As a parent, you want nothing but the best for your children. You want them to excel in school, you want them to find their dream job, marry their soul mate, live life and be merry. So you do all you can to ensure that your children have the best, and that nothing jeopardizes their happiness. But as we all know, things don’t always work out as planned. Especially when your children hit those “I know it all” teenage years and start experimenting with new things, like sex. (Oh boy!) Yes, this is one of those inevitable occurrences that every parent dreads. (It’s a tough task to tackle, we know, so if you need a little help, click here for our take on how you should handle talking to your child about sex and abstinence.)
One of a mom’s worse fears is that her kid will end up becoming a premature parent. But it happens. So if and when that nightmare comes to fruition and your teenage son got a girl pregnant, what do you do? Well, most mother’s first reaction would be, “You’re joking, right?” But after it’s established that you’re not being Punk’d, you’re second instinct would probably be to faint (or charge at him like a raging bull), but keep it cool mom. Let’s think this through.
Of course, as with any mother who wouldn’t want her son’s life complicated by the huge responsibility that having a baby comes with (especially if you were a young parent yourself), there’s no doubt that you’d feel some disappointment. But it wouldn’t be so smart to pound him with criticism and make your child feel worse than he would already. Your baby boy made a mistake, so while you might hand out some sort of verbal assault, don’t push it to the extent where he’d be afraid to open up to you about his problems in the future.
Perhaps one of the biggest and most important steps would be to have serious sit-down with not only your son, but with the mother-to-be and her parents; which maybe the trickiest part. First things first, how do you know for sure that this young lady is really carrying your son’s baby? Do you ask for a DNA test (even if you know her and are almost certain she’s not the skanky type)? If so, how do you do so without offending her or her parents? Assuming the kid does have your blood running through his/her developing veins, do you try to impose your own views on whether or not the mom should keep the baby?
You may feel like it’s best to abort the unborn child for the sake of both your son’s future and the mother’s. But what does she and her parents think? Or maybe it’s the other way around and you don’t believe in abortion but her parents are pushing in that direction. If the young lady and her parents decide to keep the child (because ultimately, it’s her decision. And her folks would play a major part in it being that she’s just a kid herself), now you’re in a situation where you have to mentally and emotionally prepare your son to be a dad.
He’s going to have to provide financially, so he needs a job. The baby is going to take up a ENORMOUS chunk of his time; so he needs to know his days of PS4, frequent mall trips, and weekend party time with his friends will be no more. Most importantly, he (and the child’s mom) would need to learn how to prevent this same situation from occurring in the future.
(Sigh.) This is a tough subject Mommy Noire readers, but we need to know what you would do if your teenage son told you he was expecting a child?
