What Selena Gomez Has Said About Mom Mandy Teefey Raising Her as a Teen Parent

Mandy Teefey (born Amanda Dawn Cornett), 41, gave birth to her daughter Selena Gomez, 25, when she was just 16 years old. Though she and Gomez’s father Ricardo wed at the time, they split when the entertainer was 5 years old.

“I blamed my mom a lot [for the divorce] because I wanted a family so bad,” Gomez once said on an E! special. “I wanted to have my mom and dad together. I remember just being angry with my mom. I still feel really bad about that. Having me at 16 had to have been a big responsibility. My mom gave up everything for me and had, like, three jobs.”

Gomez’s mom married Brian Teefey in 2006, and the duo managed the star’s career until 2014.

“I was a teen mom with Selena, obviously, and was very judged by that,” Teefey told ET earlier this year. “My neighborhood was a really rough neighborhood [with] gangs. With all of that stuff, and when I got pregnant, I think that’s what triggered, because I was like ‘Okay, I have another person depending on me. I gotta get straight,’ and that’s when I started hammering through. I’m like, ‘I’m not going to let her have the upbringing I did.'”

“When I started working, my mom was the person in my life that helped guide me through most of that. Everything that I am has kind of become a little bit of what my mom has gone through,” Gomez told Time earlier this year. “She had the ability to make me feel like I was still capable of doing anything I wanted.”

“It’s because of [my mom] that I can do things on my own. I like being professional,” Gomez told Glamour in 2012. “I like showing up on time. I like being good to people, and I know that I’m reflecting her at the end of the day.”

In 2013, Gomez left the nest after living with her parents throughout her teen years. “I think it’s time,” she told Ryan Seacrest at the time. “I didn’t ever wanna be forceful to saying, ‘Okay, I’ve made enough to get my own house and okay, let’s blow it off and do whatever.'”

“I just love being with my family and I love knowing that they’re there. But yeah, I think it’s probably time for me to get my own house,” she added.

Teefey honored Scarlett, a baby she lost to a miscarriage in 2011, in December and reflected on her relationship with her daughters.

“A mom’s love for their children is pretty fierce. In order of my girls, Selena, Scarlett and Gracie,” wrote Teefey in an emotional caption on Instagram. “Family is what matters.”

The mother-daughter duo paired up to executive produce Netflix’s hit show 13 Reasons Why, which was released in 2017.

“She’s the one who spends hours in the bookstore looking for what to read, so one day she came home with this novel,” Gomez told Metro. “I was about 16 or 17 when that happened. When I read the book, I saw that I could perfectly relate to the story. And above all, my fans could connect with it.”