Behind the Story

As I prepared to give birth to my first child in my thirties, friends, practitioners, and family treated me with joyful respect. I received countless congratulations, friendly advice, and numerous unprompted assurances that I’d make a wonderful mom.
......The teenage mothers I met as a doula providing labor support had very different experiences than mine. Their family members became distraught over the news of their pregnancies. During their babies’ births, medical practitioners and other hospital staff served them heavy doses of disdain or even outright disapproval and criticism along with their usual medical services. As one young mother said to me, “Why do people assume that just because I’m young, I’ll be incompetent as a mother?”
......Recent studies have shown that while young parents face difficult early years with their children, their lives eventually look about the same as their non-early parenting counterparts. Indeed, many teen parents attribute their increased motivation to succeed at school or work to their becoming parents. Where were the books describing these success stories?
......After a year of teaching a writing class to teen mothers at John Marshall Alternative High School in Seattle, I became ready to create such a book. I posted a call for submissions on the Internet and elsewhere, and about 250 women, ages 14 to 59, responded to my request for true stories that illustrated the upside of young motherhood. Some wrote simply to say, “It’s about time someone put together a book like this!” Roughly 200 sent their stories: funny, intelligent, moving, or heartbreaking—and always full of chutzpah.
......With my guidance, 100 women revised their essays, some only a few times, others more than a dozen. I’m often asked, “Did you do any of the revisions yourself?” The answer is, absolutely not! I worked with the writers the same way my book editors have worked with me, offering suggestions for expanding, cutting, and clarifying their work. Other than my introductory chapter and notes, the writing is entirely theirs.
......Choosing stories for the book was challenging. Each woman who revised had worked really hard, and it was painful for both of us when I had to reject her story. When my editor told me she wanted 20 to 25 essays for the book, I sent her 40! Eventually we compromised at 35, including as well an introduction by Hip Mama Magazine founder Ariel Gore, herself a mom at 19.
......Another challenge came just weeks before we went to press, when Penguin’s legal department sent me a list of 51 potentially libelous statements from the book, requesting proof of their veracity. After months and in some cases years of building trust with my writers, I had to ask more than a dozen of them questions such as, “Would you now prove that your mom really was an addict?” or “Would you send proof that your boyfriend was abusive?”
......A couple of writers responded with anger—understandably—and we worked through that, but everyone cooperated in providing the required proof: copies of court orders, news articles about arrests, letters from named parties stating that everything about them in the story was true. One writer bravely decided to show her essay to her estranged mother and ask her to sign off on it; later she reported that was healing for both of them.
......If I include the year of teaching before I began collecting and editing essays, You Look Too Young to be a Mom was a five-year project. I got to know an amazing group of women during that time, and it was an honor to be entrusted with their stories.