Mayor Bloomberg and the New York City Human Resources Administration (HRA) have launched a $400,000 interactive campaign to prevent teen pregnancy. It has been lauded by some as a much-needed reality check for an age group that tends to think of itself as invincible. On the other hand, it has been criticized as a vehicle that heaps shame on single teen mothers, while blaming those girls for society’s collective ills.
“The ads feature images of young children alongside messages to their would-be teen parents,” elaborates Miriam Pérez on the web site RH Reality Check, which monitors issues related to reproductive health. “It’s hard to describe the ads as anything but horrifying and yet another link in the chain of shame-based teen pregnancy prevention efforts.”
Regardless of your perspective, it is clear that the campaign leaves much to be desired. The way it is designed, it fails to warn young people about the most severe consequence of unprotected sex: the sexually transmitted disease HIV/AIDS. It also fails to effectively disseminate information about condoms, birth control and health services.
It is easy to see why the campaign’s fans praise the ads as truth in advertising. The HRA’s posters in subways and on bus shelters consist of photos of adorable (but often distressed-looking one-year-olds) and hard-hitting statements. “Dad, you’ll be paying to support me for the next 20 years,” reads the caption around the face of one such child. “NY State Law requires that a parent pay child support until the child is 21 years old.”
Yes, this is the hard truth and many parents in New York State are living with it. In 2012 alone, the HRA collected nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars in child support on behalf of New York City children.
“Got a good job? I cost thousands of dollars each year,” cautions another cute tyke. “Expect to spend more than $10,000 a year to raise a child.”
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Yes, children are expensive and sexually active teens should know that! In my opinion, $10,000 sounds shockingly low. Most of my fellow NYC mommies are paying more than that for part-time day care and pre-school programs alone.
Thus, judging from these particular ads, it might be hard to see what all of the controversy is about. It is easy to see why New York’s Daily News praises these ads for highlighting the harsh facts of parenthood, while also stating that “Mayor Bloomberg gets credit for unflinchingly presenting them.”
Christelyn Karazin, founder of the No Wedding No Womb Movement that promotes black births within wedlock, summarizes her support of the campaign in two words: “Go Bloomberg.”
However, other posters are more jarring in their messages. “I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen,” one reads. “Kids of teen moms are twice as likely not to graduate than kids whose mom were over 22.”
And this one: “If you finish high school, get a job, and get married before having children, you have a 98 percent chance of not being in poverty.”
Although I, and many others, would agree that graduating from high-school and being in a committed relationship before child-rearing is beneficial and should be vigorously encouraged, these ads seem to wholly blame teenage parents for their own poverty and their children’s drop-out rates. Are kids dropping out of school simply because of the poor parenting skills of their young parents? Failing schools, antiquated teaching methodologies in a digital age, overcrowded classrooms and a popular culture that glamorizes fast money may play more relevant roles.
Further, the last ad is slightly misleading. High-school graduates who get a job and get married before having children have a 98 percent chance of not being in poverty only if they are able to secure full-time jobs. This is a relevant distinction given New York City’s 14.9 percent underemployment rate, which includes people who work part-time but want full-time work. The difficulty millions are having finding work is hardly only related to whether teens have children.
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.