{"id":470820,"date":"2026-05-06T06:43:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T06:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/470820\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T06:43:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T06:43:12","slug":"i-dropped-out-of-school-at-15-and-got-pregnant-at-17-i-was-told-id-never-amount-to-anything-but-all-my-children-are-thriving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/470820\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I dropped out of school at 15 and got pregnant at 17 \u2013 I was told I\u2019d never amount to anything, but all my children are thriving\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">\nYoung mothers are often faced with negative stereotypes surrounding their family background and character, but many are resilient and have forged successful lives for themselves and their families\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Tara O\u2019Rourke Wickham has made sure all her adult children completed third-level educaton. Photo: Tony Gavin\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/TG TARA O_ROURKE 4.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Tara O\u2019Rourke Wickham has made sure all her adult children completed third-level educaton. Photo: Tony Gavin<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Tara O\u2019Rourke Wickham was 15 when she experienced homelessness, and 17 when she had her first pregnancy. Despite the cards being stacked against her, the 41-year-old Kildare woman fought tooth and nail to provide her daughter with all the things she wasn\u2019t afforded growing up.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Today, she has a husband and a vibrant family life with three adult children, who all completed third-level education, and a young school-aged boy who she believes will follow in their footsteps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Young mothers are often faced with negative stereotypes surrounding their family background and character, but many are resilient&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,99378,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,23,12,15,16,5,147476,152020,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-470820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-daily-features","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latest-news-ticker","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-shp","24":"tag-signature-human-interest","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116526278779859953","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}