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Sparkle (1)
Newsflash: television doesn’t properly depict the life of a teen mom. I know, shocking, right? If you’ve watched any reality television, you’re aware that episodes only give us a glimpse into the heavily edited “real” reality. Teen Mom, a spin-off of MTV’s 16 & Pregnant follows original “cast member” moms through their babies’ first year. It’s kind of train-wreck-y, kind of interesting and a world away from most young moms’ experiences with parenting.
The truth is that the teen mom journey is not easily depicted, even by multiple moms, on a television show, reality or fictional. Despite what supporters of reality television will tell you, cameras change things. So do editors. And prospects of fame. Even with the currently famous teen moms on MTV, we also don’t get to see what happens when the cameras aren’t rolling -- or what was deemed “too boring” for viewers. The eighth diaper change of the morning is not all that interesting.
Neither is a teen mom who gets her act together, strives to build a future for herself and her child and generally succeeds in life. Where’s the drama in that? Despite what television producers might think, those moms are immensely interesting and extremely important to our society.
Luckily, there are some great young moms (and some who have grown up but started as young moms) on the Internet who have chosen to blog their experiences with us. Sometimes they do it for themselves, as we all know blogging can be a form of therapy. Sometimes they share their experiences to debunk all of the myths and stereotypes that surround them, to hush the judgments and stop the nasty looks. Like most moms who blog, sometimes they simply want to share their experiences, pictures and life with other like-minded people.
Whatever their reasons for blogging, we are lucky that they’ve chosen to keyboard up and put their lives -- and hearts -- on the line. We can learn so much.
Recently, Cassie Boorn blogged her thoughts about the Teen Mom show, which she has not watched nor does she plan to do so. In her heartfelt post, she talked about avoiding the subject of how old she was when her son was born. She attempts to appear, talk and act older than she is to avoid the inevitable questions. She brings up an important point about young mothers and society.
As a society. As women. As humans capable of making mistakes. We have to stop focusing on the tragedy of having babies too young and start focusing on supporting and building up the young girls that had a baby too young.
Trust me, young girls know all of the reasons why they shouldn’t have babies. Very few sixteen year old girls want to give up prom for dirty diapers. They understand that motherhood is alot of work and can wait.
But the young girls that have found themselves in this struggle that is being a young mother? They are met with shameful looks. They are told how to parent not asked how they want to parent. They are encouraged to take the low paying job and to not shoot too high. They are put on reality television shows and giggled at as they fumble through what has to be the hardest time in their lives.
Cassie also has a great series of reader-submitted ""20something Letters", written to our younger selves. Some deal with pregnancy, others don't. But read them. They're fascinating.
Last month, Kim chose to combat comments on a previous post by another blogger at Momaroo with her own, entitled “I Got Pregnant at 18, and I AM Proud.” She takes on the idea that “no one who got pregnant at 18 should be proud” by describing all of the things that she did before and after her son arrived and just why she is proud.
No one should be proud of being 18 and pregnant? I'm really proud of the pregnant-18-year-old-me. Before my son was born, I graduated high school, got married,
