Annmarie had her two-year-old daughter Megan when she was 16 and is anything but an "irresponsible sponger". The youngest child of three, Annmarie became homeless at 16 after falling out with her mother. She ended up sleeping on friends' sofas until she was provided with a bedsit.
"I got pregnant about two weeks after I went into a local authority bedsit in Aberdeen provided for 16- to 17-year-olds," she recalls. "I was determined I would stay on at school though."
Attending school while pregnant was not easy, but Annmarie found her classmates largely supportive. "I felt like I was on my own at 16," she remembers. "But school kept me going. If I had been sitting in my house all day, I would have felt worse. There were snide remarks by some people, and I felt some of the teachers would rather I'd left, but my midwife helped argue my case for staying on at school."
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