The U.S. teenage birth rate rose in 2006 for the first time in 15 years, Maclean’s magazine reported this week. The article asserts the increase in teenage pregnancies is part of a growing “trend” glamourizing being a young mom.
The article cites recent successful pop-culture phenomena such as Knocked Up and Juno as instigating of this change in attitude towards what used to be a societal taboo. The article also cited a celebrity baby boom as influencing the trend.
A second article in the same issue features two teen mothers in Calgary who discuss the disappearing stigma that used to accompany young motherhood. One of the girls says society’s new change of attitude portrays having a baby “as the new handbag.”
But Maclean’s is only perpetuating the problem it purports to explain. The flashy headlines following 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears’s announcement she was pregnant and keeping her baby were a prime example of how media try to profit from and sensationalize what should be a learning experience.
It’s entirely plausible that, far from a fashion trend, teenage pregnancies are on the rise because teens aren’t receiving the information necessary to make educated decisions about sex and contraception. Sufficient sexual education programs in North America are essential to dealing with the problem of unplanned pregnancies.
Girls are increasingly sexualized at a younger age and if they aren’t able to access the proper resources, then Hollywood’s influence becomes prevalent. Teens need the materials to discern reality from a happy cinematic ending.
If someone’s mentality is to associate a handbag with a baby, there’s something skewed about how society is both conveying and interpreting the issue of being a teen mother. The Maclean’s article unfortunately contributes to this mentality without tackling the root of the problem—that the only literature teens are reading about sex may be articles like these.
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