I really like Teen Mom. It's a real look at the problem of having sex too young and getting pregnant. Here's the deal though: while this may work as birth control, you have Amber beating the crap out of her on again/off again boyfriend, Farrah acting like a brat towards her mother (who, by the way, messed up her daughter's face in a fight), Maci making rash decisions that affect her child's emotional well being, and Caitlyn getting yelled at by her drug addict mother. You need to consider the fact that there is also a lot of shots of the couples in bed together. How does your family feel about that? Would it be better to scare your children away from having babies, or protect them from seeing unwed couples asleep in a bed? It's a toss up.

It follows four girls as they deal with life after delivering their children. No one expected them to be good role models. Obviously, since they were pregnant at 16. But when you put a show like this on TV, and teenage girls are watching it, role models are what these girls are going to become. Farrah is a selfish, stuck up, brat without a clue. She had it the "hardest" of them all because she is raising Sophia alone. Yeah, right, her parents dote on Sophia. Yes her mother is a little overbearing, but Farrah, during the first season of the show, didn't seem to understand that getting pregnant and raising the child has consequences, and there are sacrifices to make. She really needs to appreciate her family more. I think if she did, and if she respected their boundaries...and acted responsibly, the conflict with her mother in the season 2 premiere could have been avoided. Amber is a good Mom, for the most part. Her flaw is that she continues to put up with Gary. He is no good for her, or for her child. They need to separate both for their own good, and for their daughter. She says she needs to do what's best for Leah, but being in that situation, I'm not sure she sees what is best. It isn't healthy to be around their arguing. They are both very stubborn people, who never let the other get a word in, that's not changing if it hasn't yet. That relationship aside, she is a good mom who loves her daughter. Macy is probably the most realistic and most mature of all the girls. She knows what she has to do, and does it. Like Farrah, she's going through it alone, Ryan clearly is no help. Her parents are very supportive too, and it seems that she has a good relationship with them. She's in school with some sort of ambition, she has a job, and she saw that her relationship with Ryan wasn't good for any of them. She's very mature. I can't judge Caitlyn on her motherhood. She did a very brave thing in putting her child up for adoption. What she's going through now is what I assume is normal teenage experiences, obviously with the added emotional strain of not having her child. I can't stand her grammar, and the strange phrases she says like "Love on her." but that doesn't say much about her as a person. I don't think that her relationship or her life really has a place on the show. We know that she went through something really hard, and she still is facing a challenge with her home life, but it really doesn't relate to the other girls' lives. Thank GOD that they didn't start the second season of this show with the girls from the second season of 16 and pregnant. That sends a terrible message "If you get pregnant, you can be 16 and pregnant, AND teen mom!" It's better to watch these girls go through a few years of raising their kids, rather than a bunch of girls going through the first year...