A Minor Impregnation
Have you heard about MTV’s new reality show 16 and Pregnant? To qualify you must be sixteen and expecting, be highly entertaining, have a deadbeat baby daddy, and be active in making your life fall apart on national television. The show’s winners advance to the spin off series “Teen Mom”, where contestants further denigrate their lives to get friends on MySpace. The last one to cry wins. (Just joking. Sort of.)
As each generation comes of age, so too must its overall trends and attitudes. These trends and attitudes, in turn, determine how the generation is to be viewed by history. And since we, the Millennial generation, are still coming of age, many of our attitudes are just now making themselves known. As the former paragraph suggests, the topic matter is, of course, teen motherhood, and the question I want to pose to you is this: Why is our generation so fascinated with teen mothers?
To start, let’s have a quick look at pop culture.
On December 20, 2007, sixteen-year-old actress Jamie Lynn Spears, younger sister of pop icon Brittany Spears, announced to OK! magazine that she was pregnant. The media instantly erupted into a firestorm, leading pundits to question, in their usual zeal, whether or not she was “glamorizing” teen pregnancy.
As coincidence would have it, five days later the popular movie Juno premiered, captivating audiences with the story of a sixteen year old getting pregnant after her first time, only to later put her baby up for adoption. The movie, of course, won a few Oscars. Fast-forward two trimesters.
On June 19, 2008, Jamie Lynn Spears gave birth to a baby girl, and less than three weeks later, the ABC Family smash hit The Secret Life of an American Teenager premiered with an estimated 2.82 million viewers, entertaining audiences with fifteen year old Amy Juergens, who, of course, gets pregnant after her first time. For those who have never watched the show, its hallmark is trying to set the world record for how many times the word “sex” can be used in one hour. (It averages around 31.76 times an episode.) By summer’s end, the show drew in 4.5 million viewers, prompting one to wonder which sells more: the sex scenes or the cute babies that follow?
The following summer served as a hallmark for teen motherhood and television. The Secret Life premiered with an estimated 4.68 million viewers, easily establishing itself as the number one scripted premiere for viewers (presumably female) between 18 and 34. Likewise, MTV’s 16 and Pregnant premiered and became an instant hit. As its name suggests, the show documented several sixteen-year-olds as they approached the end of their pregnancies and had their children and for the first month or so as they adjusted to their new life. The show was widely received, and prompted a follow up/spin-off series called Teen Moms in December 2009, which at over 2.1 million viewers, became MTV’s most watched premiere in over a year.
Though these are brief examples, it is easy to see that, for whatever reason, teenagers having babies are highly entertaining. But why?
As a member of the generation in question, let me direct you to the answer, which lies in the question itself. In asking why the fascination, one forgets to ask what allowed the subject matter to be fascinating in the first place. Teenagers want to watch other teenagers have babies because watching them have sex is no longer a big deal. Teenagers having sex are finally normal.
Let’s think about this in two ways.
1.) When one examines the generation that first gave birth to the Millennials in 1982, he will find none other than the Boomers, who kicked off the sexual revolution when they were our age. Hypothetically speaking, if I told my children not to do x-action, even though I did x-action frequently when I was their age, I would hold no moral standing in condemning them for it. Therefore, what our generation had from the start was the license to repeat our parent’s actions—albeit not to the extremes they did—without fear of complete punishment. But what of the Generation X parents of Millennials?
As it turns out, when comparing the teenage birth rates of Generation X (circa 1990) to current Millennial birthrates (circa 2006), the Millennial Generation’s is still 39% lower! This almost makes one ponder if it is not a big deal socially because it is not as big a deal statistically. (This one is left up to the reader.) Bottom line: If our parents had actually acted the way they told us to, we would take what they said more seriously.
2.) For more proof that teenagers having sex is the new norm, one need not venture further than the Teen Mom website. What they will find is a “Highlights” section dedicated to helping teens as they deal with pregnancy, adoption, and domestic abuse. After all, if it is the new norm, as a society we must find ways of dealing with it realistically! Secondly, if you can stand an entire episode of The Secret Life, you will be treated to a teenage sex PSA that informs parents they should talk to kids about sex… before they do. (And lastly, let me inform you that being a Millennial that both believes and practices abstinence puts you in the clear minority.)
Let us stop here for a few quick comments. First, by saying teen sex is not a big deal, I do NOT mean to imply, even the least bit, that is it NOT morally wrong. One must remember that Sodom and Gomorrah had more than their fill of sexual deviancy—which for all intents and purposes would make it “right”—but were still judged regardless of what its inhabitants thought. (And since God does not change, the actions condemned are still wrong today!)
Second, regardless of how “realistic” and “helpful” entertainment about teenage mothers really is, any attention is good attention. If attention were as harmful as we would like to believe, we would not be watching Governor Blago play with Donald Trump’s cash!
So where do we go from here? To be honest, that’s anyone’s guess. The purpose of this article was to explore the question and ask new ones—which it did. All I can say is that when the time is right, the world will be affected by the attitudes and trends we create today. Let us hope that we are willing to ask new questions, and able to boldly act on the new answers we will find.
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