‘Being a teen mom doesn’t mean that you’re a sh***y parent’: TikTok’s teen moms are making big money

“Dinner w an exhausted overstimulated 19y old teen mom who hates cooking,” wrote MariClare MacLamroc over a video of herself cooking pasta and sauce. The video, posted to her 1.7 million TikTok followers, has racked up more than 2.6 million views. “We are all so proud of you,” wrote one person in the comments. 

MacLamroc is one of several teen-mom content creators featured in a recent Teen Vogue article, who have gained thousands, if not millions, of followers online by sharing videos of their experiences of young motherhood. Speaking with Teen Vogue, MacLamroc opened up about falling pregnant at 15 and deciding to document her journey on the platform. Her content includes her candid and sometimes controversial opinions as a 19-year-old mom to a three-year-old, such as supporting unlimited screen time, cussing, and not making separate meals for kids and adults. She also shares the meals she prepares for her family, as well as shopping hauls from stores like Walmart and Dollar Tree.

While the fascination with teen moms is hardly new, TikTok has enabled these women to become creators of their motherhood-focused content rather than the subject, as they were with such scripted reality shows as MTV’s 16 and Pregnant. “I want to show people that being a teen mom doesn’t mean that you’re a shitty parent, you don’t take care of your kid,” MacLamroc told Teen Vogue, shining a light on a reality that about 150,000 teens will experience each year.

More than just gaining a following, a number of these teen-mom content creators have been able to turn their platforms into profitable ventures, with some earning six-figure incomes. MacLamroc says she earns between $10,000 and $30,000 a month from posting online.

Jenna Ronan, 21, who became pregnant at 16 and joined the cast of TLC’s reality show Unexpected, estimates that she earns between $15,000 and $20,000 a month from her 274,400 TikTok following. Without this income, she told Teen Vogue, she’d still be living with her dad and working a minimum-wage job. But with it, she’s able to stay home with her kids and is now working toward buying a home with her fiancé, the father of her second child.

When asked why people are so drawn to her journey and those of other teen moms, Ronan explains that there are two types of followers: “You have your supporters, and then you have people who are just waiting for it to go bad.”

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