Make fun of me all you want, but when it’s Tuesday night at 10 o’clock you can be sure to find me in front of a TV watching “16 and Pregnant” or “Teen Mom.” Yes, my roommates make fun of me for watching it so religiously, but I can’t help it. There is just something about MTV’s latest hit that really draws me in. Before I go on, I just want to make one thing clear: my attraction to this show is NOT because I want to be or wish to be pregnant; in fact it is quit the opposite. I just find it interesting to watch the struggles that these girls have to face at such a young age. It makes me cringe at the thought of ever having to deal with that, not only as a young adult, but also when I get older. Personally, I think this show is one of the best forms of birth control out there [other than a condom or the pill], and I am sick of hearing people say how “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom” glamorize pregnancy and motherhood.
As much as adults would love to blame teen pregnancy on a television show rather than their own son or daughter’s decisions, they can’t. Their children are the ones who fudgeed up (literally) because they didn’t practice safe sex, which is not MTV’s fault. In a new government report, it states that teen pregnancy has dramatically dropped since 2009 after the 5% increase between 2005 and 2007. Well, since “16 and Pregnant” didn’t even air on television till June of 2009, it could be said that the show has helped to diminish teen pregnancy, rather than to increase it.
Each time I watch the show, I always turn to my roommate and say, “Wow, I’m never having kids.” There is not one thing on that show that makes having a baby young look appealing what so ever. In almost every episode of “16 and Pregnant,” the girl having the baby is always in some type of bad situation, on top of being pregnant.
Other than being way too young to have a child and being broke, most of the girls on the show are with a crappy, immature boyfriend. This boyfriend most likely doesn’t have a job, has not graduated high school and does not plan on going to college. He also cannot seem to get off the couch and stop playing video games. In the end, most of the girls find little to no support from them. Therefore, it’s no surprise that if they didn’t leave their girlfriends during the show “16 and Pregnant,” they left them in MTV’s follow-up show, “Teen Mom.”
In “16 and Pregnant,” you see the girls facing tough decisions prior to having the baby, such as finishing high school, going to college, affording the baby, and where they are going to live. Not only are they dealing with the pressures of teenage life, but they are also thrown into adulthood within nine months. Most lose their high school friends, along with their dreams and ambitions of going to college, when they quickly realize that motherhood requires giving up everything to take care of their child. MTV’s follow-up show, “Teen Mom,” only further emphasizes the sacrifices that these teens have to make for their children, by taking the viewer into a more in-depth view of these teen mothers’ lives.
Throughout the entire series, you watch the trials and tribulations of these girls’ lives. It not only makes pregnancy and motherhood NOT look glamorous what so ever, it makes it look down right awful. To only further show how hard the whole ordeal is for a young teen, at the end of each episode of “16 and Pregnant,” the teen mom who they feature always says how much she loves her child, but how she wishes that she would have had her much later in life. Simply put, these teen moms feel like they have been robbed of their adolescence. Also, throughout the program, MTV runs short commercials saying how you can prevent teen pregnancy, and gives information on where to learn more about pregnancy prevention online.
After watching “16 and Pregnant” or “Teen Mom,” if you still think it glamorizes pregnancy or motherhood, then maybe you’re the one with the problem, not MTV.
