One of my closest friends gave birth when she was 17 years-old. When she goes out for dinner with her now 27 year-old son, they are often mistaken for lovebirds on a romantic first date, I kid you not.
My friend, who had been a teenage mom, looks very young for her age, while her son looks older than his age. And, yes, sometimes – or a lot of the time – I’m completely envious of my friend’s life. Unlike me, and many others these days, I had a mid-life crises baby. My friend has freedom NOW, in her forties, while I have a five year-old. My friend can come home from work and plop on her couch without anyone yelling for chocolate milk. She doesn’t have to worry about carpools and playdates and last-minute birthday gifts for a another five year-old birthday party at the same trampoline park, weekend after weekend. She can actually nap whenever she feels like it! In her early forties, after having a baby at such a young age, she can just pick up and leave for the weekend, without having to make plans for any children.
No, it wasn’t easy raising a son on her own, but my friend had a solid and reliable support system, thanks to daycare and her mother, who, mind you, also gave birth to my friend when she was just 17. I know people who had babies in their teens and both their children and their own lives have turned out just fine. Even more than fine.
So why does 20-years old seem to be too young, at least to me, to have a baby these days? On Sunday, at 3:33 p.m. I received a ‘BREAKING NEWS” notification in my inbox stating, ‘Kylie Jenner Gives Birth to Her First Child.’
Kylie Jenner apologized to fans, saying her pregnancy was one she chose not to display to the world. ‘I knew for myself I needed to prepare for this role of a lifetime in the most positive, stress free, and healthy way I knew how. There was no gotcha moment, no big paid reveal I had planned. I knew my baby would feel every stress and every emotion, so I chose to do it this way for my little life and our happiness,’ said the makeup mogul. (Jenner might not have got a ‘paid’ reveal, but it seems calculated, to announce it just hours before millions were about to watch the SuperBowl, no?)
Personally, I think Kylie Jenner will be a good mother. She has the help of her huge family, numerous nieces and nephews, as well as the ability to hire as many people as she chooses to help out with baby, which, I’m assuming she’ll have with the click of her fingers. Kylie Jenner has a lot of money. She’ll never have to worry about the expense of diapers, or worry about not being able to afford extracurricular activities, like day camp or the orthodontist. Still…
Something, to me, seemed a little ‘off’ about the whole guessing game – Is Kylie pregnant or not? Call me a cynic but I’m pretty positive that both Kylie Jenner and her famous Momager Kris Kardashian, kind of knew that having a baby at age 20, while most certainly a blessing, may turn off some of her millions of fans. I think keeping her pregnancy a secret was more of a business move. Why? When it comes to Kylie Jenner, we just want to see pretty and more pretty. Her fans want to know how to plump their lips, not pump for breastfeeding. They want to see her in sexy poses in the latest fashions…but not with spit up. Her fans want to see her hourglass figure, not cellulite on her butt. I could be wrong. I mean, more than 18 million people have watched her video, with footage of her baby bump, that was released yesterday. Clearly, her fans are at least VERY interested in her.
So I can appreciate that Kylie Jenner wanted to enjoy her pregnancy, without the world watching. But I can also imagine that, even though I believe she is extremely hard working, much of her pregnancy was likely extremely calculated.
Most likely, it was for vanity reasons that she disappeared for months on social media. But truthfully, I think that many of Kylie Jenner’s fans (well, their mothers) don’t want their teenage or millennial daughters getting pregnant, or looking up to Kylie Jenner as a role model, at least not when it comes to getting pregnant at what I consider a pretty young age. In fact, almost every millennial I talk to haven’t even thought of getting pregnant, because they can barely afford to rent a place to live.
I’ve always thought that the one plus of having a baby so young is that, by the time your child is off on their own, you really DO have the rest of your life to enjoy…whatever it is you want to do, because you’re no longer expected to be at home at a certain time to make tacos for dinner.
One of my colleague’s was born when her mother was only 15. For my colleague, there were a few pluses, but also a lot of hardships, with having a teenage mother raising her. ‘My mother never really had an adult life. She planned to have me so she could get out of her house and she thought this was the only way. She didn’t know how to parent, because she never really grew up,’ my colleague shared.
Kylie Jenner finally shows off her bump… after having the baby.
There was resentment, my colleague says, because she knew her mother wanted to go out with her friends, like most teenagers, instead of keeping house. Once you become a mother, it’s pretty much game over – for things YOU want to do – until they’re 18.
Unlike my friend who gave birth when she was 17, my colleague learned very quickly that her mother’s decisions weren’t ‘good’ decisions, so she turned to other friend’s mothers, for role models. Because my colleague’s mother had her when she was only 15, my colleague was forced to grow up fast.
Now that my colleague is 34 and has an almost five-year old herself, she says her mother has admitted she wishes she had given her a happier childhood.
My daughter is going through some weird phase now. At 14, she’s been starting to plan out her future as a mother. She knows how many children she wants, and what their names are. I’ve told my daughter that she needs to get a career going first and then have babies. We go back and forth on what age is appropriate for her to have babies. I say around 30, give or take a couple years. She wants to be a mother so badly, it’s kind of odd to me. Whenever my 14-year old daughter brings up having children and says, ‘I really want to be a mother,’ I will always respond, ‘You need to have a career first!”
And that’s the thing: Kylie Jenner already had a ‘career’ in reality television since she was a child. Her Kylie Cosmetics is on track to be worth a billion dollars in the next three years. She started her own business at such an early age, and is such a success in the beauty industry, that she had to grow up faster than the majority of her peers.
When Kylie Jenner’s first born is 20, she’ll only be forty, which in this day and age, is like living to 108.
Calculated or not with keeping her pregnancy a secret – and keeping her loyal fan base – I do wish Kylie Jenner all the best. Babies are a blessing. So congratulations! Maybe you’ll come out with the perfect line of under-eye cover up. You’re a mom now. You’ll get it.
Do you think 20 is too young to have a baby these days?
Tagged under: makeup,celebrity parents,reality tv,reality TV parenting,Celebrity Mothers,reality shows,kim kardashian daughter,kardashians,kylie jenner,celeb moms,celebrity pregnancy news,parenting advice teenagers,makeup techniques,reality television,pregnancy rumours
Category: mom-101
