Is Modern Society Glamourising Teenage Pregnancy?

When I was 16 years old, I was not concerned about the backstreet boys, or the latest issue of some teen magazine, I didn't even know what the latest movie was in the cinemas. I was concentrating on eating properly, taking my vitamins, keeping up to date with doctor appointments, finding a place to live and buying bibs, bootees, cribs, nappies. My reading material consisted of parenting magazines and books, there wasn't a Twilight novel in sight.

I was a child having a child, there is no other way to say it. I knew I was not headed for any kind of party, I knew that I had just made life harder on myself and at the times that I was silly enough to forget it, there was a family member ensuring that they reminded me.

While I do believe that teenage parents need support and education, there is a new and frightening trend on the rise and that is alarming, that is the glamourisation of teenage pregnancy.

There are television shows out there such as MTV's 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom, that teenagers are just eating up and believing that this will never happen to them. I personally believe that this is outrageous and these programs should be cancelled. Shows like these don't deter teenage girls from pregnancy, they encourage it and teenage pregnancy is not something that should be encouraged.

Throughout this hub I intend to cover the many different aspects of teenage pregnancy. If you are a teenager out there reading this please soak in every word, I beg you. If you are the parent of a teen I encourage you to read this with your child. If you are a pregnant teen there is help out there.

If you are a parent of a teenager I encourage you to TALK TO YOUR TEENAGER. Open up the conversation of sex and it's consequences, don't leave it up to sex ed or their friends. I'm not just talking about the birds and the bees, I am talking contraceptives.

This may feel like a tricky subject to broach, because so many parents believe that informing their kids about contraception is giving them permission to have sex. Let me ask you something, when you were a teen did you ask your parents permission? Any person who has been a teenager knows that ALL teens are ruled by their hormones, there are no two ways about it. You won't be able to stop a teenager from having sex, believing so is naive. You can however open the doors of communication with your teen, talk about sex and ways to prevent catching a deadly disease or getting pregnant.

It is your responsibility to have this uncomfortable conversation with your teen, to help them make the right choices. Explain to your daughter that mother hood is a minimum of 20 years commitment, a 24/7 job that has no sick days or holiday breaks, including Christmas. Keep telling your children this until they are repeating it back to you, then get them to recite it EVERY SINGLE DAY!

The next thing you need to do is cross your fingers and pray that each and every measure you have taken has got through to your child and that when they do decide to have sex, they take every measure possible to keep themselves out of harms way.

Well, there is no undoing teenage pregnancy. It is what it is and no matter what happens it is going to change any young girls life forever.

Pregnancy is pregnancy there are only three choices once you are pregnant and no matter which choice you make, you will never be the same again.

There's the choice to adopt the baby out to a couple that is unable to conceive. A noble and very brave thing to do and I do encourage it 100%. Why did I not adopt my baby out? I just couldn't. As selfish as that is I could not bring myself to even think about doing so.

The second choice, is good for some and not for others. It's not the best option, nor is it a form of contraception. I do believe in each to their own and I am not the judge of what people do, but simply going to a clinic and having the pregnancy terminated is not as "easy come easy go" as some people would have others believe. It is a very difficult choice to make and has an enormous psychological impact on any woman.

The third choice is to take on responsibility. Not just to say "I made my bed so I should lie in it" but to bring a whole human being in to the world. A little person who requires food, shelter, clothing, love and attention. This is not a job you get paid for. In fact the closest thing you will get to payment is a slammed door in your face followed by "I hate you!" or the nice dinner that you took the time to make thrown across the floor you just cleaned with a screaming toddler saying "I don't want it!" That's parenthood. In fact the least of any mothers worries is labour. I truly wish people would stop trying to scare women with that. It lasts up to 36 hours, it's full blown pain and half of us end up up with our abdomens cut open and feeling afterward that our legs have been stitched to our stomachs with a screaming infant demanding being fed. No parent has ever said "The hardest part of being your parent was getting you here". That's the easy bit. It's the 20 years to come that's hard.

I was 16 when I found out I was pregnant. In my case, the condom broke and I still had another nine years to find out that I have poly cystic ovaries, which as it turns out makes contraceptives have the opposite effect than what's required. (This doesn't mean that teens shouldn't go on contraceptives) I was terrified. I was afraid to tell my mother and father, but I did. My father stopped speaking to me and my mother made sure she reminded me she was angry with me, every single time she spoke to me. My pregnancy was not intended and all means of prevention failed me I moved out of home, away from my enraged mother and in with my baby's father.

I went from a kid pouring over English, math and history, to a young girl who read books about pregnancy, breastfeeding, what to expect in the first year of motherhood, raising children and all other forms of information about rearing children. I took multivitamins and went to regular doctor checkups. All of my friends were busy, talking about boys, magazines, movies and all of these normal things that teenagers talk about. I was alone. No mother or father to support me, no friends to rely on. Just myself and my baby's father. The only real support I ever got during my pregnancy was from my grandmother and an aunt. They weren't happy about my being pregnant, but they were loving and supportive nonetheless. More than anything they understood that they could not change me being pregnant and being angry was not going to help anyone. So they helped in whatever way that they could.

The time the birth came around I was 17. I was supposed to be induced but my baby had decided to come on her own. I had a fast and extremely painful labour and an even worse birth. My daughter tore me open as she came into this world and there is no pain like it. But she got here, healthy and happy. The first year went by so fast and she grew so quickly. My mother than cooled off and my father began speaking to me again.

By the time my daughter was three the relationship between her father and I had broken down. Luckily I was old enough to get a lease on a property and managed to get some online work in order to pay my bills and look after my child at the same time.

My daughter started school and I went back to school and finished my education. I continued working from home and raising my daughter. She is now in fourth grade, is interested in Justin Bieber and her favourite food is lasagna.
I am now ten years on from having my baby. She is happy and healthy and one of the most warm, loving, compassionate, well balanced human beings I have met. Sure she gets on my nerves at times and I do believe she is deaf but only when I tell her things like "You need to clean up your room". It's not all rainbows and sunshine, but I see people who had their babies in their 20's and 30's and describe their kids the same way. Does that mean that this teenage mother has been a success? Nope not a chance, I still have many years to go and I have made mistakes, but I made sure that my child understands that no matter how angry it could make me or how much it would hurt me she can tell me anything and I will do whatever is in my power to help her through.

I hope that in some way some how I have encouraged someone out there somewhere to think differently about teenage mothers. Some of them do just dump their kids on their parents and go out and enjoy their young lives. But there are a whole lot of us who take responsibility and raise our kids. Who go through having their families turn their backs on them, best friends turning around and calling them sluts. Or having their friends phone them and call them dogs because they have to stay at home with their sick screaming infant. We have all gone through that and still have not quit on our kids as quickly as society quit on us.

All teenage mothers notice the sideways glances, your comments, your giggles, your judgemental glares. We all notice it and we don't need that. Being a teenage parent is already hard enough without the judgement of a stranger bearing it's weight down on us, in fact our nearest and dearest do more than enough of that whether their intentions are good or not.

So now that I have told one meager story of the hardship of teenage mother hood, I certainly don't encourage it. Teenage pregnancy should be avoided, there is no mistake about it. It certainly should not be glamourised on the television.

Televising teenage pregnancy does not prevent it. Most teenagers believe they are bullet proof and if MTV is going to make teenage pregnancy look cool then society has made a rod for it's own back. Most teenage mothers require support in learning to care for their children and support in finishing their highschool education.

Teenagers need to worry about the latest Rob Pattinson flick, or the latest issue of seventeen magazine, not about birth, breastfeeding and burping.