A surprising new study links the reality television shows 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom to a sharp drop in teen pregnancy rates. The findings are of concern, however, to teen parents and pregnancy prevention groups.
Two weeknights a month, a group of young mothers and their children get together in downtown Boston. Twenty-year-old Jasmin Colón is chatting with friends one minute, on the floor playing a game with her son the next.
In her teens, Colón said she partied hard and fought with her parents, who didn’t like her boyfriend. She also had sex without protection.
“I wasn’t on track with the pill, we weren’t using a condom all the time,” she said.
Colón said that at the time she got pregnant, she had never had a sex education class.
“I didn’t even know how to put on a condom properly until my son was 2-years-old,” she said.
Colón's friend has a similar story. Lauren Singer has a 2-year-old son. She grew up in Brookline, where she attended a private Jewish day school.
“We didn’t have proper sex ed because you’re supposed to be abstinent," Singer said. "So, basically, I learned really just about my period. My parents, or my mom, did talk to me about sex but it wasn’t like, ‘If you do have sex, use a condom or birth control. It was really, ‘just don’t have sex, until you’re married.’”
Colón and Singer said they don’t regret their decisions to carry out their pregnancies. They’re both working, taking classes and living with the fathers of their children. But they do wish that they’d had better sex ed. And they also want the media to present stories of teen parents who are smart, resourceful — even proud.
An ad for the MTV reality series 16 and Pregnant bills the show as "expecting teens facing unexpected challenges of becoming moms". The show has a spinoff called Teen Mom.
These shows, which have been wildly popular among teenagers, portray messy relationships and bad decisions. Singer said she’s not a fan.
“They are kind of pushed to add drama to how they’re acting and everything," she said. "And you don’t always see the stigma and the shame that goes on.”
But just after the shows came out, the already declining teen birthrate dropped more sharply — by about 7.5 percent per year. Experts wondered if there was a correlation.
“We thought it was an interesting question," said Wellesley College economics professor Phillip Levine. "On the one hand, you hear people talk about how the show glamorizes teen sex. On the other hand you also hear people talking about the realities that are displayed on the show and maybe the depressing effect.”
He and his co-author looked at various regions in the country. They looked at birthrates in those regions, and then they looked at Nielsen ratings to see where people were watching the show.
“In the areas where the show is more popular we see larger declines in teen childbearing,” he said.
The study concludes that 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom account for part of the drop in teen birth rates. More significant is the recession, along with the ongoing downward trend in teen birthrates. The researchers also found that Google searches and tweets about birth control and abortion spike when the show is on, especially in regions where it’s popular.
But there are skeptics, such as Elizabeth Peck, public policy director for the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy.
“A finding like this- tied to media- does not take the place of what we know prevents teen pregnancy," Peck said. "It cannot take the place of access to education, access to contraception and access to opportunity for young people. This is what we know there is a large body of research backing.”
That opportunity means a bright vision for the future — college, a career, travel. And those are dreams young moms such as Colón still have.
“In no way, shape or form do I promote teen pregnancy," she said. "Everybody’s different. Yes, we made our mistakes, in some people’s eyes, yes we made them, but that is not my title. That doesn’t define me. I’m not Teen Parent Jasmin. I am an activist.”
