Being a stay-at-home mom (or dad) is one of the most rewarding jobs there is. Many parents report that it’s one of the most rewarding times of their lives.

I don't believe that going to college should be put ahead of raising your child. I've said that many times.

3 Reasons for Stay-at-Home Parents to Go Back to School.

Don't you have anything better to do than take every post personally and feel it is your SOLE mission to refute everybody's opinions?! Get a life

I wouldnt label it as neither good nor bad.
it would be ideal for women to wait until they are settled financially, finished their educations, are in a loving marriage, and have gad some life experience.

But we do not live in a utopian world. Young teens and young women will have children wheather anyone likes it or not.
We cant change that.
We can offer them encouragement to be the best persons and mothers they can be.
age doesnt always equate maturity; i have seen abominable mothers ij their 30's and 40's, and awesome kick-ass mothers in their late teens and 20's.

I was a young mother myself and fared well.
I have a young friend of 16 who recently had a child; before she got pregnant i preached to her about abstinence, and about birth control if she wasnt going ti stay abstinent, and took her to get birth control when she told me she was sleeping with her boyfriend and was afraid to ask her mother for birth control.
Well she ended up pregnant, obviuosly she didnt make good use of her birth control,
and she came to me terrified, that she was pregnant. I took her to get a pregnancy test, camer out positive, yeah i could have railed on her but what good would that do? it was already done. took a deep breath and promised her my friendship, love and support.
I enciyrage her all the time, and tell her what a great mother she is.

One of the best gifts of my life was a little handwritten poem she wrote about me and how much she loved me for beign there for me. She has told me many times that by encouraging her to be a strong young woman and good mother, i made a difference.

I would never ever condone a teen to get pregnant. VBut, if they are already pregnant or have given birth, all we as a socity can do is offer them the support to be the best they can.

Don't you have anything better to do than take every post personally and feel it is your SOLE mission to refute everybody's opinions?! Get a life

You never said about working and school, just school GF. I said that I worked, went to school, was a mother and a wife. That is me. I fried it up in a pan.

I didn't miss anything, but again, comprehension. A partner isn't required to be a stay-at-home parent.

I don't see why it is the same, minus the leture hall.

A partner isn't required to be a stay-at-home parent.

She stated her opinion, and now she is being critized for it.

Why is that when someone says, "This is the way things should be done", people interpret it as preaching to those that made the mistake about what they should have done? If anyone is reading that, it's their own feelings interpreting an opinion as a lecture about their choice and consequences.

I have not said that a teen or young adult is incapable of becoming responsible, and being a good mother. If you cannot remember to take your birth control everyday, or don't care enough to take it everyday and then have unprotected sex anyway, that shows a high level of irresponsibility. Not being responsible beforehand leaves a teen or young adult woman at a disadvantage. Statistically these women end up on public assistance within 5 years of giving birth, and 8 out of 10 of them do not marry the father of their child.

I don't feel they should be encouraged by saying things like they are better people because they became a parent before they were ready.

I get what your intentions are with saying this, but other young women who want to play house read this and view it as a PSA for the positive side of teen pregnancy. There are women who beat the statistics, even those 2 out of 10 that get to marry the father and go on to live a great life that no one would ever expect started with a teen pregnancy. That is the exception to the rule. Don't you think it's a bad idea to give girls the impression that it's acceptable to get pregnant and have a baby if they think they are ready and responsible enough to do so because there is the chance that they will be in the minority of these statistics?

A partner isn't required to be a stay-at-home parent.


I'm all ears to be educated about how this is possible. Please enlighten me.

or most stay at home single mothers it would probably be the route of self employment. I own 2 homes that i use for rental income and can stay home with my kids and am a single mother.

I'm all ears to be educated about how this is possible. Please enlighten me.

i did not say you did. My opinion on the forum was not directed towards only you, i was sharing it with all of the forum users. If the young ladies who have become mothers are shown encouragement and support, i think that the statistics of them failing at doing better for themselves and children would be lower.

I said that? When? My memory must be getting fuzzy in my old age.

I doubt any young women are going to think of my opinion that young mothers should be encoraged to be the best they can be and offered love and support so they can have a high enough self esteem to beat the odds and make good lives for themselves and children as a PSA for teen pregnancy.
I have never told a young lady that it is acceptable to get pregnant before they are ready. i do not think it is a bad idea to try to bring them upo rather than put them down.

