Teenage Mothers

Definition:

A female aged 13-19 who has given birth to a child.

Statistics:

- in America about 1 million girls between the ages of 15 and 19 become pregnant each year; 1 in every 10 births is to a mother who herself is still a child

- globally, 1 million children born to teenage mothers die before their first birthday each year while 70,000 teenage mothers die due to complications in childbirth

- in Niger more than 50% of girls aged 15-19 are married; 1 in 4 has given birth and 1 out of 6 of their babies dies before reaching age one

- educated girls tend to marry later, have fewer children, and raise healthier better-nourished children; they also are more likely to send their children to school

Personal Impact Story

If the child inside her young womb could speak, it might ask her a few questions. He grows inside her body, can hear the rhythm of her heart and knows that troubled heart’s questions too. He might ask this first time mother how she will care for him if she chooses to carry him full term, what she will do if she brings him into the world. Her body will continue to change, has swelled already with the new life inside of her, but life will not wait for her to adjust. Her high school friends will continue studying, socializing, busying themselves with all the important and meaningless things teenagers do. But she will have a new, helpless boy to love and feed and change and protect.

The child, growing inside of her might ask – if she decides she does not want to be a teenager and a mom – whether or not she will name him before he is ripped out of her womb. He might think about the boy or man he could have become had his lungs filled with breath on her mysterious, spinning world. He might wonder how that one, clean incision will feel as it cuts through the soft tissue of his skull. He could ask her if she will feel that one last kick, when his foot hits the protective wall of her uterus when his heart stops beating.

The unborn, unnamed child might say, “Mother, how will you care for yourself, will you drop out of school? Will you pay the bills? If I am born, will my life only remind you of your unrealized dreams? Who will care for you if you are hurt giving birth to me?” He cannot ask her about grocery bills and doctors visits, neonatal care and post-partum depression, for she does not yet know about these things herself.

If he ever gets to see the eyes that match her troubled heart, he will look into them with concern. He will love her and submit entirely to her care. She will be his mother, and he will be her little boy. She will answer some of his questions, and together they will have many more.

*the above story is based on facts but is fictional, for actual statistics order 30 Days of Prayer for the Voiceless today