Television Ponders Our Children's Children

From "Rebel Without a Cause" to "Thirteen," pop culture focusing on teenagers traditionally tends toward the alarmist. Youngsters on screens big and small are forever driving too fast, running with the wrong crowd, and getting pierced in all the wrong places.

In reality, though, adults today don't have much to fear from the teenagers in the house. As David Brooks observed in his important 2001 Atlantic Monthly article "The Organization Kid," the youngest generation of Americans is cheerful, obedient, and goal-oriented. Mr. Brooks reported that a 1997 Gallup survey found that 96% of teenagers said they got along with their parents. "They're not trying to buck the system," he wrote. "They're trying to climb it, and they are streamlined for ascent. Hence they are not a disputatious group."

For better or for worse, young people, generally, aren't the increasingly untamable wild bunch they're perceived to be. One key manifestation of the taming of the American teen: Before a slight uptick in December, their pregnancy rates had been declining steadily for 14 years.

Not surprisingly, pop culture is adjusting to the new, cautiously teen-positive mood, and the phenomenon of teenage pregnancy — once the nightmare scenario — is starting to acquire a strange patina of fun. Tabloid magazines have covered the pregnancy of 17-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears, the former star of Nickelodeon's "Zoey 101," just as they would any other fun scandal: "Jamie Lynn Dumped!" "Is Casey the Father?" (Her baby was born last Thursday.)

Last year's surprise hit movie was "Juno," a teen-pregnancy dramedy on quirk overdrive. The titular protagonist (played by Ellen Page) was a good kid, wry and sex-positive, with loving parents and funny friends. In the end, she gave up the baby for adoption, but got to keep its cutie-pie father. "Knocked Up," another comedy blockbuster last summer, portrayed a 20-something's unexpected pregnancy as a happy accident, complete with heartwarming ending.

Now come two television shows in which teen parenthood is further presented in a surprisingly non-alarmist manner. "The Baby Borrowers," a reality show that makes its premiere tomorrow on NBC, follows five teenage couples as they get a crash course in adulthood by serving as caretakers. The show begins with the couples tending to squealing infants and, by the end, they're caring for seniors. The exercise is basically an escalated version of the old health-class routine in which students have to lug around an egg for a few days. The show's Web site asks which couples will "weather the storm of parenthood and stay together," a focus that assigns an extraordinary level of significance to these adolescent couplings. A reasonable guess: They will all break up someday. It's a goofy premise — and execution — but one that takes teenagers seriously.

The more significant and earnest entrant on the scene is "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," a dramedy whose first episode appears July 1 on ABC Family. The show's executive producer is Brenda Hampton, who was responsible for "7th Heaven," the longest-running show on the now-deceased teen-focused network WB.

"The Secret Life of the American Teenager" shares with "7th Heaven" a fondness for corniness, a respect for religion, and a yearning to be the kind of show that families can watch together and then discuss. It follows shy high-school student Amy (Shailene Woodley), a good girl who plays the French horn in the marching band. Her father and mother (the latter played by 1980s teen queen Molly Ringwald) are more worried about her belly-button-baring little sister, but it's Amy's belly which will soon become the problem. Over the summer at band camp, she lost her virginity to the school's callous lothario, and the first episode begins with her positive pregnancy test. "The Secret Life" follows the fallout of the test on Amy and her friends and family, examining the sexual attitudes of a few of the school's other students along the way.

There are no bad guys in "Secret Life." All the parents are loving and supportive, the perky Christian cheerleader is a sincere believer, the cheating football hunk is sincerely sorry when he strays, and the sexually aggressive girl is empowered, if naïve. Even the sleazy, soon-to-be father (Daren Kagasoff, a dead ringer for Jake Ryan in "Sixteen Candles," Ms. Ringwald's breakout 1984 film) is in therapy for his problems. Crucially, Amy herself is a genuine good girl, smart and studious.

Like Juno, Amy gets pregnant after one ill-considered sex act; a relationship, especially a healthy one, would make a more complicated test case. By the end of the first episode, redemption is hanging thickly in the air. It's hard to say if this will give the show enough of a frisson to survive on, but it's unexpectedly sophisticated in its attitudes.

That's not to say its touch is subtle. The show strains to prove its responsibility. One character's hobby is memorizing statistics about teen sexual activity (seriously), so the first episode informs viewers that almost half of all high school students are sexually active. That may or may not be bad news, but this is: 29% of sexually active 15-to-17-year-old girls have partners three to five years older. This is complicated stuff.

We might not view these things as merely "complicated" for long, though. Last week, a so-called pregnancy pact between a group of Massachusetts high school girls earned worldwide shock, suspicion, and plenty of tut-tutting. The inevitable TV movie will be worth some attention.

Ms. Graham is a senior editor at Domino magazine.