Hi, I'm Karley, you probably know me from "16 and Pregnant."
- I was on season four. - Season three.
I was on season five, episode seven.
Being where I'm from, how cool is it to have somebody
filming your life, I guess?
I just think it sounds cool. Sign me up.
Oh, my gosh. I'm gonna be on MTV.
Like, I'm gonna be rich!
It was a lot of...
not what I expected it to be.
Giving birth to a kid on TV at 16.
What else is more vulnerable than that?
You think you're gonna be on television,
and it's gonna be great.
Um, that's not really how it works.
The reality is, for many of these girls,
the show did help them.
It-- it was a positive experience.
It just was so unpredictable, the potential downsides.
I mean, we all watched it.
We all watched her...
kick Gary down the stairs.
After the show, I overdosed in the backseat of her car.
I remember flash bangs and smoke bombs.
And it was like, we murdered him there.
I've been homeless, and I've slept out of my truck
with kids in 20-degree weather, and-- [sharp inhale].
The producers are like,
"You know, you're telling your story.
You're gonna help other people."
I think all it did was...
hurt me.
Producers promise it will be fresh.
I was so scared.
People telling me to kill myself.
Maybe someone could learn from this.
It all kicks off with a brand-new show on Tuesday.
Up until very recently,
MTV was teenage HQ.
It was where you went for all things pop culture
that mattered to teenagers.
This is TV, this is live, this is MTV.
But then it was the birth of reality TV.
So we had "Real World," and "Road Rules," "True Life."
We started to see some of this more raw observational
programming that, at the end of the day, felt more real,
perhaps almost too real, honestly.
Those shows were great, and there's always been people
watching that, but they were just slightly older.
I have been known to watch "A Shot at Love," and I watch...
I think they realized that we,
as young viewers, like, we could go more.
We could go raw, and we could go younger,
and so they did.
In 2009, a producer at MTV read a "People Magazine" article
that was all about this epidemic of teen pregnancy.
In America, we were seeing some of the highest rates
of teen pregnancy in our country's history.
In 2008, over 750,000 women
under the age of 20 were pregnant.
And 13,500 of those pregnancies were 14 and under.
And MTV decided, there's a show in this story.
For most American teens,
high school is about having fun.
I remember the first time I saw the commercial,
and I was glued. I was so excited to watch it.
And the commercial that they did, they started
with Maci's big belly.
We are introduced to a new pregnant teen each episode.
So, we really are seeing it through from the final stages
of pregnancy to watching this teen mom
welcome a child into her world.
This is something that I can't watch anywhere else.
There's nothing like this on TV.
I love the styling.
I love the way that they presented the material.
It's very much styled like Juno was.
Juno was this beloved film
that came out two years earlier,
which centers around a teen pregnancy story.
It had that Hollywood movie veneer on it,
and you can even see hints of that inspiration.
There are those diary sketches that open up each episode,
and that is really reminiscent of what we saw in Juno.
I think, in the beginning, the characters that they cast--
it was like, "No, no, no." Whatever you had thought
about what girls get pregnant is wrong.
This is everyone. Look at this girl.
Look at Maci. Look at even Farrah.
She had a two-parent home, and she was a cheerleader.
It is-- your daughter can have this happen.
It really kind of opened the conversation
and scared a lot of people.
And America needed to be shook up a little bit, I think.
I've been doing media for over 30 years.
In 2009, I was mostly known
for "Loveline," "Celebrity Rehab."
I was willing to put myself
in environments that were uncomfortable
because entertainment, funny music,
that attracts the eyes.
We used to have a philosophy we called
the Gaines burger and the pill.
You want a dog to take a pill,
you have to wrap it in something yummy.
And so, I'm the pill and the entertaining aspects
are the yummy aspects.
And if there is not entertainment, I don't get
to deliver the pill.
Prior to "16 and Pregnant," I had done a show a few years
earlier for NBC where Hoda Kotb and I hosted
a primetime special where 16-year-old couples
were given babies, live infants.
These children were being sort of observed
while they tried to manage an infant.
But I knew it quite wasn't hitting the target yet.
And in fact, during that episode,
a distinguished professor of psychiatry from Yale
stood up and said, "This is terrible..."
We don't do experiments like this because we can't
get these through human investigation committees,
because the amount of stress that babies are likely
to be feeling in even very short periods of time.
Which that-- that caught me off guard a little bit.
And I'll never forget he mentioned,
there is a pandemic of pregnancy
among 16-year-olds in this country.
You should just put cameras in the households
of 16-year-old couples with infants,
which stayed in my mind in following that.
So, when "16 and Pregnant" came along, I both knew
from my "Loveline" experience it would have
a very significant impact on teen pregnancy.
And I remember that psychiatrist saying,
"This is the way to do this. It's a good idea."
There were six episodes on season one
following six different girls.
And I thought, this is gonna-- this is gonna impact
teen pregnancy for sure.
I wanna be-- I wanna be part of this.
And I was called by the production team
and the executives at MTV to host their reunion specials
at the end of each season.
The "16 and Pregnant" finale special
hosted by myself, Dr. Drew.
What I appreciate is, we are getting into these women's lives
and some of it is very touching and very intense.
Sorry, .
- You all right? - Yeah, I'm fine.
I had a huge emotional reaction to Catelynn and Tyler's story
where they had given up their child for adoption.
I told you, you guys take my breath away,
your strength and your courage.
And it's just-- it's just incredibly difficult
what you guys-- - Yeah, it's not easy.
And in fact, when I got to the studio,
asked to meet with them privately,
and they thought they were in trouble.
They thought I was going to sort of...
And I just wanted to tell them how deeply moved I was
by their willingness to share their story.
And they've always been the closest to me
of all the-- of all the subjects.
Amber was on season one of "16 and Pregnant."
She got pregnant by Gary.
Why did you tell your mom about the PS3?
You said you wouldn't. It makes me look like an ass.
- I was-- - Oh, 'cause you are an ass for doing it.
Amber was different. She was not the girl next door.
She was rough around the edges.
And, you know, that sticks in people's heads.
We're not perfect.
Oh, I don't really think anybody is.
You're gonna remember the one that causes the most chaos.
The show was wildly popular.
That season reached an audience of over 31 million views
and consistently took the number one spot
in its time period among young females
between the ages of 12 to 34.
MTV also saw the potential for spin-offs here.
"Teen Mom," the spin-off, was this huge phenomenon
where producers kept filming four of the girls
from "16 and Pregnant," and we got to see
really what their life was like after having the baby.
And Amber Portwood was one of the girls
who went on to "Teen Mom."
It's just documentary,
but I don't think anyone appreciated
what we were gonna get into with-- with Amber.
