Teen Mom

My teenage daughter and I started watching the show 16 and Pregnant when she was just in grade 9 and only 14. We then moved into Teen Mom.

Critics would say this show this show glamorized teen pregnancy. I would get judged for allowing my teen watch it.

I remember there was this girl very similar to my daughter in personality, who got pregnant by her boyfriend. We watched her pregnancy go by and what a loser her boyfriend was. He wouldn't get a job, spent his days and nights playing video games. He was disrespectful to her and her family. Once the baby was born, it wasn't long before he was gone.

My daughter looked at me and said "Oh my God, that is my boyfriend". The next day she broke up with her boyfriend.

After consistently seeing the baby daddy leave on 16 & Pregnant, because being a parent as a kid is way to difficult for them to handle, leaving the mom to live a very difficult life; it was evident there was a trend: the mom is always left to do it alone. The mom always expresses her regrets, and how sad she is to see her friends go out while she is home being a mom.

At 15 she was with a nice boy and admitted to having unprotected sex with him. After watching an episode of Teen Mom, she asked for birth control. She was allergic to birth control, and she was left with two options, abstinence or an IUD. We agreed on an IUD that offers 5yrs protection.

As a mother all this is hard to process especially when she is only 15 yrs old.

Fast forward 2 yrs, we are watching Teen Mom 2, and the moms are still going thru many trials and tribulations. They have baby daddy drama still, dating issues, babysitting issues, education difficulties etc. Things are still very hard for these girls after all this time. We don't see how at any point teen pregnancy was glamorized, in my household it did the opposite and inspired my teen to avoid that lifestyle.

But one thing doesn't sit right with us.  The children. I can't imagine what it will be like for them to know their childhood was documented right from when they were in the womb. Too see what their parents were like as teens. How their dads,.real or edited, were douche bags to their moms. Or in the case of Janelles son, how neither parent cared.

That puts me at a crossroads with this show, in many ways it has unglamorized teen pregnancy motivating my teen to avoid, but at the expense of the teen moms children.