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The Nation's Pulse

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Thanks to both the sexual revolution and the "Great Society" welfare programs, this nation has seen a huge rise in illegitimacy. Worse, Hollywood, through shows like Murphy Brown and Friends and celebrities like Madonna, has glamorized this social tragedy. Getting pregnant out of wedlock is something that hip, successful women do without suffering any serious consequences.

Knocked Up only reinforces that message. In the movie, Allison Scott is a successful television producer for E!, and she is just beginning to host her own show when she gets pregnant. But the pregnancy actually helps her career; viewers like her pregnancy, and E!'s executives want to make the most of it. In the real world, of course, Allison probably wouldn't have such a happy fate. As much research has demonstrated, there are few ways that will more likely lock a young woman into a life of poverty than getting pregnant before she is married.

Yet Knocked Up takes the wrong message up a notch. Not only is out-of-wedlock pregnancy something that is associated with successful women, it also turns slovenly losers like Ben Stone into responsible fathers. That's not a message that is likely to do much good. Rather, we should want young, single women to be aware that the men most likely to get them "knocked up" are also most likely to be bums who will abandon their charges.

After all of the dreck that Hollywood has inundated us with over the years, it is hard to find fault with my fellow conservatives for being enthused about Knocked Up. One feels a great sense of relief to finally see a film that has messages that are pro-life and pro-fatherhood. Unfortunately, it still sends the wrong message on out-of-wedlock pregnancy. It tells young, unassuming women that Allison Scott is what getting pregnant outside of marriage is like, when in reality they are far more likely to suffer the fate of Anne and Lisa.

David Hogberg is a Washington writer and host of the website Health Hog.

topics:
Television, Abortion, Hollywood, Conservatism, Oil