Not so cheap: Teen mom rejects the stereotype

Several years ago, advertising behemoth Ogilvy & Mather launched an edgy campaign in conjunction with the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Youth magazines like Teen People and CosmoGirl volunteered to include the ads in their issues for free, deeming the strategy as effective at getting through to teens. The series of six photo ads aimed to confront, in bold terms, the so-called realities of young pregnancy. In one ad, a young Latina girl dons a revealing belly shirt, her heavily made-up eyes glaring moodily at the camera. Bold, capitalized letters, spelling out "CHEAP," are superimposed across the girl's purportedly pregnant torso. In tiny lettering that runs down the length of the page, an explanation: "Condoms are CHEAP. If we'd used one, I wouldn't have to tell my parents I'm pregnant."

Charlie Rose 'AC has chosen another set of labels for her choices. In a Facebook album entitled "Pro Girl Mom," 20-year-old Rose superimposes bold text across photos of herself and her four-year-old son, Cae. "The way I parent makes me a great ROLE MODEL," is splayed across a black-and-white image of the Rose family, Cae wrapped snugly around his mother. Another photo says, "My son and I make a BEAUTIFUL family," and another: "Breastfeeding through high school made me feel STRONG."

When she decided to have a child at 15 years old, Rose says that her biggest obstacle was not the physical pregnancy itself, which she describes as "easy," "wonderful" and "delightful," nor was it the financial burden - all of Cae's clothes and cloth diapers were handed down, and Rose made her own baby food. Instead, the hardships came from the labels and stigma attached to her decision.

"For some reason," she says, "people have very visceral responses to teen pregnancy. It's sort of the unifying issue, because everyone thinks that teen moms are awful. It challenges the idea of adulthood that we've established, the idea that teenagers are always irresponsible. From a patriarchal state, teen mothers are threatening because women are supposed to belong to their fathers until they belong to their husbands."

Unable to identify with this construct surrounding adolescence, and sensing an innate maternal instinct, Rose made the conscious decision to conceive when she was 15 years old. "Humans are pretty hard-wired to want to continue the species and procreate," Rose says, recalling her strong maternal urges and desires to become a parent. "Biologically, the best time to have a child is during the late teens... I knew it would work out."

During her pregnancy, high school teachers advised her to drop out, telling her that she would be lucky just to get into a community college. After telling her to drink 32 ounces of water in preparation for an ultrasound, a gynecological office turned Rose away due to her age. She was not allowed to sign herself out of school for her mandatory prenatal care appointments, despite the fact that her parents lived in another city. "I was disenfranchised in a lot of ways, and I didn't have any legal rights because I was a minor."

In Texas, a married woman assumes the status of a legal adult if her spouse is of legal age. In order to be able to sign into her own doctor's appointments and to open her own bank accounts, she decided to marry Cae's father, who was 18 years old at the time. "When I was deciding to leave Cae's dad, people were really shocked and rude," Rose said, recalling the comments and assumptions that took away her "agency and pride in leaving an unhealthy relationship." According to Rose, "If someone's not being a good parent, then I don't need to parent with that person."

After Cae's birth, she received a letter from the school's principal, scolding her for breastfeeding her son in public when in situations associated with the school. "When you start eating all of your meals on the toilet," she retorts, "then you can tell me to feed my son that way."

"It's really sad that when someone knows that you're a pregnant teenager, they automatically write you off," Rose states. "You feel a lot of pressure to prove yourself to people. People see me when my son's having a hard time, and instead of seeing a mother with a two-year-old, they see 'that teen mother' - a bad parent who doesn't know what she's doing."

Aside from these externally imposed obstacles and criticisms, however, Rose has few negative thoughts about her experience as a teen mom, and no regrets about her decision to have Cae. She insists that she has not missed out in choosing motherhood over what she sees as a packaged idea of "wild, carefree days."

In fact, she says, "Cae is totally involved in everything that I'm passionate about. I really love showing him the things I care about, like activism or science. He's starting to love math a lot and loves hanging out in the math forum."

Rose serves as president of Conway House and as site producer to GirlMom.com, a left-aligned, pro-choice resource for teenage mothers with over 100,000 posts to date. As the Web site's home page states, "The only true epidemic associated with teen pregnancy is the overwhelming and universal lack of support available to young mothers... We love our children fiercely. We protect and care for them like any mother, of any age, would."

Her activist, open-minded role has translated to her parenting philosophy. "I feel like childhood is so over-commercialized and over-gendered and over-restricted... If I see something that's really awesome in the girl's section then I buy it, and if I see something that's really awesome in the boy's section then I buy that, too. I don't want to be in the business of stifling my son's interest because he's born of male sex."

As diners in Gillett House can attest, Cae often traipses in for dinner decked in pink and purple tights with cowboy boots, a beloved doll in tow. "Cae loves playing with baby dolls," Rose says. "People wonder why there are so many shitty dads in the world. Maybe if you said that parenting is for everyone, and that not just women take care of babies, that wouldn't happen."