The cast of Sex and the City celebrate all the teen pregnancies they’ve caused.


From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Teens who watch television shows that have a lot of sexual content are more likely to become pregnant — or to get someone pregnant — by the time they turn 20, according to a study in the journal Pediatrics.

Blah, blah, blah, then:

The research was based on a 2001 survey of 2,000 12- to 17-year-olds who were asked how often they watched any of 23 popular TV shows, ranging from cartoons and comedies to adult-themed shows such as Sex and the City.

Follow-up interviews were done years later to see how many of them got pregnant in their teen years or were responsible for a pregnancy.

Teens who watched shows where sex was regularly shown or discussed had two to three times the risk of pregnancy than young people exposed to lower levels of sexual content, the study said.

Hmm. I watched TV shows “where sex was regularly shown or discussed” when I was a teenager, including Sex and the City. Never got pregnant. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “That’s ’cause you’re a giant lesbian. I mean, duh, your last name is Lesbian.”

But you never saw some of the women who came onto me when I was a teenager. I’m pretty sure one or two of them might have gotten me pregnant if given the chance. Had I, as a 16-year-old, gone on even one date with that very persistent 24-year-old retail manager who wanted me to see the inside of her truck (I was always afraid that was some kind of euphemism) and liked to point out that she was old enough to buy alcohol, I bet you anything a third-grader would be calling me ‘Mom’ right now.

You’ll note that no one in the Sun-Times article mentions the fact that these pregnant teenagers, and the guys who knocked them up, came of age in the George W. Bush era of abstinence-only sexual education. It was a golden era to be sure, with the teenage birth rate increasing by 3 percent in 2006 after 15 years of not rising. Which makes me think that it might be George W. Bush and his fellow evangelical nutcases who are responsible for creating this spike in our GDJP (Gross Domestic Juno Product), and not the Sex and the City gang.

Still, just to be sure, when I have kids there’s a very good chance they won’t be allowed to watch anything but I Love Lucy and The Cosby Show. They’ll be the only five-year-olds on the playground who could pick Harpo Marx out of a lineup and think loud patterned sweaters are stylish, but when they make it all the way through high school without baby spew on their graduation gowns they’ll thank me.