OK, Gary, just come over here and pick me up.
I'll see you in a minute. - All right.
This is a moment from the first season of "Teen Mom,"
where tensions flare between Amber and Gary because it takes
Gary too long to pick Amber up from her dad's place.
- Sorry. - Well, you can [bleep].
I don't wanna be here 'cause it's bull[bleep]-- sourpuss.
- Leave then. - Who are you talking to?
Gary gets upset because Amber's dad
inserts himself into the situation.
You need to [bleep] apologize to him.
Amber, I'm not, I'm out.
Amber, she engages in physical abuse on Gary.
You don't [bleep] talk to my [bleep] dad like that.
You [bleep] hear me? You apologize!
Amber commits domestic violence on camera in front of the crew.
I mean, we all watched it.
We all watched her,
you know, hold him against the wall.
- You don't [bleep]-- - You can get [bleep] out.
Uh, horrible.
These shows were designed to really bring forward
the struggles of pregnancy, relationships, family,
and of course, raising a baby.
But there certainly was tons of concern
about what-- what we do with this, tons of it.
I wanna talk to you about the--
one of the more disturbing scenes
from the entire season, is when the domestic violence...
This is from the reunion episode that season.
You just laughed when you watch...
I'm trying to get them to get some help, ultimately.
And what I'm aiming towards is that should this happen again,
he has got to call the police.
He's got to be willing to do that.
It did turn the tables on what people thought
domestic violence could look like.
It can happen to men.
Just because you're a big, strong dude doesn't mean
you can't have this going on.
We were also trying to emphasize the importance of awareness
and the domestic violence.
So if you have been a victim of teen-on-teen dating violence,
you can learn more about this at loveisrespect.org.
It's one word, L-O-V-E is respect.org.
It's an important issue.
We wanna encourage everyone to log on to get help.
Learn more about healthier ways
to communicate with your partner.
What I always told both the producers and MTV is
they should take a bow.
They went to great lengths to fund and place and get help
when it was necessary.
But an 18-year-old with a child
is not necessarily interested in psychotherapy.
With Amber, clearly, their relationship was troubled,
but we did not know the full extent of it at that point.
Amber and Gary lived in the suburbs of Indianapolis.
In "Teen Mom," season two, there's an episode where Amber
is laying in bed and Gary is leaving.
All right, I'll see you later.
Get off me.
You need to shut your [bleep] mouth!
Amber...
I'll bring your ass to [bleep] court.
- You wanna [bleep] me? - No.
- Amber, quit. - Huh?
How is this on TV?
- Amber? - No, I swear to God, I wish I was bigger than you.
- I'd [bleep] beat your ass. - One more hit.
- One more hit, what?
- You gonna [bleep] hit me? - No.
I am at the edge.
Do you wanna get punched in your [bleep] face?
You wanna hit me then--
I think everybody watched that scene
that when that episode aired the first time,
and they were saying, "This shouldn't be on TV."
You better watch your [bleep] damn back.
I mean, we all watched her kick Gary down the stairs.
So there was an episode of the TV show "Teen Mom"
that aired, and we started to receive phone calls
to the prosecutor's office, the Anderson Police Department,
Department of Child Services, beginning the very next day.
The viewers were the ones that ended up making the calls
to the police, and they got so many
that they had to look at it and say,
"Well, what is actually going on here?"
This is still a very unusual circumstance
for something to air on national television
that had occurred in Madison County,
and that began an investigation from
the Anderson Police Department.
We obtained the raw footage.
Investigators watched the footage and determined
that there were three separate incidents
of domestic violence that had occurred.
She left you a message.
In that scene, you see Amber first take
the car seat from Gary.
[bleep], let me tell you something.
You don't [bleep] talk to my [bleep] dad
like that, you [bleep]--
Any one of those instances where she makes contact
with him in a rude or insolent manner is domestic battery...
...and is now a felony in the state of Indiana
because of the presence of the child.
But this was not why people reached out to
the Anderson Police Department.
Are you done? Are you seriously done?
This was actually the second incident
where domestic violence had occurred on national television.
She slapped him five times, punched him three times
with a closed fist, and then kicked him as he was carrying
a television down the stairs of their home.
But there was a third incident of domestic violence...
that had not aired. It was in uncut footage.
While the criminal investigation was underway,
we addressed the domestic violence on the reunion show.
OK. It's hard to watch this stuff.
It's very hard.
Makes you wanna change, doesn't it?
This has to stop. We all agree.
- Yeah. - Has to stop, yes?
- Yeah. - OK, and you can't...
There was a feeling that we didn't want
participation in this show to cause her to go to prison,
cause her to go to jail, or cause her...
She had enough going on where the consequences
would be potentially profound. On the other hand,
if this were to continue, that has to happen.
The very next day, Anderson Police Department
conducted interviews of both Gary Shirley
and Amber Portwood.
Amber was defiant in terms of downplaying these incidents.
She said, to a large degree, she didn't remember
these instances because she had blacked out.
But if they were on video,
then she admitted that they must have occurred.
She said, she blacked out,
which could be true.
Blacking out in that sort of experience of rages
happens to dissociative people.
Turns out Amber is highly dissociative.
She stated repeatedly that these were not
in any way staged or provoked by the television show.
Amber Portwood agreed to accept that plea agreement
and she was sentenced to two years
that would be suspended to formal probation.
And also, once this became a criminal investigation,
there were steps put in place by MTV and the producers
of "Teen Mom" where a qualified security guard would have to be
present whenever Gary and Amber were together
or whenever Amber was in the presence of her child
for a period of time.
She went from being just another teenager
and then suddenly a national figure.
And then when the domestic violence
comes to light...
this is a level of scrutiny that
probably would never come to light
for the average teenager dealing with pregnancy.
And then, I'm not sure exactly how she gets strung out
on opiates, but she does.
Amber violates her probation
for possession of a controlled substance.
While in court, she went from the courtroom
to the bathroom, said, "Judge, I'll be right back,"
and started sucking out the contents
of multiple fentanyl patches,
went back into the courtroom and said,
"Judge, you have to put me in jail
because I'm gonna kill myself if left to my own devices."
And she was right.
She spends two years in prison.
Then she's invited back on the show.
You're doing a documentary and not wanting to interfere
with somebody's life, but I mean, that's the question
on every single difficult situation we're airing--
are we giving it sunshine and bringing it to light
and showing people what this really looks like
and understanding it and avoiding it?
Or is it part of an entertaining story?
Or both?
Both shows-- "16 and Pregnant"
and "Teen Mom," were airing concurrently,
so MTV is moving very quickly
to keep churning out this content
that they know audiences like.
At the same time, Amber commits multiple acts
of domestic violence.
This is when "16 and Pregnant" was at its peak.
