Beth Bluck is a 23 year old mother from Birmingham.
Beth is a parenting blogger and Instagram influencer. She actively challenges the stigma atteached to young mums and acts as living proof that just because a mum is young, doesn’t mean that they are bad mums.
“I believe that by encouraging other young mums to speak out about their experience with discrimination, together we can encourage other young mums to feel proud and confident in themselves and their parenting abilities.”
As a parenting blogger, her main aim is to help other parents with common struggles that a lot of parent’s face, especially young mums.
“I’ve noticed, since becoming a young mum myself, there are very few young mums that actually speak about the struggles they face because it is different compared to your typical parent. We face a lot of judgement and discrimination from other people and the general public and a lot of family and friends as well. A lot of young mums don’t get any support in that way so I just wanted to create something so that they knew they weren’t alone and do a little bit to help them.”
As a young mum herself, Beth has experienced first hand the harsh judgment of others, she ran a poll on a Facebook group for young mums and discovered that 100% of young mums that answerd the poll have been judged or criticized by others for being a young parent.
“Many women I have spoken to have also expressed that they have felt they needed to work twice as hard to prove themselves to be good mothers because of their age. A high percentage of young mums go on to develop a mental health issue because of this yet nobody is talking about it. We suffer in silence in fear of being thought of as a bad mum.”
In Birmingham, there is support available for people in Beth’s situation, however, a lot of the time, they think that they can get by without it.
“I didn’t go anywhere for support for a very long time, but I have very recently reached out to an organisation called ANIKA. They are specifically tailored to young mums, so they provide mental health support and give you somebody to talk to. They have been really good, even offering to come for a home visit if I couldn’t make it to them.”
When she first became a mum, Beth felt lost and scared with all the new pressure being put on her with the new responsibilities she had. She was not prepared when she found out, but had the support of her family.
“I currently live in a two bed rented property, that we (partner and i) managed to find on a privately owned site. We couldn’t afford to go through the normal estate agents with all the fees and everything. When I found out I was pregnant, obviously it was unexpected, I’d actually just been fired from my previous job. We were broke, really broke, if it wasn’t for the fact that my partner was willing to do all that he could, and my mum offering financial support, I don’t know what we would’ve done.”
However, she didn’t feel that she had adequate support from the people she thought she would get the most from, she says that midwives lacked in making her feel secure in her vulnerable state.
“I didn’t feel like I had much support from like house visitors or midwives or anything, specifically for being a young parent, I never got asked if I was, even financially okay. I was never asked if I needed any support, or if I had any worries. I actually went in to develop postnatal anxiety, because I was so stressed about people judging me and my parenting skills, I know that a lot of young mums feel the same.”
This is why she started her blog, she feels that young mums need to support each other, while also showing the world that they can be a great parent, despite their age.
“There definitely is a negative stereotype around being a young mum, its like a ‘typical chav’. Its what a lot of people will stereotype young mums to be. They also think that, well, they ARE, more ill prepared, but that doesn’t make them bad mums, which is the general consensus for a lot of people. A lot of people think that just because they are young, they are not capable, because they’ve not had the life experiences that other parents have, but it makes no difference whatsoever.”
Check out her blog here: https://www.beingbeth.co.uk
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