“I’ve been on my own & a single parent since I was 17. Is that glamorous? I don’t have relationships with either of my parents & I struggle dealing with teenage emotions & adult responsibility. That’s glamorous?” voices Teen Mom 2 star Kailyn Lowry in an article published by Today Entertainment.

The show Teen Mom is about four young mothers all struggling with the same problems: relationships, finances, childcare, getting an education, and keeping a job. These stories are not unique– all single teen moms deal with similar struggles.

These are stereotypes of teenagers with babies, but they are extremely accurate. According to StayTeen, a website devoted voicing the risks and effects of unplanned pregnancy, roughly 3 in 10 teen girls in the US will get pregnant at least once before the age of 20. That’s more than 700,000 teen pregnancies each year.

LHS graduate Kaycee Casper is a real mom behind these statistics. Several months after she graduated, she gave birth to her baby girl, Riley Jane Casper.

Riley is a happy, healthy girl who just celebrated her first birthday, but the past two years haven’t been easy for her family.

Kaycee explains that her life changed drastically once she learned she was going to have a baby.

“I have to have a job and work really hard for my necessities. I used to just work to have money for wants. I basically have two jobs because being a mom is a 24/7 job,” said Casper.

Keeping a job, while being a single mother, is difficult. A study conducted by the Sleep/Wake Research Centre and the Research School of Public Health found that in the first week of the baby’s life, moms get, on average, 1.5 fewer hours of sleep each night.

Lack of sleep impacts motivation, work ethic, and judgment.  While most mothers stay at home with their baby, teen moms have to work during the day, and several go to school at night.

“Having a baby is really time consuming,” Kaycee says. “Things with Riley’s dad got confusing and tenser, and I don’t have the time or energy to invest in another boy,” she says about dating.

A teen pregnancy not only affects the parents of the baby, but also the parents of the teens. Kaycee’s mother, Monica Casper, has a huge involvement in her granddaughter’s life. Kaycee and Riley both live with Mrs. Casper, so Grandma is Riley’s main caretaker while Kaycee is working.

“Our whole family has been impacted. Kaycee has had to rapidly mature to be a suitable mother for Riley. As different is our life is now, I wouldn’t change a thing. Riley’s been a blessing to us,” said Monica Casper.

The support system in the Casper family is strong, but not every family is as willing to accept this change. According to DoSomething, an organization that focuses on getting young people involved in social change, teen pregnancy can lead to teen homelessness. One tenth of homeless women are homeless due to teen pregnancies.

Mrs. Natalie Rebetsky knows some of the pain, but mostly the joy, of helping to raise her grandson, whose parents were both not yet adults when he was born.

“Our families worked really hard to make sure that our grandson had a stable home. It is hard, but now our grandson has lots of loving homes– his grandmother’s, his Gran’s (mine), and his mother’s,” Rebetsky says.

Some people think teen pregnancy is glamorized and glorified in shows like Teen Mom, Sixteen and Pregnant, and by references in sitcoms, but teen pregnancy has steadily been declining. In 2012, the pregnancy rate in teens ages 15-19 was 6% lower than 2011 according to the U.S. Department of Health and Services.  The Center of Disease Control states, “While reasons for the declines are not clear, teens seem to be less sexually active, and more of those who are sexually active seem to be using birth control than in previous years.”

Some believe that society being open to talking about pregnancy is to thank for these decreases in teen pregnancy. Teens are more educated on the effects of having a baby at such a young age and are making more careful choices.