Teen Pregnancy in the Spotlight

by Amanda Mourant, FAPPA E-Organizer

“Farrah is a popular cheerleader from Council Bluffs, Iowa, but when her friends start gossiping about her becoming a single mom, she abandons her high school life.”

- program descriptions from MTV’s “16 and Pregnant”

Teen pregnancy is in the news, and for good reason.  As you may have noted, major news outlets and television programs are devoting time and attention to the teen pregnancy issue as the latest data continues to startle the public. With the rise of new avenues of communication, trends like “sexting”, and teen idols with paparazzi pictures of their “baby bumps” on glossy tabloid covers, it’s no wonder that teens today are confused about the teen pregnancy issue and what it means to them. Parents and the general population watch with a mixture of bewilderment, confusion and fear.

In 2006, many were startled by the revelation that the teen birth rate had gone up for the first time in 14 years, after over a decade of continuous decline. Then, in 2007, the teen birth rate increased for a second year in a row!  After a 34% decline from 1991 to 2005, the teen birth rate had increased 5% between 2005 and 2007.

But, why is this all happening? Well, it seems obvious to many of us that have struggled with the expansion of counterintuitive abstinence-only sex education programs. As we now know, these programs are ineffective and leave teens in the dark about preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.  In fact, research shows that while teen sexual activity rates have remained the same, teens are less likely to use contraception than they were several years ago.  From 2003 to 2007, any progress in increased contraceptive use among teens (and the resulting reductions in teen pregnancy and childbearing) stalled.

In the absence of comprehensive, medically-accurate and age-appropriate sex education programs, teens must often rely on their peers and pop culture for answers to the questions that they may be too nervous to ask their parents, as well as to understand what is expected of them culturally. Couple this with ineffective, misleading, and sometimes downright false information from abstinence-only programs – and you have a very confused cohort of American teenagers!

Thus, there is much controversy over shows such as “16 and Pregnant” on the MTV network and the media coverage of high-profile teen pregnancies, like that of Jamie-Lynn Spears or Bristol Palin. The dilemma: Is this sort of attention bringing awareness of the harsh realities of teen pregnancy - providing a teachable moment on an issue that should matter to the American public? Or, does this attention serve only to romanticize the concept of giving birth in one’s teen years… and normalizing it in the process? The fact that the MTV program uses quick edits, popular teenage music and cute interludes that smack of the indie hit Juno (also about a teen facing a pregnancy), in order to illustrate the reality of being pregnant at sixteen, only makes it more difficult to watch – leaving viewers surely wondering if MTV is merely playing up the next trend. The problem here is that this trend is not a new hairstyle, pop album or must-have accessory, but a very serious, life-altering situation.

Though arguments for and against pop culture’s embrace of teen pregnancy have merit, I think that we all should recognize the benefit of starting the conversation. We can be thankful that pop culture is addressing this issue, if only because it brings it to the forefront of the national consciousness, so that we can start addressing the problem and seeking out effective solutions.

To find out more about what is already being done in Florida to protect the health and safety of Florida’s teens, check out the Healthy Teens Campaign.