These are horrible. The message appears to be teen pregnancy = defilement. I HATE these posters.

I work for a state teen pregnancy prevention organization, and these posters were very controversial within the community when they were released; many people hated them.

A local Planned Parenthood had kids create their own positive versions (ex: I'm a teen mom who's PROUD of her child) that are quite wonderful, but I wasn't able to find them online.

I think that any negative attitude towards pregnancy is ethically wrong. Pregnancy and sex should not be demonized at any age and I am also sick of the judgemental nature society has on pregnant women. The only acceptible pregnant woman seems to be married and between the ages of 22 and 35. Older pregnant women also fall under alot of scrutiny, but for different reasons.

These posters seem very 1950s in mentality and not modern or progressive in teen pregnancy prevention.

These posters make me feel sick.

Disgusting!

What I see wrong with these posters is that the are not clear and that they do seem vilify pregnancy. But who has room to print (and who wants to read) a paragraph with statistics concerning unwanted pregnancy? That's the real issue here isn't it? These posters goal is to shame and by the reaction they have received it seems they have succeeded. I don't support the image of these posters and I don't think that they would have an effect on their target audience. I don't think unwanted pregnancy should be portrayed as dirty or whorish, but foolish, and the message should be Think Before You Dink.

i guess the sentences on the posters give an important message, that teen pregnancy is a serious thing and should not be taken lightly, but putting the words in front of the teens is TERRIBLE; the ads are anti-pregnant-teen, not anti-pregnancy, and that's just wrong

These posters have been around a while! I saw the 2nd one in a magazine back in high school (maybe 2003-2004ish?). However many years later I still remember the ad, because of the vivid photo of the girl, the expression on her face. The message little high-schooler me took away from the ad (aside from "condoms=good") was that having a baby impacts a teenagers life in ways that extend beyond just the physical aspects of pregnancy and birth, or the sudden absence from school. It was something I'd never really given any thought to. I have two pages of a short story I started wondering what the girl in the picture was like, what her life was like (its in pencil, and starts on the back of a math quiz, d'oh).

The only other thing that I really have to add about these is that even though I now see the way they reinforce problematic ideas about pregnancy and violation, they do manage to deliver a message about condom use and teen pregnancy without saying "sex=bad". I like that none of the ads (with the possible exception of the one featuring the boy) seemed to feature girls who regretted having sex, or suggested that the sex itself was wrong-just the lack of condom. My high school self tended to shut down in sex ed when someone would say "sex=bad but....", a reaction that is probably true for a lot of teenagers.

I'm a prude myself, so I'm sort of flopping on myself here, but technically, they DO say that sex is bad (at least one of them). Look at the first poster: I had sex with my boyfriend so he wouldn't reject me. Solution? Don't have sex then!

Also, these aren't really saying "Don't be a pregnant teen because it will ruin your future", they're just saying what they think the teen would be labelled as IF they are caught as a pregnant teen: Nobody, Prick, Cheap, Dirty, etc. Yeah it does get the message across but it's only getting part of the message across; not all of it. Sure, one of the posters say to use a condom + contraceptives, but that's only one out of 5. |:

Here via the January '10 'what's new' post.

The thing that's so awful about this is that the actual messages aren't bad ones. That having a baby is hard and takes your social life away, and that sleeping with someone won't keep him with you. If they didn't expand those single words, the posters would be fine. But by blowing them up and labeling the teens as Dirty and Cheap and whatever else, it goes into shaming territory.

Here from the Jan '10 post as well... What bugs me is how the big capitalised words like 'PRICK' etc are intended to be taken out of context. They give you the context below ('I'm changing DIRTY nappies') and it actually comes as a surprise. You expect the sentence to be something more along the lines of 'and now everyone think's I'm DIRTY'.

They have very much intentionally done this campaign with the intent of making pregnant teenagers feel ashamed. They could have easily used words that were within the context of the subtext below the image. Like having 'CONDOMS ARE CHEAP' as the big text, instead of just 'cheap'. But no - they've elected to make it this horrible campaign instead.

I really hate stuff like this. There are so many other ways they could have gotten their message across without it being totally negative and encouraging slagging off between teenagers. Surely there's enough of that going on as is.

these posters can be really offensive to kids who already have kids yes it gets a message out about how teenage prgnancy can be bad but people survive it and some of the things under the posters suggest that being prgnant or having a child period is bad because you can be 25 married with a baby and not be able to go out with friends because u have to watch the baby. Does that make u dirty?

These are crap. Sex isn't dirty. The message should stick to the facts of real consequence vs. hitting the self-esteem and shame hot-buttons of teens (which is basically like taking candy from a baby anyway). What evil anti-sex person thought this hate literature up?

that's freaking terrible. cant they do something constructive? jeez

Awful, awful, awful. As if kids in a tough situation don't have enough to worry about without feeling demonised and shamed as well. There's something horrible in the mindset of people who'd create a 'promotion' like this, especially as with a little family and community assistance ~ and some real life options ~ teens with kids don't actually need to feel isolated, alone or 'bad'.

I think Pauline has it--it's all about the context.

I'm absolutely appalled. I'm thinking about going to grad school for health promotion, and I think it should be clear that fear and shame is not the way to influence people to have healthy behaviors. "Objects of control" is right--this is how society tries to control teenage sexuality: fear and shame.

