'Teen Mom' Shows May Have Cut Teen Pregnancy Rate

Two television series that follow juvenile girls through pregnancy, delivery and sustain on motherhood may have prevented greater than 20,000 births to American youngster years in 2010, according to a optional appendage scrutiny.

It concluded that "16 and Pregnant" and a spinoff called "Teen Mom" edited the U.S. minor birth rate by in fable to six percent, The New York Times reported. The investigation was to be released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The programs are along in addition to MTV's most-watched programs. Each episode of "16 and Pregnant" follows a interchange youngster as she goes through pregnancy, birth and the first few weeks of motherhood, even though "Teen Mom" continues the stories of the teenagers mothers and their children.

By stressing the result of unprotected sex, educating minor person years just about the difficulties of having a child, and prompting discussions about birth rule and pregnancy, the shows seemed to have condensed the teen birth rate, according to the psychotherapy by Melissa Kearney, the director of the Hamilton Project, a research outfit in Washington, and Phillip Levine of Wellesley College.

"It's thrilling," Sarah Brown, the chief management of the nonprofit National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, told The Times. "People just don't agreement to how influential media is in the lives of minor people."

Kathryn Edin, a poverty college at Harvard University, said the shows may advance young people years overcome "don't ask, don't govern by" situations where they don't chat back each added roughly their expectations. This nonappearance of communication can gain to unintentional pregnancies.

"Families born by encumbrance, rather than design, are bad for men, bad for women and truly bad for children," Edin told The Times.

But the shows have critics.

"Only 40 percent of minor mothers ever graduate high conservatory; two-thirds of families begun by an unmarried pubescent mother are needy," said a evaluation of the program by the Media Research Center, a conservative supervision. "So what does MTV reach? It shows how chilly teen pregnancy is once a appendage realism series."