Last week, a Guttmacher Institute report said that teen pregnancy and abortion rates have risen in the past few years after a decline. Soon after, one of Lifetime’s new movies, The Pregnancy Pact, premiered and got record ratings. Coincidence? I think not. Our culture has recently had an obsession with teenage pregnancy and this fascination shows no sign of disappearing.
I was one of millions of people glued to the television and Twitter when Pregnancy Pact premiered. Many of my friends watch Teen Mom and 16 & Pregnant religiously. Jamie Lynn Spears and Bristol Palin were paid generously for glimpses of their infants. The stigma placed on teen pregnancy is vanishing. I don’t believe teenage mothers should be pariahs, but I find this obsession to be problematic.
First of all, the movies, TV shows and tabloids never show a completely realistic portrayal of teen motherhood. Movies and TV usually show the stereotypical hardships of teenage motherhood followed by a feel-good ending. Reality shows are a tad more realistic, but they only show the drama that will draw ratings.
A description of Teen Mom on MTV says “Each episode interweaves these stories revealing the wide variety of challenges young mothers can face: marriage, relationships, family support, adoption, finances, graduating high school, starting college, getting a job, and the daunting and exciting step of moving out to create their own families.” However, whenever I see Teen Mom, the show seems to put more emphasis on the girls’ romantic lives than raising their children. The babies make more of a cameo and are often seen crying or playing in the background while their mothers squabble with a wayward boyfriend or irritated parent.
Another gripe with this teen motherhood fascination is the fact that the focus on the teenage mother is so intense that other problems are often ignored. For instance, the media almost always places its focus on the mothers, while the fathers serve as secondary characters or they’re barely mentioned at all. One of the girls in Teen Mom doesn’t even have the baby’s father in her life. While the feelings, emotions and daily lives of the teenaged moms are picked apart and analyzed, the effects of new fatherhood on these young men are left largely unknown.
The teen mom frenzy also affects the controversy surrounding teenagers, sex and contraception. One would think that the increase in pregnancies would add more fuel to the fire of the abstinence movement. I agree that abstinence is the safest way to prevent pregnancy, but it isn’t smart to just tell teens not to have sex. I know from personal experience that just telling a teenager not do something with barely any explanation will drive them to want to do it more.
There is evidence that abstinence-only programs aren’t as foolproof as the sexual education that they promote. There are reports of abstinence-only educators using outdated and inaccurate statistics. It has been shown that teens who take virginity pledges are just as likely as their non-pledging counterparts to have sex but are less likely to use protection.
In reality, the abstinence-only movement only adds to the frenzy and pregnancies. It seems that the only people who benefit from the teen pregnancy craze are the people producing the television shows, shooting the movies and writing the tabloid articles. Many regular teen parents don’t have the luxury of a MTV paycheck or the perks of having Britney Spears as a sister or Sarah Palin as a mother.
Is the teen pregnancy media craze helpful or harmful?
Published: Monday, February 8, 2010
Updated: Monday, February 8, 2010 17:02
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