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YWCA campaign for young mums

The leading young women's charity, YWCA, which runs services for young mums has launched a new campaign that challenges the commonly held attitudes towards young mums.

A national opinion poll commissioned by YWCA in the summer found that people's strongly held views on young mums are more often a reflection of ignorance, misunderstanding or prejudice than the facts.

1664 adults were asked what they thought about youngs mums. Forty nine per cent thought that young mums get pregnant to get a house while forty per cent thought young women get pregnant to get benefits. However, the YWCA say that the facts are different. Seventy per cent of 15-16 year old mums and almost half of 18 year old mothers live at home with their parents.

Mums under the age of 16 are not entitled to any benefits at all. Child benefit goes to her parents or the father of the child if he is over 18.

The RESPECT Young Mums campaign calls for improvements in all areas affecting the everyday lives of young mothers, from education to income and childcare.

Despite common beliefs that young mothers are reaching epidemic levels, that there are almost half as many young mums now as there were 30 years ago and overall the teenage pregnancy rate has fallen by 9.4 per cent since 1999.

Sophie Holmes, YWCA's director of policy, research and campaigns, said, "The real problem of teenage motherhood is poverty and prejudice - not that young mums are careless and irresponsible, as they are so often portrayed.

While we are not promoting teenage pregnancy, neither do we want to see young mums demonised. For some young women it's a really tough decision whether to keep their baby or not. For others it can be a positive turning point in their lives. For most, it means that they want to plan for a better future. It is time we gave them our respect."

Gill Tishler, chief executive of YWCA said, "Every year we work with thousands of young women facing poverty, discrimination or abuse, many of them teenage mums. Many have told us that once they become pregnant and decide to have their babies they could do without the extra burden that prejudice and stigma places on them, and their children.

October 25th to 31st is National Parenting Week and the YWCA is urging the public to challenge their attitudes and respect young mums.

The Government has set 2 national targets for pregnant teenagers. Firstly to halve the number of under 18 year olds who fall pregnant and secondly to increase the participation of teenage mothers in education, training or work by 60 per cent. £98 million was spent by the Government between 1999 and 2004 on the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy.