Teen pregnancy is more accepted in society than it is frowned upon. When MTV’s Teen Mom first came out in 2009, teen pregnancy started to become more popular. It was all of a sudden cool to have a kid at a young age. It does not help that these “stars” that are teenage parents get paid half of what some people make in a year for an episode. 

“The Teen Mom OG (original cast) dads — Ryan Edwards, Gary Shirley, and Tyler Baltierra — reportedly earn $25,000 per episode,” Lauren Hamer of ShowBiz CheatSheet said. 

Paying teenagers for having children at a young age is not okay, it is encouraging others that getting pregnant and having a child is more of a job to make money from then a responsibility. 

Although these movies and shows do show some of the hardships of carrying a child and raising one, it does not show how teenagers have to deal with school while raising a child at the same time. The money that is needed with raising a child and having a family is also not portrayed in these television shows.

“Even if the intent of [these] shows is to discourage teen pregnancies, it seems there’s a pretty good chance they might accidentally be encouraging teens to get pregnant. That’s not defensible, not even for all the ratings in the world,” John Cave Osborne said in an interview with Babble. 

Shows like Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant are making it seem fun to have a baby at such a young age. These shows pay teenage parents a bundle of money for having a child and showing how they raise it. Teenagers then go and think that raising a child is not that hard and if others can make money for it, then they can too.

Becoming pregnant on purpose should not be something that teenagers should be thinking about, let alone something their parents should be worrying about.

Teenage pregnancy is becoming more and more accepted in today’s society when it should not be. Minors are not getting punished like they should be, letting them think that their actions do not have consequences. Teen pregnancy is growing and needs to stop.