Teen Pregnancy And Teenage Pregnancy

Teen pregnancy is a subject easily made into a reality show as it makes viewers feel morally superior—we are made to believe that young mothers are “unstable, weak and selfish” (Friedman) and that these women’s struggles are just the ‘consequences’ of their promiscuous behaviour. Shows like 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom aim to engage an audience by showing them what poor choices (i.e. sexual activity) and the events that follow these choices look like. They also attempt to be an example for young, impressionable viewers, constantly reiterating that teen pregnancy is “100% preventable”. However, the morals behind these TV shows seem to be partisan, intentionally failing to mention every side of the story. The reason that these reality shows are able to thrive is because they agree with the misogynistic moral perspectives held by

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 86 percent of mothers who give birth out-of-wedlock are teenagers. MTV’s show “16 & Pregnant,” which has only been on air since June 2009, is already reflecting the rapid boom in teenage pregnancy across various cities in America. Since the early eighties MTV has been considered somewhat of a cultural phenomenon for American adolescents and its depiction of gender has a strong impact that continues to this day (Holtzman 2000). Created by Morgan J. Freeman (director of teen shows Dawson’s Creek and Laguna Beach), the show “16 & Pregnant” has been said to be guilty of exacerbating, normalizing and even glorifying teen pregnancy. Perhaps, it’s just reflecting a current social dilemma

One such group stated, “We are gathered together because of a shared concern about the national trend of father absence that is affecting nearly all races and ethnic groups in the United States” (Franklin, 2009). While many are concerned, few seem to be actually taking serious steps needed to curtail this issue, besides collecting data. One thing that is absolutely true, data tells us that society will continue to be impacted in a negative way until the circumstances leading to fatherlessness are fully

Through these two structures, the article does more than just present a problem and a solution, but she also presents the causes and effects of that problem, making a more evolved and informative article. She identifies the problem as the media portraying teen sex or sex in general as being consequence free, one solution she mentions is to have the media and the society combine forces to campaign against teen sex. Teen-age pregnancies are somewhat indirectly caused by the media’s lack of reality when promoting sex. Goodman’s article is successfully written using both of these structures however, to make her point resolute, her rhetorical appeals need to be more prevalent and more defined.

In the United States teenage pregnancy outside of marriage is labeled as a social problem. Society views young, poor, single teenage mothers as an liability and not an asset. Teenage mothers are stereotyped as (a) welfare dependent (b) irresponsible (c) lazy (d) ignorant and (e) promiscuous. However, the majority of society believes that their taxes were higher because of government benefits that teenage mothers and their babies receive.

While reading this, I couldn’t help to contemplate how the bad father model and the emerging single mother is becoming more apparent in our Southern California community. While it may seem like common sense, it had not occurred to me before that deadbeat fathers fail to acknowledge their accidental offspring, even on the smallest scale. For instance, Furstenberg notes , “Many males today do not report their children in social surveys...because many men simply “forget children living outside of the household (1988:201).” I felt disgruntled at my own gender after reading this. I understand that the child may be a product of accidental love but somewhere in the world there's a person that holds half of your

Age of sexual activity is important, but it is found that the age of first sexual experience was the same for both pregnant and non-pregnant adolescent females (Hockaday, Crase, Shelley, and Stockdale, 2000). Delinquency and adolescent pregnancy show that adolescents are involved in delinquent behaviors before encountering sexual activity (Hockaday, Crase, Shelley, and Stockdale, 2000). The article states that females usually participate in delinquent acts first, experiment with drugs second, and become sexually active last (Hockaday, Crase, Shelley, and Stockdale, 2000). Attitudes and aspirations deal with adolescents who feel they will never make it to college, and decide to become a mother at a young age. Another aspect is their lower parental socio-economic status, race, and their father being absent in their life (Hockaday, Crase, Shelley, and Stockdale, 2000). According to the article, family attitudes found that females who supported the egalitarian view of women’s roles were more likely than those who supported traditional views to engage in sexual intercourse, use contraceptives, obtain abortions, and choose single parenthood (Hockaday, Crase, Shelley, and Stockdale,

Hollywood portrays this teenage pregnancy in a comedic way that entertains the audience yet informs them about the realness of teenage pregnancy. Luttrell states, “The media flurry surrounding these events featured warnings that ‘celebrity culture’ is endangering young women’s minds, glamorizing teen pregnancy when it used to be stigmatizing”(Luttrell 4). Luttrell emphasizes the large influence that the celebrity culture has a on young women and how by making something acceptable or unacceptable in their world, young women become misguided.

