UPDATED 12/9/12: The stats now include the girls featured on Season 4 of the show.
The Ashley has done some research to figure out some statistics regarding the girls who have appeared on the show 16 & Pregnant. She decided to take on this project because she thinks it will be helpful to fans of the show and, well, because she has no life. This is Part 1 of The Ashley’s Official ’16 & Pregnant’ Research Project. (To see Part 2, click here!)
Here’s everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the girls who have appeared on 16 & Pregnant. (If you’re trying to get cast for a future season, maybe this research will tell you if you have what it takes to make it on the show….that was a joke.)
The Girls of 16 & Pregnant: Official Research Statistics:
*There have been 47 girls featured on ’16 & Pregnant.’
Location:
*More than half of the girls that were cast for the show are from Southern states. Very few are from the Western states. (For research purposes, ‘Southern’ states include anything south of West Virginia and east of Texas.)
- Southern States: 27 girls (57%)
- Midwestern States: 9 girls (10%)
- Western States: 5 girls (11%)
- Northern States: 6 girls (13%)
*The state that was home to the most ’16 & Pregnant’ girls was Texas, with 8 girls, followed by Florida and Pennsylvania with 4 girls each.
*The city that was home to the most ’16 & Pregnant’ girls was Riverview, Florida. Two of the girls (Markai from Season 2 and Jennifer from Season 3) are from that city.
Babies:
*There have been 49 babies born on ’16 & Pregnant.’ The girls on the show are slightly more likely to have a girl than a boy.
- 51% have been girls (25 babies)
- 49% have been boys (24 babies)
*There have been 2 sets of twins born on the show.
*The most common baby names featured on the show are Ayden and Noah, with 2 girls naming their babies each of those names (although they are spelled differently.)
*Only 9% of the girls featured on the show have chosen adoption for their children.
*As of December 2012, at least 9 of the girls featured on the show (19%) have gotten pregnant again. (Only confirmed pregnancies have been included. Other girls are rumored to have been pregnant, but it wasn’t confirmed.)
- 2 have gotten pregnant two more times (Season 1’s Ebony Rendon and Season 2’s Leah Messer
- 2 gave birth (Season 1’s Ebony Rendon and Season 3’s Jordan Ward)
- 4 are currently pregnant (Season 2’s Brooke Smitherman and Leah Messer, Season 3’s Danielle Cunningham and Season 4’s Kristina Head)
- 2 had an abortion (Season 2’s Markai Durham and Season 3’s Jamie McKay)
- 2 miscarried (Season 1’s Ebony Rendon and Season 2’s Leah Messer)
Relationships:
*26% of the girls on the show have married their baby’s father. (9 girls)
- 55% of those marriages have ended in divorce
- 4 are still married
*Only 38% (or 18 girls) are currently still with their baby’s father.
To find out how many of the girls graduated from high school and went on to college, click here.
Here’s a very cool map of all of the girls’ locations, as well as their babies’ names! To view this awesome map at full size, click here. It was used with permission from its creator, Mara Page.
48 Responses
Not sure if anyone noticed but Farrah is missing from the map of moms
Ebony’s baby died
P,ease please please do a recap of Kristina’s episode of 16 and Pregnant… The one where the baby’s dad died? I really want to hear your whole take on it.
Erm, Erica. Todd Kristina’s Fiancé was already dead when her episode begun. Derek Farrah’s Ex died 2 months before Sophia was born at 36 weeks pregnant
There have also been two babies named Kylee. Cleondra and Myranda’s daughters are both named Kylee and both spelled the same way.
No,that isn’t Myranda’s bay is called,Kaylee
I’d love to see stats on breastfeeding – how many girls tried it, how many girls stuck with it, etc. Maybe even stats on vaginal births vs. c-sections.
The map doesn’t include all of the girls does it? I am pretty sure there was a girl from Miami, Oklahoma this season.
@Megan It only includes up to Season 3. The girl from Miami, OK was from Season 4. -The Ashley
25 girls, 24 boys is not enough to say you are more likely to have a girl over a boy, it is enough to say the split is 50/50.
Or if anything, it is more likely the next girl is going to have a boy, but even that is a long shot.
You can’t use that to say the next girl is more likely to have a boy…each birth/conception is an independent event- even the gender of previous children to the same parents has no impact on the probability of having a baby of one gender or the other. The chance of a given baby being male or female is always approximately 50%.
you should throw in a percentage of times Keifer wore that green sweater on the show!
