Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Guilty Pleasures

I have to confess that one of my really guilty pleasures is watching “16 and Pregnant.” If we have children and our teen daughter becomes pregnant with a baby, I would never encourage her to have an abortion and I would certainly never be behind adoption. I would definitely make sure that she could continue on with high school and graduate from college while we hired someone to watch the child. However, I am pro-choice and if my teen daughter felt strongly that abortion was her best option, I would stand behind her regardless of how much it would pain me. Anyway, I have no doubts that teen pregnancy is difficult, but I do question why our society looks down on it so much. If a family has financial stability and realizes the importance of education and is able to support their child/grandchild, I don’t think it’s as terrible as people make it out to be. Of course, this situation is probably not the norm.

I think some of my feelings stem from my sister-in-law’s experience. She had two kids at a young age, but by the age of 27, she was diagnosed with cancer and had to have her uterus removed. She can’t have any children now but she was blessed to have two at a young age and she is very thankful for that. I know that this is a unique situation. Not everyone loses their ability to have children at 27. But in her case, everything worked out in the way that it was supposed to.

When I married my husband at 22 (he was 29) I think a lot of people thought we were too young. However, now I am more thankful than ever that we got married when we did. If we waited 4-5 more years to get married and then we tried naturally for a few years, I’d be at least 30 before we’d seek out fertility help and go through what we are doing now. Fertility begins to gradually drop in your late 20’s. That is certainly not a reason to get married young, but if you know you are with the person that you are going to marry, perhaps that should be a thought in your mind.

In hindsight, I wouldn’t have tried naturally for a few years to get pregnant based on the theory that we were young.

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