wants to meet her, we will make the arrangements). She graduated, went on to college, got married and now has two other little boys. No one knows where the birth father ended up (although I heard through the grapevine that his sister’s kids ended up in foster care, with the possibility of her parental rights being terminated.)

I know there are many women who decide to keep their babies and do a wonderful job raising them. I know others who have been pressured to give up their children and still suffer those pains. But what bothers me is that a teenager gets pregnant and it’s almost EXPECTED that parents and grandparents will drop everything to help her raise the child. Few ask anymore, “What will I do?” They already know. “Mom will watch the baby while I finish school.” “Grandma will watch the baby while I’m at work.” Mom takes the baby to the doctor, Mom buys the baby clothes, Mom and Dad provide a roof over their heads (plus groceries and free child care).

I’ve seen this happen in my own family. My sister did this (only she was 34, not a teenager!) and so here are my octogenarian parents raising a 6-year-old and a 40-year-old who seems to be going on 13. My husband and I would have gladly adopted my niece and my sister would have been able to play the “fun aunt” like she enjoys doing with our son, and had none of the responsibilities of raising her daughter… oh, wait a minute, MY PARENTS wouldn’t have had the responsibilities of raising their granddaughter.

No, sometimes adoption IS the best answer. There’s just something very wrong with a society that pushes abortion over adoption.

 

[Teakafrog]

No, sometimes adoption IS the best answer. There’s just something very wrong with a society that pushes abortion over adoption.

I get tired of hearing these selfless, loving, generous moms vilified for choosing the best life for their kids. Birthmoms who choose adoption are some of the bravest, strongest, most rational women I’ve met. They put their baby’s needs ahead of their own desires. And it makes me very angry to hear people ‘always’ say it would be better for them to keep the child. It isn’t. I thank God every day for birth mothers who choose adoption, most especially for my daughter’s birthmom. I have the utmost respect for her. To hear birthmoms who selflessly choose life for their baby instead of the ‘easy way out’ of abortion, then choose a more stable life that they can’t provide, called selfish for not keeping that baby themselves is about the sickest thing I’ve ever heard. The adoption rates are already miniscule, it’s attitudes like the OP’s post that keep it that way.

 

[OutinChgoburbs]

I get tired of hearing these selfless, loving, generous moms vilified for choosing the best life for their kids. Birthmoms who choose adoption are some of the bravest, strongest, most rational women I’ve met. They put their baby’s needs ahead of their own desires. And it makes me very angry to hear people ‘always’ say it would be better for them to keep the child. It isn’t. I thank God every day for birth mothers who choose adoption, most especially for my daughter’s birthmom. I have the utmost respect for her. To hear birthmoms who selflessly choose life for their baby instead of the ‘easy way out’ of abortion, then choose a more stable life that they can’t provide, called selfish for not keeping that baby themselves is about the sickest thing I’ve ever heard. The adoption rates are already miniscule, it’s attitudes like the OP’s post that keep it that way.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my younger girls. I would not have adopted them if I didn’t.

But back when Meg was unborn, I told my adult daughter that she needed to give strong thought to adoption. And surprisingly, I recently found out the “other” grandma also supported adoption over them keeping the baby (Well, she also supported abortion, but she is a rather liberal Methodist). Neither one of these two was ready for children, and they were certainly NOT ready for marriage (and they still aren’t, even though he has married somebody else and has 5 others).

 

[FanChan]

I’m sorry if some of you took my attitude towards this whole thing the wrong way. I think that the choice to give the child up for adoption is one that takes a lot of guts and a lot of love. Keeping the child obviously isn’t right for everyone, in fact it might even be wrong for most people in that situation, considering the sort of people that end up in that situation. I wasn’t trying to rub anyone the wrong way or bring up the serious issue of adoption over abortion or keeping the child… I just wanted to hear what other people on here would have done.

I’ve never really heard of cases where teen parents refuse to give up their kids, for selfish reasons or otherwise. I didn’t know it was a more common thing than I thought it to be. I’m sorry if I touched on someone’s nerves with the question.

I understand that a lot of teens who are having sex are immature and selfish and whatever else. It wasn’t them I was curious about here. It was all of you.

And to one of you… I am in no way an advocate against adoption. I plan to adopt as many kids as I’m able. I’d adopt hundreds if I had that many hands and attention spans. My mother was adopted, and my parents very nearly adopted a few kids when they realized they couldn’t have anymore of their own. I think adoption is a wonderful thing, and something that has far too many stigmas around it that keep people from doing it. I’m sorry if I rubbed you the wrong way, but please don’t assume something like that about me…

 

[kristacecilia]

I have always been a fairly mature individual and, I believe, I would have been able to put aside my childish-ness and raised a baby if I had gotten pregnant as a teen.

