What are they really saying?

Whether it was intentionally controversial or not, MTV’s shows 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom have become huge hits. It’s a show you either love or hate. In case ypu’ve been living under a rock, 16 and Pregnant is a show that came out in 2009 and followed teenagers as they went through their pregnancies and all the drama that followed. Teen Mom is a spinoff show currently airing following the lives of those same teens after they had their babies.


While MTV’s intention with the show was to show how hard it is to be a parent, it seemingly glorifies it in the process. According to Stuart Hall, the encoded message would be to depict pregnancy negatively and thus prevent other teens from making the same mistake. Unfortunately, the show seems to unintentionally glorify having a child. The cute babies and all the attention that comes along with it might make it seem like it’s not so bad to have a baby at a young age. The message is thus decoded by viewers as being different than what the producers intended it to be.

This is not to say that these shows alone are to blame for the glorification of teen pregnancies. Young actresses like Jamie Lynn Spears and Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol send the message that if famous teens get pregnant and have babies, maybe it’s not that big of a deal. Jamie Lynn Spears and her boyfriend even did a photo shoot for a tabloid!