Examples of Teen Pregnancy in Literature.
- In Acid Row, Melanie is an exaggerated example; she was fourteen when she had her daughter Rosie, sixteen when she had her son Ben, and is currently nineteen and pregnant again.
- In The Alice Network, Charlie's brother dies while she's still in college. She has a number of one-night stands and then, as a result of those, gets pregnant at the age of nineteen.
- In Always Coming Home, it seems common among the Dayao, but very rare among the Kesh. Abortion is mandatory for them before eighteen, while a teenaged father might be mocked to the point of suicide.
- The Anderssons:
- Elin must have been only 17 years old when her oldest daughter Rebecka was born.
- Judith is the same young age when her daughter Maria is born.
- Referenced in Annie on My Mind. It's mentioned several times that prior to the book, two students were expelled for being married. The real reason was because the girl was pregnant.
- In Aunt Dimity: Detective, this is revealed to be the reason Prunella Hooper was able to blackmail Peggy Taxman. Peggy was fifteen when she met a brash young American serviceman, and she had his baby shortly after he was killed by an exploding piece or ordinance leftover from WWII. She is reunited with her son over fifty years later.
- In Because of Mr. Terupt, Shrinking Violet Anna's mother Terri had her at sixteen, hence why she doesn't have a wedding ring. In the sequel Mr. Terupt Falls Again, Anna becomes curious about her biological father, but even then, his identity remains a mystery throughout the series.
- The Blue Lagoon indicates that Dick and Emmeline were both about sixteen or seventeen when they consummated their love and she had Hannah about a year later.
- In the Books of Swords, it is outright stated that the Silver Queen, Yambu, became pregnant with Ariane while still barely a teenager herself. As such, when Ariane is in her early twenties, Yambu is still only in her mid-thirties or so.
- The age when men are married and expected to start servicing their wives, in A Brother's Price, is sixteen. But only a generation ago, that age was only thirteen, and the Moorlands were fathered by a boy who was married off at that age. Cullen Moorland expresses relief that the age of marriage is higher now. It is not mentioned what the age is for girls, but one family tries to get Eldest Whistler to give them Jerin for a night, in exchange for some money, so that he can father a baby with their youngest sister, who is just sixteen. (Men are very rare, so the problem is not so much avoiding teen pregnancies as getting pregnant before one hits menopause. And some, if not most of the marriages can include wives that aren't born yet; the husband would naturally have to wait awhile if they wish to include everyone.) Eldest Whistler, naturally, refuses; her brother is not for sale.
- Brown Girl in the Ring: Ti-Jeanne is a teenager, pregnant with Tony's baby.
- Bumped by Megan McCafferty, where only teens can get pregnant due to a virus making adults infertile. Teens are paid big bucks to be surrogates for couples. It creates a never-ending cycle, because the teen girls have all their kids for other people and when they are mature enough to have kids, they can't so they hire surrogates... and so on.
- Casteel Series: In the setting — deep poverty of the Appalachia in the 60s — it's completely ubiquitous. Leigh and Sarah both married Luke at 14, and grandparents Annie and Toby apparently met at that age too. Granny urges Heaven to wait a bit — like 15, rather than 14.Granny: Ya jus make sure t'marry t'right one, like I did, that's all. An wait till yer old enough t'have good sense. Say fifteen.
- In The Color Purple, Celie had two teen pregnancies as a result of being raped by her stepfather. Her children were taken from her and adopted by the local minister and his wife, who were unable to have children. She finally gets to meet them near the end of the story.
- In The Crosses-Boy's Counselor, witnessing a number of girls fall victim to this during her high school years was part of Sitara's inspiration to become a sex therapist. It also happened to her aunt, her mother's sister, and it caused a divide in their family; she notes that the two older women are still estranged from each other years later because of it.
- Dear America: Subverted. In Cannons At Dawn, Abby becomes pregnant with Willie’s child at the age of fifteen and gives birth to a daughter named Hannah in the epilogue. However due to the era, Abby is considered an adult woman and married, so it’s not a big deal to herself or her family.
- The web-novel Domina:
- It's common for people in the city to have children in their teens (possibly because they don't tend to live much longer). Several characters mention off-hand having kids they put in orphanages, and the vast majority of the current generation are orphans as well.
