My mom was a teacher in a poor neighborhood. The way girls in my neighborhood felt and the way girls in my mom's school felt were completely at odds. The girls

My mom was a teacher in a poor neighborhood. The way girls in my neighborhood felt and the way girls in my mom's school felt were completely at odds. The girls at my mom's school often wanted to be mothers and would tell my mom that. Whereas the girls in my neighborhood had their eyes set on careers, later marriage, etc. I went to school somewhat near my mom's station and I knew several girls in classmate's families who also wanted to be mothers. This is heavily cultural, and some cultures strongly emphasize family life (especially mothers), and these often are the ones in which you'll find a lot of teenage mothers. In my mom's case, her school was heavily hispanic. Hispanic culture deifies mothers and many teenage / pre-teen girls saw becoming a mother as a way to escape the drudgeries of life and be turned into 'mother'. Of course, they didn't always think about the other sides of it. Now, I realize this study is in Australia, but Hispanic culture is hardly unique in this area. Many cultures greatly celebrate mothers and motherhood and don't have the same cultural prohibition on teenage parenthood / emphasis on post-high-school education. And before everyone gets all mad and cries racist, we are also of Latin stock. EDIT: You seem very surprised that any girl may want a baby as a teenager, but I assure you they exist. Unfortunately, I cannot find direct research on the topic. However, I did find this documentary tracing women who wanted to have babies as teenagers and were happy about it: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/10/were-glad-we-chose-to-be-mothers-in-our-teens https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/10/were-gl... . Hopefully this at least proves that such people exist. More sources: https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/planned-teenage-pregnancy-views-and-experiences-young-people-poor-and-disadvantaged https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/planned-teenage-pregnancy-view... ^ This one in particular substantiates my hypothesis as "Many mothers spoke of their love of babies, often heightened by experience caring for other children."