When season two of "16 and Pregnant" came out,
it was the most-watched cable show of the day,
even topping the Winter Olympics
with the women under 34 demographic.
This debate started to emerge.
Was this show glamorizing teen pregnancy,
or was it helping to prevent it?
The media people, not understanding this
about adolescence, looked at it and went,
"Oh, it's gonna glamorize pregnancy.
"It's gonna cause people to get pregnant
in order to be on the show."
And of course, the casting organizations went
to great lengths to exclude those people.
The unfortunate reality is, by the time "Teen Mom"
comes around, there is such a thing as a reality star.
And therefore, they can command more salary.
The cast of "Teen Mom,"
towards the middle of the series,
they started getting $25,000 per episode.
And I remember then started hearing about managers
and agents and publicists also.
Later in the run of the "Teen Mom" series,
the girls started getting
$40,000 to $50,000 per episode.
As the series rolled along, a young person who was pregnant
might look at "16 and Pregnant" and go,
"Well, that is a way to make money.
It's a way to get some sort of deal."
Who knows what they're thinking?
And probably very magical kind of thinking.
But it did look like a reasonable thing to do,
if you were pregnant.
My name is Sabrina Rosario.
So growing up, I think when I started watching
"16 and Pregnant" almost every day,
I think it did put the idea of having a baby in my head.
Yeah, I just had that thought.
When you're on the show, that fame could solve
their problems if they market themselves correctly.
But it was a lot of-- not what I expected it to be.
Um, I had Fish most of the time, Fish Stevens.
It's on silent?
My name is Felicia Stevens.
Perfect.
So, when I first started working at MTV,
I was in the heart of it, the thick of it.
The TRL days, the Times Square craziness,
streets blocked off because NSYNC is there.
And as time wore on, I was a field producer
on "16 and Pregnant."
Producers do everything.
Everything that you see on camera, on film,
we've touched every aspect of that.
There was one girl that needed a producer.
So, when I first spoke with Sabrina, it felt like she was
just a sweet girl, a young girl who had a dream.
I was a cheerleader,
and I wanted to be a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader,
and I had no other aspirations in my life.
Her boyfriend was gonna be a football player.
I went to school with Iman.
I liked that he was a football player, .
I was very vain in high school.
She's the cheerleader.
They're gonna ride off in the sunset together
with their new baby.
I think that's what she wanted to believe was going to happen.
But that was not gonna happen.
To be honest, I just think a lot of the girls that were
on "16 and Pregnant" already had troubled pasts.
I remember saying, and crew members said this too,
"We could write a handbook on how to become 16 and pregnant."
We saw in some of the girls that their own mother
was a teen mother,
their parents had addiction issues
and/or not present in the home.
This is an issue that happens everywhere, right?
Not just the girls on the show.
So, when I was younger, with my mom and my two siblings,
up until I was about seven years old,
we had different dads.
My mom, I just knew she wasn't present.
At four or five years old, I was raising my two siblings,
and I just remember, like,
playing outside in the backyard.
I would feed them, like, the little canned sausages,
Vienna sausages.
Yeah, noodles.
A young child taking care of children is highly traumatic,
but this is particularly traumatic because I would be
traumatized at my stage of life, being a week alone
with a five- and a two-year-old and trying to manage it
by myself-- that's a lot. At age six, seven?
It's just overwhelming. And yet she just did it.
When I was about seven years old,
I remember being in the car with my mom.
She was speeding and she got pulled over.
And when she got pulled over, I unbuckled my seat belt
and I sat on her beer, her case of beer in the back seat.
So the cops took me away.
After that, I started living with my dad,
and I'd never met my dad really before.
I think I met him like twice.
They ended up with their dad.
I felt alone a lot of the times
and couldn't stop crying my whole life.
Try not to cry-- OK.
Um, probably. I cry a lot, actually.
I cry about everything now.
I...
I see teen pregnancy as a symptom of larger issues,
but we didn't always get to highlight them on the show.
I'm of the opinion that most teen pregnancy is already
a symptom of something going on
from a mental health standpoint.
And that childhood trauma, of course,
plays out through mental health issues.
People try to solve that trauma
by doing things like having a baby.
Take one AB mark.
My mom had me at 16 years old.
So my mom was a teen mom.
Her and my biological dad, they haven't been together
since I was two. At about maybe ten,
my stepdad, very abusive, physically, verbally,
went to jail for punching me in the face.
Like, he just wasn't a good man.
We dealt with evictions.
We dealt with our heat being turned off, our water.
We used to have to go take big gallons to my step grandparents
and fill them up with water, so we could flush our toilet
'cause we didn't have water for so long.
Yeah, turning on the stove so we'd have a little bit of heat.
So, yeah, poor.
I've blocked out a lot of my childhood.
Like, when I...
I don't know, like, I don't wanna cry, but, like,
when I think back to...
I just don't remember a lot of it.
Like, I mean...
Appearing on a television show could be a huge opportunity
for someone who doesn't come from a lot of prosperity,
someone who comes from a small town
and a rough family background.
When I was 16, I was dating Jamie for three months,
and then I got pregnant. Mm-hmm.
Like, even before I got pregnant,
I watched "16 and Pregnant" every week.
Oh, yeah, my mom was also addicted to it.
I mean, it was a huge show then.
Pretty much anybody I knew watched it.
I mean, look at them.
They came from "16 and Pregnant."
Now they're living in big, beautiful homes
with money for days, and they're well-off.
We were not.
I was a poor, "16 and Pregnant" mom.
I might get the fame of being on TV,
and they end up making the big money.
I'm from a small town in East Texas.
My dad, he is my stepdad.
He was really funny and very playful, but then he got sick.
He had a brain tumor, so it really changed
his personality in ways that weren't great.
It was very chaotic.
Me and Todd were dating.
He was two years older than me.
He was very, like, comforting and funny,
and he was there when I needed someone,
and I got pregnant my junior year.
I had watched "16 and Pregnant."
We just thought we were gonna do it and make a paycheck.
One day, I was talking on the phone with, like,
one of the producers.
They were going back and forth, picking girls.
They were trying to choose.
I mean, they asked you a lot of, like,
mental health questions.
They're asking you stuff from your childhood,
current things like that.
I honestly didn't think we'd even get picked.
I didn't think we had enough, like, trauma.
And there was things that I knew
I wasn't gonna share on camera.
I thought, automatically, I thought, well, that's it.
They're not, you know, they're not gonna wanna do it.
But then, I'm 17. We were going on vacation.
First vacation I ever been on my entire life.
I was, man, maybe like 12 weeks pregnant,
maybe a little farther along.
We all went out in the water.
My friend looked back at me and said,
"Don't come any further
or you're gonna get caught in the riptide."
