Pauline Shaw
I’m 20 years old and I live in Esh Winning near Durham. I’ve got two boys aged 2 and 6 months.
When I was 15 I went to the GP with my mum and he prescribed me the pill. I’d just started a relationship and we wanted to be sensible. But when I was 17 I found out I was pregnant. I thought it was the end of my life. It was the term after I left school. I had passed all my GCSEs, eleven of them, all grades A to C - I even got an A* in one - and I had started doing four A levels at college. I had high hopes which didn’t include being a teenage parent.
After Ashley was born I rented a house with his dad in New Brancepeth and we were together there for two and a half years. When we broke up he refused to move out so I moved back to my mum’s. He still sees Ashley and he gives us some money each week.
I’ve been with Alex for a year and a half now. I got pregnant a second time when I was 19. We have a council house in Esh Winning in a street that’s a bit wild. The kids throw mudballs at our house and cause all sorts of trouble.
I’ve no intention of letting the fact that I was a teenage parent ruin my life even though it was certainly hard at first. It‘s partly the perception that other people have that you will live in a council house for the rest of your life with your mum looking after your children that makes you feel as though you’re a failure.
Alex is doing an adult skills course and there’s a creche attached to that, which means that I can go to college. I’m doing a one year access course in psychology, sociology, health promotion and social welfare and I’m applying to universities at the moment. I’ll need to get a place at one of the nearby ones because of the children.
Alex is not like most fathers: he helps a lot with the children and he’s good with them. He does more than me if truth be told and he’s certainly more patient with them. He supports me in wanting to go to university and to get a degree and have a proper career. Having two children is hard work but I love them and they are more an encouragement than a burden.