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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My Aunt.  She was 15 years younger than my mother, so I was in elementary school when she got pregnant her freshman year of college and I vividly remeber it.  My grandparents were solidly UMC Catholic, so abortion was off the table. They wanted to send her away to a Catholic home to give the kid up for adoption. She opted to drop out and marry the guy to prove some point to my grandparents about them not being able to force adoption (who were rigid and overbearing in a lot of ways).  She ended up having up having four kids in about 8 years and living in poverty.  I remember being 12 and 13 and us taking bags of groceries over because food stamps had run out.

My mother  and my Aunt had the same parents and were raised in the same house (my mother also had a sister closer in age who tragically died as a toddler). My mother got a grad degree, married a man with a grad degree, and my sister and I both have grad degrees and solidly UMC lives. My oldest is starting to look at excellent colleges, and my kids will probably end up with grad degrees.  They are typical high achieving DCUM UMC kids.

My Aunt eventually divorced her baby daddy.  Remarried when he kids were teens, and finished a community college vocational course after they graduated from high school. She now has a solid marriage and a solid job as a hospital administrator, but it took until age 50.

Among her 4 kids, none went to college. One is a receptionist. One cuts cuts hair at a chain salon. One is a high school dropout who had her baby out of wedlock at 16.   In fact, all four of her kids now have kids.  And all 304 had them young (starting at younger than 20 or 21).  2 had a kid out of wedlock when they were younger than 20.  One is divorced and a single mom. One divorced an abusive guy and remarried an abusive guy.  My Aunt is dealing with this last cousin trying to leave with her three kids an no marketable skills. While the HS dropout daughter lives with her with her daughter.

My grandmother is still going strong at 94 and is heartbroken about this, BTW.

It’s a mess.  And yes, you can live a great, productive life without a fancy degree. But, in a society where UMC people expect that their kids will live UMC lives, it’s a reminder. Sometimes people manage to move up the socioeconomic ladder. My MIL did and was the only one of 9 kids (!!) to go to college. Her son has multiple patents and her daughter is a doctor.  But sometimes people move down the socioeconomic ladder too. And when they do, the damage can last for generations. My Aunt’s kids are LMC, and her grandkids are headed in that direction.

I think it’s great that some many people know people who got pregnant in college, managed to finish their education, married a wonderful man who,loved their kid and go a dream job. But I wonder how many of them are pro-Birchers spinning tales.  it doesn’t always go that way. And it’s not fair to tell OP it will.

Maybe it will be fine for OP. I agree the chances are higher if OP puts her own plans for the future on hold to ensure that her DD has the money and grandma provided babysitting to make it happen.  And if OP’s kid does a lot of growing up and makes her baby and her education her only priorities— which is tough to do at 20.

But sometimes, there isn’t a happy ending. And sometimes it’s not only what Op’s Kid will be able to do with her life, but what her grandkids and great grandkids will do.

So at least be honest. It is possible for a 20 year old mom to pull it off successfully. It is also possible she can’t. [/quote]

I'd have freaked out too if my mom pushed to send me to one of those awful Catholic homes.  I think there was some deep seated lack of kindness in your grandma.  I think your mom was lucky that nothing she did ever led her to see that.[/quote]

My grandmother was a product of her time and her social circumstances. She was a 50-something house wife in the late 1970s. She had never worked outside the home, had lost one child (and I don’t think she ever got over it) and was very Catholic.  In her worldview, you didn’t abort, and girls “studied overseas” or “went to visit relatives,” gave birth, gave the baby up for adoption, and came back without the baby to move on with their lives . The same thing many posters are during Op’s Kid to do, without the going to a Catholic Home part.  And the abuses that went on in these homes were not widely known.  It was what was done at that time in their social class, in their church.

I’m not excusing it. I grew up thinking my grandmother was rigid and lacked an empathy chip. But she changed a lot after my grandfather died 15 years ago.  He was an up at the same time every day, eat the same breakfast, I want my house to run just so, everything in its proper place, guy, and I think my grandmother catered to him and deferred to him more than I realized. Looking back, he probably made the decision, not her.  After he died, she relaxed a lot and became much more human.  Despite being in her mid-90s, she is much better with my kids than she was with me.  I like her a lot more.

I’ve come to realize that as a Greatest Gen woman, she married my grandfather after the War, kept house for him, raised their kids and knew her place. I think it’s sad she didn’t get a chance to relax and be herself until her late 70s.

Both of my grandparents clearly screwed up with my Aunt. But my Aunt made a lot of bad decisions (see 4 kids in short order). I’m not sure if anything they did would have “saved” her. [/quote]

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