But at that point, like, I was caught in it.
I blacked out.
And then I remember, like, the lifeguard coming, um...
and yelling.
And I had, like, salt water in my lungs.
They were trying to find the heartbeat for the baby.
I was looking around and, um...
Todd wasn't there.
I remember they called, like, the Coast Guard
to start looking.
A few days later, we got the phone call.
The cleanup crew had found him.
When all that was happening, then you're just,
like, focusing on being pregnant and having this baby
and hoping nothing happens to the baby
because it's all you have left.
I called the producer I had
and told them he had passed away.
And I probably won't do it anymore now.
It was almost immediate. They were like...
"We want you."
When you're casting a reality show,
you want compelling stories.
And sometimes that looks like casting someone
who just lost their baby's father.
You could imagine that to be
somewhat of a Machiavellian move on part of producing,
but her story had become interesting.
They wanted to investigate it.
The industry is pressure.
It's entertainment. We're always about,
You know?
How do I keep these eyes on this show?
What will viewers wanna keep watching?
After a girl is cast on the show, they have to sign
a contract or agreement to appear on the TV show.
But remember, we're dealing with minors.
So how much can an adolescent pay attention to a contract
or negotiate payment or understand what down the road
may be a consequence from being on television?
Essentially impossible.
No, no we don't care.
I mean, I've-- I've never read a contract in my life.
Usually it's just skip to sign,
it's usually big words, mumbo-jumbo.
We don't know what any of it means anyway at that age.
Even an adult doesn't really have a clue
as to what really happens to make a show like this.
So why would we think a 16-year-old would know?
So they're relying on somebody with a functioning frontal lobe
hopefully, the parents.
But, of course, parents may have their own biases,
their own mental health issues, their own reasons for consenting
to something like this that may not be
in the best interest of the child.
So, when MTV first started talking,
immediately they pulled out the contracts just to go over
before even deciding to do it.
It did say there was room for negotiation, but my mom was
like, "If you don't sign it, maybe they won't, like,
accept you or not want you on the show."
Pff-- I doubt it.
I know I didn't read it.
We were just...
poor people in Ohio.
We were just like, "Cool, sign me up."
So I wanna tell you, I was scared to ask.
I was scared to talk about it.
And if it was in my contract, I definitely didn't read it,
which is crazy to think about now.
But at 17, you're not really thinking about it.
So I just signed it, I mean, I didn't think--
And I didn't-- and I really didn't know
how much I was gonna get paid until, I think,
I, like, got my first check.
I think it's like $5,000, like a total-- $5,000.
I was like, "OK, well, at least after, I could get a car."
And I needed a car.
And I used that $2,500, the first $2,500,
for things for the baby.
The last $2,500, I think I bought, like, a lot of beer
for, like, house parties and stuff.
But, um, which was horrible.
It was interesting when I would tell people
that I was working on the show.
Some were-- mm.
Gave me a look like, "Oh, I don't-- you know,
you're glamorizing teen pregnancy."
So I would always reiterate that
there's no glamour involved here.
If you look at any episode of "16 and Pregnant,"
you'll see the belly reveal,
doctor's appointments, the hospital.
This is not fun.
We're not talking "Housewives" here.
They're not in glam, OK, before they get to set.
You know, they're wearing their T-shirts and shorts,
and they're not going to Turks and Caicos, .
You know, this is real deal.
We probably went out every couple of weeks.
And then once any of the girls were about to deliver,
then it was more of, like,
being in touch with her, like, almost every day.
Like, are you good? Are we on?
I would say during-- during filming they were really good.
It was-- during filming they were really good.
But the problem is...
And I wasn't trained or anything to handle it.
One day I went to Walmart, before the episode aired,
I was not expecting to see a picture...
of me and Todd on the cover of the "Star Magazine."
It was just talking about the accident
and it was like implicating that we murdered him there.
It was a pretty big shock,
'cause my episode hadn't aired yet.
But I remember thinking, like,
"Nobody called and asked me anything."
Like, this was being put out there, and then I was like,
I had no voice to it at all.
I did not ever think that would happen, truly.
Maybe these women thought the show would be an escape,
a chance for fame.
But in the meantime, they're being very public
with their lives, but we couldn't have predicted
audiences treating them as non-human entities
and subject them to ridicule.
I've talked to girls who have said,
you know, they got called out in the street
while they're pushing their baby in a stroller
and people are yelling at them for something that they did
in their episode. They actually feel like,
"Oh, God, is this girl gonna hit me?"
You're no longer a private person.
Where it becomes stickier with this particular show
is the girl signed on-- yes, absolutely,
they knew what they were doing, they chose to be public figures.
They've consented, but can you consent
when you're a pregnant 15-year-old
and you're desperate for money
and you don't know what you're going to do
and you maybe don't have the best parents?
I don't think a lot of these girls knew
all of the negative aspects of fame.
I was with Jamie for three months,
and then I got pregnant.
So I lived with Jamie and Jamie's dad
in a whole 'nother town.
When we were filming for the show, however,
any time MTV came in, maybe two times a month,
I would go to my mom's house and spend the night there.
So we actually made a bedroom there
because my mom didn't want the whole world
to know that she let her 16-year-old daughter
go live with her boyfriend.
And there was even a part in the show
where she cries about it.
Now, when people look at me, they think that
I'm this horrible person because I have a 16-year-old daughter
who's pregnant, which I worked so hard to embed it
in your head that this isn't something that you wanted.
Well, I feel terrible for both of them,
obviously, but the thing I heard was Mom saying,
how could I put my daughter back in the same environment
where I got pregnant? What did I expect?
What's interesting to me, she's caught up
in her own stuff, and she is not
fully present for Jessica, maybe the way she should be.
My mom probably thought that me being on TV and pregnant
would help with finances, like things that are typically
very difficult for, like, just your average teen mom.
But I didn't want our dirty laundry out there.
But we had a lot of it.
When I gave birth, I just recently went back
and watched it, and I cried.
So I was like, "That is really such a beautiful thing to have."
Like, I've never filmed another labor and delivery.
I only ever had that filmed.
And yeah, it's beautiful to be able to go back and look.
The whole internet hated me just from seeing my show,
because the way I talked and looked.
I was 130 pounds when I got pregnant with him.
I was 223 when I gave birth.
I gained 100 pounds with that kid.
And I was 16 years old,
so I ruined my body at such a young age.
This was in 2011, when social media was really taking off.
And these girls were facing extraordinary stress,
not just from being on TV,
but the pressure of social media.
The day the show aired,
I was dealing with hate comments, negativity.
It was like hate from everywhere.
"You fat cow, you fat whale, fat,
fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, fat."
