‘Knocked Up,’ but looking for more

In the past year, the unplanned pregnancy has provided the premise for two of the year’s most popular movies, “Knocked Up” and, more recently, “Juno.”

Both are comedic, human portrayals of pregnancy, and critics have looked to audience reception as an indication that the national mood toward unintended pregnancy has shifted.

Others point to recent dramas that capture the same subject matter and question who has actually been let off the hook.

Creators of both movies insist that their films are not intended as pro-life or pro-choice endorsements. Rather, they are human experiences that transcend the politics of pregnancy.

The unwed mother in “Knocked Up,” played by TV’s Katherine Heigl, chooses to embrace a surprise conception that results from a one-night stand with slacker Seth Rogan. Their road to a relationship plays out in reverse. First comes baby, then love.

“Juno’s” title character, played by newcomer Ellen Page, finds out she’s pregnant from a one-time encounter with eventual boyfriend Paulie, “Superbad’s” Michael Cera, and chooses adoption. Clever one-liners and dry humor, intermingled with unexpected tenderness earned this distilled portrait of quirky adolescence four Oscar nominations.

By the time the credits roll, the unwed mother has become someone we can cry and laugh with, and most importantly, laugh at.

But how closely do these unplanned pregnancies resemble those common in real life? How many of the pregnancies in low income or minority contexts are captured on film as quirky, hilarious, and blameless?

In Texas, teen pregnancy is the second highest by state in the nation, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research group.

Teenagers of Mexican descent continue to have the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control’s most recent figures.

Between the ages of 15 and 19, Hispanic teens had 81.7 pregnancies per 1,000 girls, while white, non-Hispanic teens had 25.9 per 1,000 according to the CDC.

In Brownsville, many of these girls are found at the Lincoln Park School, opened 18 years ago as a facility dedicated to helping pregnant girls and recent mothers finish their high school education.

The school serves about 150 pregnant teens a year; administrators say that’s just half of the reported pregnancies districtwide.

“So many of their families don’t expect anything else of them,” said Cindy Davila, a guidance counselor at the school.

Students like Jessica Aguilar, whose name was changed to protect her anonymity, never sought an alternative to teen motherhood. Aguilar planned her first pregnancy at 17, and then had another child at 19.

“I think it’s better to wait and have time to have friends and give time to yourself,” said Aguilar, who added that she hopes her daughters will wait longer than she did to have children. Now she’s is trying to finish her GED while she cares for her two kids.

“I want to be a dentist,” she said. “It’s going to be harder for me now, but I’m working on it.” She hasn’t had time to go to the movies.

“Quineañera” and “Maria Full of Grace,” two recent films with a central plot line of pregnancy take a different tone with their protagonists.

Their circumstances are tied indelibly to the weighty subject matter of poverty, drug trafficking, and gentrification. Their stars are intriguing characters but rather than funny and ironic, their stories are humbling and tragic.

For critics like Mia Mask, a professor of film at Vassar College, the discrepancy between the attitudes of these films toward their leading ladies is pregnant with subtle stereotyping of the ethnic groups they fall into.

“That is the burden of representation,” Mask said. “In film, white people get to be individuals because they exist independent of their race. For a Hispanic or African American character, that pregnancy is tied up in the ‘problem’ of those ethnic groups having too many children or getting pregnant too young. For the white character it isn’t seen as indicative of anything other than her specific situation.”

Part of the hilarity in “Knocked Up” and “Juno” comes from the notion that their unplanned pregnancies are exceptional, and therefore fodder for unlikely comedic scenarios.

Unpredictable couples are forged, high-powered careers are put on hold, and high school classmates look on in awe and disapproval at Juno’s growing belly.

“They’re not representative films. That goes without saying — or maybe it doesn’t go without saying,” said Jennifer Baumgarten, author of “Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future.” After all, she added, the films are so mainstream that they appear to capture a national phenomenon.

Unlike Juno, who is shown watching a health teacher roll a condom down a banana in health class, local teenagers never see contraception demonstrated in the classroom.

“My parents never talked with me about sex,” said Diana Rodriguez, another former Lincoln Park student who also asked that her name be changed for this article. Rodriguez’s mother was 17 when she got pregnant, but when she got pregnant with her first of two children at 15, she had never spoken with her about sex, learned about it from teachers, or even talked to any of her friends about it.

As for the post-pregnancy aspect of the films, “Knocked Up’s” credits roll over a montage of idyllic scenes of Rogan and Heigl playing with their child.

In “Juno,” the baby is given to an adoring mother and Page is left to enjoy what is left of her adolescence. We leave her riding a bike and playing guitar with her boyfriend.

“There are no adoptions here,” said Lincoln Park’s principal, Gabriel Garcia.

And though many healthy babies are born to young mothers, teen pregnancy greatly increases the risks of premature birth and defects, not to mention the lack of stability in a household where the mother has not started her career or established her relationship with the father.

“Eight out of 10 of these couples are broken up within a year,” said Lincoln Park nurse Vici McClure.

While art may reflect life, the two mirror one another, infinitely mimicking an image until it’s difficult to tell where it originated. Perhaps girls see themselves in the protagonists of "Maria Full of Grace" or "Quinceañera," but Terri Lievanos, the director of Brownsville’s Planned Parenthood, hopes they see more.

Like the administrators at Lincoln Park, she believes that curbing unplanned pregnancy comes down to giving young men and women the sense that there are other, better alternatives within reach.

She hopes that community organizing and improvements in education may help to make unplanned pregnancy as exceptional in the area as it is for the protagonists in Knocked Up and Juno.

“Now when I see ads on TV for UTB-TSC I think hey, we have the option to send our children down the street for higher education, even if we don’t want to send them away,” said Lievanos. “What a wonderful thing that is, I think.”