Fantasia Barrino became pregnant at the age of 17, after dropping out of school and moving in with an abusive boyfriend. "That's when everybody seemed to give up on me," she admitted to Oprah magazine. Although her demonstrable talent was obvious, everything changed at that moment, and suddenly the assumption was that Barrino would no longer be able to pursue her dreams. As the American Idol alum acknowledges, "I'd lost myself." She struggled to find work, due to her issues with math and borderline illiteracy, relying on government assistance to make ends meet. At times, Barrino even resorted to shoplifting for the essentials, admitting, "Living like that was hard."
As the singer, who also enjoyed a successful stint in the Broadway production of The Color Purple, acknowledged in an interview with MTV News, she also helped run her grandmother's daycare facility, which earned Barrino some extra money for daughter Zion. Speaking at the 2009 Saving Our Sisters summit in Biloxi, Miss., Barrino admitted she would've waited to get pregnant if she could go back and do it all again. "I could be a testimony to some of these young people and say to them, 'Yes, I've overcome a lot of things, but it was tough. It was hard,'" (via People). Thankfully, these days, life is a lot calmer for Fantasia Barrino, who's married to businessman Kendall Taylor and has another child, son Dallas Xavier, with him (via Chicago Tribune).
