Response to Teen Pregnancy: Media Influence or Bad Parenting

In to response to Kathleen Killin's post, Teen Pregnancy: Media Influence or Bad Parenting, Kathleen brings up interesting factors with Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant's television shows glamourizing teen pregnancy. In noting that was a teen mom, I can certainly say twenty years ago, if was far from being glamourous. In the community that I am from, this was rare and teen girls had a social stigma attached to being a teen mom, which made it all the more difficult when my parents told me they had raised their kids, and they weren't raising mine. I came from a religious background, so it wasn't as if I didn't know the proper protocol of getting married first and then having a baby, I made the best choice for me in difficult circumstances. Women in my family just didn't get pregnant before marriage and churches were less than accommodating to accept my child for baptism, however, some how I believed there was value to her being baptized nonetheless and the church baptized her with the perspective that her arrival was "not her fault". Moreover, even at the time of my daughter's arrival, I had a nurse come to my bedside and ask me if I was giving her up, and she was quite dismayed that I wasn't.

In acknowledging your comments on your mom's inquiries of young girls vision for themselves in five years ( i.e. welfare), little do they know that the welfare rules in Ontario have tightened up, and parents/grandparents responsibility has a little more teeth. A 2004 Fraser Institute report cites that Ontario welfare rules require teen moms to go back to school if they are under 18, (Gabel, Clemens, and Leroy 2004). Even back in the 1990's, welfare didn't cover all the bills, and I decided to pull myself up by my boot straps and go back to school. Margaret Little, author of  Litmus Test for Democracy:The Impact of Ontario Welfare Changes on Single Mothers, notes how the government of Ontario has marginalized single moms and how poverty affects their overall living circumstances. So should those girls go this route, a rude awakening is waiting for them with all the expenses and hardships that teen motherhood brings with it.

However, it seems like a oxymoron when the Catholic Church emphasizes abstinence, and yet, at my daughter's Catholic high school, out of her grade twelve graduating class, she was only one of four girls out that wasn't a teen mom. Whether my daughter took into consideration the difficulties of parenting, by watching her peers become teen mom's, I have to admit I was thankful she was not a statistic. More importantly religiosity seems to be passé when it becomes "inconvenient to the whims of adult and teens", but with shows like Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant, very presence on cable television programs illustrates a shift in popular culture "condoning" and valourizing the experiences of these moms.

I can tell you going to school with a baby changes every aspect of your life from your sense of religiosity,  to the facade of teen girls expectations from the child's father participating in the process ( i.e. creating their own sense of family when they have not been able to realize a nuclear family experience), which breeds a whole new set of issues. I am not sure how these shows validate the new crop of teen pregnancy candidates for their shows ongoing broadcasts, however, society needs more emphasis from these shows about these teen moms being properly able to support their children, the financial hardships that mount for teen mom's trying to navigate their way past the 20 year old threshold and how the pro-choice argument factors in to future health considerations for these young women.

This leads me to often wonder what social issues provokes these teen pregnancies to be on the increase in the first place; the lack of religiosity or lack of a nuclear family experience of these young women. Nonetheless, there are deeper issues with teens that get pregnant and popular culture media  does not do enough to expose the underlying issues, which are very real hardships attached to being a teen mom.

Conversely, to include my own religious experience as a teen mom, I returned to my religious beliefs for the benefit of my daughter, seemingly to create an alternative to the problematic situation that I put myself in. Evangelical Christians in my community provided a supportive structure for me, that went past the judgemental stares from my traditional Anglican/Roman Catholic background. Looking back twenty years later, it seems as though running back to church after such a "fall from grace", seems like an odd thing for a teen in 2012, to do, but the model of family values motivated me to "fix" the teen pregnancy problem I found myself in.

I also note in a response to Miranda's February 27, 2012, posting regarding the movie Saved! one approach to teen pregnancy (pro-life) and in class on March 27, 2012, the Friday Night Lights show highlighted the opposite approach by Mrs. Taylor's counselling of Rebecca, wherein American Christian Conservative's responses can vary to the precarious circumstances pregnancy choices are made by teens.

Accordingly the cultural and religious gaps that have grown in twenty years appear to foster and promote the glamourizing of a teen mom's pregnancy environment far beyond what I ever thought possible twenty years ago.



Sources:

Little, Margaret. Litmus Test for Democracy:The Impact of Ontario Welfare Changes on

Single Mothers. Vol. 66 Autum 2001. Studies in Political Economy. April 1, 2012. https://www.mediatropes.com/index.php/spe/article/view/6702/3701.

Gabel, Todd, Clemens, Jason & LeRoy, Sylvia. Welfare Reform in Ontario: A Report Card. The Frasier Institute. September 2004. April 1, 2012.

www.fraserinstitute.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=4342.