A SCHOOLGIRL, 12, and her 13-year-old boyfriend are believed to have become Britain's youngest parents.
She became pregnant at the age of 11 and gave birth to a girl weighing 7lb 4oz on Sunday.
Being 12 years and three months old makes her five months younger than the previous youngest mother, Tressa Middleton, who gave birth in Edinburgh in 2006.
The new mother was 10 when she met her boyfriend.
The pair, from north London, cannot be named for legal reasons.
The schoolgirl lives with her mother, who is 27, and is pledging her support to the couple.
A source is reported to have said, "The baby's mum and dad have been in a relationship for more than a year, so this isn't a fleeting romance. They intend to stick together and bring their daughter up together. They're very into each other, totally in love. She's in Year 7, he's in Year 9 at a different school."
"It costs £100,000 to the taxpayer to support the average teenage mother in the first five years - it is a reason but is not the primary reason to stop teenage pregnancy, which is that we are talking about young people's lives. We need to stop the cycle of teenage parents having children who are more likely to become teenage parents themselves."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article