Honestly, I think my mom would have tried to convince me to have the baby and let her raise it. She was young, and she always wanted more kids. She had me pretty young herself, and while she of course missed out on a lot of opportunities, she liked being a young mother and I think she was pretty happy with how it worked out.
Really, from my perspective so many years later, that might have actually been a pretty good plan! I’m 30 now, and I’m not sure if I am going to reach the point where I want kids while I can still have them. It’d be pretty neat to have had a kid without having to raise one, and I think my mom would have done a great job and gotten a lot out of it.
It would have not been my decision to make, nor my parents to counsel the pregnant party. My parents would have told me to support whatever the girl wanted.
I was also counseled preemptively by my dad that he would kick my ass if I got any girls pregnant, and he gave me my first pack of condoms when I was around 16.
I did get pregnant in high school and my mom “counseled” (to put it lightly) me to choose adoption. Then she decided I could get married if I wanted to keep the baby. The one thing I was forbidden to do was keep the baby and not get married, because that would look slutty, but that’s what I did. (And my mom did come around and was very supportive.)
My dad said he’d support whatever I decided. If it was up to him to decide though, I think he’d pick abortion, even though he never told me that.
Given that Mom is Catholic, abortion would’ve definitely been counseled against.
Adoption would have likely been both my parents’ advice. Next would have been marrying the poor schmuck and last on the list (that is, of carrying the pregnancy to term) would have been keeping the kid without marriage.
When raising stepkids, I would have advised abortion.
My sister got pregnant, although she was a couple years out of HS. My parents told her they’d help her, and begged her NOT to marry the guy. She married him anyway, and when she became pregnant with their 2nd child, he told her it was abortion or he’d leave. He left.
At one time my mother and I were talking about a friend whose daughter had a child out of wedlock. I told her she didn’t have to worry about that with me, and she said a baby would be welcome.
Abortion probably would’ve gotten me disowned, although I can’t imagine considering that as an option.
This, pretty much. I’d have been less surprised that they’d want me not to give the baby up, though. Abortion definitely wouldn’t have been suggested by them, and I wouldn’t have really considered it myself.
What is this “counsel” the OP speaks of? My parents, once they stopped yelling, would have at most have allowed me to consider adoption. Abortion, no way: Dad wouldn’t have been able to look himself in the mirror after letting me have one, and not just on account of it being illegal at the time.
My pregnant-in-HS acquaintances all kept the babies, in some cases but not always marrying the father. If there are any who didn’t, the trip to London was taken very discreetely. I know one case which was an enormous scandal because the girl’s father (a head honcho in the local anarchist organization) was dead set on his daughter marrying the sperm donor and she, having cut off with him when she found him boinking another a mere two days after her own deflowering, was dead set on not; in general, the consensus was “having gotten pregnant does not mean you have to get married”. The ones who married their child’s father did so because they wanted to marry him, not because there was a baby on the way.
Adding since the OP asked whether Christians are against adoption: in my community, the reason to keep the baby would have nothing to do with being against adoption - but I guess you could say there was and is a stigma against giving a baby up when it seems to the onlooker that you have the resources to care for that baby; if you’re overwhelmed, if you’re in ill health, if your parents are absolute idiots - then giving the baby away is the best thing you can do for your child. Adoption is seen as a wonderful thing, but also there is the idea that you should give a baby up if and only if you’re incapable to care for him or her. The closest to someone giving the baby up which I know firsthand (1) is one girl who was raised by her grandparents (and has always known it, no Jack Nicholsons here) - if, the mother and aunt being in fine health, and the maternal grandparents in fine health, still of breeding age themselves and with a good economic level, they would have given the baby away, the community’s reaction would have been “bh- wha? ” They had the means to care for the baby, therefore they did care for her.
1: in the context of teenage pregnancies. I also know a few cases of children being sent to live with relatives due to things like the parents separating, death of one of them… but it was in different contexts.
My mum would have counselled abortion, on the grounds that I had I was too young and had too much to look forward to in life to tie myself down with a child so young. She’d have been right, too.
