I was getting ready to be highly critical of this new PSA from Bristol Palin, but I kind of lost my head of steam once I actually watched it. Bristol did a “don’t have sex, y’all” PSA for Candie’s “Pause Before You Play” abstinence-promotion program, and Brisol pretty much dissolves most of criticism of her circumstances during the brief 25 seconds. While Gawker complains that the message is “If Sarah Palin is not your mother, don’t have a baby as a teen” I think that’s actually a pretty smart message – Bristol is acknowledging that she had a baby under special circumstances, and that being an unwed teenage mother probably would be totally f-cked up if you don’t have a supportive family, or money, or airbrushers. Here’s more from Gawker:
America’s most famous teenage mother has a new commercial denouncing pre-marital sex. The message of the spot is basically, “If Sarah Palin is not your mother, don’t have a baby as a teen.” There’s also a Levi Johnston guest spot!
The catch phrase is “pause before you play,” which is obviously something that Bristol didn’t do when she let some hockey playing jamoke with dreams of being famous and posing (almost) naked knock her up when she was still in high school.
She shows us that she is lucky to have such a great family and so many opportunities to raise her baby, but no one else has them. So if you, average teenager, get knocked up, you are going to be alone in a room with a dowdy T-shirt, a soiled couch, and a baby that won’t stop crying. So don’t do it, already. We also feel bad for poor baby Tripp. All this talk about how conceiving her son was a mistake is sure going to f-ck that little bundle of joy up.
[From Gawker]
Eh. I go back on forth on Bristol – I believed a lot of what Levi Johnson said about the Palin family, and Levi always made it sound like Bristol was the most responsible and organized person in her family. Levi also made it seem like her mother basically treated her like a slave/nanny/cook/personal shopper. I think Bristol is struggling to be a role model, as if she feels it’s her duty to represent teenage mothers and the teenage motherhood experience, and Bristol knows (probably from seeing her friends) that other girls are having a much worse time with it. I just never understand why these kids are so terrified of birth control. A condom is not your enemy, kids.
idk, was she on BC when she got pregnant? maybe thats why she’s saying just dont do it at all. I read a quote the other day that said everytime you have sex you can get pregnant or you can not get pregnant 50/50 chance which makes sense. And no BC is failproof. My parents have five kids (spread over 20 years) and all were on some kind of BC (except one which she calls the Vibe) so maybe the message should be dont have sex with a douche cux you could have his baby.
I dont think kids are scared of birth control, I think they are scared of their parents finding evidence- I would have never asked my mom to put me on birth control, and I rarely had the money to buy condoms… It really needs to be more about preparing kids than making the issue so taboo and off limits!
This is just my personal opinion, but I think there should be barrels full of birth control on every street corner; sort of like how they put out barrels of sand out in the winter. If it were so available then perhaps the stigma would go away and kids would not be ashamed and scared of using condoms, etc. As they say an ounce of prevention, prevents a pound of cure.
my favorite is that now condoms are kept being locked doors at many pharmacies and drug stores in my area. if i were a 16 or 17 year old kid i’d be afraid to ask to get some. Heck I’m in my mid 20s and i get nervous about. the best on was when someone carded me for buying contraceptives.
no wonder kids aren’t using birth control it’s hard ot get!
I honestly have no idea how someone can claim birth control is so hard to find. I mean, i was a emaciated minor at 16 and by the time i started having sex, I didn’t have a parent figure around to talk to me, i just asked my boyfriend flat out ‘do you want to have sex?’ and of course he said yes, so we talked about birth control and we found my OB/GYN in the yellow pages. It was that simple. And though we have since gone our separate ways I’m still on Depo nine years later. Its that fucking easy. so I dont feel a damn shred of sympathy for these idiot twats that cry how hard parenting is.
Every teenager where I grew up was on BC if they were having sex. There were maybe two pregnant teenagers in my entire school of 4,000. My middle-class neighborhood in NYC had no illusions about its teens knocking boots- there was actual Sex Ed (still could have used a lot of improvement), and condoms were available free in the nurse’s office. I’d like to see the same everywhere.
Well, I think she’s pretty scared because she has actually been knocked up twice – once with the baby that her mom is claiming is her baby, and then with this baby.
Yeah, this is going to fuck up her kid–being the poster child for the results of teenage sex.
