What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open.” –Muriel Rukeyser
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I will come right out and admit that I’ve become completely, utterly, hopelessly hooked by a pair of companion MTV series: 16 & Pregnant and Teen Mom. While there’s so much I think I want to say about these programs, when I start trying, I find myself at a loss for words.
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The shows, aimed at the MTV crowd—or at least the part of MTV’s demographic that must be young, female, and mainly white from places that are, mostly suburban or not urban and if urban, hailing from smaller cities—follows teens over the course of both series from mid-pregnancy (around twenty to twenty-four weeks) through approximately baby’s first birthday.
Here’s how 16 & Pregnant opens each week: a young girl reports briefly, in a chirpy and breezy tone how I’m a cheerleader or I’m a party girl but now things are going to change because… I’m pregnant. Pan camera shot on big belly. For an hour, viewers are guided through the second half or so of pregnancy, birth, and the beginnings of parenthood with one teen per hour. Companion series Teen Mom follows four former 16 & Pregnant’s subjects from the first season through the first year of parenthood, splicing their narratives together. Three of those teens are raising their babies; one chose to place her child into an adoptive family.
The way MTV has crafted these women’s stories into somewhat predictable arcs provides a simple frame for viewing lives that become—with the advent of a baby, or in one teen’s case, twin babies—almost unfathomably complex. Most of these young women weren’t living simple lives before their unintended pregnancies (although, to varying degrees, their lives were more or less comfortable and arguably more or less simple). Unintended pregnancy brings conflict, excitement, shame, fear and hope. The conflicts most often occur between the pregnant teen and her boyfriend—or ex-boyfriend—and between the pregnant teen and her parent or parents. If there is not conflict, often that’s because there is absence. Sometimes, the boyfriend is out of the picture or a parent (or even both parents).
Another recurrent theme is this: pregnant teens seem to trust the road ahead isn’t going to be all that hard, harder than not having a baby, sure, but not all that hard. The teen believes, despite the added responsibilities, that she will remain more or less a “normal” teen. Most of the young women describe feeing entitled to their versions of “normal” teen experience. And these same young women are, pretty much to a one, completely shocked to discover just how dramatically their lives change.
In truth, these young women’s stories seem to reflect what the numbers say about teenage pregnancy: that finishing high school, let alone college, is much harder to accomplish with a baby than without a baby, that children of teenage parents have less chance of knowing their fathers by the time they are teens themselves than children of older parents, and that children of teen parents are more likely to repeat that pattern and become teen parents than children raised by older parents. Contrary to mythical Juno-like thought, very few teens opt for adoption: only about two percent. Over two seasons, just two (out of twenty) pregnant teens on the programs made that choice.
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That’s kind of what it is, but why is this fortysomething mama to four so very hooked?
My husband has seen snatches of 16 & Pregnant and declares it the “most depressing thing” he’s ever seen. My seven year-old thinks Catelynn and her boyfriend Tyler are the smartest teens on Teen Mom—they opted, a joint decision—for an open adoption, because says Remy, “Sixteen is just too young to be a parent. It’s just too hard and it’s better to wait.”
The thing I say, at my most flip, is that the shows represent the best birth control ever (and MTV has been very proactive in its wonderful It’s Your Sex Life campaign to offer information about contraception to its viewers with the message that teen pregnancy is totally preventable). For teens, I’d hope that, like young Remy at a remove from actually being able to have this happen to him, the show provides a sobering pause. It’s like looking at the reality and thinking, not for me, thanks. The teens’ friends tend to mirror this, because they do not come around help much and they do not seem at all envious of the moms with adorable babies (and the babies are, of course, adorable). No, they ask whether birth control was being used and tend to counsel in favor of dropping disappointing boyfriends regardless of paternity and they do not leap to join the young mothers’ club.
I think, though, finally, that what makes for riveting viewing is how much respect I have (and how much my heart breaks, too) for how hard it is to be a parent, and especially so in the particularly challenging situations experienced by many teenage mothers.
For someone like Catelynn, a young woman who received total support from her boyfriend and his mother and vehement opposition from her mother and her boyfriend’s father (themselves a married couple) the journey to accept her own emotions and her decision was poignant. She had to shed her shame and confront her grief and in so doing, she found her own strength and self-acceptance (something she could not have begun to do without a strong support network, focused upon helping birth mothers). Seeing strength mixed in with so much loss and seeing how much simply isn’t there (for Catelynn, a supportive and present, attentive parent of her own) for many of these young women is extremely powerful.
Each of these young women’s stories has a lot of power. Beyond the television, fifteen minutes from my house, Holyoke, Massachusetts has a teenage pregnancy rate five times higher than the rest of the state (and it has one of the most inspiring programs for pregnant and parenting teens I’ve ever seen, the Care Center). If media can help to shape conversations between parents and teens, between educators and legislators, between teens and teens, it’s a start to holding the issue more personally. Maybe MTV’s programs can serve to advocate for comprehensive sex education. Certainly, a first good step is providing some comprehensive sex education, even if it’s online. There is no question that some pretty important truth is cracking open the world—and of all places, on MTV.
