On MTV’s ’16 and Pregnant’

By Alison Thurston

My summer job didn’t start until two weeks after Princeton’s Reunions weekend ended, so I found myself with a little extra time on my hands. I ended up enthralled in episodes of MTV’s ’16 and Pregnant’ that the channel streams online. I hosted a one-woman marathon that lasted all afternoon, and I ended up enjoying the show and the thoughtful perspective it takes on teen motherhood. Though the relationships between the new moms and their boyfriends were often cringe worthy (you want to leave the birthing of your child to go get Mexican food? Really?) I never got the sense that MTV was exploiting its young stars, and I was a little surprised at the newspaper articles and blog posts that felt it does.

This is probably because several girls in my high school graduating class were pregnant either while we were in school or in the short time between graduation and today. The little “write something about yourself” boxes of their Facebook pages proudly display the names of their babies and their statuses often center around their newfound motherhood and the challenges that ensue. Sometimes they post wistfully about losing their figures and missing their friends. But just as often, my friends post pictures of their children and thoughts about the joy of motherhood. MTV does the same in its portrayal of its stars. It provides a platform for them to show the ups and downs of their lives.

Yes, MTV shows these young mothers being immature—Jenelle, 16, goes out several weekdays a week when her son is just weeks old, and threatens to pack him up and run away when her mom asks her to stay home with the baby in the evenings “I will leave at the first sign of bullshit,” she sasses in her Southern twang. But the sheer fact that these women agree to be on the show, I think, reflects a shift in our culture. No longer do all young women feel they should be ashamed of themselves for being unwed and pregnant. My Facebook friends and former classmates aren’t, and neither are Jenelle and the other young women on this show. Instead of projecting our own feelings about unwed (and often lower middle-class) motherhood onto MTV’s teen moms and assume they must be being taken advantage of by Morgan J. Freeman, the show’s producer, we might be better off thinking of “16 and Pregnant” as a reality show that actually attempts to depict reality.

Freeman doesn’t glamorize their situations. Many of the girls became pregnant by accident while on birth control. Some (inexplicably) were using little to no birth control at all. But MTV frankly presents both the most tender moments like Leah peeing her pants while very pregnant and laughing uncontrollably, and the most fraught, like Chelsea replacing her boyfriend Adam’s last name with her own on her daughter’s birth certificate after their final fight in a balanced fashion, and one that rings true to the (Facebook-mediated) lens of teen motherhood that I know.