When my wife had our first baby, my wife shared a room with an 11 year old that had just given birth.
Whenever I hear one of these stories, I think “Wow… if her child does what she did, she could be a grandmother at 28”. I think it’s because I read Virginia Andrews books as a young teen. 
I’m glad to hear that everything worked out relatively well for you, SylverOne. Not a good thing for anyone to go through, but a 14 year old… you must have been somewhat mature - most of the 14 year olds I know are too selfish to do what’s best for the baby, and would want to keep it because that’s what they want.
A girl I’ve known since I was 4 (but have barely seen since I was 12) had a baby at age 15 - so she’s the mother of a 9 (nearly 10) year old! It just seems so wrong! No way am I old enough to have a 10 year old and she’s the same age as me!
Some here are blaming parents. I’ve known lots of girls who got pregnant at varying ages, including as young as 12, and not all of them came from bad homes. One was the daughter of church-going parents, and I think they were a good family. I remember before I met them I was instructed to watch my language, as they disapproved of swearing, and I wondered what they thought of their 17 year old unmarried daughter being pregnant if they had a problem with the “S” word! She was the youngest daughter, and all her siblings turned out well adjusted and good people. Yet this girl was wild, sleeping around from age 13, stealing, using drugs. She was just a hellcat. I don’t think the parents were to blame, I just think that some kids go nuts when they reach adolences because of hormones.
I met a pregnant 12 year old back in 94. She was sitting there, smoking, and telling me about the time she got beaten up by a group of girls from the carnival quote “…just 'cause I slept with their boyfriends”. She bragged about the time she had more than 10 men in one evening. She spoke of using all kinds of drugs, and getting drunk, and of past abortions. She was planning on keeping this baby, despite the fact she had been disowned by her family and was living hand-to-mouth on government assistance, but she was still doing drugs and sleeping around even while she was pregnant. I have always kind of hoped that baby died as it came into the world, because it was going to have one hell of a life with that little girl as it’s mother. I only met her once, but she made a profound impression.
Due to an extraordinary lack of self esteem and other personal problems, I was having sex at age 14. Fortunately, my sister caught wind quickly and dragged my ass into Planned Parenthood and I got on the pill. (this was pre AIDS). I did not get pregnant, but I can say that I had no parental limits, little attention, and no affection at home.
Not placing blame, just telling it like it is.
Zette
:::cough::: I was having sex when I had just turned 13. I had TRIED to have sex when I was still 12, but my boyfriend had some sort of issue about having sex with pre-teens. What a weirdo.
Anyhow, we didn’t seek guidance from our parents, it was certainly not against my will, the boy was only a year and a half older than me, and we both came from normal loving homes. I still believe I was mature enough to make that decision and I don’t regret it.
Of course, I wasn’t your average 12-13 year old, but there’s my story.
I really think that’s part of the reason kids are having sex at such a young age. (not all kids… just some) They’re confusing sex with love. Thinking “if I have sex with this person they’ll love me and I won’t feel so alone anymore.” Well, it doesn’t work that way as I’m sure we all know. I used to work with a girl whose story is much like the story cazzle told about the 12 year old. This girl had a baby at 13 and her mom was helping her to raise it. When I knew her she was 16 and had a 3 year old. She used to tell me about all the drinking and drugs she did and bragged about sleeping with 10 guys in one night. She’s had 2 more kids since then.
I can tell you unequivically that back then I was desparately seeking love and affection. I was also drinking a lot, which doesn’t help in the judgement department. Once started on that path (sex=love,affection), it’s very diffucult to stop. Even though the feeling is temporary, it’s almost like a drug.
My heart breaks for any girl that ends up pregnant at that age. There but for the grace of my sister go I. Thank God she saw what was going on and at least got me protection against pregnancy.
Zette
When I was 12, I was living in the city, going to the park and building treehouses and biking in the neighborhood and playing at the rec center all day. I didn’t know anything about sex yet, and I didn’t like boys. AFAIK, most of the kids I played with were the same.