As it is, I am 26, a SAHM of almost 3. I got married at 21, had my first baby at 22, and graduated cum laude a month later. Now I am committed to being home and raising my kids myself, even though it means I drive a 15 year old car with a chunk missing out of the front bumper. It drives, and it is one up on what I used to have- which was nothing.

I have been investing since I was 18 or 19, though I don’t have much money to put in. I have been saving money since I was old enough to make it- even if it was babysitting. I doubt there would have been any opportunity for me to GET myself pregnant because my parents were very diligent and involved in every facet of my life. They had high expectations of me academically, morally, etc.

Heck- I still played with DOLLS until I was 15. Of course, I had two little sisters who wanted me to play with them.

I am sure that IF I got pregnant, my parents and I would have decided for me to keep the baby. My mom might have played a large role in care during school hours but I would be expected to take care of the baby every hour that I was not in school. My parents were very generous and even spoiled us a bit, but they did not let us shirk our responsibilities.

 

[HannahLisa]

If I had gotten pregnant in high school, I probably would have kept the baby. It would have been difficult. If I was to get pregnant now (which is highly unlikely) I would keep the baby, but then I’m also in college and about a year younger than my mother was when she had me (after a year of marriage). I might be able to keep going to college after the baby was born, as well.

 

[ALLGIRLS]

I get tired of hearing these selfless, loving, generous moms vilified for choosing the best life for their kids. Birthmoms who choose adoption are some of the bravest, strongest, most rational women I’ve met. They put their baby’s needs ahead of their own desires. And it makes me very angry to hear people ‘always’ say it would be better for them to keep the child. It isn’t. I thank God every day for birth mothers who choose adoption, most especially for my daughter’s birthmom. I have the utmost respect for her. To hear birthmoms who selflessly choose life for their baby instead of the ‘easy way out’ of abortion, then choose a more stable life that they can’t provide, called selfish for not keeping that baby themselves is about the sickest thing I’ve ever heard. The adoption rates are already miniscule, it’s attitudes like the OP’s post that keep it that way.

I understand what you’re saying, but I disagree that adoption rates are miniscule b/c girls are encouraged to keep their babies, it’s because they are encourage to abort them. I had my daughter at 17. I couldn’t give her away, and I’ve had adoptive parents and infertile couples tell me *I *was selfish for not giving her to “a stable family who could’ve given her a better life”. Excuse me, but she’s had a darned good life w/ me, thank you very much, just as good a life as my other kids who were born in wedlock when I was over 30!

The problem is, that, yes MOST of the time adoption is probably better for the child, but you can’t force someone to give up their baby, that’s a total violation of the girl’s (or boy’s) rights, and it would lead down a slippery slope of the gov’t deciding who is “fit” to be a parent and who’s not, and that’s a scary place to go!

In Christ,

Ellen

 

[mommamia]

I don’t think there is a right answer. Some babies would be better given up, and some would do well to stay with the birth parents, even if they are young.
I was a teenage mother, turned 19 2 weeks before my son was born, DH was still in hs when I got pregnant. I think he has had a great life, maybe not all the material things he could have, but he is loved and cared for by both parents. And he has always been raised in the church.
But I admit that is not the norm. Often these children would be better off raised by an adoptive family. Often these children end up abused or neglected. And for every one teenage mom I know who turned out wonderful, I can find at least 3 who didn’t.

understand what you’re saying, but I disagree that adoption rates are miniscule b/c girls are encouraged to keep their babies, it’s because they are encourage to abort them

Sadly enough this is very true I only remember one person mentioning adoption, and honestly she was quite pushy. But lots of people, even some I didn’t know that well pushed abortion. DH and I both felt that would be murder and we never thought about it, but it is there. When my 14yo neighbor became pregnant, everyone told her to just get an abortion. I don’t think anyone but us even mentioned adoption, and we were immediatly dismissed. Unfortunantly she decided to keep this baby, and well, lets just say I am glad I no longer live there and have to see what the poor child goes through. She isn’t exactly neglected, as much as raised without good parenting skills and is really a horrible brat.

So maybe part of the problem is that for some reason people have issues with adoption. I don’t know why, I know many adopted children, and most were loved and happy children. It is such an awesome thing to do if you feel you cannot support a child emotionally or financially. But I have issues with folks who say that ALL teenage parents should give up their children, there are quite a few teenagers who handle the responsiblity well, and quite a few adults who would do better to look into adoption.