Wow. A lot of people certainly are judgemental. I should tell my parents they did the wrong thing in ‘enabling’ me when I was a pregnant unemployed college dropout.
Has your sister looked into ‘open’ adoption? She’ll get to interact with the couple and follow her child’s progress throughout its life–no secrecy.
I know how you feel. My sister got pregnant at the age of 16, and had the baby. I lived in an other town going to university and could do very little to help. It was very frustrating for me. Big brother could do very little for her. She moved in to live with a wonderful but no nonsense aunt, married several years later to a wonderful guy and has four great kids who are now starting their own families.
There is light at the end of the tunnel. Be positive with her.
Thanks for the words of advice and comfort everyone. A couple of days later this doesn’t seem nearly as bad. I think the dad will remain in the picture, he can be described in a two words, that aren’t nessacarily bad; Dependable, Boring. He is a very nice kid, he’s a mechanic at only 20, and has a good job with benefits. From what I understand he wants to marry my sister, but she is resisting. As a family, we will do what we can to help her, I just wish that the family lived closer to her. It sucks being spread out around 4 discontiguous states. I am going to talk with my mom about not helping her too much, though that might be hard for mom. Oh, and she got a job yesterday! Admitedly, it’s fast food, but that still makes things look better already.
That’s really good news. It’s great that he’s stable and wants to be involved, and can support a kid financially. That should really help both your sister and the baby out.
You know, someday when she’s a little older and has some experience under her belt, it’s entirely likely that she’ll get the troubles that led her to this sorted out in her mind. People who are somewhat irresponsible and impulsive at 19 often overcome that.
A lot of people are extremely judgemental. I was nineteen and unmarried when I became pregnant with my first child. He’s now a wonderful young man about to graduate high school, and has two beautiful sisters. My husband and I have been married for 18 years, have one of the most solid marriages I personally know of, and have never depended on the state for support. Young parent /= equal bad parent.
A couple of things:
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Believing it’s a good idea to make people take responsibility for their own actions is not judgmental, it’s just common sense and a belief a lot of people share. It’s not something I apply only to pregnant young girls.
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It would be foolish for Jeeves or any of us to ignore the statistics which show overwhelmingly that teen moms have a really hard time on a lot of fronts. Yes, there will be exceptions. I hope you were one of them. But there’s good reason to worry about an unwed teen who didn’t plan her pregnancy.
Q.N. Jones:
I agree that people should take responsibility for their actions, and maybe, given my circumstances, I’m oversensitive to some of the responses. I’m sure that plenty of people I know did think that my parents helped me too much, especially as much of the financial burden fell on them (the father has never contributed in any way). On the other hand, it was important to them that my daughter and I did not suffer hardship, so they did it gladly. I am eternally grateful that they gave me the opportunity to stay at home with my baby when she was small, and gave me the (long) time and space to get my metaphorical shit together while ensuring that my daughter had all the stability in her life that she needed.
I’m not advocating that family take over the child and allow the feckless teen to carry on in her fecklessness. It makes me sad to read the stories of young mothers who just go on compounding their mistakes, but I don’t necessarily think that family ‘enabling’ causes these problems: they are merely symptoms of an already existing refusal or lack of understanding of responsibility. Forcing someone in this situation to stand on their own two feet may well be what pushes them over the edge.
It is precisely because teenage mothers face more difficulties that family support is so important. And on the up-side, having a baby to care for can be a pretty effective way of sorting your priorities out.
I can understand the need to rant: all of my family members and friends did a fair amount of ranting themselves. But nothing in the OP suggested that the family would be anything but supportive, however irritated about it they might be at present, and I took affront on Jeeve’s behalf at suggestions that the sister get rid of the child.
Some people can see that as “gambling” with your baby. If you buy a car you can’t pay for, then you have it taken away. The car doesn’t care or suffer; it’s just an object. If you have a child you can’t care for, then the child suffers. Someone who fails to “sort their priorities out” ends up like that mother who locked her kdis in her car while she got her nails done. The stakes are just so high. Too high, in some people’s eyes.
I’m not trying to argue against what you’re saying; I’m just trying to show you “the other side”, so that you can understand where some of the people in this thread are coming from.