The beliefs of the teen fathers supported their engagement and behaviors and teen pregnancy was then excused from them making a decision of preventing or proceeding. Building on the idea that society values masculinity as the dominant group and femininity as the subdominant group we evaluate men for their performance and women on their choices. The teen age males discussed their strategies by level of determination of being received as a man and not a sexual predator.

There is popular belief that “the decline of Fatherhood is one of the most basic, unexpected, and extraordinary social trends of our time” (Tischler, 2001, p.19). But to others who see this as a conflicting statement, they argue that this is indeed untrue and see no real importance within society over the male biological “father figure” other than for reproductive methods. Fathers are being looked at as a person who are easily “replaceable” rather than “in dire need with substantiated importance” within family units. They are being replaced with “uncles, aunts, grandparents, mothers, step parents and others who are willing to step in to devote time, love and effort”. Don’t get me wrong. I do understand that when a man leaves his family or his children fatherless- (whether divorce, abandonment or death and etc.) there is a male family member or counterpart or etc. who will step in to fulfill the need for a “male role model”. I being a witness to that myself.

In 2008 the popular MTV series 16 and Pregnant aired which followed young girls who got pregnant during high-school. The show followed teens throughout their pregnancy and into the first week or so of having the child. The show was successful in a sense that teen pregnancies dropped and continue to drop, however this show created a societal message that glorifies teen pregnancy through its sequel Teen Mom. Throughout this essay I will show how the series fails to show the negative impacts teen pregnancies have on their family system, the UA research in Missouri on this matter, the general view of teen pregnancy and my recommendation for how to silence the true societal message the show gives in hopes that the MTV producers will take my recommendation

Our generation is accustomed to being raised in a household where our mother is head of household, not at the fault of our mothers in a lot of cases. In the older days it was assumed that if a man impregnates a female they become a family and he raises the child with the mother. In just three decades, between 1960 and 1990, the percentage of children living apart from their natural fathers more than doubled, from 17 percent to 36 percent (Popenoe, David. Life Without Father. 1997,

When it comes to the topic of TV shows like “16 and Pregnant” promote or discourage teenage pregnancy, most of us will readily agree that it prevents teen pregnancy, Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of has teen pregnancy decrease over the years while airing pregnancy shows. Whereas some are convinced that teen pregnancy has declined nationale because of the program, others maintain that teen pregnancy has increased since the reality show started to air. I disagree with others views that it does promote teen pregnancy because, as recent research has shown, since teen pregnancy has aired nationwide the percentage of teen pregnancy has surprisingly gone down due to the view of the show and seeing what the young mothers have to go through and the responsibilities they have now that they are mothers.

In the United States a total of 229,715 babies were born to a woman aged 15-19 years. Most of those teens who got pregnant don’t know how to raise the kid. They're not physically or mentally ready to raise a baby. There multiple problems with teen pregnancy it’s a health risk to the child's life. It can break the bond between the parents and end up with them separating. Also its cause the parents to be stressed out and not be able to continue on with their regular life. Teens need to prevent having a kid at a young age and wait till there old enough or ready to have one. But until that day comes they need to use protection such as condoms, birth control and other things.

Like Amy and Loeber (2009), when it comes to the ecological paradigm of teenage pregnancy, Corcoran, Franklin, and Bennett (2000) also believe one’s socioeconomic status is a huge factor that contributes to this problem. A person’s socioeconomic status a lot of times determines “education, expanded family size, single-parent household structure, and lessened resources in terms of employment and income.” These three authors claim that educational performance and goals “dictate the potential costs of child bearing at a young age.” Their studies have also shown that teenage girls’ relationships with the school setting and poorer performance in school serve a greater risk for adolescent pregnancy.