- Ling Yu turns out to have given birth at age twelve, which is noted to be extremely strange. Might have something to do with being an ex-succubus. Apparently her boyfriend was older than her; The Rant mentions that he was scattered over half the district when the authorities found him.The Rant: Domina City does not take kindly to anyone who does anything to children.
- Earth's Children: In the setting, it isn't unusual for teenage girls to become mothers for both Cro-Magnon and the Clan (Neanderthals), both because girls are considered adults after they experience menarche and because people don't tend to live as long due to the Stone Age setting. Jondalar mentions that for Cro-Magnon, it's generally more typical for girls in their late teens to become mothers as some people think that anything younger than fifteen is still too young. As the Clan reach physical maturity faster than Cro-Magnon, it's common and socially acceptable to have teens and even preteens get pregnant.
- In The Clan of the Cave Bear, Ayla is eleven when she has her son Durc - her sister Clan Uba isn't much off that when she gets pregnant. Justified in-universe in that the Clan have a lifespan of about thirty and go through menopause in their early twenties, and so have children early, and Ayla was held to their standards. In Ayla's case, being pregnant and giving birth at such a young age nearly kills her though; when Jondalar finds out how young she was, he's shocked and says he's never heard of a girl that young having children (though has known thirteen-and-fourteen mothers) and says she was just a child herself.
- Downplayed when Ayla gives birth to her second child in The Shelters of Stone; she's now nineteen and it's considered far more usual for Cro-Magnon women to give birth in their late teens. This time she has a normal pregnancy and uncomplicated labor, despite her fears of suffering another horrific birth.
- Iza is nineteen when she gets pregnant with and gives birth to Uba; she's also the same age when she adopts five-year-old Ayla as her daughter. Notably, due to the Clan physically maturing faster than Cro-Magnon, Iza is well into adulthood and is actually considered unusually old to be having her first child (Iza had been secretly taking contraception for years, only for it to fail recently).
- Cavoa of the S'Armunai is implied to be quite young and is heavily pregnant, though this is normal in her cultural setting. Her biggest concern is that her tyrannical, man-hating leader has threatened to kill her and her unborn child if she gives birth to a son; she already killed Cavoa's teenage boyfriend for trying to escape with her.
- Janida of the Zelandonii is said to be only around thirteen years old and is already expecting her first child. Although she's regarded as quite young to be having a baby, she's unconcerned and considers herself blessed (though it is mentioned part of this could be due to pregnancy hormones).
- In Eleanor & Park:
- Discussed between Eleanor and Sabrina when the latter tells the former that the teenage daughter of a family friend has gotten pregnant by a black boy, and the family is in an uproar over it.
- It's also implied that Sabrina and her first husband had Eleanor when they were in high school.
- In the Maeve Binchy novel Evening Class, after realizing that her older sister is actually her mother, a girl realizes that she was the result of this—she's 16, her mother is 32.
- In Fifty Shades of Grey, Christian Grey's mother was presumably this (she was in her early twenties and he was four when he was taken from her, meaning that she likely would have been between fifteen and eighteen). This is never remarked upon.
- Fortune's Rocks by Anita Shreve. As it's set at the turn of the century, 16 year-old Olympia is forced to give up the baby for adoption by her parents.
- In Ginger Pye, Jerry and Rachel's mother married their father at the age of seventeen, at a time when such marriages were unusual but not unheard of. (The novel was the recipient of the 1952 Newbery Medal, and is set in 1919.) Their grandmother is still quite young, and they have a three-year-old uncle, affectionately referred to as "Uncle Benny" by everyone in the neighborhood.
- Giovanni Francesco Straparola's Fairy Tale "Pietro Pazzo" (also known as Peter the Fool) takes this trope further by having the title character impregnate a ten-year-old princess, who gives birth at the age of eleven.
- In the world of The Giver, some girls are selected to become Birthmothers at the tender age of twelve, meaning they first give birth at 13-14. Of course, this only helps the jarring creepiness of the setting. In Son, one of the follow-ups, other characters find out about ex-Birthmother Claire's pregnancy and are aghast, disgusted, and saddened.
- Diana from Gone gets pregnant by Caine when she's fourteen, leading to her Heel–Face Turn.
- In Moonlight Mile, the sequel to Gone Baby Gone in the Kenzie and Gennaro Series, Patrick and Angie eventually track down Amanda McReady, a girl who went missing when she was four years old and then disappeared again when she was 16. She has a baby with her that she claims is hers because of this trope. It's not actually hers, but rather her friend Sophie's, who does actually qualify for this trope since she's the same age as Amanda.
