Baby Love

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That’s one of the disadvantages of living in the country,” she says. “There are lots of advantages.” Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Laura has sex that's so brief she's not even sure that anything happened and still falls pregnant. It's also her first time being with a boy ever. Laura is named after her older sister, who died shortly after being born. Laura's older brother also died before he could leave the hospital, and he was named William, after their father.

Cosmetic Catastrophe: Laura puts on mascara and rouge when going to the movies with Nina and Daniel, and initially struggles with making it look right. Nina then bluntly points out that it's weird she put on make up when they'll be sat in the dark. Sent away to save her family from shame, Laura meets girls just like her, whose families have given up on them - and they become a family for each other at the most difficult time in all their lives. Fiery Redhead: Averted with both Moira, who is a sweet tempered girl from an entire family of redheads and with Sarah, who is somewhat smug and pious but never once loses her temper.

Age range(s)

Set in 1960, Baby Love is a story for older readers (aged 12+) about teen pregnancy, family trouble and unlikely friendships. a b c "Dame Jacqueline Wilson's nasty adult world". The Daily Telegraph. 7 March 2008. Archived from the original on 10 May 2008 . Retrieved 13 August 2009. She knows she is fortunate that, in her mid-70s, she is still going strong. Her father died of heart and kidney failure in his 50s. “I’ve had exactly the same things [illnesses] and yet have been given all this borrowed time,” she says.

Today, she sometimes can’t bear to watch herself if she’s been on a television show. “I just think, ‘oh God, I’m so old!’” Way past the age when women start to become, as she says, invisible. “It’s noticeable in a pub, say, when somebody young and relatively attractive walks by, most men will look up. Somebody old and still relatively attractive walks by, nobody looks up. And it’s not that I feel you should or shouldn’t look up but there is an invisibility thing.” Poor Laura ends up being coerced into having sex when she has no idea what's actually going on and her parents are furious on finding out that she's pregnant and send her away to Heathcote House. They don't visit her and then say that she can only come home if she gives her daughter up for adoption. Laura just wants to keep Kathy while almost everyone around her is demanding that she gives her up. Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Laura does try to abort her child by taking over the counter medication but it doesn't work, and part of her is grateful that it didn't. Laura's mother later brings up the idea of abortion to Dr Betram but he bluntly tells her that it would be illegal at the stage Laura's at.In recent years, it has become fashionable to suggest that writers should not write outside their own lived experience when it comes to certain topics; that they shouldn’t try to appropriate other people’s stories. Wilson is sceptical. Nina's little brother Richard admires Laura a lot too, even stating openly how much he likes her and wishes she was his sister instead of Nina, while constantly showing off his latest achievements to her as well, to the point Laura thinks he's got a Precocious Crush on her. Of course once the pregnancy is known no more is heard of Léon. Laura’s parents are outraged. She has betrayed the moral standards of the family. There is no question of Laura giving birth at home. Instead her parents send her to live for the remainder of her pregnancy and to give birth at a mother and baby home called Heathcote House, where Wilson unfolds the rest of her narrative.