Also, need I point out that the only guy that is pictured is still shaming women? ("at least, that's what her friends say")

Even a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, I recognize that shame does work, as it has for centuries, and it's great that NYC is putting up these direct and hard-hitting ads (I'm much more repelled by the anti-smoking ads which depict horribly mutiliated bodies).

>These ads are about getting teenagers to do what we want, not helping them figure out what’s best for them.

What exactly does that mean? That maybe it's better for teenagers to become pregrant because *they* think it's best? That's a failure of adult, and moral responsibility. If your teenager thought it's ok to do heroin, you'd say nothing because you don't want to tell them what to do?

Ugh! As a former teen mom, these programs irk me to no end on a personal level. Additionally, these posters (specifically the latter "threat" ones) also confuse causation with correlation. Teen pregnancy is not the CAUSE of those issues, but instead the plethora of other complicated variables (income, educational level, poor work-family policy, etc.) associated with teen pregnancy are. Teen pregnancy seems like the "easy" fix and teen moms, with very little social power, are easily scapegoated in lieu of much bigger discussions we need to be having as a society about sex education, parenthood, and gender. Fear tactics, especially when not coupled with comprehensive sex education, do little than stigmatize teen mothers/parents who already have the cards stacked against them. Self-fulfilling prophesy much?

Just to be clear - is it shame as a motivator to stop undesirable behavior in general that is inappropriate, or simply its application to teenage pregnancy?

Social shaming is a powerful tool, particularly with younger people. There is no question that social shaming will work. Cigarette smoking is a prime example of how well it worked. I don't know if these specific ads will work well, but the technique would work to reduce teen pregnancy. Of course, there are people who think teenage pregnancy is just fine and perhaps should even encouraged.

To me those adds look just like abortion-advertisement...

Is it just me, or does the level of minority representation skyrocket in campaigns like these, compared to general advertising?

You don't have to like the truth, but as long as it IS the truth, your criticism of it is invalid. How can anyone make informed decisions without being armed with the brutal truth? I’ve seen too many teen parents buy into an “everything will be fine” fantasy, only to regret it deeply when reality kicks in. No one's short-term feelings are more important than long-term consequences.

And I'm guessing that for all the horror stories about teen pregnancy, they don'thave any more sympathy for abortions.

In all honesty I'm a bastard child and ended up just fine. I do not agree with you one bit and feel horribly insulted as my mom was a teen mom.

Leaving aside the disgraceful shaming methods, as repulsive as they are, two things occur to me:

First, how awful these posters make motherhood sound. Like, if I would not want to be abandoned by my partner, stuck with [disgusting, per the poster] dirty diapers, suffer through painful labor and have to provide for the baby all by myself when I am fifteen, why would I want to do these things at twenty-five or thirty? There is no clear narrative in these posters for "men are like this at fifteen, but when you're twenty-five they will be totally different and having a baby will be awesome, plus the diapers won't bother you!"

Honestly, I know a bunch of women who had babies very young and in difficult circumstances, and while some of them did regret it in a way, absolutely all of them found labor tolerable and child care rewarding. And in general their kids have turned out well.

In some ways, having a baby when you're young is similar to "disability" - the problem isn't that you have a tiny kid and you're seventeen or that you have trouble climbing stairs, the problem is that society has decided that we're not going to support mothers in general and teen moms in particular, and that if you can't climb stairs or see very well or whatever, we sure aren't going to help you with that either. The "problems" of teen parenthood, as with many "problems" of disability, are basically "problems" with a society that doesn't want to help people.

In fact, my friends who did have kids very young pretty much uniformly said that the problem wasn't having the kid - they'd all wanted kids eventually anyway and there's something to be said for having a baby when you're young and healthy - the problem was access to jobs, childcare and medical care.

Second, I'd sure like to know where the posters aimed at young men are - except for one, these are all aimed at women. Why is that?

Of my young mother friends, literally half of them were lied to by the guy - but it was lies about how the guy wanted to have a baby and they'd get married. Like, these young women thought they were making a shared decision to have a baby and start a family; it wasn't a failure to use birth control. And then the guy decided to duck out - except that there really isn't an actual 'get out of jail free' card for them, they're still all on the hook for child support no matter how much they whine about it, and several of them have discovered that they actually care about these kids. The guys' lives were forever altered too. Even the ones who are real assholes and have done everything possible to get out of paying child support or having visitation still have to put a lot of time and effort into avoiding wage garnishment and dealing with the law, plus everyone in our social circles knows that they are deadbeats.

Why not some posters talking to guys? It's not "it only took one prick to get her pregnant", it's "you will be paying child support, your wages will be garnished, and even if you're a generally lousy human being you may find yourself unable to totally ignore and neglect your own kid, so if you're not ready for that, perhaps you should think about birth control and truth-telling".

It seems to work for smoking

I don't have a huge problem with the ones where text covers the images of young men. I think a lot of girls do have this idea of what their boyfriend will be like as a father, which often is totally inaccurate and way too hopeful. Expecting a boy to be a good father is largely unrealistic, and girls should have that brought to their attention before they're pregnant and committed, and he's...not.

They who shame pregnat femals shame themself.