I Think I’m Having a Baby: A Teen’s Pregnant Pause

As strange a title as it is — it’s preferable to possess a degree of certainty about whether you’re expecting — I Think I’m Having a Baby is also perfectly in keeping with the utter cluelessness of this 1981 Afternoon Playhouse special’s 15-year-old protagonist. Laurie McIntire (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a child with the hair and makeup of a divorced and disillusioned single mother of two, has entered that hideous phase of adolescence where she’s constitutionally incapable of doing anything but mooning over an unimpressive boy.

Star athlete Peter (Shawn Stevens) dates her older cousin Phoebe (Helen Hunt), whose preppy sweater draped over the shoulders tells you all there is to know about her. Peter isn’t particularly bright (Phoebe does his schoolwork) and teases Laurie on the rare occasion he notices her at all. But when her best friend Marsha (Bobbi Block, now known as Samantha Paris) and little sister Carrie (Tracey Gold, years away from the torments of Lady Killer and Midwest Obsession) mock his ape-like walk across the football field, Laurie gets defensive. “He’s not really like that,” she insists.

Starry-eyed and severely mopey, she’s prone to pronouncements like “Sometimes I look at myself and I’m not even sure it’s me.” Speaking enviously of her cousin, she says “Must be nice to have someone. Go to all the dances, have something to do every Saturday night. I think Phoebe’s lucky.” You know what else provides companionship and something to do every Saturday night? Parenthood. After an unexpected hookup with an opportunistic Peter (they find themselves alone in the dark after he quarrels with Phoebe), Laurie falls ill and begins to suspect she’s pregnant.

Coincidentally, as her big sister’s baby drama secretly unfolds (mother Susan Niven is kept in the dark), young Carrie comes into possession of several rabbits. Buddy Steven (Shane Sinutko) puts a divider in the pen to keep the girl away from the boys, but Carrie, newly inquisitive about reproductive matters (she wonders whether rabbits kiss when they mate), is in for a PBS nature documentary education of her own. And then there are the parallel lessons Laurie belatedly learns at school, in the Experience of Adult Living class taught by Mr. Fenning (David Birney).

He speaks freely about sex, a topic titillating to some students and frightening to others. Breaking down teen pregnancy statistics, he estimates that two of the girls in the classroom will likely become pregnant that year. (If only he’d been available to educate a middle-aged Ted Shackelford in Baby of the Bride, it would’ve spared Rue McClanahan a lot of trouble.) When asked who wants to be pregnant, no one raises a hand, but Cathy (Ally Sheedy) already looks guilty. During a discussion about unplanned pregnancy, the class is quizzed on available options. “Well, the guy could help her get an abortion,” a male student quickly offers, as Fenning writes it on the chalkboard.

As with Someone I Touched (1975), Cloris Leachman’s syphilis telefilm, it’s painful to watch teens take for granted access to a procedure now denied to women of all ages so many decades later. When a classmate questions the morality of abortion (shades of Craig Bierko in Love Note), it’s Laurie’s confidante, the awkward, tomboyish Marsha, who cuts through the bullshit, exclaiming “It’s just an embryo! A couple of cells! It isn’t even a fetus yet!” Mr. Fenning pokes fun at her with a false equivalence-promoting wisecrack: “In one class we have a legal expert and the world’s youngest biological wizard.”

Pressed for his opinion, he demures before offering an answer better suited for adults than hormonal teens whose brains won’t be fully developed for another decade. “Different choices are right for different people. […] Me, I think the act of love probably implies a willingness to accept the responsibility for a commitment.” Clare Elfman’s screenplay only hints at how that tends to work in practice when Peter angrily threatens to enlist his friends to smear Laurie’s reputation should she jeopardize his future by holding him responsible — if she’s indeed pregnant.

Leigh, already a thoughtful, offbeat screen presence in her late teens, is inscrutable here beyond what’s normal even for a moody teenager, no thanks to a screenplay minimally invested in character development. Director Arthur Allan Seidelman (Strange Voices) seems to juggle two movies at times: Leigh in a Joyce Chopra-esque study of teenage sexuality in all its vacuity and danger, and everyone else in a straightforward after-school special. More accessible are Sheedy (who is only given a couple lines), Gold, and my favorite, Bobbi Block.

Block’s Marsha, partial to athletic jerseys and sensible sweaters, is uninterested in boys and confidently declares “I never want to have babies. I’d rather have a dog.” Determined to help however she can, Marsha reads up on how to induce miscarriage and takes Laurie horseback riding. She also schemes to get her to a women’s health clinic (neither is old enough to drive), where a nurse played by Sheila Scott-Wilkenson administers a much-needed dose of reality. And Marsha delivers a bit of that herself. In the film’s best exchange, Laurie asks her no-nonsense friend of her unconvincing grownup drag, “Why didn’t you tell me how stupid I looked?” Ever a pal, Marsha reminds her, “I did!”

Additional screen caps are available on Instagram.

Streaming and DVD availability

I Think I’m Having a Baby isn’t available on DVD but you can currently stream it for free (with ads) at FreeVee or Tubi.

^{Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.}

… But wait, there’s more!

The ’80s were a fertile time for teen pregnancy movies, no pun intended, and one, an Afterschool Special called Schoolboy Father (1980 and starring Rob Lowe), was also directed by Seidelman. Other entries in this genre include Daddy (1987) and For Keeps (1988). My generation got its own scared straight special in the form of Lifetime’s Fifteen and Pregnant (1998), starring Kirsten Dunst.