by Martha Kempner

Lifetime movies have always held a special place in my heart.  I remember watching Blood Vows: Story of a Mafia Wife starring a post-Little House Melissa Gilbert and a really cute Joe Penny with my sister when we were in high school, and it remains one of my favorite (admittedly bad ) movies to this day.  In fact, the concept of the Lifetime movie made it into my wedding vows when my husband promised to watch them without making fun in exchange for me reading his favorite comic books.   Still, I am always a little wary when Lifetime tackles subjects of sexuality; for one thing it takes the movie out of the realm of silly fantasy and makes it part of my job, and for another, television rarely handles these sensitive subjects well.

So I was both excited and a little nervous this weekend when I sat down to watch The Pregnancy Pact, a fictionalized account of events that took place two years ago in Gloucester, Massachusetts where a spike in teen pregnancy was attributed to a pact between girls to get pregnant and raise their children together. National media swarmed the story, and, while much attention was to the pact, it was never proven or disproven.

The movie follows the story of six high school girls.  Rose becomes pregnant first, possibly accidently, and then suggests that her friends join her in this experience and one by one they do.  Each girl has a different home life; Rose lives with her gruff, chain-smoking grandmother; Carissa’s mother, a teen mom herself who is having trouble making ends meet is horrified at the concept of becoming a grandmother at 31; Iris’s mom is never seen but described as an absentee alcoholic; and Sarah’s parents, the most stable and loving of the bunch, are an out-of-work fisherman and his wife who runs a fish restaurant and is the president of the local Family Values Coalition.   Another major character is Sydney Bloom, a twenty-something reporter for a teen website who returns to her former hometown to try to understand the spike in teen pregnancy and ends up befriended and guiding the teens.  Throughout the movie, Sydney often serves as the voice of reason. 

Despite my fears, the movie actually handled its subject matter in a relatively delicate and even-handed way, and it did touch on many of the issues surrounding teen pregnancy in this country.   Early in the movie, the school nurse, having handed out over 150 pregnancy tests and counted 18 positive results, approaches the principal and the school board asking for permission to distribute condoms and other contraceptives to students.  She is met with opposition from Sarah’s mother who argues that the school must promote an abstinence-until-marriage message and handing out condoms is like telling students not to drink but providing beer on the weekends.  The nurse counters by saying that, clearly, if there are 18 girls who are pregnant and 150 who think they might be, teens are not practicing abstinence and adults must be realistic. Still, the board denies her request.

Condoms come up again when, before a party, a young friend of the pregnant girls admits she’s  too embarrassed to buy them.  Sydney takes her into the convenience store and helps her make the purchase with the lesson that a few moments of embarrassment is certainly better than a pregnancy.  Still, condoms and other forms of birth control are ultimately not the most important issue in this movie because these girls did not get pregnant by accident.  These pregnancies were planned.

The movie goes out of its way to point out that these girls have no real idea what it is like to raise a child.  They dream mostly of someone who will love them unconditionally.  In one scene the girls discuss how their kids are going to be best friends too.  Iris explains in  a tone of obvious naiveté:  “We’re going to dress them up in matching  outfits, we’ll take them to the park together, I’m going to cook them dinner every night, and we’ll never yell at them.”  Rose compares herself to Jaime Lynn Spears, the teen television star who got pregnant at 16.  Jaime Lynn Spears of course has money and help whereas at the end of the movie we see Rose in a deep post-partum depression having no luck calming a screaming infant while her grandmother and boyfriend recline on the couch and drink beer.
What made me most pleased about the movie was that it addressed the issue that no one seemed to want to talk about when the real events happened.  Whether or not the girls made a pact is far less important than why any of these young women thought that getting pregnant at 15 was a good idea.  Sarah’s story portrays this point well.  She is happily in love with the star baseball player who talks of marrying her after he goes off to play college ball. Sarah, however, wants nothing more than to stay in Gloucester, work at her parents’ restaurant, marry Jesse, and raise a family.   And, clearly, she fears that if she waits until he goes off to college she may lose her shot at that dream.  

Though her motives are slightly more complicated—she is essentially trying to trap her boyfriend into staying with her—the movie does poke around the edges of her lack of ambition.  Both Sydney and her own mother question why Sarah envisions nothing more for herself and has no intentions of going to college or a starting a career.  Research has shown that ambition and  hope for the future are motivators that help young people prevent both pregnancy and STDs, including HIV.   By the end of the movie, a reluctant school administrator has realized that he needs to do more for his students and suggests not just sexuality education but a class in life skills and job training. 

So, in the end, I think Lifetime came through this time.  Don’t get me wrong, this was neither a feet of cinematic greatness nor was it exactly educational but it was timely (new data this week show teen pregnancy, birth, and abortion rates are all heading up after over a decade of decline) and it touched on important issues, albeit in broad strokes.  Even so it could be helpful to parents, whether you use the movie itself as a discussion starter or you just use the issues it brings up.  

Obviously, you should talk to your kids about abstinence and birth control; let them know what your family values are when it comes to sex and also give them or help them find information about how to protect themselves if they do become sexually active.  But beyond that it is also important to talk to them about their hopes and dreams for the future and what you see and wish for them.   And, of course—without making them feel too guilty— it is important to let them know how all-consuming parenthood really is. 

On a closing note, there is one scene in the movie that touched me (in exactly the way the writers had hoped it would I presume).  After losing her boyfriend and drinking herself into a coma despite the fact that she is pregnant, Sarah and her mom have a bedside chat. Sarah says that there were times she wanted to talk to her  mom about her relationship with Jesse but she knew how important abstinence was to her mom and didn’t want to be a disappointment.  Her mom admits that she and Sarah’s father didn’t actually wait until marriage to have sex (they “slipped” a few times). The admission is somewhat out of character and not at all necessary to the scene.   What’s important is that Sarah wanted to talk to her mother but felt her mom was unapproachable.  Now, I realize this is fiction and such a blunt admission from a 15 year old is rare, but I think the sentiment is common.  A lot of kid do want to talk to parents but fear judgment and even punishment.  The most important thing we can be as parents is approachable.  If we are someone that our kids can talk to whether it’s about their friends, their school work, or their love life, we are far more likely to have an impact.