I logged onto Twitter
and had people telling me to kill myself.
When people watch this show,
they think we're just a character,
we're not a real human being.
And everybody on TV deals with that, but we were children.
And it's almost like people forgot that we were children.
Audiences are drawn to instability and conflict
and chaos in these reality shows
because it's what we call hate-watching.
There are fans who derive pleasure from criticizing
what's on their screen.
Young women in particular gather in mobs
and try to scapegoat.
And what better scapegoat than a helpless teenage mom?
One study concluded that hate is a strong driver
for retaining viewers.
For every 1% of hate response on social media,
there's a boost to viewership for the following episode.
That is more than double the boost if the person said
they, quote, "Loved it."
I was on season four. My mom was also a teen mom.
She had me at 16.
I think every teenager thinks it would be fun to be on MTV.
I was 16, and I met Ben at a party.
He was cute, but there wasn't really a relationship,
and then we started sleeping together.
Still no relationship.
I got pregnant at 17.
When my episodes aired on TV,
they were focusing on my weight.
MTV did the cartoon of my cankles... dancing.
I was like, "Oh gosh, this is so embarrassing."
And there was one time they had my boyfriend
go to the doctors with me,
and I had stepped on the scale
and I had just broke 200 pounds.
Oh, man.
And so, one, for the whole world to see
and your new boyfriend that you don't even have
a solid relationship yet, to see your weight
and I just started crying.
And they'd be like, "Oh, we need to film this scene
going to the lake."
And I did not want to be on camera in a swimsuit.
They're like, "Well, let's just do it.
It'll be fun."
She clearly is thinking about it.
Remember, we were thinking about, you know,
discouraging teen pregnancy.
What she was saying about her body is
one of the realities of being a pregnant woman.
And I'm sure they wanted to portray that.
In preparation of doing this interview,
I went back and looked at some of the old comments
that I could find.
Some of the comments would be like,
"Ew, her makeup's so bad."
"Ew, she's fat."
That I'm so boring and I have no personality.
I'm a bad mom.
MTV did kind of sell me on it, like, "Oh, it's gonna stop
"the stigma on being young and pregnant.
It's gonna help other people choose birth control."
And I'm not sure if I even helped anyone.
I don't know that my story made it easier
for someone else. I think all it did was hurt me.
So I went into--
they-- I got to choose the date
that Tristan was born on because I was getting induced.
And by the evening, they told me that
my contractions were coming too hard and too fast
and that we needed to have a C-section.
I remember the show being so excited that they were going
to actually film my C-section.
Like, "This is the first time
we're, like, getting the whole on camera."
And I'm feeling all this pressure
and already have anxiety.
They have a bucket of blood that's being like sucked up
right by my head.
And just these cameras all around me
and all these noises beeping.
I just remember being so scared.
Oh, my God.
Even if you get pregnant young,
it doesn't mean your life is over.
If anything, Tristan made my life better.
I often wonder, what would my life been
if I didn't get pregnant?
But you're at a point where you have a baby
and you have a family, and you don't really care.
I would say yes and no.
I don't go back and watch the show
because it just brings up a lot of feelings I don't care to...
relive again.
So, I'm glad that they have
the first moments for Tristan to see.
For me, I don't know that I necessarily want to
go back and look at it.
Ben did not like the way he was portrayed.
Do you think we're in a good place in our relationship?
My relationship with Ben was good,
but Ben made a comment that he would rather live in a tent
than have a conversation about us moving in with his mom.
And MTV went, "Wait,
can we film you setting up a tent?"
And Ben's like, "I will only do this if I never have
to film anything ever again."
So they have him sitting in an empty tent.
I feel like...
having your relationship on a microscope for everyone
to see causes more issues.
So, I feel like whenever we stopped filming,
it made our relationship better and just made us both
happy overall.
I'm not gonna lie and say, like, the attention.
I obviously wanted some kind of, like, attention.
But outside of that, I think I was thinking that,
like, "Yeah, we can do this." Like, "We've got this.
We're gonna show them that we've got this."
That was my expectation. And I do still watch it.
I'm like, "Yeah, you did get that,
just not in the way that you anticipated."
My story is different than other girls.
I grew up very Mormon and religious,
and I bring that up because I do think it shaped
a lot of how my childhood went.
I didn't talk about sex in my household.
Yeah, we didn't talk about sex at all
because in Utah, it is very abstinence-based.
I don't remember learning about condoms, birth control,
or anything in high school.
And at home, especially, we were not having
that conversation because you don't have sex
until you're married, so why would we talk about it?
I met my daughter's dad, Tony, when I was, uh, 15.
I was in science class,
and he kept looking at me. Then we started hanging out.
I think I liked the attention. You know, I think...
I don't think it really mattered who he was
as a person, or, you know, I think
I just liked that this boy was giving me attention.
Very quickly, he wanted to, like, hold my hand,
and he wanted to kiss.
We were in a bedroom alone together, you know?
I'm like, "Oh, you wanna do what?"
And so it was scary, but we did.
So I was 17 when I found out I was pregnant.
And then we go to the ultrasound with my doctor,
and we find out we might be having twins.
My mom cried.
My mom cried for, like, a week straight.
She was just heartbroken,
as I imagine I would be, too, if my daughters
got pregnant at that age.
My parents were very supportive, though.
Now, her and her boyfriend decide to get married
so that they can officially raise these kids
as a family unit.
I remember thinking, "I wonder if MTV's casting."
Tony was like, "Let's do it."
He's like, "We're gonna be famous.
"This is gonna be awesome.
We're going to look so good."
Maybe. Maybe in the beginning.
Absolutely.
I was like, "Oh, my God, my life is about to change."
And then I had babies, and everything changed.
With twins, I think I was just in survival mode,
just, like, doing what needs to be done.
I think I was...
...thinking about my daughters.
I think I was thinking about everything except for
how I was feeling and what I needed or what I wanted.
And then we were actually filming,
and that was such a stressful time.
And it wasn't stressful because of anything the show provided.
It was stressful because who I was filming with.
And yeah.
I grew up with this expectation, right?
The man goes to work, and then he comes home,
and he provides.
But-- and I knew this was
a stressful time for my parents.
You know, they had to pick up
extra financial support.
They had to start support-- you know, they were doing
so much for me.
And this is one of those memories that's not great,
so I don't have a lot of details surrounding it,
but we were still living at my mom's house,
and something did happen between Tony and I
that we got into a really, really, really bad argument,
and, um...
The cameras weren't there.
But at that point, my relationship with Tony
already wasn't great, and my producer had called me.
They called me, and they're like, "Hey,
"Tony let us know what happened.
We're coming down, an emergency trip."