She would have supported me whatever I’d decided though, and would have been a fantastic and loving grandma to the child.
Abortion would not have been an option. My mom always told me that if it happened, I would have the baby and she would take care of it while I was at school. My education was (and still is) priority number one in her mind. Even now that I’m in college, she says if I get pregnant she’s moving in with us until I graduate to provide day care. Knowing this to be a certainty, it’s the best birth control ever
As my grandparents firmly believed that illegitimate children were destined to become vampires, abortion would have been the only option. Since I never wanted to be parent, there would not have been an conflict with me over this. In fact, the only potential conflict in the situation would have probably been between my paternal grandmother and the clinic staff over the abortion remains. Grandmother would have wanted to follow old rituals involving salting and incinerate the remains which probably would have conflicted with the clinic or hospitals rules on biological waste.
I voted “other.” My parents (I assume) would have supported any choice I made, but I’m pretty sure I would have had an abortion on my own and never told them about it.
Totally a hypothetical on my part, because I didn’t know what sex WAS in HS, but if it had happened (rape or if in some parallel universe I found someone of boyfriend material in my HS and had my utter innocence taken advantage of) I would have taken care of it (aborted) by myself and not told my family EVER.
If they HAD found out, I would have been beaten, then promptly kicked out, and afterwards I could have done whatever I wanted to with the offspring.
In that instance, I probably still would choose abortion, but I can’t be sure. I might have just jumped off a bridge instead.
I’m male, and I have no idea what my parents would have done if either of my sisters got pregnant. We had one overarching rule - don’t bring shame upon the family. I think my sisters would have gotten an abortion without anyone knowing about it (and, indeed, it’s possible that one or both did).
My mother still had pretensions to devout Catholicism when I was a teenager in the early 80s, but more importantly, she lived and died by What Others Would Think. If I had become pregnant, I’m certain I would have been shipped off to a distant relative or even to a “home for unwed mothers” to have the child and give it out for adoption.
Picked other: Mom would have raised it as my sibling.
We were just talking in the car once and something on the radio prompted the discussion, I said I’d abort and she freaked out and told me if I ever got pregnant and didn’t want to raise the baby then she would.
That is, of course, what my parents would counsel. I would have gone to the clinic without them knowing.
The idea that I would have gotten close enough to any girl in high school that pregnancy was a possibility is laughable, but supposing in another universe it happened? It’s an interesting question.
My parents divorced when I was in grade 11, and I lived with my mom. Mom would probably have been considered a flaming leftie in US terms (worked for the NDP, lived in a co-op, supported and was civil to gay people, believed in education for all, was not locked into religion, etc), so she would probably have counselled me to make my own decisions.
If it had happened, though, it would have been disastrous, because I had very little experience in the “outside world”–no job, few social skills–so I would have been unable to help support a child.
I think my mother would’ve strongly pushed a quick and quiet abortion, to get my life “back on track” (her track, of course). My dad would’ve been ambivalent, but worried about my future if I was a teenaged mum.
Neither of them would ever have found out. I saved up enough cash to get an abortion before I started having sex. I also told my boyfriend (who eventually became my husband) that if I fell pregnant, an abortion was the only option - making it clear that not only did he have no say, but also that he knew those terms beforehand.
His parents would never have known either. They would’ve insisted either having it and keeping it, or worst case, having it and them keeping it. Those would be the only options in their eyes.
Hmmm. I know what my parents would do now (keep it or adoption) but back when I was in high school mom (not sure about dad) was more liberal and probably would have recommended abortion.
I certain there would have been a lot of yelling and histrionics before any rational dialog happened.
It happened to me, sort of - I was nineteen, had just graduated and still lived at home. Unplanned and unwanted pregnancy. My parents didn’t actually counsel me to do anything - they merely asked me what I wanted to do, and said they would support me no matter what decision I made. Not one word of reproach, no freakout - I admire and am grateful for that to this day. I think they could tell how embarrassed I was about the whole thing - they’re both in healthcare so I knew about sex and birth control since I was about five. D’oh.
” They had the means to care for the baby, therefore they did care for her.