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Sunday, 6 September 2009
Categories:
Health and wellbeing: teen pregnancy
Young mums are not scum!
by Bubblees
"Just because I am young, the job centre assumed I was a lone parent"
Young mums have always got a bad press. People assume we are all single, skint and useless. I had my daughter when I was 17. I am still with her father and even though we have our problems we take parenting and responsibility for her very seriously. We love being parents and have our own house council owned.
Sadly, we both lost our jobs not long after we found out we were expecting. When we found out we were over the moon and thought we'd be fine as we both worked full time and enjoyed working. The job centre were not supportive and the receptionist was awful with me when I came in to them alone. She assumed I was a lone parent and told me "we don't deal with you people here." I was digusted! I was on income support at the time due to us both being unemployed and had enrolled for full time college. All I wanted to know was how do I let them know.
I feel that Job Centre Plus do not help young people or young parents enough. I was given £15 a week until I was 29 weeks pregnant to support myself because I was under 18 and they refused to review this. My daughter's father was given Job Seekers Allowance, enough to keep our car in petrol and feed ourselves as well as stock up on baby supplies for when our baby would arrive.
Income support is only paid to mothers with partners for 11 weeks before birth and 15 weeks after birth then both parents must go on job seakers allowance. My daughter was only 3 months old when they wanted me to go back to work. This meant I would have to miss out on her growing up. I was treated badly because I didn't want to work so soon as I had had a traumatic labour and an emergency C section and wasn't fully mobile.
When we did switch to JSA we were not paid for 4 weeks after applying and this meant we struggled with the utility bills and had to live on people giving us handouts. Eventually they did pay us but this wasn't the last time they didn't pay us for one reason or another.
I think that just because people have children young does not make them scum and we should be treated with the same respect as any older mum. I enjoy being a parent and see it as a responsibility and not a phase.
