Teen Pregnancy is The Way According to Britain’s Youngest Mum

Amy Crowther claims getting pregnant at 12 was the smartest thing she ever did.

Amy, who is now 22, got pregnant from a one night stand with a 15-year-old she barely knew. She then went on to have another child at 16 after a ‘one-off reconciliation’ with the father of her first child, who had not been on the scene up until then, and who vanished rather quickly off the scene after that.

But Amy claims she does not regret having children so young. In fact she says it is the best way to do it. Why, we may ask Amy? Well, now she is free to go clubbing because her mother babysits her son and daughter and she is super slim, taking dress size six. She says she looks round at her school friends who are having babies now and sees how they are tied to their newborn babies with no social life and who, in her words, are fat, and feels she has had the best deal.

She is such an advocate of her way of doing things she would be happy if her own daughter had her first child at 12. That would make Amy a grandmother at 27 by the way!

There is certainly something to be said for having children when you are young as it does allow you to have a life of your own ‘on the other side’ once your children are older. It was the norm going back several centuries for girls to become mothers in their teens and it still is in certain cultures. Young girls’ bodies are built to deal with giving birth and the recovery afterwards far more efficiently than older mothers and they obviously come with bags full of energy to run after their offspring.

But Amy, despite her claims, does not sell the life of a teen mum too well. We go on to hear how she is living off the state, on benefits and with a three-bedroom council house. (As an aside how interesting it is that there is so much support for teenagers who fall pregnant whilst families where both parents work are left to make ends meet – but that’s a separate discussion).

We also learn Amy dropped out of school to look after her children. Admirable perhaps as she felt the urge to do this rather than leave them with her mother, but there goes the education.

And Amy has also been in trouble with the law for drugs. She was found in possession of cannabis in 2009 and received a community order. She told the judge at the time she had the drugs to help cope with the stresses of parenthood – so on this basis it wasn’t so rosy being a teen mum after all.

I think Amy rather defeats her own argument all by herself.