{"id":434685,"date":"2026-05-06T06:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T06:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/434685\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T06:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T06:46:10","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.newsbeep.com\/ie\/434685\/","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.newsbeep.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":434686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[77748,61,60,898,43,128197,132860],"class_list":["post-434685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-daily-features","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news-ticker","tag-news","tag-shp","tag-signature-human-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}