Awesome! Or how many times you see Chelsea from Teen Mom 2 with something cheetah/leopard print on.
Did you do any research on the high percentage of “16 & Pregnant” girls who either have their lip pierced or a “Marilyn Monroe” piercing? Because I think it might be close to 100% (although I must admit I slacked off on Season 3 and have focused my attentions on the Teen Moms). Also, I think the percentage of 16&P boyfriends who wear a D&G trucker-style hat or shirt is also quite high. Tyler is still wearing his D&G hat (monogrammed with “Baltierra” on the side) 3 years later, bless his heart. It leads me to believe these might be pre-requisites for appearing on the show.
LOL! That would be an awesome project, trying to find odd correlations in the group.
LMAO. Hilarious. Throw in Ed Hardy for the teen dads too. Oy.
Do you have any idea how old the kids are from season one (Leah, Bently and Sophia)? I’m trying to figure out their ages…I feel like they should all be talking/babbling a lot more than what we see on the show.
The kids from season 1 are all around 2 now however most of the filming was done last year since it was in the fall (end of summer and going back to school) so that would put them at 1-1 1/2 at the time of filming 🙂
4,5,5
Nevaeh is a girl 😉
good catch. i looked at this yesterday and guess i wasn’t paying attention!
Oops, I will fix that. Thanks!
This may sound selfish and ignorant but i’m glad there hasn’t been a North Eastern state featured. It’s been proven the South has high teenage pregnancy rates, and we have low rates. I wouldn’t want the dumb viewers of MTV to view my region the same as the others, since teen pregnancy is rare around here. And i’m proud of that. The closest to being North Eastern was Kail and Jo, and they are in Pennsylvania which is not included in the states i’m referring to. And i also don’t need any more people making New Jersey look like trash. Jersey Shore and The Real Housewives of New Jersey do enough of that.
Um, how do you exclude Pennsylvania from the northeast just because you want to? Also, the last official teen pregnancy study had New Mexico ranked as #1 in teen pregnancies, Nevada as second, and Arizona as third. These do not sound like southern states to me! You say teen pregnancy is “rare” around the northeast. New York ranks # 11 and New Jersey ranks # 20 in teen pregnancy. New Jersey has a pregnancy rate of 68 out of every 1000 teenage girls. Rare? I think not. Do the research before speculating on other states.
When I think of ‘Northeast’ states I do not think of Pennslyvania either.. Or New Jersey. Northeastern states in my mind is anything in New England and New York. When you look at the population of New York, obviously it will have a high teenage pregnancy rate, there is signifcantly more people that live in that state than 45 of the other states in the U.S. And in regards to New Jersey, 40% of other states have higher teen pregnancy rates so I wouldn’t exactly count it as a state with a teen pregnancy epidemic. When looking at all the states in New England, not one of them has a high teenage pregnancy rate. I am sure that is what ispeakthetruth was referring to.
I wasn’t saying there was an epidemic, I was just stating that “rare” is not the case. I mentioned New Jersey because it was mentioned in the first post. Also, the rates are per thousand, so population is not a factor in the rankings. Pennsylvania is considered in the northeastern region of the United States by the official census bureau. If you want to specify New England, that is a different story.
I live in PA and we are definitely northeast USA.. if you break the country into 4 or even 6 quadrons we’re northeast..
When I graduated high school there was 1 girl in my graduating class of 600 kids that was pregnant my entire 4 years in school, that was 25 years ago.. Today there are 30-50 pregnant in a class the same size between their freshman & senior year.. times have changed.. the pendulum swings back & forth, someday the world will hold the values of the 50’s again, or close to it in a more modern way.. remember the rip roarin’ 20’s, well we are in a modern version of that, maybe even the 60’s again..
I would never bash another person or entire state for that matter, we all live in glass houses, nobody is perfect, everyone makes missteps, but I would never call a child a ‘mistake’..
I love the chart, its neat to see all the girls displayed that way, and the stats are cool too.. keep up the good work “the ashley”.. I was a young mom, not a teen mom, I still struggled having a baby in my early 20’s.. so unless you are financially ready USE BIRTH CONTROL, cause guess what “it can happen to you”
first off im from new york and id ont consider pennsylvania the northeast either, same with jersey..second off of course new york is gonna be a high number we have a way larger population..so even being at number 11, thats still low based onthe population
Thanks for making this chart, its interesting to have all the facts and information together. Im from Northwest Oregon and even though teen pregnancy is fairly common in my small town, its still somewhat of a taboo. Most young oms here are in the same situation I was, pregnant at 18, but already graduated and employed. But there is so much negativity around the subject that just nobody even talks about it. It would be interesting to see the difference in attitude in comparison to the south, which seems more open and relaxed about it.,
moms*
There were three Aidens.