@ Obvious — Where do you live that they are behinf the counter. Out here in LA you can pick them up in at any Target or Wal-Mart and a lot of nightclubs actually have then sitting in jars at the bar or in the restrooms. Of course, we live in the land of sin out here so it’s to be expected that we don’t actually want to procreate.
And I am sick of seeing Bristol Palin talk about what she herself could not do. It’s like having Whitney Houston doing a Just Say No ad.
It’s a safe bet that Bristol was not on birth control. Her family is very right-wing & evangelical and I doubt that her parents would have made it easy for her to get birth control – plus, she was the governor’s daughter at the time, and they lived in a small town where everyone knew her face. She was probably too scared to be seen buying condoms. I’m not excusing her … she was an idiot for screwing Levi without birth control … but I’m guessing she knows that.
What’s unfortunate is that, instead of doing PSA’s about the importance of birth control and safe sex, she’s hawking the tried-and-failed abstinence routine. “Do what I say, not what I do.” Abstinence simply does not work, because most post-pubescent humans like to f**k.
Yeah, I was prepared to hate this ad too – but Bristol did a good job of defusing my bitchiness.
Still, if she wants to advocate for safe sex, she needs to do it responsibly. Abstinence is just not a viable means of birth control – especially with hormones fueling the need to psychologically rebel. (I was a certified band geek/debate team/D&D nerd, and even I lost my virginity while attending my very socially conservative high school.)
Promote healthy sex education. Promote condoms and birth control. Abstinence-based or Abstinence-only sex education does not work. Period.
You know, I remember it being a catch-phrase when I was young that if you were too embarrassed to buy condoms, you weren’t mature enough to be having sex. I still feel that way, personally, but my married-with-three-kids sister is still embarrassed so I guess it’s just me.
I would feel a lot better about Bristol as an advocate if I feel like she had autonomy. But as noted already, she lives with (and off) her mother. I can’t trust anything she says as her personal take until she’s not beholden to a pretty but terrifying tea-partier. I’m still not over how she “chose life” on the cover of People while promoting her mother’s politics, which oddly enough would see that same CHOICE eliminated for a lot of young women.
@ hatsumomo:
Were you an EMACIATED minor, or an EMANCIPATED minor??
I’m sorry, I just couldn’t resist….!
On another note, you are 100% right about the availability of birth control. WalMart has condoms hanging on a hook (right in front of the pharmacy, mind you, but still available) for anyone to purchase. I recently found a receipt for condoms in my 17 year old son’s room, but I was much more relieved that he used protection than I was angry with the fact that he was having sex. (It’s tough when your kids grow up LOL!)
I live in a college town and right in the neighborhood of the school, there is a clinic with a sandwich board right on the street advertising Planned Parenthood. I just feel like it IS easy to get the protection if you are really serious about safe sex. Personally, abstinence is best, but SAFE SEX is the next best thing.
@Taylor B
You said it! Im with you! They should drop condoms from airplanes! ha ha!
Jaundice wrote: “Promote healthy sex education. Promote condoms and birth control. Abstinence-based or Abstinence-only sex education does not work. Period”
Yup. Thank you! That pretty much sums it up. Take away the stigma, and educate, educate, educate. Teens are gonna have sex like it or not, at least they can do it responsibly.
@ Ron
I live in KY and they are behind freakin lock & key! It’s riciculous! I have a friend who yells at the pharmacy for doing that. They say “its the main thing kids shoplift”.
@ Princess Pea
And did you know People didnt sell as many of those Sara/Bristol “Choose Life” editions as they thought they would.
Thank you SO much for mentioning birth control at the end — abstinence programs just do not work, and they’re usually supported by the same people who flip out if someone gives out free condoms at a school.
This message is so disingenuous. Bristol received shame-based abstinence-only sex ed, and when her hormones started to rage, she had no information about protecting herself from pregnancy and STD’s. THAT’S why she got pregnant. It wasn’t simply having sex, it was having stupid sex without contraception.
She’s giving the wrong message. It shouldn’t be “don’t have sex” (we all know how well that one has worked), it should be “use contraception, have safe sex”. Actually, I’m a little unclear as to what her message is. What does “pause” mean? Pause to use a condom, or pause and just stop?
