Despite a decline in teen pregnancy rates over the past few years, there are still many teenagers who become parents. As you can imagine, teen parents face a lot of challenges. It’s already hard enough to balance things like grades, extracurricular activities, a social life and sleep—now imagine throwing a kid into the mix!

Teen moms especially face the stigma surrounding being a teen parent. Pervasive stereotypes include the idea that teen moms are irresponsible and uneducated. A video released by YTH and Florence Crittenton Services—also known as Flo Crit—seeks to challenge those stereotypes. Flo Crit is a high school that provides education, childcare and other support services to teen parents to help them to succeed. In the video below, teen moms share experiences of being shamed for being pregnant teens as well as how they defied expectations by getting their high school diplomas and achieving success while having a child.

Something I found poignant was when one teen in the video said, “We’re more responsible than any other teenager out there because we have to take care of our kids, we have to find jobs, we earn our degrees and we keep our children clothed, fed and loved.” It hadn’t really hit me until then how hard it was to have a child at such a young age in addition to the responsibilities of being an adult and a student. While many people assume teen parents drop out of school, the young women in the video were still getting an education and are possibly headed to college. The video also stressed something very important—there needs to be more support from the communities for teen moms. Florence Crittenton definitely exemplifies the support teen moms deserve!