What do you think of all these teen pregnancy shows?

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Yes, I'm talking about MTV's "16 and Pregnant" and its spinoffs ("Teen Mom", "Teen Mom 2", etc.). I'm one of those that think those shows glamourize teen pregnancy (some of the stars are even featured in the tabloids and entertainment news shows). Plus, my mom and my sister are obsessed with these stupid shows.

I like the original documentaries that chronicled one teen-mom-to-be per episode but in the spinoffs where some get their own show it becomes unrealistic and scripted because they're obviously getting paid and have money that most teen moms wouldn't have, but the show has to try to somehow hide this. The magazine covers they're getting don't help the situation.

Anyway, yes, the original documentaries are pretty realistic and not very glamorous AT ALL, so I think they're just very informational.

As an aside, I've probably only now reached the age that I have the emotional/social maturity of these teen moms, so I can appreciate the show a lot more that I would've been able to before. I'm quite impressed by how capable and responsible they all are. But I don't envy them. Their lives seem horribly tedious at best.

They annoy me, because they are not realistic. Well, a little bit - but it's not as easy as it looks. Family is not always there to help. Money is not always available. School, lack of sleep, cholicky (sp?) babies... that's hard for anyone - doubly so for a child ill-equipped to handle it.

The reality is, for an average teenager, parenting IS NOT DOABLE. Mom (or some other relative) steps in and does 50-100% of the work. Of the 20 or so teens I've known who were parents, not a single one looked like they do on TV.

Well, I hate all reality TV, but I think the worst reality TV is the kind that glorifies lowlifes like Jersey Shore, Teen Mom and Wife Swap. Back in the good old days, the most that these riff raff had to hope for was a guest spot on Jerry Springer. But now it seems if you're reckless enough, stupid enough, and obnoxious enough you can star in your own show. These shows kind of remind me of that old movie, Pink Flamingoes, where that family is trying to live up to the title of the world's worst family.

I don't watch television at all...but I think the whole premise is pretty disturbing.Is it glamorizing those who are ignorant enough not to take care of unprotected sex and therefore have children really young? Or is enlightening for other teen mothers to see others going through the same thing?
Either way,I don't plan on watching them.Ever.

I don't know about these shows, but I'm pretty jaded about the whole "teen pregnacy phenomenon" because I think people are always blowing it out of proportion like they do everything else. Teen Pregnacies are not a recent thing like the media would have us believe and they have been around since the dawn of humanity. The only difference between now and then is that in those days girls were expected to have babies by the age of 14 because they were often married at an age that these days we consider too young to be of marrying age. Somehow in our modern time we've developed the idea that it's always been unthinkable for a girl to have children before the age of 20, which isn't true because in the old days waiting untill you were 20 to have kids was considered too long of a wait.

I just think it's silly that people act so shocked that teenage girls are capable of having sex and getting pregnant. I'm not saying it's OK for underage girls to go around having promiscous sex and getting knocked up, but maybe instead of living in an oppressive fairytale we should all be figuring out ways to fix this problem, and by fix it I don't mean things like throwing our knocked up daughters out on the streets or lying to everyone and saying that her baby is her new brother/sister.

They don't bother me since teen mums do exist and they shouldn't be hidden away and shunned by the rest of society. Younger teenagers have been sexually active for hundreds of thousands of years, it's not a new thing at all. Also in some cultures it's normal for someone to have their first child at 16 so the taboos are not the same everywhere. In somewhere like America or the UK first time mothers tend be in their mid 20s, but in somewhere such as India they might be 18 or 19.
I don't get why people are so snobbish towards younger parents, yeah they didn't use protection and yes they're a bit careless but there's nothing they can do now so just leave them to it and not ostracise them.

Cultures where teenage pregnancy is the norm tend to have agrarian or hunter-gatherer societies where the cost of living (by our standards) is small. While I'm no anthropologist, I would presume that hunter-gatherer societies tend to remain small. Their daily activities consist of gathering food and not much else, and may not even live in permanent settlements, so they may not own any property.

Agrarian societies tend to be larger and have complex divisions of labor (farmers, ranchers, herders, tool makers, carpenters, masons). Since farming and ranching requires a lot of work, agrarian families tend to have more children (unless their society permits slavery). Because of these divisions of labor, these societies might have some sort of a monetary or bartering system to exchange goods and services. People might own private property, but land is not too scarce and the forces of supply and demand are at an equilibrium.

Industrial and post-industrial societies tend to have their populations concentrated in crowded urban areas that have extremely complex divisions of labor and food is so scarce that it has to be constantly shipped in from other parts of the country (if not the world) in order for the population to sustain itself. Some of the resources that these societies depend on may not be renewable (such as oil) and their costs are constantly increasing, which subsequently leads to an increase in other costs. Industrial and post-industrial societies also require other necessities that less complex societies do not; things like transportation, electricity, computers, telecommunication services, public utilities, education, healthcare, property insurance, law enforcement, emergency services, taxes. Because people need to pay for all of these things, child rearing takes a back seat to our financial responsibilities. A teenager with a minimum wage job (or no job) is in no position to raise a child in our society.

i havent watched many of them but the few i've seen have deamonised the teens, calling them dole bludgers and sluts basically or they have shown only one possible outcome of the situation: that being the family all chip in and the teen gets to live a happy life where school, baby and work and life never clash. life is not easy for teens who are parents and abortion is never ever ever mentioned nor is the part of the church/ other religions who preach abstinence or the schools who don't adequately teach safe sex mentioned.

I must have watched different shows-
the ones on MTV deal with domestic violence, losing custody of your child to your own parents, trying to work AND raise a child AND go to school, feeling alienated from one's friends, struggling to find a guy who will date a girl with a baby.

Teen pregnancy rates are down from before the premiere of these shows, but that could in all fairness be a number of factors.

I stopped watching MTV when they stopped showing music videos (did they start up again?).