I don’t know why this is so hard for people to wrap their heads around. TEENAGERS WILL HAVE SEX. There is NOTHING you can do about it. So give them the tools and information they need to make good decisions and protect themselves. Very. Simple.
I’m so thankful that I had comprehensive sex ed. I started having sex when I was 16. I was on the pill AND using condoms the first time I had sex, and started getting my very important yearly gyno exam. I did this because I was given the information I needed to be healthy and responsible. I would never have known to do these things without a good sex ed program. And you know what? Nothing would have stopped me from having sex. This is reality. Either you give kids information, or you give them pregnancy and STD’s and make them feel ashamed to even utter the word “sex”. You leave young women ignorant and without any agency, to be eventually pressured into sex instead of making empowered choices.
She’s the poster child FOR teenagers having sex. Other than getting knocked up, what is her claim to fame? It is EXACTLY THAT (getting pregnant as a teenager) that has provided her with public attention and job opportunities. So to all the other teens out there who have no skills – hey, you can always get pregnant!
That PSA announcement will not work. I remember how uncontrollably horny I was as a teenager and the only thing that is going to work is birth control.
The reason we all exist is because it is programmed into our bodies to reproduce when we are young and healthy. DNA trumps PSAs in this case.
DoMaJo…,
I agree that it is easy to get condoms, but when kids are told it is shameful and taught ab only education, there is a level of shame that prevents them from buying condoms.
A friend of mine, who was a sexually active adult and her BF (both in their late 20’s)wanted condoms but were both too shy to go to the Super America and buy them (they are kept behind the counter so they would have to ask for them); she asked me to go to the store to buy condoms for them.
Shannon – You said it best. You are lucky you had good sex education. My sex talk from my Mom? Sex is bad unless you are married. Love my Mom but she didn’t prepare my sibs and I for raging hormones.
As so many posters have already said, abstinence only sex education doesn’t work. You know what kept me abstinent in high school? Comprehensive (not scare-tactic-based) sex education. Not from the school, but from my parents. I grew up in a house where information was readily available to me, and that kept me from having sex until I got to college. Because I recognized that the potential consequences of having sex were too huge for me to deal with in high school.
My best friend and I figured out in high school that every time you had sex, you better like the person you are doing it with enough that if you do get pregnant, you can handle dealing with the fall-out from it with them. Because once the sperm hits the egg, there are consequences, even if you choose not to carry the pregnancy to term.
she had sex and other teenagers shouldn’t?? that sounds very egoistic
I didn’t have sex until I was 21. Neither of my sisters had sex until they were 21/22.
We lived with a single mom in a lower-class area of Los Angeles.
We had comprehensive sex education and my mom basically told us that we could have sex if we wanted but we’d have to deal with the consequences on our own i.e. she wouldn’t support us if we got pregnant.
That pretty much kept us away from sex. I was very interested in boys and sex and all, but I didn’t think the risk was worth it.
Therefore, I’ve never understood people who say that “teens will have sex no matter what” or that their “raging hormones” tell them to have sex. I had raging hormones. I was mature enough to keep them in check. Why can’t other people?
And when I finally DID have sex I was on birth control (my mom took me to the gyno to get it the day after I turned 21-a kind of birthday present, I guess) and we used a condom and the guy was my best friend of about 6 years.
She really bothers me. Being a teen mom I know it isn’t easy but I love every moment of my child. I hate how she gives the impression that she ruined her life and now she’s stuck with this kid.
The message shouldn’t be “Don’t have sex like I did.” It should be “Don’t have sex LIKE I did” because she admitted to not using birth control. She also admitted to not being educated on it – thanks MOM for all that Abstinence preachy stuff – which proves the point that Abstinence only education doesn’t stop kids from having sex; it only makes them have more DANGEROUS sex, (i.e. unprotected.)
Oh, PS: This is exactly what is wrong with our country:
http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/2010/04/07/sex_ed_prosecutor_wisconsin/index.html
God forbid – teenagers learning how to have sex for pleasure! Because we all know that sex is just for procreation and women should just lay there unmoving whispering the rosary.
And being marketed for sexual products like condoms, the horror!
