Glee

In the last few years, ABC Family channel developed a new marketing slogan: "A New Kind of Family." What? Isn't the point of a family channel to present family-friendly programming? Are they not there to provide the opportunity for an entire family to watch appropriate TV, to sit there comfortably, without worrying about little ears or losing the interest of the teenager? And yet, ABC Family produced "The Secret Life of the American Teenager." Although I've never watched the show, apparently the show depicts the struggles of a pregnant teenage girl, the baby daddy, and their families. I get that this is reality, I get that the producers are either pushing an agenda for tolerance or for using this as a teaching tool for abstinence. But what I cannot figure out is how they advertise for this show during cartoons. My girls aren't old enough to wonder how girls end up pregnant at sixteen. Maybe I am picking on Molly Ringwald, but I think "Insidious" is an apt description of ABC's message that they can fashion the foundation for a family or remake an entire cultural institution.

There is a new show this fall whose story revolves around a high school glee club. When I first heard the title for the show, I thought a glee club was similar to a pep squad. Apparently, though, a glee club is a distant cousin to the choir. My guess is that choir sounds a little too boring and not quite metrosexual enough for prime time TV. I kept reading Facebook posts about the music in Glee or how hard people laughed.

I was hooked on the show within two minutes of watching it for the first time. What's not to like: an adorable teacher, awesome music, an even better looking guy with a mohawk...And did I mention the music? This show makes me laugh and cry and tap my toes.

Except that it's about a teenage girl who gets pregnant, her Glenn Beck-watching parents who kick her out, the teacher (did I mention that he's adorable) whose selfish and amazingly beautiful wife lies about being pregnant, a kid with an amazing voice who is in a wheel chair, the real baby daddy who sports the mohawk and kind of sings back-up, a cheerleading coach who is nuts and vindictive and yet has a heart buried deep beneath some kind of pain, the kid who does a lot of singing and doesn't know that he really isn't the father. The list goes on with a few Asian kids, the street savvy African-American girl, the dumb blond cheerleader, the slightly nutty but fabulously talented Latina, and, finally, the gay guy who is in love with the one who thinks he is the baby daddy. Could the producers fit anymore stereotypes into an hour?

I cannot decide if the producers are insidiously attempting to push an agenda under the cloak of good music or if they are attempting to teach tolerance. For now, I assume that we all need to learn a little tolerance; I'd hate to give up some great entertainment because they were trying to pull the wool over my eyes.

The parents of the pregnant teenager really got to me. They are an obvious stereotype of conservative Christians who love Glenn Beck. It is easy to see why I'm still undecided about this segment. Obviously I've never been in the situation of having a pregnant daughter and I am ambivalent toward the portrayal of the parents kicking their daughter out of the house.

I just watched six segments of a BBC show entitled "The Strictest Parents in the World." The show took two wild British 17-yr olds and moved them to UT for 10 days to live with an LDS family. The LDS mother, while even more conservative than I am, if that's possible, happens to be an amazingly effective communicator, successful parent of four plus many foster children, and runs a business teaching people about self-government.

One of the teenagers was a single mom living on "benefits" as she called it. From what I could see, this girl's mother enabled her bad choices (and I'm not talking about the baby here). My first thought was that if the mom left the girl to her own devices, the girl would wake up to reality. If she could not depend on her mom, she would have to become an adult herself. When the girl had no place to live, she would have to spend her TANF on rent instead of drugs and alcohol, right? But what if the daughter didn't make the change and the baby suffered? Do you enable your child to save your grandchild? How do you save them both, and whose responsibility is it, ultimately, to save them? Could you help the baby without impeding the challenges and subsequent growth of teenager?

I don't have an answer for that, and that is why I support adoption as the best possible solution. However, on the Strictest Parents, it was a combination of limits, of understanding cause and effect, of love and validation, of teaching, of effective, calm, and open communication, and of prayer that led to the changes in the young mother.