About YM
The History of The Young Mommies Homesite
The Young Mommies Homesite began as a personal homepage created by a newly-pregnant 17-year-old.
She searched the internet for good links and resources to help her in planning for her new arival, but found only limited support for mothers her age.
She began to expand her personal homepage to include links to resources on the web for young mothers, soon adding a space for other young moms to add their stories. When the small section grew to include the beginnings of a pen pal directory, and an online e-mail discussion group, The Young Mommies Help Site was born (in 1999) and moved to it's own space on a free webhost. In 2001, it moved to it's own domain name as well - www.youngmommies.com - and has grown in this place ever since. In 2009, YM celebrated it's 10th anniversary as a support site for young mommies and had a name change. Now known as the "Young Mommies Homesite", the site offers not only help (via support, information, resources, etc.) but also a safe homebase for young moms to hang out and chat.
Our Mandate
About us... in detail
- We support choice!
- We support education!
- We celebrate diversity!
- Everyone is welcome!
- Supporting, not promoting!
the YMH's "political" standpoint...
As awareness of teen pregnancy and teen parenting issues is rising all over, there is an increase of sites meant for teen parents. Some sites (such as this one), run by teen parents or those who used to be teen parents are there to help and support teen parents by providing access to a social network of other teen parents, as well as to the resources available online.Other sites (especially government-funded or political organization, etc. sites) are meant to help educate teens about why they should not become pregnant. Some of those sites are focused on education and awareness about birth control and protection against STDs etc. and others are focused on preaching abstinence as "the only option".
This site tries to leave the political side of things out of it, but it does have a few clear guidelines about what you will and will not find here...
Supporting Choice
This is a Pro-CHILD site, and the first site to put forth the Pro-CHILD movement. This site respects the choice of mothers to choose for themselves whether they want to keep their child, abort their pregnancy, or give their child up for adoption. This also means that we respect mothers who *choose* to be pro-life, pro-choice, or pro-CHILD. You can read more about the Pro-CHILD movement here.
The purpose is not to convince anyone that any one way of thinking is the "right" way of thinking (with this controversial issue as well as others), and therefore although you can respectfully state your opinion, you are not permitted to be derogatory towards others for their opinions. You will hopefully see a balance of these choices among our information, resources, and stories, and we make no attempt to persuade visitors of our site that one choice is necessarily better than the other. We don't tolerate any derogatory posts towards any one choice in our message boards, teen parent stories, or within our communities.
Supporting Education
Our site also believes in open communication and education. There are sites out there that claim to be "teen pregnancy" sites, but that only have the agenda of trying to solve the problem of teen pregnancy through teaching of absitence as the only answer, spouting religious propoganda, etc. You won't see any of that here. In fact, religion is not at all part of this site's focus, although visitors are free and welcome to discuss how religion has affected their choices. We don't tolerate any posts that are derogatory towards those who are or are not choosing abstinence. We support the sharing of information about safer sex, about lifestyle choices, pregnancy choices, etc. and of course about parenting! The more informed you are, the better you can parent, and so everyone is encourage to be a "teacher" to everyone else here because we can always learn from others...Celebrating Diversity
This site respects all cultures, lifestyles and walks of life. We are a multi-cultural, multi-racial, and multi-ethnic site. Women of colour and of all nationalities throughout the world are welcome here. We are also tolerant of all religions, and women from all faiths/religions/spiritual paths are welcome. We are also a queer-friendly site, although obviously not a queer-focused site; bisexual mothers and lesbian mothers are welcome here. You will see mostly women posting here, and although this site isn't feminist-focused, we support feminist views and women's issues, and will not tolerate anti-feminist, anti-woman posts. And of course since most teen mothers aren't living in mansions, we respect people from all social classes, economic and financial backgrounds. We are also respectful of everyone's unique way of living, learning and being. We are respectful of everyone's unique physical make-up, and don't allow put downs based on physical appearance or disabilities. Mentally and physically challenged mothers are welcome here. No derogatory comments towards any one religion (or towards a lack of religion will be tolerated here. No racist, homophobic (or heterosexist), classist, ableist, or sexist comments will be tolerated here.Everyone is Welcome
Another point to add- although this site is mother and women-focused, young fathers are welcome as well. And although the focus is on young parents, we welcome older parents that were once teen parents, or even parents of teen parents, etc. We also want to be sure to inlcude young teenagers that are having sex, because part of this website's goal is to help young women be able to make the choice for themselves whether they *want* to be teen parents or not! So basically, everyone is welcome here, as long as they follow our rules of respect and courtesy, and recognize that this site's main focus is young mothers and mothers-to-be. Anyone may view our stories and post their own, etc. although please note that the communities are (for the time being) reserved solely for young mothers and mothers-to-be.Supporting, not Promoting!
It also should be made quite clear that although this site is meant to help and support teen parents, it is not intended to express the view that teen pregnancy is a great choice to make in life! We support mothers who made the choice to become teen mothers by giving them the resources they need, but we do not advocate choosing teen pregnancy. We are not going to turn away the 16-year-old that may for some reason, want to get pregnant, but we don't encourage it as a good choice to make!A disclaimer to young teen girls that may be wandering by our site- a lot of us young mothers sound positive about things because we're very proud of having made the best of our situation, but please keep in mind that many of us would have made the choice to wait another few years to start a family, because in most cases, teen parenting is a difficult challenge that is best avoided if possible! So please be extra careful to use protection! As those of us that ended up pregnant with only one incidence of unprotected sex (or worse yet, failed protection!) can tell you, better safe than sorry.
Sound ok to you? :)
Hopefully these views will fit in well with your own, or if not, hopefully they are views you can respect enough to be a part of our growing young mother community here at The Young Mommies Homesite. We have lots of options of how to Join YM so I hope to see you around the site!
Sincerely,
Kris Cormier, Founder of YoungMommies.com
