So Monday was my birthday and in honour of that, we at Buttercup decided that I should do an article about what it was like to be raised by a teen mom. I have mixed feelings on this assignment. One, because I’ve already painted my mother in a negative light on Buttercup (which I think she was very upset about) and two, because my childhood really wasn’t sunshine and roses and it’s going to be difficult to bring many positives to this article.

However, this is my assignment and truth be told, the concept was my idea, so here we go.

I was born March 1st, 1979 to my 15 year old mother and my 17 or 18 year old father. My mother’s birthday is at the end of August, meaning that she was actually 14 when she got pregnant and in 1979 that “simply didn’t happen” and when it did, parents forced their girls to abort or sent them away to have the baby and then give it up for adoption. In 1979 my mother was a pariah, they even made her write her high school exams in another room from everyone else, fearing that her visibly pregnant belly would be a bad influence on other students.

I’ve asked both of my parents numerous times how I came to be and while I’ve gotten mixed answers, what it all really seems to boil down to is the fact that neither one of them were given any kind of sexual education either at school or by their parents. At one point my mother told me not to believe my friends when they said you couldn’t get pregnant your first time, which has lead me to believe that perhaps she DID get pregnant her first time, but really, my conception remains largely a mystery.

What’s not a mystery is the years that followed. After I was born, my parents lived together in an apartment above my grandpa’s carpet store and my dad worked as his apprentice, learning the carpet trade. My mother stayed home with me. Around the time I was a little over 1 year old, my parents split up, my mom claiming that my dad had more interest in growing and selling pot than he ever had in me, which, knowing him now is a believable scenario. That’s when my mom and I moved in with her parents and my great grandma, who lived next door, looked after me when my mom went back to high school. I would see my dad again once when I was 3, but never again until I sought him out when I was 13.

During this time, I’m assuming things were okay or at least no one’s ever told me otherwise. What I do remember though, was when I was 3 years old, I was sitting on the floor in my grandmother’s living room watching TV when my mother called down to me from her bedroom saying that she had a present for me. So I went up to her room where she was doing homework and she said to come closer, which I did, and then she spanked me. This is one of my very first memories of my mother and I’ve asked her since why she did that and she said it was a “preventative measure”. She figured because I was quiet I must have been doing something bad and if I wasn’t I was about to so that’s why she spanked me. Nice parenting there, ma.

I know, because I’ve seen the pictures, that not every moment was horrible during my early childhood. I know my mother took me with her to the CNE which is a big fair held in Toronto in the summer and I know she took me with her to friends’ cottages and that there were always a lot of other teenagers around me as a child. And in the pictures I seem happy.

But something else I remember is house parties. I remember my mom and I going to Toronto because she was dating a guy named Cooper and I remember being put to bed early in a strange house and listening, in the dark, to the partying happening downstairs. I remember waking up early and the house being so trashed that when I walked down the hallway to the bathroom, ketchup packets from McDonald’s stuck to my feet and beer bottles full of cigarette butts were everywhere. I don’t remember anyone ever checking on me during these parties. Nice parenting again, ma.

Things didn’t really get bad though, until my mom married my step-dad when I was 5. I think she partially married him so I’d have a dad and when things turned sour between him and her, she took it out on me. In short, my mother became abusive and would remain abusive until I was taken away from her by the Children’s Aid in grade 7 and again in grade 9. She denies to this day that she ever abused me, but whether she can admit it or not, she did and I have the scars, both physical and mental, to prove it. Oh and a Children’s Aid file thicker than the Toronto phone book. When I was 15 I was legally emancipated from her so I could be on student welfare and live on my own as an adult while still attending high school.

But I don’t think I really blame her for that. I’m not mad at her for that. I used to be, I spent a lot of my life hating her for not being the mother I felt I deserved, that I felt every child deserves and our relationship since I was about 11 has always been strained and while things are good right now, I still feel like I have to walk on eggshells around her or World War III is going to break out.

It wasn’t until I had my own daughter though, that I understood the gravity of my mother’s situation. My mother hit me because she was a child herself and was never allowed to develop other methods of coping. In 1979 there were next to zero resources for teen mothers, the parenting course at high school that I took before having my daughter didn’t exist when my mom was having me and my mother had to put up with a lot of shit, namely her loss of childhood and a constant barrage of judgment and name-calling that it’s no wonder that she took out her frustrations on me, the reason for all of that.

What I’m saying is that I don’t forgive her for what she did to me and how she raised me and I never will because it fucked me up for life, but I don’t hare her for it because I’ve done my best to put myself in her shoes and I understand.

I was technically a teen mom myself, getting pregnant at 18 and having my daughter at 19, although my pregnancy was not an accident. But in 1997/1998 there were TONS of resources for teen moms. I had a group run out of the region’s health department bringing me healthy foods every week, like fresh produce, whole wheat bread, chocolate milk and cheese. I had a public health nurse come once a month to go over what was happening inside my body with me and tell me how my baby was growing. I had a church group that ran what was called a “community kitchen” for teen moms teaching the other girls and I how to cook healthy meals, which we made in large batches so everyone got to bring home left-overs, both a fresh dish and something to put in the freezer. An extension of this church group made sure I had gifts and a turkey every Xmas and a ham and an Easter basket for my daughter every Easter. When I threw my daughter’s father out of our apartment for good (long story, which will no doubt be another article) and had to go on welfare to support myself because I was only eligible for a minimum wage job that wouldn’t even cover my daycare expenses, they gave me a daycare subsidy that allowed me to go to a local community college (which they also paid for) so I could do upgrading to my education in order to get into college. When I did get into college, my government subsidized 80% of my daycare costs and gave me student loans that covered tuition AND living expenses. When it came time to put my custody and support arrangement in writing with the courts, my government paid for my lawyer to help me get it done.

Support like this didn’t exist for my mother and because of that, it’s no wonder that she and I have had completely different parenting experiences with completely different outcomes. The only support my mother got was outdated advice from her mother and my great grandmother and the “wisdom” of her teenage friends. I know my mother was on welfare when I was very young and she was still in high school (how weird is it that I was AT my mother’s high school graduation?) and I’m sure there was a social worker involved during that time, but because of how my childhood was, I can’t imagine that social worker was very helpful.

Despite at all though, I love my mother and I appreciate the things she had to give up in order to have me. from what I’ve been told, abortion or adoption were never even considerations and I thank my mother on this, my birthday week, for giving me the life I have. It’s been a bumpy ride, no doubt, but I’m grateful nonetheless.