“I knew if I had a baby, everything would disappear—my freedom, friends, fun. And I knew I would have to work twice as hard for everything I wanted,” says Jill, a 17-year-old who lives in Vincetown, New Jersey. Still, she let it happen.

 And Jill is not alone. Eight hundred-twenty thousand (820,000) teen girls get pregnant each year, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, in Washington, D.C. Fifty-seven percent of pregnant teens aged 19 and younger gave birth, and most kept their babies, according to the Campaign. (The rest had abortions or made adoption plans.) 

Sex, Etc. interviewed seven teen mothers to try to find out why so many girls became parents, even when they know a child will change their lives forever.

Lifelong Partners?

Most of the girls interviewed felt they had found their lifelong partners and said that love caused them to become careless about birth control. These teens had planned on getting married. So far, only two of the seven interviewed are married.

One 15-year-old Trenton teen thought that her pregnancy would improve her relationship with her boyfriend.

“But that was stupid,” Jayne says now. “I thought it would bring him closer, but obviously it didn't.'' 

All said that, given a second chance, they would wait to have kids. They added that love had overshadowed their better judgment.

“I felt so in love, I didn't care about the consequences,” says Gail, 16, a junior at Burlington County Institute of Technology in New Jersey. 

Some girls believed they were invulnerable: pregnancy couldn't happen to them. They also believed that since they did not become pregnant the first time they had sex, it was OK to continue having unprotected sex. (Not true.)

Some teens failed to grasp the realities of caring for a baby.

“I thought having a baby would be no real responsibility, just something for dressing up and showing off,” says Gail. “Now I know what a huge responsibility it is.”

Affection Factor

Most of the young women viewed having a baby as a way to get affection—either from their boyfriends or from the babies they had created.

“I really needed someone to care for me, and my boyfriend was there,” says the teen from Trenton. “My parents weren't.” 

For others, the focus was the baby; some girls said they felt they were creating someone who would love them and whom they could love in return. The teens who talked about this factor had rocky relationships with their parents.

“My parents weren't giving me the support I needed,” says Jayne. 

But other teen mothers did have strong relationships with their parents. Several said that their parents talked to them about sex and even offered to provide birth control, but they did not want their parents to know they were having sex. They felt it was too intimate a part of their lives to share with their parents.

They added, however, that if condoms had been available through another source—schools or local clinics—they would have used them. 

None of the teens interviewed felt that they were very mature or responsible when they got pregnant. Yet, the average age at which they became sexually active was 14. All agree now that they were too young at 14 to make decisions that would change their lives forever.