 |
| Jane |
 |
| Lorraine |
Spotted in this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly:
Series Debut
16 and Pregnant
This reality series, which focuses on a different teen each week, features cute, Juno-esque graphics. But unlike that fluffy comedy, 16 spotlights the struggles girls face — and what they're forced to give up — when having a child. It's a must-watch for sexually active teens everywhere. B+ —Tim Stack
Wanting to know more, I found this on the MTV Website:
16 and Pregnant is an hour-long documentary series focusing on the controversial subject of teen pregnancy. Each episode follows a 5-7 month period in the life of a teenager as she navigates the bumpy terrain of adolescence, growing pains, rebellion, and coming of age; all while dealing with being pregnant.
Each story offers a unique look into the wide variety of challenges pregnant teens face: marriage, adoption, religion, gossip, finances, rumors among the community, graduating high school, getting (or losing) a job. Faced with incredibly adult decisions, these girls are forced to sacrifice their teenage years and their high school experiences. But there is an optimism among them; they have the dedication to make their lives work, and to do as they see fit to provide the best for their babies.
I’ve watched the trailer twice and it’s like watching a plane crash or train wreck--sensationalistic, edited for drama and ratings, not reality, and of course there's a camera in everyone's face so how much is reality versus acting? The cast members in the trailer have twangy accents and one guy (I’m guessing a grandfather-to-be) was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, baseball cap, and sported a very long mullet...in other words, perpetuating the stereotype of an unwed young mother as trash. And yes, adoption is mentioned.
I wonder if the series sought out pregnant teens in affluent zip codes; probably not, because those teens have the means and access to pregnancy alternatives; besides, I doubt they (or their parents) would subject themselves to such public scrutiny.
I’m as uneasy about this series as I was the ABC series "Who's Your Daddy?” where a young woman had to guess which man was her birthfather à la The Bachelor (there were even red roses, it was...just creepy and unseemly. Thank God just the one show was aired). My gut reaction upon hearing of the program was shame on MTV, and what were those young girls and their families thinking, or not thinking?
An old friend of mine, an adoptive mother who facilitated my adoption support group for a decade, posted this comment on her facebook page last Sunday:
"[She] has observed a pregnant young girl (high school student?) in church who asks for God's care for her baby and herself. Today I congratulated her and her mother for planning to keep the baby -- told her that was the best for all! Tears came into the mother's eyes -- so I hugged her twice!”
I responded with, “Yay!...Yay Yay! If I were with you right now I’d squeeze you so hard I’d probably break a rib.”
I know many will disagree that it’s best for a 16-year-old mother to be a mother herself, but as we’ve discussed often and strongly here at FMF, relinquishment and its consequences are even more difficult.
I'm sure the news media will have plenty to say about 16 and Pregnant tomorrow, when the show premieres. So should we.--Linda
Lorraine here, adding that I think the show might actually do some good and get kids to be more careful sexually, i.e, use birth control. New mom Bristol Palin is now an advocate for teenager not having kids--of course, her answer is abstinence alone, which is unrealistic. Adoption for some of teen moms is going to happen; I won't be offended or put off if relinquishing a child for adoption is presented on the MTV show as the terrible terrible gut-wrenching, life changing event that it is. Will I watch? Probably check in and see how it hits me. And I might as well add, I thought even the incredibly tacky tacky Who's Your Daddy raised awareness of the need to end ALL RECORDS-CLOSED adoptions. A Good Thing. My original piece seems not to be available for free from Newsday, where it was originally published, but here is a thoughtful look at the whole situation that includes some of what I wrote by an adoptee writing in the UK.
"Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain willing, even anxious, to adopt, and this number is likely to grow because infertility among men and women is expected to rise due to the epidemic of sexual disease."Not mentioned: the number of women who wait until 30, 35, even 40 before they try to conceive, long past their fertile time span. Implied here: My god, we had better do something for these poor people! Ladies, let's multiply and give them our babies! But it isn't going well, Wetzstein writes, for since 1973 (when the attitudes of the Sixties caught up with real life) the number of adoptions dropped to roughly 1 percent, and relinquishments are becoming so rare they are nearly impossible to study statistically. I'd call that a victory for the end of stranger-adoption. Ms Wetzstein calls it a "perfect storm" that has beset domestic infant adoption.
"We hoped we would see a 'Juno' effect, but it hasn't happened,'" said Teresa McDonough, who directs the adoption program at Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Arlington."She adds that since previously there was no acknowledgment of the birth mother's grief--"No wonder they couldn't let it go"--but now, since some genius sociologist figured out that we do grieve our children lost to adoption, we are much more "empowered." In other words, give us some counseling and support services (an unlimited lifetime supply of Kleenex? A memory-eraser?) and Voila! we are "settled and at peace."
"Juno was a horror show, said Jessica Del Balzo, founder of the adoption-eradication advocacy group Adoption: Legalized Lies and author of Unlearning Adoption: A Guide to Family Preservation and Protection."The story also includes interviews with two women who are at peace with their decision to have their children be adopted. One had a ritual in a Catholic church with a priest presiding over the"entrustment ceremony," after which the baby went home with the new parents, and the mother when home with her parents. (One wonders what the scene was like in the car on the drive home.) The birth/first mothers quoted, both in open adoptions that have remained open, do sound at peace with their decision to relinquish their children. Birth mother Jessica O'Connor-Petts even went from a partially open--updates without names--to a fully open one, and her relinquished son, now eleven, was the ring-bearer in both her and her sister's weddings.
"For some people," she added, the best decision "may not be adoption. But for me, the joy of watching him grow up in his family far outweighs the grief of separating from him."
But those words at the end were so far outweighed by the overreaching attitude of the piece: Gee, why can't adoption be made more palatable to girls who have babies? As I read, I kept remembering Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. And thinking that family columnist Cheryl Wetzstein was an advance man for the society depicted therein.
________________
