S1E14 "Teen Pregnancy Without The Shame"

Teen pregnancy gets talked about like a warning label, but that story leaves out the truth: shame doesn’t prevent pregnancy, and silence doesn’t keep teens safe. I’m unpacking why “teen pregnancy” (before 20) and “geriatric pregnancy” (35 and up) sit on the same timeline and still invite judgment from opposite ends. When fertility can begin as early as nine, the real urgency becomes consent, honest sex education, and support systems that meet young people where they are.

I also share how fear-based messaging shows up in families across generations, and how it can quietly place the entire burden on the birthing person. We talk about the mental load of pregnancy, the way plans and identity shift overnight, and why teens often get stuck between being “the child” and being responsible for a child. Just as important, I expand the conversation to include boys and teen dads, because reproductive health and responsibility are never a solo assignment.

From Buffalo, New York’s teen pregnancy rates to policies that reduce economic harm, we get practical about what helps: childcare access, education pathways, and community-led solutions built without punishment. I break down how we turn lived experience into real change through parent advocacy and a people-to-policy pipeline, and I name the gaps that still get ignored, like preterm birth, stillbirth, loss, and inclusive support for all families.

Subscribe, share this with a parent or mentor, and leave a review so more people can find these conversations. What would a truly safe talk about sex, consent, and support have sounded like for you?

Transcript

Welcome To Momming In The Margins

Jaye Wilson 0:17

Hey girl, hey, it's your girl Jaye. Welcome to another episode of Melinated Mommy Talks, the podcast, where we're talking about and exploring all things within the Melinated Moms spectrum. This season is all about momming in the margins. And if you've been keeping up, we have explored so many corners of what the margins are for many moms in our community. If you're just tapping in, I highly recommend that you go check out those previous episodes so that you're all caught up on the conversation. In our two-part conversation with Chéy Davis, we explored the realm of teen pregnancy and learned about her personal journey of becoming pregnant at 19. So many members of our community began their parenting journey or even had a taste of the pregnancy process in their teens. There is so much stigma and shame that permeates the teen pregnancy experience. But Chéy taught us that there can also be pride and joy. And with that pride and joy comes the opportunity for advocacy and policies that lead to supporting those who do become pregnant teens, those who want to avoid pregnancy in their teens, and even those who are considering consciously beginning their parenthood journey during that time in their life. So go ahead and pull up your metaphorical seat, tap in, and enjoy this episode where I'm going to dive even deeper into the concept of momming in the margins and teen pregnancy.

Defining Teen And Geriatric Pregnancy

Jaye Wilson 2:10

Teen pregnancy is defined as a pregnancy occurring before the age of 20, whereas geriatric pregnancy is defined as age 35 and up. So if this is true, then what is the most ideal time for pregnancy to occur? Chéy talked about our elders living it in a time where most birthing journeys began in their actual teenage years. Scientifically, the human body begins becoming fertile and able to be impregnated as early as nine years old. And as we step into the teen years, we know that all youth may not have the mental capacity or the understanding of responsibilities that come with beginning the birthing and parenting journey, which has led to the aggressive stance often filled with stigma

My First Period And A One-Line Talk

Jaye Wilson 3:05

and shame around teen pregnancy. So since we've defined what teen pregnancy already is, I want to talk about, you know, some of those numbers and how it actually relates to me. I actually remember starting my personal period story at actually nine years old and having a conversation with my Nana. I remember her saying to me, you have to understand, you got to keep your skirt down. And that was my sex talk. I know she wasn't meaning it in a way of shame or, you know, fear, but understanding the ramifications of pregnancy, it was not an open dialogue that she was providing for me. What she was, what she was giving me was understanding that the onus of being pregnant will ultimately fall on my shoulders. And I had to be responsible for becoming or avoiding becoming pregnant, even before I even thought about what that meant for me. I think the limitations of teens being unprepared for what pregnancy is and how it intersects with being a teenager isn't always defined clearly. And when we want to open up these dialogues with teens, we can see the disinterest or even the pushback because from their perspective, we don't understand what they see and what they're experiencing in this present moment. Can I reflect back to say I was a teenager? Absolutely. I am 40 plus. That means I did it already. However, the era of what my teenage experience looked very different than the era of what my mom or my grandmother's teen experience was, right? Even with that, my grandmother was a teen mom. She had her oldest child when she was 17. She was a senior in high school. And taking those experiences, she may have used the messaging that she received as the warning that she didn't heed. So for her, the education piece for me was you better listen because I didn't. Right. And I can understand where that, where that is, right? And where that's coming from. It's like it's the way that love is is delivered through fear and caution, but also through wisdom. And when it comes to having conversations with teenagers, they don't think about the wisdom part in the same context as whoever is raising them, right? So even moving back a little bit, when we're thinking about how pregnancy can occur in people that are even younger than teens who are preteens, it actually opens up a wider conversation around what consent looks like, what responsibility can mean,