I'm thinking, you know, we don't--
I don't wanna-- this is not something I wanna talk about.
And this is when everything comes crashing down.
There are gray areas that we, you know, worried--
did we do the right thing?
That's inevitable in situations like this when you're going
into very stressful environments
and showing people's lives on television.
OK, I remember this. This is Carly's episode
from season five.
You know what, Tony?
Part of me would like you guys to move out.
The tension really comes out
in the dynamic between Tony, the husband, and Karley's mom,
because her mom is very adamant
about the two of them staying there so that she can help them
raise these twins.
I don't feel like you really know how much we really...
Oh, you can see how uncomfortable Karley is.
She is wanting her cameras gone so bad.
You can see it all over her face.
Well, if it's a big deal, then...
No, it's not a big deal.
It's just a little bit of grat--
a little bit of gratefulness.
Do I not show appreciation?
No, last night you didn't.
But I work my ass off every [bleep] day.
- I-- - Oh, my gosh.
You can see his anger building, and it looks like the women
know exactly what's about to happen.
Oh, man.
Your mom's [bleep] crazy. I'm leaving.
I-- Tony, I work every--
Shut the [bleep] up, Cindy.
You're [bleep] crazy.
Tony, don't sit there
and talk to her like that. - It's fine.
The fact that he can talk to the grandparents like that
is astonishing.
I go to work every [bleep] day.
- I do too! - I [bleep] work my ass off.
I think I was [bleep] scared and didn't know what to do.
And then I come home and get told I don't know
what's coming towards me? - I didn't say it like that!
Shut the [bleep] up.
Get out.
You're not gonna talk to her like that.
- [bleep] you. - Seriously.
[bleep] I hate this Tony.
I hate this! I don't wanna do it anymore!
Oh my gosh, I gotta imagine that she's probably really
embarrassed that this is what people are going to see
of her family.
My mom was not happy.
I think that's probably one of the hardest things
I struggle with,
with my episode, is how people perceive her.
And I don't like the way people demonized her for it.
My mom said, "Yes," and she had to participate,
but I think about it sometimes.
I put her in this insane situation
that she was uncomfortable in and didn't wanna be in,
and she did a really good job. You know, she was--
and she did it for me.
And that broke me and ruined me for years, so.
So Tony and I, after the show, it didn't turn around
for the better. It only got worse from there.
We stayed together, I wanna say, 'til they were two.
I really wanted the chance to talk to the dads,
'cause I was so disappointed.
None of them stuck around.
And these were about the most important relationships
in anyone's life,
and very few of the relationships
seen on "16 and Pregnant" last.
But keep in mind how many teen couples
just in general stay together,
and how many teen moms stay with the baby's father.
Statistically, that's very few.
This is the reality of--
the ripple effect of teen pregnancy.
I consider the show a triumph
because it accomplished what we set out to do.
After the episode aired, I still have questions.
I wanna know more about what their life is like,
why people have succeeded and been resilient
where they have,
and why people have struggled where things didn't go so well.
My name is Aleah LeBouf. I was on season five.
It's just been me and my mom, our whole lives.
And I loved my mom. I adored her.
A lot of times when we were struggling or our electric was
off or no running water, you know, I'd always tell her,
like, "You're a good mom anyways, Mom.
I love you."
And then she met my stepdad.
If I locked my keys in my car, that's who I called.
If I was broke down, that's who I called.
That was my dad.
But my mom struggled throughout my whole childhood
and started doing drugs whenever I was pretty young.
When I fell into teenagehood, I wanted to drink
with my friends, and I wanted to hang out and smoke weed,
do illicit drugs, and that's when I ended up
in juvenile the first time.
I was in juvenile for a total of three years.
And that's when I met Sean.
I was 16.
One of the unfortunate aspects of being in criminal detention
is sometimes people find each other there,
and that's a bad sign. It does not go well.
As soon as we both got out of juvenile detention,
I wanna say whenever I turned 17,
I moved out of my parents' house.
We got our first apartment maybe two, three months later.
And then I find out I'm pregnant.
So, Aleah has type 1 diabetes.
She was already insulin-dependent,
and she's pregnant, and the metabolism of pregnancy
is highly unpredictable for diabetes,
and it makes the pregnancy high-risk
of various complications.
My actual birth-birth was not filmed
because my doctors were not comfortable with filming
a high-risk pregnancy.
But whenever I started filming, they wanted as many details
as possible. - Genetically go to...
Voice the issues that we were having...
It's 285.
...and talk about the possible birth defects.
Doctor doesn't want to chance a stillbirth.
It was just a consistent anxiety for me.
But yeah, I believe it was an accurate portrayal
of my actual fears and anxieties at that time.
We had Peyton, and she was healthy and beautiful
and just honestly the easiest, best baby ever.
She hardly ever cried. She made parenthood easy.
It was all the other stuff...
that made parenthood hard.
At that point when the show ended,
life hadn't hit me hard yet.
Life didn't hit me hard until a year later.
So Aleah was very close to her stepfather.
Unfortunately, he is killed in a tragic accident.
And then...
my mom, who was on crack when I was younger,
got her life together and then, uh,
you know, to get a call from a coworker of hers,
and he said, "Are you sitting down somewhere?"
And I said, "Ray, don't say it." I was like, "Don't say it, Ray."
"You can't, you can't--
Ray, don't say it."
And he said, "I am so sorry."
And I just threw my phone on the wall, and it shattered.
They found her keeled over dead
in a shitty, shitty crack hotel.
Cause of death was cocaine and a fentanyl overdose.
And then I said, "You selfish bitch.
"you selfish bitch. You [bleep]-- .
You left me here."
And then I just fell on the floor
and I just started crying.
And I mean, I was in a fetal position.
I started grieving hard and spiraling,
going out drinking a lot with my friends,
not really being able to go to work.
And at this time, Aleah had four kids
with three different fathers.
Since my parents died, I've been homeless
and I've slept out in my truck with the kids.
And now I see certain places when I drive past and I think,
"If me and the kids had to sleep in a tent,
that'd be a good place to go."
I know that it's easier...
to steal butcher ground beef than it is to steal the rolls.
I know that hospital parking lots are
the best place to go and sleep at, at night,
'cause they cover the wind and the cold,
and typically people park there overnight.
Nobody notices.
'Cause they have security cops don't go in there.
And then I wouldn't get the kids taken away.
And worrying about that kind of stuff,
it changes you a little bit, you know?
I was on "16 and Pregnant," season three.
We first meet Jessica as a 16-year-old girl
with her boyfriend, Jamie.
It seems like she had a really unstable upbringing.
And dealing with all this hate and backlash online...
after the show, you wonder
what happened to this person after they gave birth.
