Sex education for the masses?

VICKI:

MTV’s TV Program, “16 and Pregnant,” is a documentary of the lives of 6 teenage girls attending high schools in the United States who go through their 2^nd and 3^rd trimester while being pregnant. It is a daily struggle for them to attend classes with the overwhelming pressure and influence of their peers, let alone with a baby  too. This blog describes the battle for these women, and the lack of awareness for safe sex. When dealing with the issue of women’s health, we see how crucially important it is to take care of our bodies, have safe hygiene, and practice safe sex, to name a few. With the United States being so conservative to the point that talking about sex in health class is practically taboo, we see the results that this can have on young girls throughout the whole country.

The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrialized world, yet with proper awareness of sexual education in schools, such high statistics could further be prevented. Unintentional pregnancy prevention measures can be implemented by providing better sexual education to public schools, both to males and females, as well as giving better advice about the use of contraceptives. The World Health Organization has worked at establishing effective ways to help in the decline of birth rates all over the United States of young, unmarried, teenage females. As the population is expected to reach 7 billion people this year, according to an article in the National Geographic, we can note that women play the leading role in birth rate, thus leading to the major increase in population growth. Birth rate is the root of nearly everything these days, as it affects the amount of resources we have, the amount we use, and the amount we will thus still need. The National Geographic brought up the concern that there could soon be a shortage of resources if methods of population prevention are not demonstrated or implemented soon.  As this is such an important topic for women’s health, it is up to each individual to properly aware themselves of the effects that unsafe sex can have. This TV series depicts the lives of these girls as perfect examples of what the results could be from just one foolish action that could change everything.

*hardly any literature on it

ANNE:

I am taking a more critical stance on MTV’s “16 and Pregnant and the Teenage Mom” series (16&P and TM). While the show does not glorify entering parenthood in your teens, The episode I watched focused more on the tensions between the young teenage parents love life, then it did on the child...(?)  Do these reality TV series normalize teen pregnancies? Does it invite other teenagers to join the young parenthood club?.  In 2008, 434, 758 young women between the ages of 15-19, became teenage mothers, make the live birthrate 41.5/1000¹. Given that countries like the USA, & Great Britain, are facing an extraordinarily high teen pregnancies rates is it appropriate to media-tize teen pregnancies through a reality T.V show? I find it troubling that the media is dramatizing teen pregnancy for someone else’s Wednesday night entertainment. Furthermore, I am still not convinced if MTV is trying to make money off teenage pregnancies, or provide sex education for the masses. While there is increased advocacy for better sexual education, the public health implications of these type of reality series are not clear.

Similarly, I found it shocking that it was difficult to find critical reviews of the television series. In fact, the only accessible article I found on critiquing the show, was one from Fox News, for creditability it is probably better not to mention this. Originally I thought it would be easy to find critical review articles, but they just simply are not available on the internet.

¹  Statistics from:  Center of Disease Control USA (2008): retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/teenbrth.htm

Check it out yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12MrdhGohk8