My husband and I have discussed, in light of watching many episodes of MTV’s 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom, what we would do if one of our girls came to us and was pregnant at 16.
For me, I believe I would support my teen in parenting. I honestly can’t say that I would advocate for adoption knowing the heartache it causes a biological mother and the loss it creates in an adoptee. Perhaps that sounds strange coming from an adoptive mother...
Knowing what you know about adoption, how do you think you would react if your son or daughter came to you at age 16 and said he/she was expecting a baby?
We'd support their decision. I know parenting at 16 can be impossibly hard but if that's what they wanted, we'd support it. If they wanted to go with adoption I think we'd mull over options like an in family placement, open or closed adoptions.
ReplyDeleteThe nice thing is they would have options. None of them are going to end with everyone happy and life being easy. No matter what choice a teen girl makes regarding their pregnancy there will be huge loss and struggle associated with it.
Just found your blog for the first time and found this post to be very thought provoking. What WOULD I do?! I would hope that I would be supportive of what she thought was best. But, I can't say that I would suggest adoption. I would try and help support her in every way to keep her baby first. But, in the end if adoption was her choice, then I would support her in every way that I could.
ReplyDeleteI just stumbled on your blog and this is a question I have thought of often because we adopted a baby from a teen mom. I also have 2 teenagers. The process of adoption for us was heart wrenching as I watched what this teen mom was going through. My first reaction is that I would not want to see my teenagers go through this, but I would also not want to see them struggle with a baby, unprepared for life. I am now of the philosophy that good parenting is not what you do for your children but what you teach them to do for themselves. I would support whichever decision they made, but I would be support. I would not do everything for them so that they did not have to go through the hurt. Unfortunately life hurts sometimes.
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