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Cautionary Whale: How Hollywood Weaponised Teen Moms

elle literacy

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from MTV to Oscar-winning features, teen moms dominated our screens in the 2000s. but the "moral panic" was entirely false and misdirected. a deep dive into these stories shows that they’re not interested in exploring the social and cultural elements that lead to teen pregnancy, they’re morality tales designed to keep girls in line. how did 2000s media misrepresent teen moms?

0:00 intro
03:11 cultural context
12:40 juno
19:17 glee/secret life
26:25 exceptions
28:57 16 & pregnant
38:44 teen moms today

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20 Comments

@elleliteracy Creator 1 year ago Pinned

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@Dark_Boba-chan 1 year ago (edited)

I find it weird how not many of the teen mom storylines ever show how dangerous teen pregnancy and childbirth can be for the adolescent anatomy

@trinaq 1 year ago

As a teenager, I appreciated that "Juno" emphasised Juno trying to give her baby up to an adoptive couple, and didn't really condemn her for her situation. Her parents, while not being thrilled about the pregnancy, aren't as angry as you'd expect, but trust Juno to make whatever situation feels right for her.

@Hazelinka 1 year ago

They made us despise being pregnant, avoid it at all costs. Made us believe that pregnancy will end our lives and careers. Now they act surprised that we, as adults, dont want to have children because we fear this will destroy our lives and careers. Make it make sense

@95CamaCazzie 1 year ago

In the 1980s my mum was forced into marrying a 23 year old man, a month after her 16th birthday, because she was already 6 months pregnant with his baby. They had been "dating" since she was 14. He got her pregnant again within 3 months of giving birth.

The root of teen pregnancy is usually predatory grown men

@TheThingsWeCarry23 1 year ago

The Welfare Queen stereotype to this day makes me so angry. Why would anyone want to be a Welfare Queen. What do people think welfare provides? You think people subsisting on welfare are living fantastic and wonderful lives? You think they don’t work? That’s how I know people talking about welfare are people that have no experience with welfare and what it’s like to live on welfare.

@HighAsHeckPriestess 1 year ago

The messaging we were taught at my school (to be clear, we had great sex-ed for 2010) emphasized the cost of having a child. now I'm 28 and its "when are you gonna have a baby? when are you gonna find a man?' as if childcare is free or something

@zompinaa 1 year ago

one thing I loved about the 80s Degrassi is that it had two different teen pregnancy storylines, one where she kept the baby and dealt with the struggles of it, and another where she was heavily religious but ultimately picked to get an abortion because she felt it was the best choice for her and showed her both religious struggles with it and personal struggles between her and her sister and her and the community. It really highlighted two sides of the same coin and didn't paint one has a better option.

@ShakespearsCyst 1 year ago

I'd say the most disturbing part of our abstinence education was the tape lesson. Teacher gave us a piece of tape and we all took turns putting it on our arm and pulling it off. So by the time the tape got back to the teacher it had lost all of its adhesive. The lesson was that the more sexual partners you have, the less that you're worth. Fun stuff.

@aetataureate 1 year ago

Elle, you're a hero for watching Secret Life, what an absolute toilet of a show in every way

@Cocobxbyy 1 year ago

36:31 birth control isn’t just for sex people are prescribed it for the worst of worst periods I hate the stigma around it

@ameliathomas9966 1 year ago

It also needs to be known that shows like 16 and pregnant cherry pick the young girls on the show. They pick who show what they want to portray and what will get the most engagement

@kotkotlecik7310 1 year ago

At 14-15 I asked my mother if she would help me if I got pregnant. She hesitated. Then I discovered I'm infertile, so whatever.

@catis4 1 year ago

I'm pretty sure one of the reasons I don't want children now as an adult was the fact that everyone was telling me, as a teen in the late 00s and early 10s, to not ever get pregnant and how life-ending that would be. I would think that getting an STD was be better than getting pregnant. The only sex ed I had was about not getting pregnant and not getting an STD. I never learned about consent, we didn't even use that word, and I also never learned about LGBTQ+ relationships.

@TshepoMohasoane 1 year ago

I live in South Africa. We got a talk about periods directly from lil-lets or Always (not sure which brand) to educate the girls about periods. This happened in Grade 6 when I was 12. When I turned 13 however, our school got educators that are experts in sexual education for children. We (boys and girls) learned about practising safe sex, practising safe oral sex, different types of contraceptives, I think they even touched on self pleasure. Can't remember all details because this was 16 years ago. When asking questions we weren’t allowed to use silly language like "kookie" or "dick", we had to say vagina and penis. It was in-depth and very educational. I remember they even taught us that 'blue balls" was a myth and is a coercion tactic used by boys to girls to guilt trip girls into sex. I feel like this gave girls more agency. I am so happy my school did that because I KNOW my parents weren’t going to give me a talk like that.

@maytalacedo20 1 year ago

what's really annoying and sad is they never brought up consent or bigger problems like power-dynamics of age gap relationships that caused young girls to be pregnant. so, they scapegoat the mothers even though their victims like as if they didn't have a choice, and they forced the choice the choice for them in society.

only years later now begging to get married and make babies because of the birth rate when the irony of that is tried to get rid of teen pregnancy the hypocrisy there is very telling. that's why Juno was very refreshing and the portrayal of it holds up today

@Elegantnost 5 months ago

I am 30, I am from Russia, but I emigrated from there after the war began. In Russia, there is also a TV show called "Pregnant at 16," a complete copy of the MTV show. The show's original idea for many years was to prevent teenage pregnancies, and people watched it and were shocked. But after 2022, the show was renamed "Mom at 16" and began to showcase how cool and not scary it is to be a teenage mom, how the government helps with payments and preferential mortgages, etc. The show has become part of propaganda, everyone clearly understands this and cringes.

@PopSceneMadi 1 year ago

It's so ironic hearing governments talk about the declining birth rate and blaming women for no longer wanting to be mothers when it's like growing up you did nothing but traumatize us into never wanting to have sex or get pregnant with these medias like Teen Mom, 16 and Pregnant, Secret Life of the American Teenager, The Baby Borrowers, and horror movies where every time a girl has sex she is immediately killed by the murderer. I'm sorry but you can't give us PTSD when it comes to pregnancy and then act dumb when women don't want to get pregnant.

@toomuchsci-fi 1 year ago

27:30 precious at the end of the movie has HIV and the takeaway is that she dies from that. For some reason a lot of people miss this in the movie

@littlefox7694 1 year ago

Okay, but honestly I don't know what's worse: doing 16 & pregnant as a cautionary tale, as it's done in the US, or... making it a friggin propaganda on how amazing it is to have a child as a child yourself, because that's literally how the same show is done in Russia. The conclusion in the end of every episode is pretty much like "we didn't expect this and it's really hard, but it's also the best thing that happened to us, don't be afraid to have babies, yay".