Teen Pregnancy, Hollywood Style

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  • Posted By: terlgerl @ 07/24/2008 3:50:22 PM

    I was a single mom at 18, and it is unbelievably hard! Without the help and support I recieved, I would not have been able to do it.
    I would suggest open adoption for young moms who love there baby's but can't raise them or don't have any support.

  • Posted By: lmrsdiz @ 07/24/2008 2:45:57 AM

    My youngest daughter is on her second baby. She is 18 and has a 2 year old and a 2 week old. What these young girls don't see is the stress and financial burden that is placed on State resources and their parents. I am a widow on Social Security disability and I am supporting both children and my daughter. Her "boyfriend" will not work and she refuses to have him made responsible for child support. Am I mad? You bet!

    • Posted By: EquiPro @ 07/24/2008 12:39:54 PM

      You need to stop being mad and start being firm and realistic. You daughter needs to now take care of the mess that she has made. She should be working paying for her chil0dren and paying you rent. She needs to really suffer the realities of her choices if anything is to change. If and when she can't make ends meet without help from her children's fathers she's start to go after them. That's also probably when she will REALLY gets the fact that having babies doesn't keep a man or prove her love, or whatever prompted her to do it not only once, but TWICE, She not responsible at this point - you are. When she starts to be responsible for her actions, she'll start making the other parties responsible, too. As long as she is getting a free ride from you and from the government, she'll keep doing what she's doing and baby #3 will be along soon.

  • Posted By: jacko3 @ 07/24/2008 9:22:18 AM

    Additionally, media portrayals 99% of the time focus on the consequences for the girls and neglect to represent males being responsible. Why is it always the girls responsibility to be sexually safe? I would love to see an episode somewhere when a guy is using safe sex and insisting upon it. Girls get portrayed as passive victims (again, denying girls any sexual agency or pleasure) while guys get portrayed as succumbing to their "natural" tendencies. Would it be so wrong for the guy to suggest, and even insist, on protection?

    • Posted By: EquiPro @ 07/24/2008 12:33:11 PM

      It would not be wrong - it would be great. But it won't happen because it's a fantasy. I'm not sure th
      at girls are portrayed as passive victims (and this has absolutely nothing to do with sexual pleasure), but I think that it is a reality that girls tend to have sex for love and boys tend to give love for sex. Hollywood's role is fantasy and this is what they show. If you want reality, just put 2 dwarf hamsters, a male and a female together in a cage. This is when my now 10-year old really "got it", although I have been talking to her about reproduction since she was old enough to ask where babies come from.

      She realized that males want to have sex and that it only takes one time to result in a pile of babies that the female must then spend every moment of her life caring for. Really. She got it. It only took 2 $4 hamsters and 5 minutes to result in 9 babies. Lots of talks later, she knows how pregnancy occurs and she also realized that males are programed, heavily, to make babies. She also knows that it is the female that is left to do the work.

      Hamsters, humans..the drives are the same and the results are the same. THAT'S something that people seem unwilling to conceede, unless all of the religious dogma and social faleshoods can be stripped away.

  • Posted By: NotSoBigMac @ 07/24/2008 7:43:37 AM

    I've noticed that in American discussions about sex, you can talk about everything but the Facts. And while the administration pushes abstinence education it clearly isn't working because pop culture goes so strongly against it. Parents, tell your kids that if they can't control their urges, at least know the consequences of succumbing to them (and how to avoid some of them). No-one else is going to do it.

    • Posted By: jacko3 @ 07/24/2008 9:19:32 AM

      Interestingly, I think the media does portray abstinence only education, however, it portrays it only when if fails - when the good girl gets pregnant - think Saved. Again, the issue here is not that kids are having sex or that we aren't talking about sex, but we aren't talking about how to be protected during sex.

  • Posted By: migratialcoconut @ 07/23/2008 9:37:03 PM

    It's a sad thing that the media doesn't want to head this issue face-on. I'm a young adult, but I always knew when I started having sex to protect myself, which was 15 years old. Sex was no taboo in my parents' household - us kids knew what it was and the consequences that came with it. I have never been pregnant.

    No one can stop teens from having sex, but they can be given the push in the right direction by parents and media to use some sort of contraception in order to reduce the unplanned pregnancies. I am disappointed that movies and TV stray away from the real issue - we ALL know that sex happens, that girls get abortions, and that these girls come from different social classes and races. Why aren't all of them portrayed? Juno was a complete disappointment to me - the girl was supposed to be so tough, then she bailed out of the abortion clinic because she was irritated by her surroundings? Come on! Where's the reality in that?

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