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I have known families where the daughter became pregnant in high school or college and the family decided that the grandparents would raise the child while the daughter went away to college, got her degree and got herself into a position where she was able to raise the child herself. While that daughter was away at school, she had no parenting responsibilities. Essentially, her parents were "giving" her the opportunity to live the life they had all wanted for her in spite of her mistake, recognizing that she didn't have the resources (financially or personally) to take care of the baby anyway. I also know situations where the parents took on the child as their own and raised it as a sibling of the real mother. In that type of situation, the girl had no parenting responsibilities while in college and most who met her, unless she told them, wouldn't even know she was a parent. It is, as DSTRen13 said, like an open adoption (although I think of it more like foster care) within the family.
ETA: I've also worked with a chapter who had single mothers in their chapter but it was a commuter campus and the young woman lived at home with her parents and they shared parenting duties. As for comments like "she has time to attend a fraternity mixer but not to parent"... that is just ridiculous. Do you think, as a parent, you will never go out on a friday night? You and your husband could join a bowling league and get a babysitter every Saturday night.. how is that any different? As a parent, I stayed involved as a volunteer for many organizations. Heck, right now, I'm a volunteer in a leadership position for three organizations, a single mom, working full time, AND going to grad school and my kids are fantastic kids. Parents get to have lives too.
Last edited by AGDee; 01-08-2011 at 10:13 AM.
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