Hypothetical Parenting Meets Real Life

Jaye Wilson 6:15

and also what stigmas are attached to those things, right? In terms of being pregnant in general, having the assumed nine months of preparation time to go from singular egg to human being, in that time frame, you're reevaluating your whole life's choices. What ways is this going to change my lifestyle? How is it going to change my economic opportunities? What freedoms or limitations are now going to be a part of my everyday life because now I have this human being, right? In the context of 18, some of those thought processes might not be in the forefront. They may be compartmentalizing the way that this is going to look for them. I like to call it hypothetical parenting. And even though I had my children a little bit older, the first time I became pregnant was actually at 19. And I was a senior in college. And I remember having the conversation with my then boyfriend, who's now my ex-husband, and telling him all of what my plans are going to be. And him showing me, well, you can't have all these plans because you're about to have a baby. Right? So just imagining like where you are in your life, how that shifts what you can prioritize, and how sometimes it's hard to prepare for things that you really don't know that you'll experience until you're actually experiencing

Safer Family Talks Lower The Risks

Jaye Wilson 7:48

them. So when it comes to opening up that dialogue, um, this is why I really loved about Chéy's conversation, because she she faced the fear of talking to her mom, who also had the experience of being a teen mom herself. But she went into it from a space of understanding where the wall may be, but also offering guidance so that they can get over it together. She knew that where she was going was not a singular road or journey. So she had the wherewithal to say, I'm comfortable with where I am. My partner and I have started the proper preparation to navigate this new space, but we also are cognizant of there's some uncertainties that we might not be calculating yet. So we're asking you to support us in that. So when we see other teens who are moving into this space and they're afraid to have these conversations, or they are not encouraged to see it from a safe place, we're actually increasing the risk of mortality, morbidity, and intergenerational traumas and choices through reproductive health. It's one thing to be a nine or 10-year-old who is stepping into fertility and not knowing what that means. But it is a completely different thing for someone who is aware of what that means and taking away what their choices can be because they know the risks, because they are part of a different level of understanding, right? So when I say that, I want us to think about again, like how putting the onus on just the birthing person can really be dangerous. These kind of conversations are often, from a gender point of view, are often put on young women to hold, right? So I always want to open up the conversation to not just highlight young women or girls or birthing people as the keepers of the information, but how this also has to be a conversation that includes young men and boys. They are a part of this just as much as that young woman is. So in Chéy's story, when she showed this conversation and this choice was not hers alone. It was also inclusive of her then boyfriend and now husband. She showed how they collectively work together to work through the decisions that they made, but also how they invited the family in to be a part of the community that they need with raising their children. I think this also can can lean into how it's hard for a teenager who's already navigating new life choices, expanding their boundaries, learning who they are also evolving into for themselves, how this is now a place where they have to still ask permission to be the child that they were, but also now have to be responsible for the child that they have. That can be a really scary place. And it can really be hard to understand how to meet support and access in a therapeutic and compassionate place.

Buffalo’s Solutions Beyond Shame

Jaye Wilson 11:29

As I said, you know, seeing teen moms is not something that's new. This isn't something that just recently happened. Um, my grandmother was born in 1935. So for her to navigate pregnancy at an age where she was still, you know, in a place of just learning who she was. She was a mother longer than she was even allowed to be an adult. And that says a lot about how that shifts what choices she's able to make. So leading to that, it helps us to really frame the idea around how teen pregnancy um impacts economic decisions, educational opportunities, and modeling, right? So, you know, I've always tell everybody, you know, I'm from Buffalo, New York, born and raised. And one of the things that I saw firsthand, um, and experience even myself, is teen parenthood. So, you know, a very vast majority of my friends and people that I know became parents before their 18th birthday. And this statistic is still pretty widespread in my hometown. Um, Buffalo, New York, currently is one of the largest, or actually, is it's the largest city with teen pregnancy rates in the state of New York. And there's so much more we're going to dive into for understanding that. But one of the things I think it's important to mention is because this has been such a prevalent issue, even from 20 plus years ago when I was in high school, seeing how the city has created innovative solutions, not out of shame, but out of understanding we can't continue to allow economic depletion or um lack of resources, uh, build the next generation of not just teen pregnancy, but you know, essential poverty. So there's actually been policies that have included um incorporating childcare facilities or even incentivizing bring your child so you can complete this program, and then that way you'll have a better stepping stone to get to where you need to be to create economic stability, to create additional educational opportunities, and to really be able to not just survive, but thrive in your parenthood whenever it begins.

