When MariClare MacLamroc got pregnant at 15, her world changed. “My life was limited,” she remembers. When she started sharing content about teen motherhood on TikTok, where her most popular video has over 47.5 million views, things changed again – with 1.6 million TikTok followers, it felt like her life was opening back up. It was attention, yes, but it also became a financial opportunity to support her kid. MariClare tells Teen Vogue she now makes between $10,000 and $30,000 monthly.
MariClare is only one of a cohort of teen mom content creators on the app who have found massive popularity (and, in some cases, a great financial opportunity) by uploading videos focused on what it’s like to be a teen mom. Though the fascination with teen moms isn’t new – MTV’s wildly successful 16 and Pregnant debuted on MTV in 2009 and one of its offshoots, Teen Mom: The Next Chapter is still airing — the format these creators follow is much different. On TikTok, the moms are their own producers and they choose what to share and what to leave out. And the social media stardom gives them a chance to provide for their children, sometimes resulting in 6-figure incomes.
Publicizing their pregnancies and then their journey as teen parents offers these young moms financial security that they may not have otherwise, letting them breathe a little easier as they navigate what can be a tumultuous path. But their popularity also garners scrutiny; are they glamorizing teen pregnancy? Are they making light of a situation many struggle through? In their view, no. They are shining necessary light on a reality that about 150,000 teens will experience each year, while working to pay their bills.
The first time MariClare posted on TikTok about teen pregnancy, she was 30 weeks pregnant and “very angry at the situation I was in. I couldn’t be mad at anyone else but myself. I was upset [and] used TikTok as an outlet to get those feelings out.”
In those early days, she posted about her child’s father, which she says really helped her content blow up, though she would take some of that content back if she could (“just because I feel embarrassed [that] I cared so much at the time”). Following the birth of her daughter and as she settled into motherhood, MariClare posted more about herself. She filmed her daily life, sharing outings with her daughter, showing off new toys, and answering many, many viewer questions. The followers poured in. Then, MariClare was invited to join the TikTok Beta Fund and she made $9,000 by the end of that month, which she used to secure an apartment for her and her daughter and buy furniture for their new place. MariClare, now 19, recently bought a new car in cash and is currently in the market for a house.
The financial benefits of TikTok are a boon to new moms of any age, but it wasn't MariClare's primary motivation to start posting, and it still isn't. The money is great, but creating content, MariClare says, is changing the way society thinks about teen moms. “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,” she says.
Changing the narrative is one of the reasons Rocklyn Muncy, who is 17-years-old and recently gave birth to her daughter Wrenleigh Bo (during which she streamed on TikTok live), says she posts on TikTok to her 70,800 followers. Her mother, Jen Wyatt, 41, also posts to her own account, where she shares her life in general, part of which is being the mother of the teen parent. Jen says it’s important to share for other teens who may not have the support of their parents or for parents who are wondering how to support their pregnant teens.
Jen supports Rocklyn, making videos of Wrenleigh’s nursery and vlogging Rocklyn’s anatomy scan, but she also tries to strike the balance of being supportive of her daughter without glamorizing teen pregnancy. “It is nothing to glamorize,” she says. Rather than making light of what can be a difficult situation, it's clear that Jen and Rocklyn's social media presence is shedding light on a specific teen experience from the comments on their posts. The comment section is flooded with teen parents and their parents thanking the two for showing them they're not alone. “This is not the life that I wanted for my daughter," Jen says, "but this is the life that was given to us, and we’re just going to take it and roll with it.”
Though both Rocklyn and Jen advertise products through TikTok Shop, which pays commission fees to creators, they decline to share how much money they make and both agree that their social media platforms haven’t changed Rocklyn’s future plans of attending college and becoming a psychologist. “But if she wants to do [TikTok] and make some money in between now and then, that’s fine,” Jen says.
When Kailyn Lowry found herself pregnant at 16, she applied for MTV’s 16 and Pregnant “solely out of survival. It was, ‘I have to look for an opportunity to figure my life out, from this point moving forward.’” There was no way for Kailyn, now 32, to know what was coming – that her one-off 16 & Pregnant episode would get her cast on Teen Mom 2, where she would share her life for 11 seasons before leaving the show in 2022. Kailyn, now a mother of 7, is arguably one of the more successful original cast members, having built an expansive brand that includes her own podcast network and book club. Kailyn applied to the show in an attempt to build a life for herself and her child as a 16-year-old mom – and starting a TikTok account can open up that same path for the teen moms of today.
The long-running nature of the MTV shows (where some of the babies who were born on the show are still filming while nearing the age their mothers were when they had them) shows that the fascination with teen moms that has found a home in TikTok isn’t new. But why are we so interested? “I think it’s [because] it’s not normal, right? It’s the same way we have this morbid curiosity surrounding true crime and things like that,” Kailyn says. “It’s almost unfathomable.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 143,789 live births to teens ages 15-19 in the United States in 2022. The teen birth rate in the U.S. has steadily declined since 1991, making it increasingly uncommon, as Kailyn suggests. When social media offers a window into experiences that most people won't have, it can feel entrancing, perhaps explaining the number of followers these teen parent creators have racked up. But, social media also offers a way for people to connect when they're having what can feel like an isolating experience — it allows teen parents to see other people going through the same situation, offering both solace and strength.
If Kailyn is part of the old guard of teen mom stars and MariClare and Rocklyn are part of the new, then Jenna Ronan, 21, embodies both. After getting pregnant at 16, Jenna joined the cast of TLC’s Unexpected, using the appearance to boost her TikTok account, where she now has 274,00 followers and posts videos making her kids breakfast or picking her son up from school. Before Jenna started making money from social media, she says she had to rely on her son’s dad, which was “uncomfortable. It was really hard for me to be financially dependent on a man, and that relationship was not good.” With the money from her first brand deal (a sponsored post for a service that checks fertility hormones, for which she says she was paid $3,500), she moved out into her own apartment.
“It’s given me a lot of independence,” Jenna says. “And I’m good to not be tied to anybody, but I can still be home with my children, which is what is important to me.”
Currently, Jenna estimates she makes between $15,000 and $20,000 a month from social media. Without that income, she imagines she would 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 she’s looking to buy a home with her fiancé, who is the father of her second child. As for why people are so interested in her journey and that of other teen moms, Jenna says there are two types of followers. “I think you have your supporters and you have people waiting for it to go bad.”
