However, I noticed that the questions keep coming so I feel that I need to address them.
Once I found out that Bristol would be one of the cast members on “Dancing with the Stars” I was honestly somewhat shocked and a little disgusted. How can Levi and our family see Tripp while she is away in LA practicing her dance routines? That was my first concern. It has been months since I last saw my precious nephew and now it is clear that it will be many more months before I see him again.
Along with my constant concern for my nephew, what really bothered me, with all due respect to other teen mothers out there, is that I believe this is sending the WRONG message to other teens.
They’re going to look at this as, Bristol Palin got pregnant as a teen, and now she is famous! They will see her being offered multiple opportunities, being cast on a sitcom, joining the cast of “Dancing with the Stars”, all while making hundreds of thousands of dollars. For many teens it will appear that the road to success is through unprotected sex.
I really hope that the media will realize that this kind of thing is sending the message to other young teens that this is glamorous and a way to get a lot of attention. Since Bristol became pregnant, and made headlines world wide, teen pregnancy in Wasilla has sky rocketed!
Everywhere I look I see somebody who is expecting a new baby. If you go into a public restroom there is writing on the walls saying:
“Is it bad that I’m 15 and want a baby soooo bad?”
“I would give anything to have a baby!”
“I want to be a mommy at 14!”
And many other extremely disturbing and jaw dropping messages. I think that having Bristol on television dancing along with those other so-called celebrities is just going to reinforce the idea in the minds of many teens that having a baby can make you glamorous and famous, and you will get tons of attention. Which of course is absolutely ridiculous! Yet many of these girls are just screaming for attention and believe this is a way to get it.
After I read those messages on the restroom wall, I actually took a picture of them with my cell phone because I was so completely shocked by how many young girls are writing them. It seems that it is becoming a trend!
I showed my dad the pictures, and at first he was wondering why in the world I took a picture of the bathroom wall, but when I explained to him how many teens are TRYING to get pregnant in response to all of the attention, money, and fame that Bristol was receiving, he shook his head in disgust.
He just looked at me and we both immediately knew what the other was thinking. How sad these young girl’s lives must be for them to believe that becoming pregnant was their only hope of finding love and getting attention from those around them. I wish I could reach out to these young girls and explain to them that they have their whole lives ahead of them, and there are other ways to get attention without going out and sleeping around just to receive gifts at a baby shower, have people comment on your belly, and buy cute baby clothes.
I just don’t think many of them realize how many responsibilities come with a new baby, and that parenting is essentially a full time job that lasts the rest of your life.
I think that as a speaker for the Candie’s Foundation, and advocate for abstinence, that Bristol should be spreading a message that speaks to the difficulties of motherhood, and pounding home the idea that, yes she is now famous for being a teen mom, but THAT it is not the right decision for the majority of the teenage girls out there.
She should talk about just how hard it is to manage a “full time job and college” while being a “single mother”. Instead I believe she is focused on the opportunity to wear fancy gowns and jewelry, and appear fabulous on TV. Not exactly an opportunity offered to other single teenage mothers in this country.
I do hope she does well on the show, and I sincerely mean that! However for purely selfish reasons I hope she gets to come home sooner, rather than later, so that I can hopefully hold my nephew in my arms before too much time goes by.
Here is just some of the bathroom graffiti I have seen in Wasilla.
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