- Harry Potter:
- Lily Potter is a prominent example - Harry was 15 months old when she was murdered at the age of 21 and nine months (her birthday is at the end of January). Add 9 months to that and you get 24 months, exactly 2 years, meaning that Lily was approximately 19 and a half when she got pregnant. note It also goes without saying that James was around the same age. Of course, this is tempered by the fact in the seventies it was much more common for girls to get married immediately after high school. Also, they were at war at the time and anyone could die at any time, with Molly noting that it was part of a much wider societal trend. The movies avert this when a shot of the Potters' gravestones show they have the same birth years as in the books despite the slightly later setting; Lily and James apparently just waited until they were older to get married andhave Harry.
- Merope Gaunt was 18 when she became pregnant and died a year later after giving birth to her son, who grew up in a Muggle orphanage. He would, later on, rename himself "Lord Voldemort."
- In If I Go It Will Be Double, Laurie's sister gave birth to a son in high school. Her family disowns her as a result. This leads to Laurie acting out and, eventually, running away.
- In The Inheritance Cycle, Katrina becomes pregnant by Roran shortly after her rescue from Helgrind, no older than 19. She and Roran marry almost as soon as Eragon returns from dealing with some unexpected after-effects from said rescue some days later, which preserves her honor.
- Inkmistress: Ina is seventeen like Asra, and it turns out she's pregnant from her fiance Garen.
- I Shall Wear Midnight quickly establishes itself as Darker and Edgier than previous Discworld Young Adult novels when a 13-year-old miscarries after being savagely beaten by her father.
- Just Juliet: Georgina got pregnant when she was just fifteen from a boy who's also a teenager, and has a young daughter with him.
- In The Kharkanas Trilogy, Sandalath Drukorlat — a young noble woman — gave birth to her son Orfantal while she still was the teenage equivalent of a Tiste (who live longer than humans). It was a disgrace in her mother's eyes, especially as the child's father was some random drunk soldier who seduced Sandalath. Nerys allows her daughter to keep the child, but no word of it being her son is to get out and she has the two separated as soon as an opportunity provides itself at the start of the first book.
- Livorette in Madame d'Aulnoy's Fairy Tale The Dolphin
is sixteen when she gives birth to a son after the protagonist Alidor impregnates her. The child is conceived out of marriage. Alidor himself seems to be around Livorette's age. - While not stated flat out, some quick math reveals that Sally Jackson from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series was 19 when she got pregnant with her son Percy.
- Top Speed in Magical Girl Raising Project zigzags this. She's 19 when the story enters with her carrying a child (unknown to her fellow magical girls). However, she is Happily Married (though still doesn't give a good impression to her neighbors). Tragically, she does not carry her baby to term as she's killed in battle.
- A Master of Djinn: Siti relates that her mother was less than fifteen when she got pregnant with her.
- The Maximum Ride series ends with its then-15 protagonist giving birth to a baby girl.
- Midnight Robber: The teenage Tan-Tan ends up pregnant by her father, but her friend Melonhead is blamed.
- Les Misérables. Fantine obviously was one. This fact is handwaved by an approximate date in the book ("When she was born, the Directory still existed" - that would be about 1798). She could hardly have been over eighteen when Cosette was born, something that makes her story even sadder (dying before she is 25, her hair already grey).
- In Nighttime Is My Time, Jean got pregnant with her daughter Lily at 18; she found out she was pregnant shortly before the baby's father died in a hit-and-run. Jean decided to give the baby up for adoption as she was in no way to prepared to raise a child alone and never even told her parents or anyone else about the pregnancy; her doctor thought she should, but because Jean was legally an adult she could make that decision for herself.
- Out of the Easy: Louise seems to imply that Josie was this, as she states she was pretty at her (Josie's) age before she had her, at the same time, however, she might have been a little older.
- Pocket Monsters: The Animation: Delia Ketchum is 29. Her son Ash is 10, meaning she had him around age 19. According to the novels, she worked at a family-owned ramen shop where she met her future husband. He later ran off to become a trainer, however his whereabouts are unknown. Delia was excited to have Ash go away on a journey because, while she loves her son, she misses being able to live her youth.
- In Pretty Little Liars Emily ends up pregnant after losing her virginity to Isaac and had the baby over summer while staying at her older sister's.