I had my first child at the age of 15 and it was hard finding out just for myself I couldn’t imagion what my mom thought….I think my problem was just my mom knowing oh my daughter wants to have sex not that I was afraid to ask!!! A lot of kids are affraid to ask and for that reason I think they should be able to get bc from a school nurse or HD!!! But don’t just blame the teens some parents could be to blame to because some parents can’t let go or they just refuse to care what their kids are doing!!! I wish at times I would have taken precautions which I think teens who want to have sex should do and if you can’t or don’t feel comfortable telling your parents find someone else that you can tell!!!! And I’m sorry to say this miss Bristol but just because you got preg as a teen and your kinda a celeb don’t mean teens will listen!!!!
I agree with Cydney. I mean she goes on and on about what a mistake she made. There are a lot of teens who make the same “mistake” but they make the best of it, in the cases I know of its quite possible being a teenage mom was the best thing that could have happened to that person. Not that I think teenagers should rush to get knocked up. More important teens should think before having sex to avoid stds and hiv
Emancipated, my bad. I may have been mature enough for a judge to grant me custody of myself, but my spelling skills are still lacking. Whatever.
hatsumomo,
Heck all of us from what I like to call the ‘spell check generation’ can’t spell worth a tinkers damn, lord knows I can’t; if someone held a gun to my head and told me to spell vaccuum (??) I would be dead by now. No worries. But I must confess the ’emaciated’ vs ’emancipated’ was pretty darn funny, no offense intended.
I watched her talking about it on GMA this morning and she actually came off as halfway decent. She explained that the catch phrase “pause before you play” is meant to encompass both bc and abstinence: she said the pause could be to grab a condom, to think about how having a baby would affect your life, or to decide you might want to wait until marriage. She also talked a lot about how much she loved her son and how she tries to be 100% responsible for him, althought I find that hard to believe. But still, she seemed a little ignorant (as most teenagers do) but she wasn’t saying “don’t have sex like I did”
You can always have an abortion, but HIV/Herp?HPV are forever. Like you said: condoms are your friend!
Teens just should not be having sex. Period. Obviously it happens, but abstinence should be the standard. Kudos to Bristol for admitting her mistake and owning up to it.
Puhleeze, in a perfect world maybe teens (and adults)would practice abstinence. The world is not perfect and the more adults try to scare/use religious shame/say your bits are going to fall off/not practice what they preach/etc, etc, the more teens are going to want to have sex. And probably not safe sex, if they are not educated and have proper access to health care/birth control/std prevention, etc.
My experience is that many teens will actually think about what they are doing, and try to make good choices, if they are treated with respect and educated on the realities and potential repercussions of sex in general, especially unprotected sex.
Let’s not forget that Bristol has been raised a relatively “privileged” teen, and did her share of under-age partying and sexy-time. Maybe it’s “nice” from a “family values” standpoint that she is touting abstinence – now that she already had an unplanned pregnancy – but many teens do not see her as a credible spokesperson for sexual education…at least none of the teens I have talked to, including my own.
God gives you choices and no matter which choice you make God has a plan for that choice! And No matter how old you are children aren’t mistakes!!!!!!!! I hate it when people call teenage pregnancy a freaking mistake!!!!!!! I had my first at fifteen and she’s not a mistake and niether was the pregnancy!!!!!!! It all happened for a reason!!!!!! If you wanna have sex use protection!!!!! If you don’t wanna have sex then don’t and good for you you’ll beat the statistics!!!!! I don’t recommend teenage sex or pregnancy but if it happens it happens!!!!! Seens should try harder to protect themeselves and parents should be more aware and push for safe sex!!!!!!!
Jessi, you completely missed the point of the 30-something comments before yours. Congratulations.
No, a condom is not you’re enemy but apparantly sex before marraige makes you God’s enemy. So don’t prepare for the possibility of your hormones/desire getting the best of you because if you’re a good christian that won’t happen. Yeah, right. This crap disgusts me. Spokespeople should be discouraging sex before you feel comfortable with it and ALSO encouraging SAFE sex for when you do.
CourtneyH: You made me laugh….
Lisa; Goodness, that’s alot of exclamation points…are you saying that you intentionally got pregnant at 15? Because that’s what it sounds like.
Kaiser, you’re so nice! That’s why I love this blog.
Also, @Obvious, that is terrible! Unless you’re totally impossible to embarrass, getting BC/condoms is always going to be kind of blush-worthy, but that really takes the freaking cake. Shame on those shop-owners. (Plus, isn’t that bad for business? Hello: you can SELL something. Or maybe they’re playing the long con: they want you to buy diapers there.)
