Becoming a young mother pros and cons. Everyone has their own opinion about it, especially in response to the TV program:'Four hands on a belly'. From my own experience I would like to give the pros and cons for becoming a young mother.
100 years ago it was still quite normal to focus on the household as a woman. They also got married at a young age, after which children soon followed. Young mothers were more the rule than the exception. Practicing a profession, that was reserved for unmarried women and for men. As a woman, you had enough to worry about raising your (large) family.
A lot has changed in that area over the years. The woman (consciously) becomes a mother at an increasingly later age. Most Dutch (but actually applies to many Northern European countries) women first want to make a career, before they settle down and start having a child. The age at which a person becomes a mother for the first time depends on a number of factors. For example, think of living conditions, culture/belief, upbringing, education, etc.
The average age at which women in the Netherlands become mothers for the first time is 29.4 years, while the average age in third world countries is much lower. And then there are of course the outliers:people who do not have their first child until around the age of 40 or even later. Or young women, actually still teenagers, who already have a child before their 20th birthday.
Sometimes this is a conscious choice, in other situations it will turn out to be force majeure (especially with older women) or an accident (with young women/teenagers). Whether you become a mother for the first time, young or very old:everything has its pros and cons. In this article, the pros and cons of becoming a mother at a young age will be discussed. Keep in mind that I base this on my own experiences.
Women who become mothers at a young age can be divided into two groups. The first group consists of young women who consciously choose to become a mother at a young age. The second group of mothers consists of young women whose pregnancy was an 'accident'.
The reasons for consciously becoming a young mother can vary greatly:it can be related to religion, culture, experiences, but also to the fact that one is simply ready for it.
If a pregnancy is an 'accident' this could be due to:insufficient sex education, wrong use of contraceptives or simply laziness. In such cases, extra guidance is necessary during pregnancy.
In this case, I want to start by listing the positives, or the benefits of becoming a mother at a young age.
1. Your body is still strong and can handle a pregnancy much easier
2. Losing weight after pregnancy is also a lot easier
3. Becoming a young mother also means that you are still young if your child is a teenager (suppose someone becomes a mother on her 20th birthday, then this woman is only 38 when her child is 18 years old)
4. Complications for the mother are relatively less common at a young age than at an older age
5. If you have a child at a young age, you have enough energy, you can go crazy with your child, you are often a lot more flexible, etc.
6. The chance that you will not have to wait that long for a pregnancy is greater than if you first take the pill for many years and then want a child
7. The older you get, the harder it is to change ingrained habits. However, that is inevitable when a child is on the way, your whole life changes because of this. Women therefore benefit from this if they become mothers at a young age. Adjusting is much easier.
There is a downside to everything, including becoming a mother at a young age. All disadvantages at a glance:
1. Making a career and having young children do not go well together in most cases
2. Financially there can be uncertainty
3. Uncertainty in care and upbringing
4. Social contacts with peers become more difficult as many people first want to party, make a career, etc. instead of having a child
5. Especially when it comes to an accident, it can cause extra stress. If there is no partner, this can be extra difficult (not only for young mothers, by the way)
6. A child means extra responsibility
7. Society is more focused on older mothers and this can cause problems in some cases
I became a mother for the second time a few days before my 20th (planned and desired) and on my 22nd. I am now 37 and have two growing teenagers (the oldest of which is almost an adult myself). I am no longer in diapers, no more broken nights (that is, if everything goes well with the second one) etc.
This gives me a lot of space to do things for myself and I'm still young enough for that. By the time I'm 40 I hope to have two grown children. And no, it hasn't always been a bed of roses:doctors and specialists in particular made it clear, for example, that they didn't like it because I am such a young mother. During an ultrasound I was even casually informed that it was definitely an accident.
Fortunately, society is changing a bit and I see many relatively young mothers, especially in blogger land. And I see that they have less problems in terms of acceptance by society, doctors, etc. Although my husband I am very happy with our choices, I hope that my children are just a little older as they get older. Not that I would mind being a young grandmother, but simply because I think my children should enjoy being a young adult a little more.
When did you become a mother or do you want to become a mother? Do you have good or bad experiences as a young mother yourself? Let me know in the comments at the bottom of this article.