- Push by Sapphire: The main character actually has two children, one when she was 12 and another when she was 16. Both were by her father.
- In Rabble Starkey Sweet Ho was 14 when she gave birth to Rabble.
- Reign of the Seven Spellblades
- Sex Magic-themed fourth-year Ophelia Salvadori, whose main claim to fame is breeding chimeras in her own womb, is known for a fact to have had one ordinary human child (sired by an unnamed male student she seduced in order to carry on her family's bloodline). Volume 3 reveals she was basically made a Breeding Slave for her mother's eugenics experiments from the moment she hit puberty, through the simple expedient of putting her in proximity to a male donor and letting the pheromones from the Salvadoris' succubus ancestry do the rest.
- Discussed in volume 4. The mage aristocracy is constantly trying to push the limits of sorcery to the point of utter amorality, and as a consequence it's so common for them to try to breed new traits into their bloodlines that students third-year and older at Kimberly Magic Academy are permitted to have children while still at school. This leads to Oliver and Chela having The Talk with their friends after Nanao and Pete are approached by other students attempting to court them for Nanao's Innocent Color and Pete's Reversi abilities; Chela estimates that approximately eighty percent of Kimberly students will at least have had sex for the first time by the time they graduate, if not had at least one child.
- Oliver Horn was drugged into raping his cousin Shannon Sherwood as a young teenager, at the behest of his great-grandfather in hopes of producing a child with her aunt Chloe's Superpowerful Genetics. Oliver hoped that a child would mean something worthwhile came of that horrible experience for them both, but the pregnancy ended in a stillbirth.
- In Remnants, Echo seems to be about the same age as the teen protagonists, but has a baby between books. Unlike most examples, it seems to have been some form of artificial insemination—these stories are set After the End, and her people, the Alphas, are very careful trying to keep their society viable. (Which is bad news for Echo, since her baby was born blind and thus implies that she has defective genes...)
- Gender reversed in The Shipping News, where the protagonist calculates that his grandfather must have been about 11 when he fathered a child. His aunt's reply is simply: "You don't know Newfoundlanders."
- In Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen, Scarlett and Michael have sex once. Not only does Scarlett get pregnant from the encounter, but Michael dies the next day. Scarlett faces being ostracized in school when she decides to keep Michael's baby, and her mother is initially unsupportive, trying to pressure her into having an abortion.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: This is rather common in the series, because of the quasi-medieval setting, and is nothing worth batting an eye on. Women generally have their first child at age 19.
- Daenerys Targaryen gives birth to a stillborn son at age 14. Her own mother, Rhaella, had her first child, Daenerys' brother Rhaegar, at around the same age. Her mother, Shaera, gave birth to her son (and Rhaella's husband), Aerys II, at age 18... yeah, incest isn't the only deleterious characteristic of the House of the Dragons.
- Lysa Arryn was impregnated by Petyr Baelish in their mid-teens. She miscarried the child, however, and would not give birth to a live child until she was in her 20s.
- Gilly is at most 17 when she gives birth to her father's son.
- Sweet Valley High:
- Book 10, Wrong Kind of Girl, has Annie Whitman's mother telling Elizabeth that she gave birth to Annie at 16.
- Another book, "Rumors", has another character's "aunt" admitting that she's her mother and that she lied because she's the result of her out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy.
- In the Kate Thompson book Children of the Night, the teenage protagonist's mother was only 14 when she had him. He realizes that his father, whom he never knew, must have been an adult, since she would have told him if his father was a classmate of hers. This squicks him out, as the idea that an adult could take advantage of a young girl like that is inherently disturbing.
- A Thousand Splendid Suns:
- Mariam is fifteen when she marries Rasheed and miscarries a total of seven pregnancies in four years.
- Laila, on the other hand, gets pregnant her first time with Tariq at the age of fourteen, and has a second child with Rasheed four years later.]]
- Rasheed also mentions at one point that his mother was fourteen when she had him.
- In the Towers Trilogy, Xhea is told that her mother Nerra gave birth to her when she was around Xhea's current age. Xhea is only 15, and due to malnutrition and stunted growth she looks even younger.
- The Twilight Saga: Bella gets pregnant with her daughter at age eighteen and gives birth days before her nineteenth birthday. It's not explicitly stated, but Renesmee may have been conceived the first time Bella and Edward had sex, which is the first time for both of them.
