While many people wait to have children until they are older and established in their careers,
these future stars all had children before they reached the age of 20, and many of them
raised their kids all on their own.
The path to fame is never easy, but these celebs were able to juggle parenthood and
career success!
Anna Nicole Smith
Before she launched her modeling career, Anna Nicole Smith was a high school dropout working
at a fried chicken restaurant.
It was there that she met her first husband, Billy Smith.
The couple were married when she was just 17 years old, giving birth to son, Daniel
Wayne Smith, less than a year later.
The marriage was a short and unhappy one, but Smith remained a devoted mother.
Then, tragedy struck when Daniel died from an accidental overdose, at the age of 20,
while visiting Smith in the hospital, 3 days after she gave birth to her daughter.
"She wakes up, and she turns to him, and he's dead.
Fiction couldn't imagine a moment like that."
When Anna Nicole then died a few months later, her ex-boyfriend, Mark Hatten, told In Touch,
"When I heard Daniel died I knew she wouldn't last long.
I've seen people pamper their kids but he was literally her world.
She died of a broken heart."
Wendy Davis
Politician Wendy Davis had a challenging life before her success as a Texas State senator.
She told Broadly,
"I was pregnant at 18.
I got married, I got divorced"
"I looked like I was gonna be headed down the same path that I had watched my mother
head down."
She recalled her struggles trying to make it as a young, single mom, telling TODAY:
"I was having a really hard time making ends meet, paying for my childcare, paying for
a car payment, making sure I had enough money to keep the lights turned on.
Sometimes, it didn't happen."
But the young mother never gave up.
She eventually remarried, had another daughter, and went on to study law at Harvard.
"I'm not an overnight sensation.
I'm a Texan.
And I'm a Texas success story.
I am the epitome of hard work and optimism."
Loretta Lynn
Country superstar Loretta Lynn has never made a secret of the hard life she had before becoming
famous.
She wrote in her autobiography, Coal Miner's Daughter, that she was married at the age
of 13 and had four children by the time she was 18.
Still, despite a difficult childhood and and life as a teen mom, Lynn pressed on in her
career.
"Country Music Entertainer of the Year is Loretta Lynn"
She was the first woman honored with the CMA award in 1972.
And she hasn't stopped making music, since.
Taylor Hanson
Remember the Hanson brothers?
"Mmm-bop - bop bop do wap, da da wap, bop, do wap… da da doo"
Well, in 2002, middle brother Taylor went from "teen heartthrob" to "teen dad," when
the 19-year-old became a father to Jordan Ezra.
His wife, Natalie Anne Bryant, was just 18 at the time.
Hanson told the press, "We are so excited to start a family...Having Ezra is the best
thing we've ever done.
Life and art are all about these moments."
Taylor, who now has 5 kids, may have been the first of the Hanson brothers to have a
baby, but he certainly wasn't the last.
Today, the three brothers have twelve children between them.
Jourdan Dunn
Model Jourdan Dunn was 18 when she found out that she was pregnant with her son, Riley.
Dunn told Vogue that the hardest thing about her pregnancy, was telling her mom, saying,
"She had me at a young age and didn't want me to go through her struggle."
Dunn's son has sickle-cell anemia and has to be monitored carefully.
Fortunately, Dunn has the support of her mother who is helping her raise Riley.
"What I love about bein a mom is the unconditional love that I have for my child and that he
has for me."
Dunn said that her son keeps her motivated, saying, "I'm his voice, I'm his lifeline,
I have to be driven...I've always been ambitious, but now I have more focus.
I'm more hardworking."
Natalia Vodionova
While it's common for mothers to struggle to lose extra weight after giving birth, Russian
supermodel Natalia Vodionova had no trouble getting back on the runway after having her
son, Lucas, at the age of 19.
In fact, it actually made her famous.
She told Vanity Fair, "I lost a lot of weight for my height...In two weeks after giving
birth to Lucas, I was on the catwalk.
I was so skinny and the clothes just sat on me incredibly and no one could believe it.
Everyone wanted to put me in their shows.
I did everything."
But the model was already used to juggling family and work, having been raised by a single
mom, and tasked with caring for her special-needs sister, as a kid.
"By age 11 I was working, there was no time to play."
Vodionova was thrilled to be a mother, saying, "I have always dreamed about having children,
a lot of children."
As of 2017, the model-mom's family has grown to five children!
"I'm a survivor"
"there's not many things that can pull me down, that can stop me."
Maya Angelou
Renowned poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou raised her child as a single parent
with the help of her mother, Vivian Baxter, who, Angelou told Oprah, made her feel confident
as a young mom:
"She never ever made me feel that I had done the wrong thing."
When the 16-year old Angelou originally told her mother she was pregnant, and that she
and the baby's father were not in love, her mother told her:
"She said We're not going to ruin three lives.
We're going to have a beautiful baby."
Angelou was the first African American woman to be a non-fiction bestselling author for
her memoir I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings in 1969, and received many honors and awards
before her death in 2014.
Aretha Franklin
"R-e-s-p-e-c-t find out what it means to me"
Vocal powerhouse Aretha Franklin was already making a name for herself as a singer when
she had her first child shortly after her fourteenth birthday.
But motherhood didn't deter Franklin from her career goals.
By the time she was in her 20s, she was the mother of two, and churning out hits that
topped the music charts, winning 18 Grammy Awards by 2017.
So what does the godmother of "Respect" consider to be the key to her success in life?
"You want to give people dignity and respect, and you want to receive it.
You have to receive it"
More than a statistic
There's often a stigma surrounding young parents, with many wrongly assuming that they have
ruined their lives.
Having a child can be a challenge at any age, but these celebs prove that with hard work
you truly can accomplish anything.
"You do the best you can, the good will come out of it"
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