You shouldn’t have a baby if you can’t take care of yourself

It’s common for teen mothers to get pregnant because they think that will make people care about them more. Teen moms are often kids who do not feel happy or properly supported in the family units they were born into, so they figure they’ll take matters into their own hands and create their own family. They believe that now that they have a baby, the people in their family will offer a helping hand and see them as valuable because they have created something so precious. Teenagers are not mature enough to grasp that there’s a high likelihood that their baby will be born into a situation just as dysfunctional as the one they were born into, and there’s no guarantee that everything will work out in the end. 

Many grandmothers in their 30s end up helping their teenage daughters with their children because they were in a similar situation when they had them. However, there’s absolutely no guarantee that older family members with their own responsibilities will drop everything to be a nanny to a child whose mother is in high school. Asking family members to be responsible for childcare is a significant burden, and immature mothers often fail to recognize this.