- Ugly Love: Rachel was 18 and months away from graduating high school when she got pregnant with Miles' child; he was also 18. Despite the challenges that came with this - and the added complication of them being stepsiblings - they decided to keep the baby and do their best to raise him together while attending college. Sadly, they never got the chance to be parents together as their baby died days after his birth.
- Warrior Cats: This is implied with Moth Flight as she's repeatedly mentioned as being young. Estimates show that she is around the age of a modern apprentice. Before it's revealed that she's pregnant, it's even mentioned by other characters that she's too young to know much about childbirth and kittens. With her mate dead, Moth Flight couldn't raise her kits on her own, both due to her youth and her job as a medicine cat. She ended up regretting her kits and the Clans enacted a law that medicine cats couldn't have children.
- Welcome to Night Vale: Diane had Josh when she was 18 and his father, Troy, was 17.
- Preteen pregnancy in eleven-year-old Denise's case in We Can't Rewind; and this after her own mother gave birth to her at sixteen. As the narrator grimly notes, Denise's daughter Jaymee made her mother "a grandmother not yet turned thirty" who could easily get away with posing as her granddaughter's mother while Denise was at school.
- Gender inverted in The Wild Hunt Trilogy. Judith's father was 14 at her conception, due to him being the only male around at a time when her 28-year-old mother desperately needed to get pregnant.
- Jacqueline Wilson often features this subject in her books, usually from the perspective of a child whose parent had them young, or a child dealing with an older sibling getting pregnant young.
- A plot point in Amber is that the title character thinks she's pregnant, although it turns out she's not.
- Baby Love focuses around this and the typical reaction of the 1960s. All of the girls at the house Laura is sent to are teenage mothers, all of whom are expected to give up their baby to be adopted.
- The Diamond Girls:
- Sue had Martine at the age of sixteen (resulting in her dropping out of school), Jude at about eighteen and Rochelle at about nineteen; Sue states she was sixteen when she had Martine, who is currently sixteen, while Jude is currently fourteen and Rochelle is almost thirteen.
- Martine herself is revealed to be pregnant at sixteen; her mother is initially angry and disappointed, as she'd tried to warn Martine about being careful with her boyfriend due to her own experiences, but she later promises to help support Martine and her baby.
- April in Dustbin Baby believes that her mother was a young teenager who could not take care of a baby and was thus driven to abandon April though it's not confirmed as April never finds her birth mother.
- Falling Apart:
- Tina's mother accuses Tina of being pregnant in without even asking her first. Tina reacts defensively.
- Louise is 18 years old and already married with a baby. This was more common at the time of the book's release, but Simon is shocked when Tina tells him her sister is a teenage mother. This might be one of the reasons Tina's mother jumps to conclusions about why she's acting strangely, even though Tina is only fifteen.
- In Girls Under Pressure, Anna suspects that Ellie's Weight Woe is due to this, but this isn't the case.
- In Lily Alone, Lily’s mother was 15 when she had her.
- In Little Darlings, Kate had Destiny when she was eighteen, which is part of the reason she struggles financially now as she left school with no qualifications.
- In Lola Rose, Nikki was only seventeen when she had Jayni. It's implied her young age and her parents' lack of support is part of the reason she initially stayed with Jay, despite his abuse of her.
- In The Lottie Project, Charlie mentions her mother Jo is a lot younger than the other mums and was still in school when she had her; her parents initially wanted her to give Charlie up for adoption, but Jo refused to do so and seems to still rather resent her parents for this suggestion.
- In Secrets, Treasure's aunt Loretta is a fifteen-year-old mother, and it is hinted that Treasure's mother was a teenager when she had Treasure.
- In The Story of Tracy Beaker, Tracy Beaker's mother had her at 16, with the latter stating in the film that she "was hardly a child herself when she had [Tracy]". Tracy says that in her children's home, baby Wayne is sometimes visited by his mother who is even younger than Adele, a sixteen-year-old also living at the home.
- In the Wings of Fire series, we eventually find out that Cricket, the protagonist of the twelfth book, was the product of one. This explains why their "parents" were always distant and her older sister was so loving.
- Wuthering Heights: Cathy (I) is 19 when she dies giving birth to her namesake daughter, and Isabella is 18 when she gives birth to her son Linton. Both are married and their young ages are just a sign of their time.
