Devon Ellis was a junior in high school when she found out she was pregnant.
The Tennessee mom told USA TODAY she didn't have much support at that time and had to drop out of high school in order to care for her daughter.
"It was very, very hard to be a teenage mother," she said. "I didn't have people helping me go to school and stay in school and pushing me. So, I had to take care of her, and that's what I did."
She had another baby, a boy, two years later.
Her children are teenagers now, and her high school sweetheart is no longer in the picture. And while she tried her best to ensure her children wouldn't repeat her own teen pregnancy story, Ellis is now a grandmother at the young age of 35. She posts about her struggles as a single mother and grandmother to her more
than 91,000 followers on TikTok, including in a recent video that brought in more than 1 million views.
"Bestie I’m 36 and this week my biggest stress was getting Harry Styles tickets," one user commented on the video.
"There's a lot of hate in these comments but I just want to say good job mama for sticking by your daughter through the hard times," another user wrote. "I know my mom's reaction and help when I got pregnant at 18 made a big difference."
@devrenaelle33 What it’s like to be a young grandmother
♬ original sound - Devon Ellis
Teenage pregnancy rates have been declining for decades, hitting a historic low of 11.7 births per 1,000 girls aged 15-19 in 2025, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the United States still has one of the highest rates of teen births among other industrialized countries, according to National Center for Health Statistics.
"I literally went through the five stages of grief that week," Ellis told USA TODAY, reflecting on when she found out her daughter, who was entering her sophomore year of high school at the time, was pregnant. "I was so upset."
People often ask Ellis if she had "the talk" with her kids. She did. She and her daughter spoke about birth control options just months before her daughter got pregnant. She told her kids that the safest way to avoid pregnancy is to not have sex, she said, but added "I know teenagers, I once was one."
"You can't always just count on them not doing it, so I wanted them to be prepared," she said. "I did everything I could to have my daughter not be a teenage mother, I tried very hard."
"I preached to my children, before she ever got pregnant, 'Please don't become me,'" Ellis said. "But it happened."
Now, her grandson is here and she loves him. She loves her family, Ellis said, but the pressure to take care of everyone can be overwhelming at times.
"It's me, or it's nothing," she said. "If I don't have money, then they don't have what they need. And the older they get, the more expensive they get. And, like, our house is falling apart."
Being the support she wishes she'd had as a teen mom
Ellis said she wished she could have finished high school when she first became a mother. She's since gotten her GED.
So when her daughter became pregnant − and after Ellis's initial shock and grief wore off − she made a commitment to be the support she wished she'd had in high school. "I want to make sure that she's taken care of," Ellis said.
In the mornings, Ellis helps out with her grandson so her daughter can get ready for school. Sometimes she helps with child care drop off if her daughter is running late. Ellis also helps get her 14-year-old son up and ready for school before starting work. She tries to clean up around the house between meetings as she works from home, she said, so she can be ready to help out more with the baby when her daughter gets home in the afternoons. Then it's time for dinner, bath time and bed.
"She's been a very good mother," Ellis said of her daughter. "I think about who I was and who I could have (been) if somebody would have been there for me to help me through school. And I want her to be a good mother, I want to make sure she's taking care of him, but I also want to make sure that she has the resources to be somebody someday."
Ellis said she turned to TikTok initially to see if it could help pay her bills. She posts videos of her coloring, shares about her anxiety and other mental health struggles and films updates about her daily life as a young grandmother. She was surprised to find a really supportive community online.
"In moments where my depression and my anxiety were bad and my PTSD was bad, I just remember feeling like I was the only person on the Earth that felt this. So I wanted other people to feel like they were not alone," she said. "And I've had so many women message me and be like, 'Thank you.' And I'm like, this is what I want to do with my life, is to make people feel better."
Madeline Mitchell's role covering women and the caregiving economy at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Reach Madeline at memitchell@usatoday.com and @maddiemitch_ on X.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: She's 35, a grandmother and working to make ends meet
