‘16 and Pregnant’: Chelsea
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I was waiting for it all season: the moment when I would finally admire one of the dads. And it happened after Tuesday’s episode ... too bad it wasn’t the teen dad-to-be.
In this week’s episode we’re introduced to Chelsea. The teen from Vermillion, S.D. is all about ‘having fun.’ She’s about to have a baby with her boyfriend Adam -- he’s the kind of guy who calls his girlfriend a ‘whore’ on his Facebook status updates. Charming, right? It’s no wonder Chelsea’s dad, Randy, whom she mostly lives with now that her parents are divorced, doesn’t exactly like the dude. That and, well, the guy got his little girl pregnant.
As he’s folding laundry, Randy and Chelsea recall the moment when he found out she was pregnant. He questioned why she didn’t use birth control. Her answer? ‘I can’t even take regular medicine.’ Um, what?
When asked whether he was angered by the news, Randy answered, ‘Disappointed is the word, and I was.’ But he didn’t let that prevent him from being supportive. When he wasn’t telling Chelsea to stay strong despite Adam’s lack of support, her father was there to encourage her to stay in school and ‘hold [her] head up high.’ He even had a man-to-man, er, man-to-immature man, talk with Adam. The overall message: ‘Treat my girl the way she needs to be treated’ and ‘You don’t have to like it, you just have to be ready to deal with it.’
But Chelsea is a teen. When she wasn’t worrying about whether she would ‘poop’ while giving birth (girl, that’s the least of your problems!), Chelsea was dealing with a passive Adam, who cared more about his car than anything baby-related. But once their premature baby, Aubree, arrived, Adam seemed to change. He even asked for the baby to be given his last name -- a gesture that had Chelsea swooning. But we’ve all seen this sort of thing before. I wasn’t fooled. Chelsea, though, kind of wondered if she was to blame for making him upset all those times in the past. Oh, Chelsea. Don’t be so naive!
It wasn’t long before things shifted back to the way they were.
When Chelsea wanted to visit her still-hospitalized baby, Adam couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed. And he rarely paid a visit, opting to spend his free time working on his car. He wasn’t even there when his daughter became ill and had to visit the doctor. But he did have these enlightening words to say after the incident: ‘Looks like you did fine. She’s not dead or anything.’ Um, Chelsea, that’s when you should have smacked him upside the hea.
When Chelsea confronted Adam about his lack of involvement, he, of course, told her she’s being annoying. Though depressed from dealing with an absentee father, she still managed to provide Aubree with the care she needs. And with the encouragement of her father and friends, Chelsea even found time to enjoy her senior year. It might not be the senior year she had always imagined -- worrying about prom dresses and whether she’d be elected homecoming queen -- but she tried to make the best of it and go to the homecoming game. Hardly the making of a bad mother. But leave it to Adam to ruin the fun. He sent her one of the most hateful text messages I’ve ever seen. He called their daughter a ‘mistake’ and went as far as to make fun of her stretch marks. Whoa, buddy! Never, ever take it there!
It was that text that finally made it all click for Chelsea. After a tearful call to her dad, who offered these inspiring words: ‘You need to start using [Adam’s] meanness as your motivation to get out of this’ -- Chelsea was ready to move on. And she eventually had Aubree’s last name changed.
So Show Trackers, what did you think of this week’s episode? Of the previous teen dads, where would Adam rank?
-- Yvonne Villarreal