My Mom always said to me… if you are too scared or nervous to buy condoms you shouldn’t be using them!
You could put out safe sex tools everywhere but teens are still going to get pregnant. 1. Because as I have said above they are nervous about buying protection and 2. because they think that they are invincible.
The same reason that they drive fast, drink hard and do stupid things like jump of buildings. They don’t have the developed inhabition or reasoning to say “if I do this, this will happen.”
Teenagers and Adults will always have sex because…
Sex is awesome.
Sex is fun
Sex lowers stress
Sex is good for your skin
Sex lowers the chance of depression or anxiety.
Sex is good exercise
Sex makes you smarter
Sex can be a great way to connect with someone you love
AND:
Orgasms.
Why wouldn’t you have sex? Jezus. Just use protection. Seriously. Condoms. They work. Use them, and get it on.
This STILL doens’t turn me into a Bristol Palin/Palin family fan. Incredibly hypocritical bunch…teenagers have sex…end of story. Talk to your kids…have birth control in your house so they have access to it without the embarrassment. Talk some more to your kids…have raised two kids to mid twenties witout them getting pregnant have two more to go…and I got pregnant at 19 myself. History does not have to repeat itself.
While I don’t find Bristol annoying like her mother, I’m kinda iffy on the ad. I get what they are trying to convey….on the other hand, I don’t think I’d like to grow up and find out my mom did “public service announcements” to say what a mistake I was. . .
I had sex ed four times as I was growing up. First two were in primary school and mostly puberty based. And then my high school gave us all sex ed twice, in years 7 and 9. They went through every available contraception with us, showed us how to use condoms, and also went through every STD with us. They knew we were going to have sex, so they prepared us for it. And we could get condoms at the school nurse if we needed them.
I lost my virginity when I was 18, and I only waited that long because I had been pressured my entire life (by adults who did NOT practice what they preached) into believing sex was only okay after marriage, and if I had sex before marriage it was a terrible “sin.”
That any teenager has to deal with that manipulation while just trying to get through high school, frankly, is bullsh**.
My kids, when I have them, will be educated about sex. I will not encourage them per se to have sex, but I will definitely not discourage it if they decide they are ready, and I will not make them feel like they are somehow wrong by acting on their NATURAL feelings. I will be mashing up birth control pills in my teenage daughter’s food when the time comes, if that’s what it takes.
Bristol is a hypocrite just like every other person who enjoyed the satisfaction of sex and then about-faced and demonized it. It’s really easy to resist the forbidden fruit once you’ve already tasted it, eh?
Such bullsh**.
No I did not get pregnant for the fun of it ruffian you totally missed my point! My point is so many people call teenage pregnancy a mistake…which it is not you make choices and sex is a choice that takes you on a different road if you don’t practice safe sex! STDs HIV ect along with pregnancy! I don’t think any teen plans to get pregnant unless your one of the crazy teens from the Maury show! You live and you learn!!!!! But no planned pregnancy for me at fifteen it was a moment of typical teen hormone and they got the best of logically thinking!
I’m 22 and I have to admit I am not sure how birth control works. I know, i know I can educate myself by Googling or going to a OB gyn (I got no insurance) and go to a university’s health clinic (i’d be kinda embarassed to ask). I had sex ed in 9th grade but teachers didn’t teach us about birth control besides condoms. I never heard about other “birth control” until my senior year in high school.
Don’t worry I don’t have a baby!
Didn’t Levi give an interview where he was asked if they used protection and he said yea but then backtracked and said not all the time? I bet they used condoms occasionally.
I’ve been on bc ever since I became active. Where I live you can go to the healthy clinic and get it without a parents permission. You can even tell them not to call your house if you don’t want your parent to know. It’s still where I get it since I don’t have health insurance.
Also, they give you a brown paper bag full of condoms.
Everything I learned was from the internet, pamphlets, and Cosmo. I will definately talk to my kid(s) about it. I would rather her use protection than end up pregnant before she wants to be or end up with a STD. Hopefully she will make good decisions.
Oh if you live in a small town like I do, you don’t want to go to the school nurse. The whole school AND every parent including yours would know! Ugh.
