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#IAmMother: Thando’s Story

Thando What are some of the assumptions people make about teenage mothers in South Africa?

Most of the people in our community, they say “girls who have a child in an early age they’re loose” like we don’t love ourselves, we love boys, that’s why we just throw ourselves at boys. Actually it’s not true because we love ourselves and we do take care of it but the thing is, we don’t have much access in clinics to [get] prevention. In our clinics, the nurses are not [very] friendly, they’re too likely to judge too much [?] and privacy actually – we don’t have that privacy. So most of the time they’ll say “you’re loose and you don’t know what you want for your life.” They’re too judgemental actually. They say things like if you like, as I do sports… so most of the time my friends are boys. I do hang out with girls if we feel [?] like his – because most of the time I play rugby so go to gym with boys and they’re like “this child is always with boys so they like to be surrounded by boys all the time” and all that so… yeah that’s the thing.