Mistaken Seed

Having a baby after you become married is a huge deal. Imagine having a baby at
age sixteen, when you are not married, you are still in school, and you have no money.
This is a story about how a baby girl was born and what her mother had to do to raise her
to the best of her ability at such an early age. Many misconceptions are made about
people who go through a teenage pregnancy, and many of them are not true. Several
hardships were endured in order to raise the baby, especially when she wasnt receiving
any support from her family. This is a story about how a series of unfortunate events
turned a girl, who at times never thought she would see the light of day, into a strong
independent woman through having a baby at age sixteen, moving out of her house and
having her family leave the country, and how she slowly came back and went back to
school and got the dream job that she still has today.
The rate of birth rate of teenagers ages 15-17 is 34 per 1000 in 1996
(National Vital Statistics System). Even though that seems like a small number, this
happens more frequently than it should. Mrs. Robles couldnt believe the news at first. It
took her four weeks to tell her mother, who immediately pushed her to have an abortion.
She refused to and had to run away from home in order to keep her baby. She barely
managed to rent an apartment building for a few weeks with her boyfriend, and she began
living on her own away from her parents in despair.
Mrs. Robles was born and raised on the south side of Chicago. She grew up poor
and often found herself stealing food for her self and her brother. She went to grade
school and part of high school in Chicago up to the time of her pregnancy. Here parents,
who both came from Mexico, loved her but they cared too much about the honor of the

family and she also didnt have many friends. I interviewed Mrs. Robles at her home one
day and although she agreed to have this interview, she almost seemed unwilling to
answer some of the questions because it made her feel uncomfortable. She never
expressed it but I could tell.
The article listed below states that the United States had an increase in the amount
of pregnancies from 1999-2007. It is now slowly starting to go down again. I believe that
anybody in this situation has it rough, but she made the right decision by leaving to avoid
an abortion. Living without her parents wasnt easy as she soon realized, but she learned
how to take care of herself, and later on, her child.
Mrs. Robles parents were shamed that she had a baby so young and that she left
the house, so in order to try to teach her a lesson, her father packed up the family and
moved back to Mexico to demonstrate to her that they are upset at her choice and choose
not to deal with her. Because she was an American born citizen at the time, she could go
to Mexico to visit her family, but her boyfriend at the time was not legal and she didnt
want to travel alone. The only solution she saw was to get married so that he can file his
papers to become a citizen and travel to Mexico with her. Now that she was married, she
had to wait over a year before she was able to see her family. Because of this she wasnt
receiving any financial support so she had to work several jobs to sustain herself and her
developing baby. In her spare time she took online classes and struggled to get her GED,
which she earned after 2 two years.
I see how Mrs. Robles potentially shamed her family but I dont think the way her
family (mainly her dad) reacted to the situation was moral. I thought it was very childish
of him to think that a way to handle a situation when your daughter needs her family the

most in her life is to pack up the bags and go to a different country to prove some kind of
lesson. Kate Walker from the Blog The Guardian explains to us how she felt during
this similar situation on her daughter. She stated that she was shamed and angry that she
let all her talent and aspirations go to waste by getting pregnant at such an early age.
Many American families have a hard time adjusting to their sons and daughters turning
out to be teenage parents. Knowing Mrs. Robles now for a little over three months, I can
see where her behavior came from. She is always keeping active and is like a machine
when it comes to doing work. I believe that she has been conditioned through those few
years of hardship to act the way she does today. She did everything herself, including
getting her GED and paying for the classes for them. Neither her family nor boyfriend
helped support her or her child. It still amazes me how she did that.
About a year later after Mrs. Robles went to Mexico, she realized that her
boyfriend had certain qualities that she didnt necessarily appreciate and has been
noticing them all along but as chosen to ignore them thus far. She knew that her
boyfriend went out with his friends to drink every week but she didnt know that one of
his cabinets next to his bed was filled with bottles of hard liquor. He was an alcoholic and
she didnt even know until much much later in their relationship. He was also abusive,
both verbally and physically. Although he only hit her once or twice a month, she stayed
with him because she still continued to believe that what she had for him was love. It
took her another six months to realize that it wasnt true love, it was just the fact that she
needed him for support because after all, he did get her pregnant and he is 50% liable for
this situation. She left him, and in a weird turn of events, she landed a job at the

University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC). She works in the technology department where
she found the man who is now her husband.
Things never really turn out the way that you want them to. She knew her
boyfriend had a problem but she didnt think it was that bad. Upon asking Mrs. Robles on
a later time what happened to her first husband, she told me simply I dont know and I
dont care. She seemed happy that that part of her life is over and that she has moved on
to a husband that does love her and a child that she was able to teach all these good
qualities so that she grow up to be a great person as well. Mrs. Robles today makes a
respectable salary and supports herself, her daughter Narcy, and their current house in
Chicago is already paid off. There is a joke that goes on between Mr. and Mrs. Robles
that she wears the pants in the family because she makes more than her current husband.
She laughs at that and is just grateful that she is in the situation that she is in.

Everybody has their own story, each original to themselves. Mrs. Robles story
was one of self-teaching, and to some, self punishment. Mrs. Robles should help people
view women in a different light, one that gives courage, strength, and hope to all that
need it. This was a story about how she turned into a strong independent woman through
having a baby at age sixteen, moving out of her house and having her family leave the
country, and how she slowly came back and went back to school and got the dream job
that she still has today. She has few regrets in her life, and is a very happy person. Its
funny how a person that has had it so bad can have it so good. She is a great example for
thousands of women around the world.

Work Cited
Ventura SJ, Curtin SC, Mathews TJ. Teenage births in the
United States: national and State trends, 199096. National Vital Statistics
f
System. Hyattsville, Maryland: National Center for Health Statistics. 1998.
Walker, Kate. "My Teenage Daughter Is Pregnant - I Feel so Ashamed." The Gaurdian. 21
Oct. 2011. Web. 23 Oct. 2014.