NYC anti-teen pregnancy campaign may do more harm than good with shame and blame tactics
OPINION - There are certainly more compassionate ways to warn teen girls about the risk of becoming single mothers than the insulting, frightening messages being promoted by Mayor Bloomberg...
It is therefore not shocking that Planned Parenthood blasted the ads. The reproductive health organization stated that the campaign “creates stigma, hostility and negative public opinions about teen pregnancy and parenthood rather than offering alternative aspirations for young people,” according to Haydee Morales, the organization’s vice president of education and training.
I would also assert that the ads are problematic because they play on the worst insecurities of teen girls while normalizing anti-social behaviors among boys by letting them off the hook.
“Honestly Mom… chances are he won’t stay with you. What happens to me?,” reads one of the saddest posters. “Ninety percent of teen parents don’t marry each other.” While that may be true, is that going to really help a typically vulnerable young woman?
It is likely that teen girls who are having sex are doing so in part, because of their need to feel loved and their fear of rejection. In a society in which, according to some, black girls are subtly yet consistently being told through media imagery that they are unworthy of love because they are perceived as not slim enough or light enough, it is horrifying to see a government-sponsored poster showing a dark-skinned toddler telling her presumably dark-skinned mother that she will most likely be abandoned.
In fact, that particular poster makes it seem expected and almost acceptable that men leave the mothers of their children and then carry on tenuous relationships with their offspring. There are certainly more compassionate ways to warn teen girls about the risk of becoming single mothers.
Additionally, the campaign features a text messaging component that similarly plays on teen girls’ fears of rejection. When a person texts “notnow” to the campaign’s 877-877 number, the dialer is prompted to play the part of a 16-year-old teen parent named Anaya or Louis, in the name of pregnancy prevention education. I played the role of Anaya and experienced belittling texts telling me I looked “huge” in my prom dress, and that my best friend forever called me a “loser” at prom. Then my parents “dissed” me for being pregnant.
Besides the sadness of being hypothetically rejected by everyone important to me, the only other thing I got from the interactive game was the generic information that teens can call 311 for sexual health care services and contraception.
In so many ways, it seems as if this ad campaign goes too far. Yet from another perspective, these ads and texts do not go far enough.
In New York City, the home to the largest number of persons living with HIV/AIDS in the United States, just getting pregnant from unprotected sex is a blessing. According to CDC surveys, 35 percent of sexually active teenagers in New York City did not use a condom during their last sexual encounter. If these are the type of sexual decisions young people are making, it should not be surprising that 25 percent of all people with HIV contracted it when they were teenagers.
The issue of teenage pregnancy cannot be divorced from that of sexually transmitted diseases, because both are results of unprotected sex. New York City’s $400,000 interactive campaign misses a crucial opportunity to comprehensively tackle all of the issues related to unsafe sex among the city’s teenagers. The campaign’s text messaging component could have provided actual location-based information on where to get tested for STDS and where to acquire condoms and birth control — to prevent HIV infection as well as pregnancy. It could have provided links to emotionally-moving video testimonials of teenage parents from the city’s commendable “No Kidding: Straight Talk from Teen Parents” program, in addition to video-testimonials of teens living with HIV/AIDS.
This berating, harsh series of depressing messages could have been so much more.
I hope that New York City’s future campaigns provide less stigma, fewer insults, and more facts and resources for New York City’s young people.
Ama Yawson is a co-founder of Loveessence.com, a romantic networking site for black women who are ready for love and men of all races who are ready to love them in return. Ms. Yawson earned a BA from Harvard University, an MBA from the Wharton School, and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two sons.
