Posted June 11, 2010 by gavin
Note from the editor: Gavin Odabashian is the newest (and youngest) member of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, serving as an intern working with the kNOwMORE initiatve. Just finishing her freshman year at Scripps College in Southern California, Gavin is considering a major in Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies. Watch for her posts throughout the summer. Welcome, Gavin! –Margaret and the kNOwMORE team
She is everywhere. The image of the pregnant single teen is a staple in many hit TV shows, national news, gossip magazines and movies. Think Glee, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, 16 and Pregnant, Bristol Palin, Juno and Britney Spears’ pregnant 15 year old sister, Jamie Lynn Spears. The image of the pregnant teen is often used to get some laughs: there’s Juno’s hilarious one-liners, “they call me the cautionary whale,” and pregnant teen character Quinn Fabray’s funk solo on last week’s episode of Glee in which she and a group of her fellow pregnant classmates called “The Unwed Mothership Connection” sing and dance around, emphasizing their protruding bellies. While the depictions of these women may have brought the issue of teen pregnancy into the public consciousness and gotten people talking, these media figures inaccurately represent the real lives of many a young pregnant woman. Besides either glorifying or making her image the brunt of a joke, the causes and effects of many young pregnancies are simply ignored by the media.
Indeed, over the past few years, we have seen again and again the media’s newfound obsession with teen pregnancy. A July 2008 Newsweek article, Teen Pregnancy, Hollywood Style, focused on this topic. According to the article, “big parts of the story are being glossed over: how that baby bump came to be in the first place, and just how hard it’ll be for a teen to raise a child.” The piece criticizes the lack of discussion of contraception by the media: “In ‘Juno,’ the word condom is used twice; the Jamie Lynn interviews skirt the issue altogether. Even ‘The Secret Life’ (a show originally pitched with the title ‘The Sex Life of the American Teenager’) only makes a few passing references to condoms…In none of these shows are the girls asked whether they used contraception, nor is there mention of STD testing…’It’s the missing three C’s: there’s little commitment, no mention of contraception and rarely do we see negative consequences,’ says Jane Brown, a journalism professor at the University of North Carolina who runs the Teen Media Project. ‘What’s missing in the media’s sexual script is what happens before and after. Why are these kids getting pregnant and what happens afterward?’”
But another important part of “what’s missing” within the
Newsweek article is the direct relation between teen pregnancy and dating abuse, coercion, or violence. Rarely mentioned is the possibility that the pregnant teen was coerced into having sex and/or prevented from using her birth control because of a controlling, abusive boyfriend. The truth is that many pregnancies among young people stem from repeated instances of sexual coercion, birth control sabotage and sexual violence. In her study,
Pregnancy coercion, intimate partner violence and unintended pregnancy, Elizabeth Miller found that approximately ¾ of women reporting pregnancy coercion or birth control sabotage also reported a history of partner violence (237 of the 328 women in the study reported reproductive control), with risk for unintended pregnancy doubled for this group. Further, in a nationally representative survey of 9,684 adults by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 10.6% of women reported experiencing forced sex at some time in their lives. Nowhere in the shows and movies we watch or articles we read are these violent realities discussed. This glossing over of the truth by the media creates a missed opportunity to spread awareness about sexual and domestic abuse and keeps the experiences of many teens in the closet. These women’s experiences and voices must be heard if we are ever going to stop sexual violence.
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Every time I would confront him about his lies and unfaithfulness, he would force himself on me sexually. He always refused to wear a condom and would act offended when I suggested he use one."
June 11th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
Thank you for that great article. My son loves watching that pregnant MTV show and I am appalled every time by the situations that these young women are put in. These teenagers think it is so great to be a mother a their age without regard for their future or the environment that they will be raising their child in.
June 13th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
How lucky you are to have a bright girl like Gavin as a part of your efforts this summer.
As a middle school teacher in AZ I see the evidence and consequences of dating violence on young women many times every year. It’s starting younger and younger unfortunatley. The sooner we teach young women how to recognize it and stand up for themselves, the better.
June 13th, 2010 at 9:45 pm
It is so easy for those out of touch with real world to glorify and make jokes of something that is devistating to young women. Indeed, 1/3 of all women have been sexually abused by the time they are 18. Many get pregnant from that, or feel that their bodies are now public property, or that they are now worthless from that abuse that they just continue sexually and are abused over and over again. They when the pregnancy becomes known, they are abused all over again by parents, schools, friends, even the very people who are supposed to help and support them can turn and tell the girl it is her fault. It is a travesty of heaping abuse upon abuse. I don’t know how that will change, but as for me, I will tolerate it no more.
June 16th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Well done, Gavin. A good, classic sociology book you might enjoy: Irving Goffman’s “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”. A fascinating treatise on the “masks” people wear to present themselves in a good light to others. Related to all human interactions, including controlling behavior and coercion.
Body language is another fascinating topic to explore in this regard.
And yes, the warning signs of controlling, coercive behavior (not just dating violence, but ALL forms of emotional abuse) should be taught to young people of both sexes.
June 21st, 2010 at 1:58 am
Gavin, I think you may be casting the net a little wide here. As a former pregnant teen I was very lucky to have a loving boyfriend (now husband!) who stuck by my side through the thick and the thin. We all know that the media isn’t real life or else we’d see the Hulk flipping cars everywhere! Not everything we see on TV is true and my marraige is a testament to that.
When my children grow up I will let them learn their way around relationships. They will never figure out how to stand up for themselves if they have to rely on others whenever their relationship hits a rough patch. When they become adults they will need to know how to function as strong, independent women weaned off of handouts and welfare.
I look forward to more good articles as the summer goes on!
December 23rd, 2010 at 8:39 pm
It is so easy for those out of touch with real world to glorify and make jokes of something that is devistating to young women. Indeed, 1/3 of all women have been sexually abused by the time they are 18. Many get pregnant from that, or feel that their bodies are now public property, or that they are now worthless from that abuse that they just continue sexually and are abused over and over again. They when the pregnancy becomes known, they are abused all over again by parents, schools, friends, even the very people who are supposed to help and support them can turn and tell the girl it is her fault. It is a travesty of heaping abuse upon abuse. I don’t know how that will change, but as for me, I will tolerate it no more.