The father of a 12-year-old girl who has become Britain’s youngest mother insisted on Wednesday that he would rather she had fallen pregnant than find she is on drugs.
The schoolgirl, who became pregnant by her 13-year-old ‘boyfriend’ when she was only 11, gave birth to a baby girl on Sunday.
At 12 years and three months, she is five months younger than the previous youngest UK mother.
The pupil and the baby’s father, who are said to be ‘totally in love’ and who have been going out for a year, are believed to be Britain’s youngest parents.
Yesterday, her 'father' who found out she was pregnant only a month ago said that he would stand by his daughter and support her- but admitted that he 'broke down with emotion' after discovering that his daughter was about to give birth.
He told LBC radio that both sets of parents were supporting the new parents.
He described the 13-year-old boy as a ‘great kid’.
The pair have the lowest combined age of any British parents on record. She, at 12 years and three months, is five months younger than Britain’s previous youngest mother, Tressa Middleton.
Britain's previous youngest parents were April Webster and Nathan Fishbourne, from Caerphilly, south Wales. April became pregnant by her boyfriend when she was 13.
Office for National Statistics figures released in February showed that the UK under-18 conception rate remains the lowest since 1969 at 27.9 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 17.
The number of pregnancies in those under 18 fell to 27,834 in 2012 compared with 31,051 in 2011 - a 10 per cent drop.
Some 5,432 under-16s fell pregnant in 2012, compared with 5,991 in 2011, a fall of 9.3 per cent.
Among under-16s, some 3,251 pregnancies resulted in abortion - 59.8 per cent of the total.
This is down on 60.2 per cent the previous year and 62.5 per cent the year before that.