Sitting in a car, in the dark garage, about to leave for school, shaking with fear. “What is she going to say?”, I thought, “She is going to be so disappointed in me.” As I sit in the passenger’s seat with tears rolling down my cheeks, my mother gets in the driver’s seat. I knew it was time to tell her even though I could not find the words. I burst into tears and feel like I can’t breathe. She turns to me and asks me what is wrong. All I can say is “I have to tell you something” barely audible. Without me having to say another word, she knew. My mother got out of the car and as she went back into the house, started making phone calls. I was halfway through my freshman year of high school, fifteen years old, and I was pregnant. I had always said that I would never get pregnant. It was a fear that my parents had since I had been in a serious, too serious, relationship since I was thirteen years old. I had told my parents over and over that I was not sexually active, I was at way too young of an age. The week before I was supposed to start birth control, I found out that I was pregnant. I have never experienced fear like that. A fear that shook me to my core. While my mother was on the phone making me a doctor’s appointment, my mind was racing. Not only was I terrified to tell my parents because they would be angry or disappointed, but I was just fifteen years old. How was I going to finish high school let alone go to college? How and I going to work and support a child? Sitting on that cold table of the exam room at my doctor’s office, feeling as if the pale yellow walls in this tiny room were closing in on me, just waiting for the doctor to come in and tell me the results of my pregnancy test even though I already knew, I was holding my breath. I could feel my heart pounding in my ears. There was a lump in my throat that made me feel as if I was choking. As the door opened with a load creak and the doctor told my mom and me that I was in fact pregnant, I couldn’t help but cry and look to my mother for a reaction. We were both scared and crying. When we got back home, my dad was there. I felt as if my heart fell into my stomach. She had already called him and told him to come home from work. He knew. When I got inside he is sitting at the dining table on the phone with the insurance company trying to find out what coverage we had for my pregnancy. We had none. They would only provide coverage for my mom to have a baby. I couldn’t help but begin to cry again. Not only do I not have a job, now I didn’t have insurance to cover myself or the baby. My boyfriend at the time, and father to my unborn child, was sixteen years old and lived eight hundred miles away in California, did not have a job and was too, still in high school. Through all of the fear, I still couldn’t help but have some joy inside. I had always wanted to be a mother. Even though I never planned on having a baby right now, that did not change the way I felt about motherhood. My mom had called her best friend and told her the news. They couldn’t help but talk about all of the exciting parts about me having a baby. That is when my mom told me that she knew what I had to tell her in the car because she had said the exact same thing to her mom when she found out that she was pregnant at the age of seventeen. At that time, I didn’t not know what I was going to do. I did not know what resources were available to help somebody in my situation. If I would have been aware of the resources that I had either for preventing pregnancy or helping me after I got pregnant, I would not have felt so lost and hopeless. I would never change what I went through but if I could find a way to keep any other girl from going through what I did, if I could help just one girl, I would feel that I was making a difference. Not everyone is as lucky to have such a supportive family like I do. Something that I will never be able to repay them for.
Persuasion Effect
Information Effect
For my Information Effect Project I interviewed 4 women that had once been teen mothers. Two of the women had their babies prior to the year 2000, the other two were after. I asked each woman a series of questions which is where I got most of the information in my chart. The facts column, I researched information on the questions I asked and found the answers that I was looking for. Some of the responses from the women were about average. For example, in my last question, “Are you still with the father of your first child?”, 50% of the women said “yes”. Where as in the research that I found, only 2 out of 10 teen couples end up staying together. Another example would be my question about graduating high school. Research says that only 38% of teen mom will finish high school. In my survey, 100% of the women finished high school.