Lori, Aubrey, and Allie all named their son that if my memory serves me correct.
Aubrey’s son is named Austin.
I’m not surprised most of the girls are from Texas. But I am surprised they haven’t done 1 single girl in California…
I’ve always said that! This is from the US Teen Pregnancy trends pdf I found:
“In general, states with the largest numbers of teenagers also had the greatest number of teenage
pregnancies. California reported the highest number of teenage pregnancies (96,490), followed
by Texas, New York, Florida and Illinois (with about 30,000–70,000 each). The smallest
numbers of teenage pregnancies were in Vermont, North Dakota, Wyoming, South Dakota and
New Hampshire, all of which reported fewer than 1,600 pregnancies among women aged 15–19.”
Obviously this makes sense statistically, but there are also certain areas in CA with an especially high level of teen pregnancies. I went to high school in Kings County in Central California. Kings, along with neighboring Tulare County, have the highest rates of teen pregnancy in California; my senior year, in my high school of fewer than 800 students, there were fifty girls who had children or were currently pregnant. That’s 6% of the school population – not even considering the boys who were the fathers of these kids!
CA has a higher teen pregnancy rate than many developed nations in the world. My area is super rural, with a lot of teens’ parents working long hard hours in the fields or the canneries (the Del Monte plant is about 15 minutes away from my hometown, which is the headquarters of the largest privately owned farm in the world). There is a unique culture in the Central Valley due to its longstanding connection to hardships and impoverishment; the United Farm Workers got their start here (after experiencing generations of depravity and abuse), and thousands of families suffering from the Dust Bowl moved to Central California to escape certain doom in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Very few young people here have high aspirations for themselves. There is just a general ineptitude of advancement, and it is pretty obvious as to why (generations of impoverishment, smallmindedness, and mediocrity!). I’m not criticizing my area at all; I’m acknowledging the historical and cultural circumstances that have led to this dearth of aspiration! I’m just saying that California isn’t all beaches and movie stars, and that MTV is overlooking a serious opportunity to highlight to the kids in my area that these smallminded aspirations to be mommies by 19 will limit their opportunities to thrive! Facebook and myspace make people show off their babies like they’re an award for them having sex and gettin’ their man. They never talk about the trials and troubles they go through and they keep their heads buried in the sand for the rest of their lives!
I’m from the same area and I completely agree with what you are saying! By the time I graduated I think I knew of at least 8 or 9 girls that had been pregnant…& I am sure there were a lot more than that. I graduated from high school 5 years ago and I would say that roughly half of the girls in my graduating class of about 500, have had a kid or two by now…and that’s completely a guess. The real number is probably higher.
I agree that MTV should highlight the central valley and show the truth about how CA has a ridiculously high teen pregnancy rate.
This is just a guess, but maybe it’s because of California’s filming laws about minors?
Who are the 5 girls that got married and then divorced? I know Leah, Christinna, Aubrey all did but who are the other two? The other girls I recall being married are Jordan, Emily, Ebony, Brooke, Megan, and Lizzie.
Only 4 out of the 9 girls who married the fathers are still married?
I thought it’d be 5…Ebony, Lizzie, Brooke, Jordan, and Megan. Or have I missed something? LOL
Good catch guys. I did make a mistake when I inputed this. The correct stats are now posted. The 3 girls that are divorced are Aubrey, Christinna and Leah. The ones that are still married are Jordan, Lizzie, Ebony, Brooke and Megan. Thanks for letting me know.
Emily and Daniel got married and are also still married.
Megan is divorced as of April 26
For all of you that obviously didn’t take geography http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England. Those are the new England states…
lol ignore my comments! I can’t count!!
I think your baby count is off, because Leah (season 2) had twins and so did Jennifer (season 3) which if you were counting both sets of twins would make your baby count higher than 37… if there wer only 35 girls 🙂
I appreciate u taking the time to write this! It really helps put things into perspective cuz a lot of teens think that they will beat those odds but we all got a chance to see these girls struggles, get to know them, and see how hard they tried to beat the statistics but didnt! I can always count on The Ashley to write the most interesting and TRUE articles!
35 girls so 35 babys plus 2 moms had twins thats 2 extra babys that makes 37!!!!
Two of the girls had abortions.