Dear Counsellor:

I am 18 years old and I am in a relationship with a young man who is 28 years old. He is very nice but the problem is he is pressuring me to have a child we engage in sexual activities, I am not ready for a child.

He already has one child but says he wants to have a child with me. Each day the pressure gets more. I fear that I may give in I love him very much, I want to go to college and become a teacher. A child at this time would hold me back and that is something I would not want. I sometimes feel confused.

- Kamisha

Dear Kamisha:

Let me say first and foremost that sexual relationships during the teenage years very rarely last, as persons get bored and desire to move on to more excitement.

Having a child

I sense a reticence in you as it relates to having a child now and I must applaud that. I see where you are thinking critically about how this child could affect your life. Many teenagers have regretted having a child at an early age. This regret is due in part to the fact that many of them gave in to pressure from peers, or from a 'very loving' boyfriend who 'jumped ship' after the child was born. The sad reality is that the very persuasive lover becomes the absentee father who has to be taken to the Family Court for child support.

Kamisha, you are not ready for a child. A child is an expensive endeavour. Too many persons rush into having a child without counting the cost. Please do not let your heart rule your head. The man who may 'love you to death' and 'cannot live without you' today may be loving someone else to death tomorrow. If it is that he desires a child to prove that he is a man, he already has one. One is forced to wonder what happened in the first relationship? What 'miserableness' was the first baby mother guilty of?

For many teenagers, the novelty of having a child wears out as the reality of child-rearing hits. In America, statistics reveal that only three out of 10 teenage mothers receive financial support from the child's father. Would you be one of the three? This lack of support results in confusion and anger of which the child becomes the victim.

Family relationships can also be affected because your family may not be as supportive as you would want them to be. I have known of persons who had to abort their educational pursuits because of insufficient family support.

Your importance

I am forced to wonder how important you are to this young man? If he wants you to have a child now, how interested is he in your future? Kamisha, you have the power to determine the quality of life that you will have. If this man is interested in you and in your future, he will encourage you to become more educated so that you can be more marketable in the very competitive environment in which we are now living.

You say that you would like to be a teacher, but this child will represent a loss of freedom and, for some, the loss of a bright future as many young mothers are unable to continue their education. And let's face it, if it is hard to study without a baby, is it not harder to study with a baby?

If your goal is to be a teacher then you must write down your goals and work actively at achieving them. What would hinder you from achieving this goal? Goals that are not written down will lose their importance. Now is the time to build a solid educational foundation because boyfriends will come and boyfriends will go, but a good education will weather the storms of life.