Talking With Teens And Shifting Trends

Jaye Wilson 14:11

I think as parents, and I'm speaking candidly, as a parent of teens right now, um, there's a lot of trepidation that parents really come to grapple with because we're coming in with the education of what it was like to be a teen and also what it's like to parent a teen and all of the temptations and things that our kids are experiencing that sometimes they share, but most of the times they don't. And you wonder how that's going to push our kids away or allow more opportunities for us to open up dialogue. So I'm asking you as a parent, if the opportunity comes up, and it doesn't have to be an after-school special, but even sitting down at breakfast or on your way to school, dropping your kids off, how can we open up more dialogue for trust? How can we open up dialogue for support? How can that translate into understanding reproductive health choices that our children understand and the ones that they're actually taking? Everything is a spectrum, right? So there's also the recognition of how there was this wave of teen pregnancy for quite a bit. But in the last about 10 years or so, we're actually starting to see a decline in not just the national statistics around teen pregnancy, but the increase in geriatric pregnancy, which is pregnancy over 35, um, and why women are choosing, women and birthing people are choosing to wait, and what that looks like for the longevity of reproductive health and family planning. I think it's it's it's an interesting concept because while we can recognize in teens having lack of access, lack of educational opportunities, economic development, and stability are absolutely things that we don't want to encounter. Waiting until you're 35 and older, there's this traditional sense of now you're at a period where you should have all of these ducks in a row, right? And it doesn't always happen that way either, right? So how do we connect these two conversations? How do we see how this is actually an opportunity to look at both people from the teen to the, I'll call them geriatrics, but but from both ends of that spectrum, to meet in the middle and say, how do we prepare for this new thing, this new, this new position in life?

Turning Lived Experience Into Policy

Jaye Wilson 16:59

And what does it mean for where we want to go? I think this is a another opportunity for us to look at how data can actually be turned into a new form of resource. So if you're familiar with Melinated Moms, which of course here you are, you are, um, one of our big driving factors is how do we put advocacy into action? And for us, our nonprofit arms called Connecting Our Communities for New Jersey, it is a parent advocacy coalition. And we introduced the idea of bringing the people to policy pipeline into the forefront. And what does that even mean? The people to policy pipeline helps us understand how civic engagement is tied to resource acquisition, legislative process, and activation from an internal source. We support parents on both sides of the aisle. We talk to them about their lived experiences, and we also utilize their stories as leverage to talk to legislators, to look at what policies are currently impacting the resources that they're in need of, that they support, or that can hinder what things that they need in order to have an equitable parenting experience. Now, sometimes we find these policies are well written and they're so inclusive and they have all of the things, but there are more times that we see that some people or things are missing. Some big examples are fathers. Are fathers introduced into these policies? Are same-sex families included in these places? What happens if a family has a child early? What does preterm labor look like? What does stillbirth and loss actually look like in terms of resources and support? Now couple that with being a teenager. All of these same circumstances are also intersecting with teen pregnancy. Who's supporting the teen that's having a stillbirth? Who's talking to the teen when they have a preterm baby? Who's supporting the teen dad when he's navigating this new space of responsibility and uncertainty? What policies include all of these people? Now, I think it's definitely important for us to know how Shay's story is not just inspirational, but it doesn't have to be the exception to the rule.

Changing The Narrative And Closing Pledge

Jaye Wilson 19:44

Shay gave us, you know, her internal struggles and story, but she also opened up the opportunity for us to talk through the different generations who impact what our parenthood is going to look like. She helped us to see that your life doesn't have to be over. It also doesn't mean that you can't still grow and evolve as a person. Just as your baby is growing up and meeting milestones, so are you. And that journey is parallel to one another. So your own identity as a parent and an individual, as a partner, and as a professional are all shaped through the way that your parenthood is supported and guided and resourced. And it helped her and other moms that she support realize that their parenthood is not a death sentence. The best thing that I want to point out through all of this is helping us to see that life is a full cycle. So we can have beautiful success and joy and pride and achievement and still be worried and tired and overwhelmed. We understand that as a teen, some of these feelings may be heightened. So I want to invite you and challenge you to be the mentor, to be the supportive person, to be the partner that's not just raising that child, but raising that mom and that dad. We have an opportunity to change the narrative of teen pregnancy, of support, and parent advocacy through how we show up for each other. I want to take this moment to thank Shay and thank you for her beautiful story, her courageousness, and the way that she also shows compassion and support for other moms, especially teen moms. She can relate to them and she can show them that there is light at every end of the tunnel. And I want to also take a pledge. I pledge to continue to open up more spaces for this open dialogue to reach intergenerational hearts. Over the last eight years of owning melanated moms, it's expanded so much of my personal views, but also the personal ways that this work is transformative. I've literally seen babies be born and been a part of our whole community. And I've seen how moms can also rebirth themselves with the right support behind them. So I pledge to continue to be that support, to reach into new places and spaces, and keep inviting you to be here right alongside with me. Talking about teen pregnancy as a margin that many moms fit into allows us to see that the margins are vast and many. Many margins are the categories and experiences that most people don't even realize that they are in. But these conversations allow us to see how these margins overlap to include us all. I'm excited to keep exploring these margins with you and keep expanding our knowledge of what constitutes a margin and how to be active in the world around us, how that helps us to also identify and advocate for changes that make these margins easier to bear and thrive in. I hope that you're excited to continue tuning in and be a part of the conversation. Melinated Mommy Talks the podcast is your place for authentic and raw conversations about what it means to be a Melinated Mom. So make sure to subscribe on all of the platforms where you listen to your favorite podcast. Make sure to like and share. And if you want to continue seeing our podcast grow, make sure to become a paid subscriber for exclusive bonus content or become a donating listening supporter. If you're interested in becoming an individual or corporate sponsor of this podcast, go to melinated moms . com / podcast for more information. We can't wait to have you with us in our next episode. So keep listening, stay connected, and stay tapped in .