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Major Networks to Premiere Shows Addressing a Key Social Issue
1-Jul-2008
Written by: Angelica G. Huertas
Recent media attention has alerted the powers that be to the problem of rising teenage pregnancy.
NBC debuted The Baby-Borrowers last week, a reality show portraying the difficulties of raising a child, while ABC Family will debut The Secret Life of the American Teenager, chronicling a teenager who becomes pregnant at 15.
Teen pregnancy has risen 3 percent between 2005 and 2006, contrasting with a 34 percent decline between 1991 and 2005. Media attention has been given to the alleged “pregnancy pact” of teenage girls in Boston and unplanned pregnancy movies like Knocked Up and Juno. The debate has heated up about how much influence the media has on people’s behavior. Brenda Hampton, creator of the new ABC Family series and of the popular '90s TV series, 7th Heaven, says, “I don't think that young women are so impressionable if they see a show about pregnancy that will make them go out and get pregnant.”
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Jane Brown, who runs the Teen Media Project, says that these media influences have produced what she calls “glamorized pregnancy.” However, teenagers have been getting pregnant for a long time, and pregnancy has been glamorized and romanticized in some areas long before Juno. One must wonder if the problem of teenage pregnancy has come to attention solely because it can be blamed on mainstream media.
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