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TV Shows Like 16 And Pregnant Promote Or Discourage Teenage Pregnancy?

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Victoria Okafor
Dr. Stainbrook
English 111-121
02 December 2015
Do TV Shows Like 16 and Pregnant Promote or Discourage Teenage Pregnancy?
Teenage pregnancy has become a major issue in today’s society for our adolescents. This is a major problem for all who are involved. It creates hurt and a struggle for on the parents, especially for the mother (Gonchar and Schulten). Also for the parent(s) of the teenager this creates struggles for them because more often than not, they end up with the load of caring and looking after the child while the teenage parents are at school or out doing other things that teenagers do. Raising a child as a teenager is not easy. Teen parents are more likely to struggle to deal with parenthood, and the child …show more content…

The television show 16 and Pregnant was initially created to try to symbolize the hardship of being a teenage parent (Taylor). The stories of these young girls are often times very similar being that they have a miserable nine months of pregnancy just to give birth as a single mother, no longer with the father of their child. This show displays the sorrow and struggle that the mother has in just the first few weeks into being a new mother.
On the other hand, some view that these types of shows somewhat “glorify” the reality of having a baby as a teenager. Both Teen Moms and 16 and Pregnant offer the young teenage girls that they document great deals of money in order to record their pregnancy, birth giving, and first couple of weeks of motherhood. This in itself, to some teenagers, shows that it isn’t all that bad. Many teen moms believe that they could possibly become one of the documented females if they end up in the situation of being a teen parent and could earn money off of it and a little fifteen minutes of fame (Henson). Also, they think that they could be featured in Teen Moms, the spinoff of 16 and Pregnant. This would just introduce even more money to the teen. The show is not intentionally trying to promote teenage pregnancy. This is just the viewpoint that some uneducated teenagers take from watching it. This is definitely not the realistic and commonsensical way of viewing teenage pregnancy.
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