Should a 17 year old girl have a baby?

Answer 1

This is a difficult question to answer because it depends on a number of variables that only that girl can answer. The most pressing question is, why does the 17 year old girl want to have a baby? A child is a permanent responsibility that often limits the parents' choices in what they can do - someone has to watch the child so no more partying every night at the local club, the baby needs diapers so mom and dad can't afford to buy the trendy brand-name clothes, etc.

There are numerous arguments for waiting to have a child until you are in your early to mid 20s. Most religious organizations strongly emphasize being married before becoming pregnant because children fare much better in stable households (gender of parents doesn't matter, homosexual couples do just as well as heterosexual couples). Social support services encourage waiting until you are mature enough to handle the emotional and mental marathon that raising a child entails. Financially, having a child before graduating high school is one of the surest triggers for the parents to live in poverty all their lives.

Warning - Personal Bias Below!

I have seen my two cousins have children as unwed teenage mothers; all three children so conceived are unwanted and have been in essence thrown away by their mothers (my cousins) because the kids are a lot of work which interferes with my cousins' partying. The kids have been through a rollercoaster of moving in and out of apartments with different boyfriends, watched their mothers complain that they are broke to bum partying money off the grandparents, have attended multiple different schools and are unfortunately starting to make some of the same bad decisions that my cousins made. My cousins are not happier because they have kids, they don't feel loved because they have kids (they've actually been all but thrown out of the family for how they treat their kids), and yet they still have a responsibility to provide for the children for the next decade. The kids are case studies in major emotional and mental dysfunctions because they never felt loved or cherished by their parents, have been bounced around schools and homes like rubber ping pong balls and have been focused on only when they were in an immediate crisis. The teenage pregnancies I have seen have turned out very poorly for the mothers and the children involved, and I would strongly advocate that no female deliberately choose this path without carefully considering the responsibility and having the strong support of friends and/or family to help them.