Then I moved to suburbia, and what a shock. My first friend in middle school was 13, had had 3 abortions, and was having sex with a 17 year old boy, who was dating the head cheerleader and class president at his high school.
Another friend got pregnant at 14. She was the one who filled me in on sex and all the junk, because I was still almost entirely clueless at that point.
I have a friend now who had a child when she was 14. She’s now 27. It surprises me because after she had the child, she went on tour with the Grateful Dead for two years (baby in tow), lived on Martha’s Vineyard for four years selling handmade hemp products to tourists, and then packed up and moved to Arizona. She also got her GED at some point.
Personally, I’m glad I waited until I was an adult to have sex. I saved myself a lot of grief and worry.
It’s sad that so many young girls get pregnant. I think that all the reasons given are valid. I don’t know if you can always blame any of the parties, each situation is different. A girl as young as 12 hasn’t even reached her body’s maturity so it’s even harder on her body having a baby.
I didn’t even think of boys at that age. I was the only girl in my family and over protected to a great degree. My dad would have probably killed me.
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**Whenever I hear one of these stories, I think “Wow… if her child does what she did, she could be a grandmother at 28”. **
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It not unheard of. I made my mother a Grandma at the age of 39. Not young necessarily, but not old enough to warrant the title of Granny either. I never was really sure what upset her more. Me being pregnant, or her being a grandma before the age of 40.
The Cycle does repeat though and I’m all too aware of it. My mother was 23 and unmarried when she had me in 1976. Which is about the equivelent of me being 14 in 1991. Same type of situation, different generations. She remembers being in the labor room and overhearing one of the nurses tell another patient that “the unmarried ones should be left to whelp in the gutter.”
I will guarantee one thing. If my son does get a girl pregnant, he won’t be allowed to leave her hanging like I was left. My mother told my brothers the same thing when they were teenagers. Though my youngest brother admitted that watching me go through the pregnancy and leaving the hospital without the child I had carried for 9 months was, for him, the most effective form of birthcontrol he’d ever need. 
Syl
I was interested in boys from about age 4 on. I learned about sex in 3rd grade and and thought about it a lot. I dind’t actually HAVE sex until I was 16 though, and it was with a guy I’d been dating for over a year already.
I knew lots of girls who had sex much younger, though. I remember at the beginning of my freshman year of high school, Carrey was pregnant. she was probably around 13. She was already HUGE, so I assume she was 12 when she got pregnant. She had been with her boyfriend already for a couple of years. They were still together at that point, not sure if they stayed together after … she sort of vanished (she wasn’t a friend of mine so I didn’t hear about it… I just noticed that after a while I just never saw her again. Not sure where she went.)
When I was in 8th grade there was a girl at my school who had already had 3 abortions.
Kids have sex. It’s freaky to think about when you’re an adult, but it’s true.
Back around the time the first colonists came over people were marrying, settling down, and producing families at the tender ages of 13 and 14 for females. You married close to menearche and produced as many offspring as you could before you hit menupause or died. It is only in the last 100years that we have had reliable birth control. And only in the 1900’s have women really been able to get an education and have the right to govern their own bodies.
Because we live longer now, we now have to have an education to meet the need to be productive economically. I sure cannot see getting hitched at 12 and living until 85 and still being with the same person. One needs to have some emotional maturity to be married (some disagree) for decades. I know I am a very different person that I was at age 12 and the guys I was attracted to then I would drop kick off the planet now much less want to look and at any of them across the dining room come Thanksgiving Family Gathering time.
At any other time in history, this would be a non-issue. The 13yr old would be married to the father and she would have at least (or try to) 2 more. She would labor all day (night) and die probably at age 50.
When I was 14, I got my first kiss. The guy lied to me, saying he lived in the next town when he really lived in the next county. He disappeared for three weeks, then returned and wanted me to forgive him by surrenduring my virginity. I didn’t.
I TOLD him it was my first kiss, and he wanted me to go from that to first sex with no interim. I hope he’s rotting in hell.
