Before being a pop star in Hear’Say, then an actress in ‘Coronation Street’, Kym Marsh was a teenage mum, giving birth to her first child David when she was 19. In this deeply personal journey, Kym gets reacquainted with the trials of being a young mum, by connecting with a group of teenage mothers in Manchester. Unprecedented access to Kym’s mum, Pauline, and intimate family archive reveal what life was really like for the ‘Corrie’ star when she was in the same position as the young mums she meets.

Brought up on a housing estate in Wigan, Kym was one of the many who fell pregnant at a young age. By the time she was 21, she had two children to look after and times were tight. Sometimes she could not afford to pay for heating, and had to share nappies with her sister. “I lived on £80 a week,” she says. “It’s hard when you’re in that situation. When you’ve got two kids and you’re living in rented accommodation, it’s hard to get out of the rut.” But Kym is a survivor.

Having now established herself professionally and financially, Kym leaves her showbiz world to return to her roots to meet a number of Manchester’s
present-day teenage mums and experience their day-to-day lives. She finds out how much money they have to live on, how they juggle bringing up a child with college, work and socialising, and how the stigma of their predicament affects them. How much support do they get?

Kym tries to manage one mum’s budget and help another who is looking for work. She also tries to get across to some of the very youngest parents (one of whom gave birth at 13) that it is OK to have a social life. Will she manage to get her message across?

Kym is interested to discover how life has changed for today’s young mothers compared with her own experiences. As her daughter Emily reaches 13, Kym feels she has a responsibility to open her young eyes to the reality of being a teenage mum, in the hope that she will choose another route and not follow her mother, and her mother’s mother, down the same road of early pregnancy.

Kym Marsh: Teen Mums and Me on Channel 5 Wednesday 11th January, 10pm