A New Novel Explores Teen Parenthood

There were approximately 141,000 births to youth ages 15-19 in 2023, and despite a decline in teen birth rates in recent years, the United States still has the highest teen pregnancy rate among developed nations.

Teen moms face many challenges, according to researchers: financial problems, difficulties with planning and decision making, trouble caring for the baby, social stigma, and family conflict, to name a few. Meanwhile, teen moms are also disproportionately stigmatized for violating age norms for parenting. Stigma has numerous emotional and practical impacts, from shame and self-blame to difficulty landing a job or safe housing, leading experts to urge healthcare providers to reduce stigma against pregnant teens, maintaining a safe, welcoming space where people of all ages are treated with respect and dignity.

New York Times bestselling author Leila Mottley explores young motherhood in her latest novel, The Girls Who Grew Big.

Q: Share a bit about your background and what inspired you to write The Girls Who Grew Big.

Leila Mottley (LM): Outside of writing, I work as a doula, and I’m privileged to witness and be connected to many different mothers and their experiences with pregnancy, birth, and parenthood in a culture that doesn’t cater to mothers or children.

People hold a lot of judgments for mothers and all the choices they make, from when and how to have children, ways of birthing, to feeding and sleeping and virtually all decisions that parents make.

This scrutiny is even more amplified for young mothers. When you look at the ways teen pregnancy and parenthood are portrayed in the media, there’s a pervasive attitude of disgust towards young parents, especially young moms, while simultaneously treating young parents as spectacles to be watched and examined.

I wanted to tell a story of young mothers that is based in communal care, compassion, and the belief that the choices we make as parents aren’t moral ones, they’re human ones, and there are so many ways to be an active, competent, and “good” parent.

Source: Penguin Random House/Used with permission

Q: The experience of teenage motherhood is at the forefront of your latest book. Tackling the challenges of new motherhood along with the developmental tasks of adolescence is not easy, and many young moms face inadequate social support. What challenges do Adela and her friends face in The Girls Who Grew Big, and how does their friendship help them to overcome?

LM: New motherhood is isolating. It is also beautiful, transformative, and full of extremes. Support systems are essential to coping with the rapid changes of parenthood and providing children and their parents with skills, resources, and community to grow inside.

A lot of young moms are not set up with this kind of community. Most of their friends aren’t at the same stage of life, their parents are often busy working and are sometimes actively unsupportive, and traditional spaces for mothers can be judgmental of young moms or simply not in alignment with the compounding of adolescence and parenthood.

The girls create a village with each other, where they can lean on each other for support in breastfeeding, depression, relationship challenges, and the loneliness of new motherhood. I hope that this group of girls and women is an example of the importance of community in new parenthood, and the necessity for more communal support of young mothers.

Q: One study showed that becoming a mother at a young age can be a catalyst for positive changes in some girls’ lives, inspiring them to invest in their educational and career aspirations. How does motherhood inspire the girls in your book, in their coming-of-age journey?

LM: Some girls who find themselves pregnant at a young age are already testing boundaries, experiencing a lack of belonging, or simply feeling loneliness and uncertainty in life. Many young mothers I’ve spoken to have said that they believe having children saved them from what could’ve been more dangerous or self-destructive behavior. These same young mothers will say that they wouldn’t blindly recommend having a child as a teenager to anyone.

Regret is a complex topic around parenthood. Most parents feel regret at some point, or miss their old lives or selves, and this rarely has anything to do with their children. In The Girls Who Grew Big, one of the characters is applying to colleges, another is breaking up with her long-term boyfriend when she realizes he preyed on her as a young girl, and another is exiting the strict expectations her parents had for how she lives and behaves. These are all parts of becoming adults for them, closely tied to showing up for themselves and for their children.

Motherhood can both make these difficult choices and pursuits harder and also provide a driving purpose for making these decisions in the first place.

Q: What stood out to you most in the process of writing this book?

LM: I thought a lot about reproductive justice and access to care while writing The Girls Who Grew Big. There isn’t much discussion of how young parenthood fits into this and, when present, it is often about the necessity for teens to access abortion in order to prevent more people from becoming young parents.

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While abortion access is a critical part of this story, with one of the main characters seeking an abortion in a state that makes that very difficult, I believe that reproductive justice has to include access to resources that make it possible for people to choose whether or not they want to be a parent. Reproductive care needs to include access to resources that make the choice to be a parent easier, at any age. These girls fight for resources to raise their children in the ways they want to, despite resistance from individuals and systems around them.

Q: What do you hope readers take away from spending time with The Girls Who Grew Big?

I hope readers contemplate how we support mothers and how we judge them. Catching ourselves in small moments of criticism, thinking about what kind of policy changes we’re fighting for around reproductive care and family support, even showing up differently for the mothers in our lives.

I hope mothers who read this book are reminded of the sanctity and importance of community and fight to create and show up for their own. And, lastly, I hope that we are vigilant in our lookout for men preying on young girls while maintaining compassion for young girls who find themselves tied to men whose age felt insignificant at the time. We are all learning and growing, mothers included.