Honestly, I think it’s the most hypocritical ad ever. A teen mom preaching abstinence? It’s like a B-52 bomber trying to sell peace. More political propaganda designed to make this situation reflect well on Sarah Palin. Honestly, teens are going to have sex, that’s a reality. There are plenty of condoms that can be picked up nearly anywhere, birth control, and new methods every day to stay safe. Bristol Palin chose to be irresponsible and has paid the price for it by becoming a teen mom. That was her choice, expecting teens to practice abstinence in this era is unrealistic, ads about staying safe and being responsible fare far better. Certainly if anyone is going to chose to be abstinent, I can guarantee it’s not because those words came out of Bristol Palin’s mouth.
Shannon – that article is hilarious. Specifically because I grew up in Wisconsin, and that’s pretty much the general opinion on sex education (outside of Madison and Milwaukee, that is).
Growing up, my schools strongly supported Abstinence-based sex ed (and very anti-abortion, as you may well imagine). As a result, much of the information we received about birth control, STIs, even a woman’s menstrual cycle was greatly skewed and overexaggerated. This misinformation made for a lot of self-loathing amongst sexually active teenagers, to say nothing of the “real life” consequences that occur amongst the miseducated.
Shannon, great posts! Agreed, and thank you.
@Cydney – I agree! This kid is going to feel like he wasn’t wanted when he grows up.
I remember the first lot of sex ed we got at school in the 7th grade, just puberty stuff. Soon as we got in the classroom the teacher started yelling at us “First of all this is NOT sex ed!” Then they gave us pictures of penises and we had to label the different parts. I got the giggles and got sent out of the room. Well I was 12!
What I find amusing is whenever you go into a pharmacy, the condoms are right next to the pregnancy tests. 🙂
there are plenty of teen and adult women who get pregnant on purpose out of some misguided need for love. maybe the ad will grab that persons attention. birth control education is no match for the human psyche.
To any teenage girls who want the pill but are afraid to ask because their mother will think they want to have sex:
Tell your parent/Dr that you have heavy, irregular periods with painful cramping. The pill can be prescribed for reasons other pregnancy prevention.
In addition to sex education, I’d also encourage teens to masturbate. You can get all the orgasms you want (and all the good effects of those endorphins) without the risk! Added bonus: if you’re familiar with your own body, chances are the sex you do have will be even better.
obviously abstinence is not realistic for many teens, including bristol, so why not advocate birth control? because bristol is nothing more than her mommy’s right-wing mouthpiece. when will this trashy family go away?
Wow. I have so many things to say on this, so here goes:
1) I work in a pharmacy, and condoms are one of the most stolen items. That’s probably why some places (but not ours) keep them under lock and key. Carding for condoms is something I’ve never heard of – we aren’t even allowed to ask questions or card for the “morning after” pill;
2) Sex eduction starts in 4th grade in San Diego County, and it continues until 10th grade. If you don’t hear about it in class, you hear about it from your friends whose parents don’t “opt them out of it”;
3) If you don’t have health insurance, Planned Parenthood or any other pay-per-ability clinic will gladly get you set up with birth control, no matter your age, with few questions asked;
4) When I was in college, there was a candy jar of condoms on the counter in the Student Health Office – you didn’t even have to check in, you just walked in & took what you needed;
5) Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Bristol already announce to the viewing public that abstinence wasn’t a realistic goal for teenagers?
6) After a discussion, my husband and I decided he would broach the subject of condoms with our teenage son. My husband let him know that when he was ready to have sex, if he was unable to get condoms for ANY reason (embarrassment, no funds, whatever), my husband would get them for him, no questions asked, but his safety was first and foremost in our minds. My husband even bought him a box and put it in our son’s drawer without telling him, so he’d have them if he needed them. We’re Christians, but we’re not stupid.
princess pea- The idea about the heavy bleeding and irregular cramps is a good idea!
bellaluna-It was also a great idea to go ahead and give your son some condoms. As much as a parent can talk to their children, many kids are still mortified at asking their parents.
I think a lot of them don’t want to have to deal with the questions.
@ hatsumomo:
Thanks for giving me another chuckle! I LOVE your sense of humor!
🙂
bellaluna: I think that’s great how you’ve gone about talking about safe sex with your son. Must remember to do that when I have my own kids.
Sarah Palin has greatly damaged this young girl’s life.
Bristol had a kid much too soon and now she is hopelessly dependent on her parents, so she has to say what they tell her to.