MTV’s Teen Mom has people talking about it. Bristol Palin advocates against it. Lifetime Network’s movie ‘The Pregnancy Pact’ has parents fearing it.
Teen pregnancy. The once taboo topic seems to be everywhere in culture today.
After about a decade of progress, teenage pregnancy rates are on the rise again.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, 750,000 women under the age of 20 became pregnant in 2006. For every 1,000 women between the ages of 15-19, the pregnancy rate was 72 percent.
In 2005 the teen pregnancy rate was at it’s lowest in 30 years. The teen pregnancy rate has increased three percent for the first time in over a decade.
People have already noticed the trend, resulting in fingers pointing toward different directions in who should be blamed for this social epidemic.
Many people blame pop culture for the rise of teen pregnancy. Critics say media glamorizes teen moms in television shows and makes them infamous by putting their faces on magazine covers.
“In every movie or television show, you never see the characters having safe sex. They just pull off their pants and go for it,” said Eric Pruitt a student at Truckee Meadows Community College (TMCC). “I think unprotected sex is always overlooked. People grow up not realizing the repercussions of their actions.”
Even though people have been recently singling out teen sex in the media as the culprit for teen pregnancy, there are many different scapegoats for the problem.
Sex education is the most common resource to prevent unwanted pregnancies and inform about the negative effects of becoming sexually active. But who is best to tell the youth about sex and what approach is the most effective?
A public service announcement for teen pregnancy starred the newly famous teen mom Bristol Palin, daughter of Sarah Palin, former 2009 candidate for U.S. vice presidential election. MTV’s Jersey Shore actor, Michael Sorrentino known as ‘The Situation’ is also starred in the ad.
In a skit called, ‘Pause Before You Play’ a message was presented that could be considered contradicting.
Even though Palin is a teen mom, she advocates for abstinence. In the video, The Situation tries to pull his moves on her, but she refuses because she practices abstinence. The Situation who’s known for being promiscuous, is sad that she turned him down, but pulls out a condom because he practices safe sex.
Brian Moylan from Gawker.com, gave Palin the title of ‘Do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do abstinence spokesperson‘ after seeing this video.
Another teen mom, Kyndra Washell, 20 believes it’s not just the media that is influencing the youth.
“I think there’s a lot of influence everywhere,” said Washell. “I think kids that are younger have older friends or older siblings that cause a lot of influence. They probably think it’s okay just to try it out, but it’s really important to have someone to talk to if you don’t know what your doing.”
The more established form of sex education is in schools. Despite the fact it has been taught in schools since 1904, schools are still debating the curriculum to teach, leaving teens amidst confusion and misinformation.
Washell feels that sex education must be very detailed because ‘in the heat of the moment‘ things can happen that you didn’t expect, so you should be well prepared.
“I think sex education is really important just because my brother is 14-years-old and already having sex,” said Washell.
The Bush administration paid $1.5 billion toward abstinence-only programs for schools that was tossed by the Obama administration, which decided to implement a new program for comprehensive teen pregnancy prevention.
The Guttmacher Institute ranked Nevada as number two for highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation. Nevada’s rate is 90 pregnancies per 1,000 women ages 15-19. Comparatively, the United States has a rate of 38.2.
Alison Gaulden from Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, Northern Nevada thinks one of the main reasons for high teen pregnancy rates is because all 17 counties in Nevada have different sex education curriculums.
Gaulden says that some schools are taught abstinence only until marriage. She believes this is ineffective because some teens will eventually have sex but will not get the tools to be responsible.
Gaulden sees another issue in schools, “Some of the curriculum they have that’s available is purchased by groups that are vehemently opposed to having any sex,” said Gaulden. “So it’s full of misinformation. Such as, [using] fear tactics like contraceptives, such as condoms don’t work very well or effectively which is all false. So those are the challenges in each school district, is fighting their own problems.”
Treion Dally director of Crisis Pregnancy Center in Fernley that was part of implementing abstinence-only curriculum taught in Lyon, Douglas and Carson counties has also noticed a rise in teen pregnancy.
“For a while [teen pregnancy] did go down,” said Dally. “We contribute that to some of the character and abstinence training that we have been doing in the public schools, but were not doing that currently, so now were seeing the rise go back up.”
Dally describes the sex education as “more than just abstinence.”
“If that student has a goal, what’s going to get [them] that goal and what’s going to get in the way of that goal,” said Dally. “A teen pregnancy can certainly make it more difficult.”
As Nevada has been projecting budget cuts, education has been greatly affected. Adjusting school times and cutting sex education curriculum may save dollars, but not teen pregnancies.
Paula Crandell Social Worker at Casa de Vida, a home for pregnant teens, has also noticed the rise in teen pregnancy. But Crandell sees the trend of teens getting pregnant younger. She says her last resident was only 13-years-old.
Crandell believes that since Legislature has changed school hours to getting out earlier in the day, this has affected the rise in younger teen pregnancies.
“I think they need more supervision,” said Crandell.
According to After School Allegiance, a group who surveys Nevada parents about after-school supervision, reported 28 percent of K-12 children have no supervision after school. On average these children spend 10 hours a week unsupervised. Only 16 percent of children participate in after school programs.
Sparks high school teacher Cyndi Kirklin,was a former sex education board member. She said that 40 percent of the sex education curriculum was cut. She didn’t elaborate further on why it was cut.
This cut not only affected students, but also others trying to get information on teen pregnancy. Samantha Danner is a student, studying medicine at TMCC. She needed information on teen pregnancy for a project but was very disappointed with the results.
“I expected the information to be a little dated, but not almost five years old,” said Danner. “How can anyone know the true trends of teen pregnancy if all the information is either too old or skewed toward a particular interest group? There needs to be some type of agreement on what is fact and what is crap.”
Below is an audio clip from a teen mom Kyndra Washell expressing her views on shows like MTV’s Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant.
Below is a video from the many voices surrounding teen pregnancy.
Below is the video of Bristol Palin’s abstinence campaign.