Being on that show is like the weirdest bubble, I mean,
'cause you gotta think, you go from being just
a regular person, you wake up, you do whatever, you go to bed.
Now you wake up and you can't even get on social media
without seeing the worst of worst.
I just started partying
and then all of a sudden, pills.
I started going into the parties and we were doing Xanax,
and then it was Percocet.
And I was 17, and had somebody shoot me up with heroin.
Online negativity certainly isn't
what causes addiction, per se, but it might have motivated her
seeking relief with a substance, certainly.
And heroin addicts do not attend to their kids.
To the outside world, I was a functioning addict.
To the inside world, I was dying.
I always knew it wasn't OK, but in my head,
I kept a house, job, car.
I thought, "I'm fine. I'm still being an OK mom."
It's not like he wasn't getting fed or clothed,
but emotionally, I just wasn't there
like I should have been.
I don't think I was like, "Oh, because of this show,
I'm gonna go do drugs."
But I think naturally, yeah,
it was the only thing that I could numb...
everything with, was drugs.
She has plenty of reasons to be upset
with the negativity she had to suffer through
and how she perceives it as having contributed
to her progression of addiction.
The first steps of sobriety are about dealing with resentments,
and if she is not doing that,
resentments become a reason to continue to use.
A year after the show,
my grandma and I get into a heated,
heated yelling match,
and I'm sure it was my fault.
She tried to push open my bedroom door
and then I pushed the door back.
And then she fell back onto the ground.
And the neighbors heard us screaming at each other.
And they call the cops, cops show up,
they find out that I had pushed her.
And so they arrest me and I go to jail.
Also in 2012, I got a bag of heroin.
I was in the backseat of
my best friend at the time's car.
We go to a McDonald's. It's like 2 in the morning.
I overdosed in the backseat of her car.
Back then, Narcan wasn't a thing like it is today,
where you can just Narcan and send you on your way.
So I'm, like, choking on my tongue,
she doesn't wanna call the cops,
so she drives me all the way to the hospital.
By the time I got to the hospital,
I was black-and-blue, and they were saying
I was gonna be brain-dead.
So when I woke up from the coma after I overdosed,
my boyfriend, Jamie, was there, my grandma, all my family
was surrounding me,
and me and Jamie, we found out we're gonna have another kid.
I was pregnant.
Yep.
Very early, four weeks pregnant with my daughter.
Now we're having another kid,
and I just overdosed with one kid.
Yeah.
Yeah, so,
that's a rough one.
And luckily, she is... the most beautiful girl.
And I never touched it again.
So she's my miracle baby.
Teen pregnancy is a marker for mental illness
and sometimes addiction.
And addiction by itself has a worse prognosis,
particularly opiate addiction, than the majority of cancers,
and people just can't seem to understand
why addicts die young.
They rarely see 50.
Valerie from season two, she was a foster kid.
She was adopted, passed away from an overdose in 2016.
And then you had Autumn,
who passed away from an overdose.
And then another girl from season five.
There was a lot of stuff going on
and then you hear she died.
And it's all been addiction-related.
Would they have been in addiction
without the show?
Probably, based on what their lives were like
before they were found by MTV.
That's my opinion.
You have to ask yourself, why do people watch dramas?
Normal, healthy people are not interesting.
So if you're going to create something where you show
people's lives that people wanna watch,
there's going to be drama.
And if there's drama, there's going to be
some mental health issues going on.
And I'm of the opinion that they should be
brought to light and addressed.
And that's how people learn.
Are you having fun?
Zoe, look at the camera.
Say, "Cheese!"
Zoe is my rainbow baby.
She's been waiting for this for her whole life.
Don't boo me. Don't boo me.
Don't boo her. That's what she said.
Don't boo you? We're definitely not booing.
- We're cheering. - Yay, Zoe!
Yay, Zoe!
We already slated and everything?
So, by the time we get to season five,
we meet Savannah.
Her little girls, Zoe, is actually her youngest kid.
She gave birth to her first child, Rowan,
in the season finale.
Rowan coming along was probably the most
difficult thing for us, but the best thing
that ever happened.
Watching my episode of "16 and Pregnant"
for the early moments with Rowan, it's bittersweet.
And that's my firstborn, and it's nice to have
those moments captured, but...
I was incredibly depressed and incredibly sad.
Savannah had a very chaotic childhood.
It was just my mom and I.
I grew up in public housing.
My mom has been on food stamps since as long as I can remember.
I grew up with my alcoholic mother,
and lots of screaming, lots of doors slamming.
It was obvious on the show.
- Stop slamming doors! - No!
And then I turned a teenager.
I had a group of friends that I spent a lot of time with,
and we were wild teenagers.
Very wild.
My first alcoholic drink was at 14.
Zoe, come here.
- Is it OK if I-- OK. - Oh, please, please.
I know you don't understand a whole lot of this,
but Mommy's gotta do something,
and you have to be a good girl, OK?
- OK. - You gotta be quiet.
All right, Mommy's gonna go back downstairs
and do this, OK?
I love you big as the sky, OK?
Oh, my God, she's so cute. She's got such good energy.
I hope she never loses that.
I was 13 when I met Stone, and he was 14.
He was funny. He made me laugh.
And he brought a sense of comfort to my life,
which is what I felt like I had been missing.
When I was 16 years old, my friend had the notion that
she was pregnant, and she wanted me to take
one with her to ease her mind, and her mind was put at ease
when hers came up negative and mine came up positive.
My mom found out I was pregnant because I left
the pregnancy test in the bathroom.
She just told me she wasn't raising another child.
Applying for "16 and Pregnant" was not my idea.
My friend was like, "Hey, you should
sign up for '16 and Pregnant.'"
And I was like, those kinds of things don't happen
to people like me.
So she sent in an email for me,
and three months later, I got a phone call.
Being where I'm from, how cool is it to have somebody,
you know, filming your life, I guess?
I guess I kind of thought the girls of "16 and Pregnant"
were having fun, and they were having a good time.
But going into "16 and Pregnant,"
I had two concerns.
One was that it would split Stone and I completely,
and to a point, it did.
And my second fear was my mom being my mom and doing
what she does, drinking, and she's a very vile person
when she's drunk.
And I feared that she was just gonna be so hateful
to everybody, but, I mean, my fear came true.
- Stop slamming doors! - No!
This is when the mom comes home intoxicated
and scares the brother, whose name is Ben,
and this is while Savannah's baby is sleeping.
Take responsibility for your own [bleep] actions.
Oh, my God...
I'll get the cops over here to do it.
Do it!
And Savannah ends up calling the police.
Yes, sir. I have a belligerently drunk mother.
And as far as my little brother,
I don't feel comfortable leaving him here tonight.
