An 11-year-old girl has become Britain’s youngest mother after giving birth this month, having become pregnant aged ten.
Her family were apparently unaware of her pregnancy when she went into labour at 30 weeks. “It has come as a big shock,” a source close to the family told The Sun on Sunday. “She’s surrounded by expert help. The main thing is she and the baby are OK. There are questions around why people did not know. That is very worrying.” Social services are investigating the matter.
Britain’s youngest known mother was previously Tressa Middleton, who had a baby aged 12 in 2006. Middleton, now in her mid-twenties, became pregnant at 11 after being raped by her 16-year-old brother. Her child was taken into care and her brother was jailed.
Middleton, from Bathgate, West Lothian, has had a second child, Arihanna, with her fiancé. She keeps mementos of her first child, including hand prints, baby clothes and a lock of hair. She said in 2017: “If anything like this happens, you must speak out. I wish I had someone to confide in when I was younger. I didn’t want my family to be split up, which was the main reason I didn’t tell anyone.”
In 2014, a baby was born to a 12-year-old mother and 13-year-old father, the lowest combined age of parents in Britain.
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The average girl begins puberty at 11, although it can start any time from the age of eight. A recent study in Denmark showed that girls enter puberty about a year earlier than they did in the 1970s. The researchers pointed to several possible reasons for this, including higher body mass index, which has an effect on hormone production, and environmental chemicals that can disrupt the endocrine system.
About one in every 2,500 pregnant women either do not know that they are pregnant or hide it from their family and friends.
In 2018, there were 15,644 conceptions among girls aged under 18 in England and Wales, equating to 17 conceptions per 1,000 girls. This was a 6 per cent drop compared with 2017, and a 60 per cent fall compared with 2007.
