'Teen Mom' caused teen pregnancy rates to go DOWN?

I agree with you. I watched once and I thought it would convince a teen NOT to get pregnant. I guess I was right.

I think it’s pretty hard to chalk up the decrease in teen pregnancy to exposure to this TV show alone. There must be a lot of confounding factors. Teen Mom is consumed more in some areas than in others for a number of societal reasons. Any of those reasons might also be affecting the pregnancy rate. In other words, correlation does not equal causation.

I think after seeing the show before that it would cause the rate of teem parenthood to go down. Not only are these teen moms a wreck but all through the show they advertise that teen pregnancy is 100% avoidable and provide website to go to.

I think ultimately though in general its the parents of the teens that should provide the correct teachings to their children. I know a lot of parents avoid even discussing sex with their children let a lone talk about it openly with them.

Facts don’t matter.

You could have all the statistics in the world supporting one side of another in this area, and the people with the loudest voices (religious right, conservatives, the god crowd) would not believe the numbers. (Look at global warming as an example).

You’ll never ever win an argument against an ideology by using numbers, Either they don’t believe the numbers, or they dispute the methodology, or they attack you personally. Watch some of the responses to this question as it develops.

@glacial Of course. But the numbers do raise questions about the effects of the show, which began in 2009 (these stats are from 2010). Of course there are confounding variables, which is why I said “may contribute to,” but the discussion is still relevant.

@elbanditoroso Well I’m certainly not trying to start an argument. I’m just interested in what people think of the article or the show in general. I’d like to hear why some people think it glamorizes teen parenthood.

I think this is a major correlation=/=causation moment.

Teen pregnancy rates have been declining for a while now.

See Figure 1 from The hhs.gov site

Oh, it also states:

Substantial geographic variation also exists in adolescent childbearing across the United States. In 2010, the lowest teen birth rates were reported in the Northeast, while rates were highest in states across the southern part of the country (see Figure 2)

@Seek_Kolinahr As I said… ^

I’ve never watched a second of the show. So I cannot comment on the show itself. However, I can comment on the intellectual honesty of the article, and I’m not seeing it. There are far too many factors, including Southern schools particularly beating the “abstinence education” drum.

@Seek_Kolinahr Fair enough.

If, for some reason, I made it sound as though I thought this was a peer-reviewed journal article based on a scientific study, that was not my intention. It’s a Yahoo! article, after all. I’m simply interested in what others who have seen the show think about how it is or is not “glamorizing” teen parenthood and what effect that may have on teen pregnancy rates. The article itself was more of a lead-in, or a conversation starter. I guess I went about it the wrong way…

My 14 yr old niece and I discussed the show and she asked a lot of questions and specifically mentioned that the guys all just ‘wanted one thing’ and then left the mom and baby. We were also talking about how painful it was for the couple who gave up their baby for adoptions, cried, and tried to stay together.

On another note, I’m kind of looking forward to this new season. And can you believe Farrah did porn with her proper family? Geesh, that girl will never learn.

The study used economic principles to chase down to what extent the show caused a reduction in teen pregnancy. While Yahoo may be sensationalizing the whole thing, the study itself just looked at numbers and tried to come up with an answer in the best way they knew how.

The abstract from the paper

This paper explores how specific media images affect adolescent attitudes and outcomes. The specific context examined is the widely viewed MTV franchise, 16 and Pregnant, a series of reality TV shows including the Teen Mom sequels, which follow the lives of pregnant teenagers during the end of their pregnancy and early days of motherhood. We investigate whether the show influenced teens’ interest in contraceptive use or abortion, and whether it ultimately altered teen childbearing outcomes. We use data from Google Trends and Twitter to document changes in searches and tweets resulting from the show, Nielsen ratings data to capture geographic variation in viewership, and Vital Statistics birth data to measure changes in teen birth rates. We find that 16 and Pregnant led to more searches and tweets regarding birth control and abortion, and ultimately led to a 5.7 percent reduction in teen births in the 18 months following its introduction. This accounts for around one-third of the overall decline in teen births in the United States during that period.

It looks like the paper took into account many of the objections here, even just from looking at the abstract. Every complex human choice is going to have multiple causes, so there’s always going to be other things at work. I don’t know that you can dismiss the work here though just because it doesn’t show all elements adding up to the total. It was never trying to.