You can say what you want about "16 and Pregnant,"
but this is about as raw as you can get for TV.
The girl looks absolutely mortified.
On top of everything, this is what your life is,
and everybody sees it.
I feel really bad for her, and I feel bad for
the little brother, too. Oh, my gosh.
But I can't force her to give you her kid.
But she's not fit to take care of him.
I remember all the vans, the cameras.
I've seen a lot of that fighting
and a lot of her drinking, so, like, it's just past me now.
It's like, she's gonna keep doing it.
Why even care anymore?
After tonight, baby, you gotta go assert it
somewhere else. - That's fine.
Savannah did exactly the right thing.
I sort of admire how Savannah behaved here.
That's exactly right.
They're looking for you. Go up there and stop.
I'm going to.
If we're gonna document life with an alcoholic,
you're gonna see stuff like this.
And we feel as though we're doing something wrong
when we look at it,
but I would argue that this kind of--
these circumstances need sunlight.
It might motivate Savannah to get out of there
and build her own life away from mom.
Stone and I were not on good terms at all.
We argued the entire time we were filming.
I was miserable.
After the show, we broke up.
I wanted to be a mom to Rowan,
I just didn't know how.
And I feel like I failed my son
because he's growing up in a broken home.
...I could just rewind time
and figure out where everything went wrong
and fix it. - "Sometimes I wish
"I could rewind my life
and figure out where everything went wrong."
My life got really complicated after that.
After my episode came up,
I had to turn my phone off from the notifications
that were coming in.
There was a fair share of negative comments
because of, "How dare the black girl make it on TV."
There was one girl that posted something like,
"Imagine being famous for opening your legs."
I was incredibly depressed and incredibly sad.
Rowan went to live with Stone's mom.
And then, I think I was 19, 20.
I was in a very abusive relationship
off-again, on-again.
And then after that, I lost myself completely.
Eight years later, after the show,
I was pregnant with Zoe.
Zoe's father is Jonathan O'Dell,
he was put-together,
and we had been living together.
Look, you told me no about putting up
the Christmas tree early, and it's literally two days,
three days after Thanksgiving, and you're already ready to go.
Hey, 'cause you wanted that.
He had manners.
Someone that didn't yell.
Someone that didn't put their hands on me.
Someone that never left me wondering where
I stood with him.
Um...
just...
peace.
October 7th, I woke up
and he had a friend that was living with us.
I am not his biggest fan.
I went to wake him up.
We had this big bay window, and I...
I was being nosy, and I can see military personnel.
There's two choppers in the air.
Every agency you could possibly imagine was there.
The next thing I remember...
is flash bangs and smoke bombs...
everywhere.
Jonathan laid on top of me in the hallway,
and his friend comes out dressed in bulletproof vest,
uh, all the works. And his friend
shot 11 shots out of the window
at the FBI and cracked their Bearcat window.
And, uh...
We just kind of accepted the fact that
I was gonna die that morning.
So, um,
we both kind of said a prayer and goodbye.
And, uh,
finally, like, everything stopped for like a second.
I got up and I ran out the door with my hands up.
And I said, "Please don't shoot. I'm 24 weeks pregnant."
And they snatched me up and cuffed me and threw me
in the back of the Bearcat
and I sat out in the cold for two and a half hours,
when they finally uncuffed me, and told me that
I wasn't under arrest at this time.
I thought for sure that they had the wrong house,
the wrong people.
Um...
that wasn't the case.
I found out then, Jonathan and his friend were
part of a self-named group
called the Second Amendment Militia,
who were gonna go to the border
and shoot immigrants.
If there was, I missed it.
Hey.
Look at me.
- You're beautiful. - Thanks.
You're welcome. Can I have a kiss?
Three months later, I had Zoe.
I spent...
the next year and a half bouncing from place to place
with my daughter--
Because I couldn't work.
I was gonna raise my daughter in a two-parent household
that wasn't chaotic. It was full of love.
Hm.
I was gonna have what I deemed as
my happily ever after,
and it abruptly got taken from me.
Zoe's never met her father.
She only knows him through video chat.
I don't know what I'm gonna do when she asks me one day
why he can't come home with her.
I don't blame the show.
It's not show-related that I was with him.
I was looking to fill a void, and it didn't.
The older I get, the more I see that
no amount of love from people on the internet,
no amount of love from people who watch you on TV
will do that.
I made the decision to sober up...
because I don't wanna walk in my mom's footsteps.
And Rowan is back in my life.
"16 and Pregnant" was a high-wire act.
It was very challenging, it was scary.
And after Season 5, MTV ceased production.
I was glad to see it go, frankly, because dealing
with adolescents with pregnancy, it just was very challenging.
I think that my life would have been a struggle regardless.
Do I feel like it added fuel to my already...
roaring fire of self-doubt? Absolutely.
I don't think that was their intention.
I think their intention was just to be realistic
and to show the struggles.
The one thing we have not talked about is
bad circumstance do not have to mean bad outcome.
I got pregnant at 17 and had Tristan at 18.
He is going to be 15 this year,
has made the honor roll every year in school.
I think it's pretty cool.
Like, not a lot of people get to say that they were born
on TV or just even on TV.
So it's something that makes me different,
more unique from people.
Hi. I'm Amayah.
I'm one of Karley's daughters.
Wonderful woman that gave birth at 16.
This was me when I was a baby. I'm right here.
I know that I don't want a child at 16.
I won't be prepared.
I don't wanna do that stuff to have a child.
And if I do, I'm gonna use protection.
My daughter, Audrey, she's turning 15.
She was a competitive cheerleader for five years.
Yeah, I'm just proud of her.
My son's name is Jamie.
He's honor roll student.
I'm, like, in awe of him.
My son Lukas is-- he's 14 now. We tell him about Todd.
We take him to his grave.
It's like, I think that he would be very proud of him and, um...
the life that we've created for him.
Like, I know that he wants to be here for him,
but I think that when he looks down, as they say,
like, I think that he's very proud of him.
At the present time, there have been six seasons
of "16 and Pregnant," eight iterations of "Teen Mom,"
and 69 episodes of "16 and Pregnant."
The ratings are trash.
Why would they pick it up again over trash ratings?
And it was supposed to be like a positive light on like
teen pregnancy or just preventative light.
And it's turned into this,
honestly, like trash reality TV.
When I quit months ago,
honey, it was gone. We know this.
I personally loved watching "Teen Mom" for many, many years,
and parts of me still do.
Do I think it should end now though?
Yes.
I think "16 and Pregnant" was a pivotal program
in television history, and I don't say that lightly.
For so many years in our society,
teen pregnancy was brushed off to the side.
You hid that.
To be able to have a show that put a huge spotlight
on this issue,
it made America deal with it.