A jobless man of 29 who is destined to become Britain’s youngest grandfather was accused last night of seeking to ‘cash in’ on his 14-year-old daughter’s pregnancy.
Neighbours branded the man a ‘lazy scrounger’ as it was claimed he contacted several media organisations before selling his family’s story to a Sunday newspaper for a five-figure sum.
Controversial: The soon-to-be grandfather has apparently boasted that the family will receive more benefits when his daughter gives birth (posed by models)
His schoolgirl daughter, who is pregnant by her 15-year-old boyfriend of a few months, is due to give birth in August, and announced the news on her Facebook page, writing that she was ‘looking for a pram with the mr’.
Yesterday the teenager’s father said: ‘It’s quite mad. I’m about to be a grandad. I was 14 when my daughter was born, and now she’s having a baby.
‘She is very young, but she was determined to keep the child. We were not going to force her into doing anything else. We don’t want her to hate us.’
Because of their age, the identity of the two teenagers, who attend the same comprehensive school in South Wales, is currently protected.
In a depressing portrait of Broken Britain, the unemployed grandfather-to-be does not live with his daughter or her mother, a cafe worker who has two other children and lives with another unemployed man on a housing estate.
Her current partner claimed the girl’s father had ‘not contributed a penny to his daughter’s upbringing’.
The grandfather-to-be said: ‘She is not the only girl at her school to become pregnant or to have a baby.’
He added: ‘I quite like the idea of being the youngest grandad in Britain, but at the same time I’m fuming that she is pregnant. I know myself how tough it is being a teenage parent and now she has to go through the same thing.’
Speaking from his South Wales home, he said his mother, 47, was excited about being a great-grandmother, adding: ‘She was 18 when she had me. Her own mum is alive, and so too is her grandmother, who will be a great-great-great grandmother.’
However, one male neighbour described the grandfather-to-be as ‘a chancer who hasn’t had a job in years’, adding: ‘He’s just a lazy scrounger glad he’ll get more child benefit coming in. Now he thinks he can cash in on his daughter’s situation. It is shameful.
‘It’s hard to think that he’ll be a great role model for that baby.’
A female neighbour added: ‘He just wants it to be all about him. If it was my daughter pregnant so young I certainly wouldn’t be singing about it.’
The girl’s father will be 30 at the time of the birth – slightly older than the youngest ever British grandfather, a digger driver from Warwickshire who was 29 when his son, 14, had a child in 1997.
Previous record: Steve Smith, left, with son Dale in 1997. Mr Smith was also 29 when his son Dale became a father at age 14
The man admitted he became a father back in 1996 when he was just 14.
He said his own mother, who is 47, is excited about the prosepct of being a great-grandmother.
‘She was 18 when she had me,’ he said. ‘She was shocked when I told her the news, but she is happy now.
‘Her own mum is alive, and so too is her grandmother, who will become a great-great-great grandmother.
'There can’t be too many families with six generations alive at the same time.’
The man’s daughter and the father are both pupils at the same comprehensive school and have been seeing each other for several months.
She announced her pregnancy to friends on Facebook, by updating her status to ‘looking for a pram with the mr’.
The girl says she wants to remain at school until the child is born and then hopes to return to her studies as soon as possible.
Her father claims he is younger than the current record holder for youngest grandfather, Dale Wright, who was also 29 when his child became a parent.
Mr Wright, a digger driver from Warwickshire, became a father aged 14.
It was ‘like father, like son’ when in 1997 it emerged that Mr Wright’s 14-year-old Stephen had fathered a child.
Speaking at the time, he called his son ‘a chip off the old block’, adding: ‘I can’t believe I am a grandad.
‘I’ve still got all my own hair, my own teeth and I certainly don’t need a walking stick.’
In 2006, Tressa Middleton, from West Lothian, caused a media storm when she became Britain’s youngest mother after becoming pregnant aged 11.
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