Pregnancy BEFORE Marriage PLANNED... not a taboo thing of today

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, and talking with a few of my friends about babies of course. The subject that always comes up is teen pregnancies, and now how much they are planned now. Maybe I'm a little old fashioned but I'm not at all warming up to the idea of a planned pregnancy in high school, or just right after before you are even married. I do realize that some do happen- play with fire, you get burnt. It happens. BUT, I've been watching 16 and Pregnant and of course, nobody is ever on any birth control, or they don't think it will happen to them, blah blah blahhhh. Sigh.

Back when I was in high school it was a very very bad deal. If you were pregnant, you was labeled a whore. It was just the way it was. No one was worried about how you would handle it, or how good of a mom you would be, you was just labeled with a big fat red scarlet letter W for whore. There was no glow, they all tried to hide it as long as they could. They didn't celebrate in the hallway with feeling the baby kick, or pass out invitations to baby showers. They did have a program that I thought was total crap where if you became pregnant your junior year, you could graduate at the end of that year. Now I don't know exactly what was involved, but to me back then it was just a thing- don't want to go to school, get knocked up... I know that is really harsh. Still pregnancy before getting married back 10 years ago was not a good thing- often really looked down upon- especially in my family even though it had happened. I cannot tell you just how much of a relief it was on our wedding night, thinking "Thank God !! We made it, now it does not matter if we do or don't." Now a days, people don't have to get married at all- it's not considered a bad thing. Having a baby whenever isn't a bad thing- whether you are 16 or 23... I just really do not understand it at all. I do know one thing is for sure and I do not want my kids thinking that these current ways are okay at all. If you cannot legally commit to someone besides telling someone you will spend your whole life with them, you do not need to have kids together. Spending your lives together and planning on not getting married is one thing. Having a baby.... well you are stuck with that other person for life. Doesn't it just make sense that those two things go together? What keeps the other person from just getting a wild hair one day and leaving you besides their word? Marriage is not just a legal piece of paper, and it is very sad that not many people view it that way anymore. To me, the day you are married, is the day your family starts. It grows with children and pets, but it is a family. You have declared that you are a union that will work together and be there for each other in good and bad times.

I know what many are thinking now, well then many people get married thinking well if it doesn't work, oh well, I can get a divorce. I don't mean to be standing up and lecturing right now, but no. If you cannot say with great confidence that you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you love them, and no matter what happens, you will stick together. Divorce is the last thing you want in your life, maybe you should not get married. Marriage is something that has been taken from something being sacred to something that you order in a drive thru, #3 sounds great to me, how about you? The first big fight a couple has, divorce is threatened and thrown out there like a curse word. They make plans for when things do go sour- to have an escape plan. It's all very sad.

The point of this all is that it has been making me sick to see that I am so "old fashioned" in just 10 years since we were married. I do not want my kids growing up where teen pregnancies are a planned and celebrated thing, and getting married to someone is just something extra you do. If babies are not regarded as something special, you wait until you are older for, they turn into pets- like a puppy or kitty. If you get sick of them, send them to Grandma's to raise so you can go party since you had to give up so much, when all you had to do was to WAIT. I am personally thankful that babies did not come soon for us. I know at 26 when I did get pregnant with Hayleigh, I was a lot more grown up than I was at 20 when we were married, even though I felt grown up at the time we were married. There is much to learn in life, and some things are worth waiting for- you don't have to rush through milestones in life so quickly.

I want to make it clear that I'm not looking down at people, because this has all become the new "norm". It just makes me incredibly sad to see that so many morals and values have been thrown out in the past 10-12 years so easily. Makes me scared to see what our future holds as a every day norm.