I knew of girls who were pregnant at 12 or 13 in junior high. A friend of mine got pregnant right after she turned 14 my freshman year of high school. In another time, or in some parts of the world today, this would be considered normal.
Not that I’m condoning it in this time and place. When Juliet’s dad was anxious to marry off his progeny to County Paris, it would have been with the understanding that chickadee would be raising the kids herself, rather than your average Jerry, Maury or Montel guest: “Yes, I am trying to get pregnant at 11, Mom, and YOU are going to take it!”
Because the way some cultures work(ed), people are mentally prepared to look after themselves by their early teens. It was necessary in the days when 30 really was an old age. If you hoped to raise your offspring to an age they could survive on their own, you had to start early and they had to grow up fast, too.
Given what we know about teenagers even under the best circumstances, this is not exactly an ideal situation, and I doubt few would disagree that it’s best in our world we get more time to grow up. But our bodies, it seems, don’t match our slowpoke minds, alas.
No, 30 was not “old age”… the “average life span” was lower back then because of the high infant/child mortality rates. People still lived into their 60’s, 70’s, 80’s
Shoot, “back in the day” my great-great-great-grandmother was 12 when she married, and 13 when she had her first child.
Compared to my grandmother who married at 16, but waited 1 1/2 to have a baby.
Of course, I’m one to talk, I got married when I was 18 (Still no kids, praise God)
There seems to be a misconception that a long life is a recent development. Women had a good chance of making it to a grand old age if they survived the childbearing years. Hell, my great great grandfather was having children up until three years before his death at age 81 in 1893. It wasn’t uncommon for people to live into their 80’s, it was just more common for children and younger people to die, bringing down the average age at death.
I hate to say it, but the only girls in my high school who get pregnant were the ones who had less intelligence than a box of rocks. They would leave for a while, and then bring their babies back to school and show them off. This is what one gets when one has to attend a public high school.
I’m not trying to be inflammatory, and I’m sorry if anyone takes offense. It’s true, though, that obviously the intelligent ones would be able to prevent getting pregnant. Sheesh.
Wtf? There was no evidence in the OP of who the father was, much less anything leading you to believe it could have been an older boy or an adult. Why would you say that? Kids have sex. All the time. I knew a ton of kids who were having sex in middle school (11-13 year olds) and I would have been one of them had I had the opportunity. Thankfully some other people in this thread have already pointed out that sex between younger people isn’t the atrocity that it is sometimes portrayed as being.
A friend (who was thirty at the time) introduced me to her son who was eighteen. She had a rather typical upbringing: letter carrier Dad and RN Mom who worked opposite shifts so that someone would always be at home when the kids were home.
Her Aunt brought a teddy bear for the baby, and my friend, being so young, thought the bear was for her.
She and a neighbor kid, age thirteen, just started ‘fooling around’ and sex happened. She thought it was fun, like a game. They continued their game whenever they found a few minutes to be alone together.
My friend’s parents raised the boy while she finished school, went on to college, and made a new life for herself at a ‘normal’ age. No one ever passed the boy off as her brother and her parents made it clear that they were raising him, that she had very little say in his upbringing. I think this was a relief to her. He and she have a very nice relationship, but his real connection is with his grandparents/parents.
One advantage to being older is that you have a story for everything…
I gave up my virginity at 13. So did my girlfriend at the time. It was to each other. (Personal semantics note: I hate the term “lost” in relation to virginity. In my own lexicon - and my own lexicon only - that only happens in instances of rape.)
The majority of girls and women I had sex with I had sex with when I was between 13 and 16.
I was also very responsible and took lots of precautions.
I was also INCREDIBLY lucky. In hindsight I realize I was probably too young, but it certainly didn’t seem so then. I mean, I was always old for my age and very given to considering potential consequences, but there are lots of things you just don’t know to factor in at that age.
One of the many reasons I’m not having any kids is because I’m terrified they will have my sense of self and IQ, but not have my luck. Too scary.