16 and pregnant

I have a confession to make. Jeff and I have been watching this show on MTV. We both yell at the TV at how ridiculous these teenage couples are. I'm sure we're a real sight as we tell them what they should do, tell them how selfish they sound, and how difficult it will be for them to raise a child.

Stepping on my soapbox:
My passion on this subject comes from an infant adoption class I took this summer as one of my electives. It's an area that I've become pretty excited and opinionated about and think I would love working in adoptions, but I also know it would be hard to be totally objective and support both the birth parents as well as the adoptive parents if the birth mom changes her mind.

Anyway, 16 and pregnant has made both Jeff and I realize how much society glamorizes teenage pregnancy and how "fun" it is to choose to parent the child. I mean, at the age of 16 (give or take a couple of years...) what could be better than to have a little person to love you and always be with you? You get to play dress up and buy cute clothes and toys and all your friends will be so excited because you'll have a baby they can come and play with! The boyfriend is always going to stay in the picture, right? And both of the birth parents will be AWESOME at raising their child because they have such good examples of parents as you can see on any of the episodes on the website. SO FRUSTRATING! This really is how so many teenagers think.

The reason for this post is because at 2 a.m. (I know, amazing that I was awake. I don't know what the deal was...watching TV AND staying awake?! Have I become a normal human being as I stay awake late at night? Hmmm...for anyone who really knows me, you know that I generally require at least 10 hours of sleep to properly function and as soon as a movie or TV show starts at night, I'm done for) we were watching the episode of Catelynn and Tyler.

We were very impressed with these 2. Both grew up in super dysfunctional homes. Tyler's dad, Butch, was in and out of prison and Catelynn's mom, April, looked like she'd done a little too much meth over the years. April and Butch were totally unsupportive and thought Tyler and Catelynn should be the parents because they would be such great parents. If you want to watch the story, it's worth it. I'm not a really big advocate of MTV so the fact that we're all about this one should say something. This episode was awesome though. The two teens were way more mature than their parents and were thinking only of the life they wanted their baby to have rather than how fun it would be to play dress up and have somebody to love you all the time.

We were just thrilled that they followed through with their choice to place their baby for adoption and the gift and blessing they gave to the adoptive parents who so badly wanted to have children but were unable to do so.

We're glad they used this story because maybe other teenagers will learn SOMETHING from it even if they just know that adoption is an option.

My moment of glory? I got all emotional and cried. True story. I am my mother's child.