You are a single mother as well i presume, so unless you are a widow or were married to someone you thought was going to be there forever,you did not make a good choice in getting pregnant either. So what makes you the judge and jury on telling people what is right and wrong?

For most stay at home single mothers it would probably be the route of self employment. I own 2 homes that i use for rental income and can stay home with my kids and am a single mother.

If they are adult enough to make such decisions, I dare say those young ADULTS are able to make their own choices on whether or not to bear a child.

Futureshock was asking how it is possible to be a stay at home mom/dad without a SO working from home is the largest growing trend in North America.

I know that "I" would not have been as good of a mother at 19 as I am at 27. I would have loved my child as much but I wouldn't be able to provide for her as I am now. I wouldn't have my job, my degree and I'd lack the self-confidence that I want to teach my daughter. Because at 18 I didn't have any self-confidence. Being older I find it easier to make the sacrifices that are needed plus I know I'm not missing out on anything.

Brain researchers are increasingly confirming what auto-insurance actuaries have long known - the powers of decision-making, especially under stress, don't fully mature in most people until they are in their mid-20s.

Boatloads of sophisticated imaging studies and other research show that the frontal lobe of the brain - the part involved in judgment, organization, planning and strategizing - gets all its gray matter by age 11 or 12. But the myriad connections from the frontal part aren't completely wired to function like an adult for at least another decade.

Imaging studies also suggest that because the braking system of the frontal lobe is still developing, signals from the primal emotions in the brain tend to get the upper hand.

Research indicates that using drugs or alcohol may not only disrupt the brain's tools for judgment in the short term, but also interferes with the long-term developmental process.

Jay Giedd, an imaging researcher at the National Institutes of Health, said for teens, "doing drugs or alcohol that evening, it may not just be affecting their brains for that night or even for that weekend, but for the next 80 years of their life."

Several research projects reported in recent weeks emphasize how important this final round of brain organization and pruning can be.

First, researchers at the University of Illinois in Champaign reported results from a study of adolescent rats that showed a substantial loss of neurons in the ventral prefrontal cortex, which is devoted to planning and social behavior.

While earlier studies in people had shown there are gradual reductions in the volume of this part of the brain in adolescence, "the finding that neurons are actually dying is completely new," said Janice Juraska, a professor of psychology and lead investigator of the study published in the February issue of the journal Neuroscience. "Some major changes are occurring in adolescence that no one suspected."

She suspects it is no accident that psychological conditions like schizophrenia and depression often develop at this point in life, and that addictions that begin at this stage are harder to overcome than those that start in adulthood.

Another small study on brain-damaged patients, by researchers at Harvard University and several other institutions, found that those who had lost function in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a center of empathy and social emotions, were more willing than those with damage elsewhere or with no damage to make coldhearted decisions.

For instance, they had no misgivings about killing a person infected with HIV if that was the only option to prevent others from becoming infected. That study appeared last week in the journal Nature.

At Emory University, researchers led by Greg Berns are pursuing yet another culprit in the adolescent decision-making process - excess of the brain-signaling chemical dopamine.

"We propose that the reason that teenagers sometimes make bad decisions is because the reward system in their brains is hyperactive," said Berns, an associate professor in psychiatry and behavioral science.

"Studies in both humans and other animals have suggested that the dopamine system peaks in activity during adolescence. If this is true, the abundance of dopamine might lead to different considerations of short-term and long-term rewards and consequences," he said.

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:64JZwjlnk4EJ:www.abqtrib.com/news/2007/mar/30/brain-doesnt-mature-until-20s-experts-say/+when+is+brain+mature&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a



http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/teenage-brain-a-work-in-progress-fact-sheet/index.shtml


The decade-long magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study of normal brain development, from ages 4 to 21, by researchers at NIH's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) shows that such "higher-order" brain centers, such as the prefrontal cortex, don't fully develop until young adulthood as grey matter wanes in a back-to-front wave as the brain matures and neural connections are pruned.

In calm situations, teenagers can rationalize almost as well as adults. But stress can hijack what Ron Dahl, a pediatrician and child psychiatric researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center calls "hot cognition" and decision-making. The frontal lobes help put the brakes on a desire for thrills and taking risk -- a building block of adolescence; but, they're also one of the last areas of the brain to develop fully.

http://www.edinformatics.com/news/teenage_brains.htm

I have no problem and I perfer my taxpayer money being spent in housing, medicare and/or food stamp programs for those needed