Chanel Dubofsky has written for Lillith, Forward, and Tablet. She is the creator of The Marriage Project.

In my medium sized, well appointed suburban high school, I had the luxury of being surrounded by those like me-intellectual, curious, and overachieving. I managed to construct for myself a world in which I was totally unaware of things like drugs, alcohol, or sex in any real context. These things existed distantly, on television or in the next town, but not to me, or to anyone I really knew. This combined with the tendency in my family to refuse to engage with sex on any level that was remotely receptive or empowering, created the perfect opportunity for me to be totally incapable of offering advice or empathy to any of my potentially pregnant peers (none of whom, of course, I knew about).

It's perhaps because of those memories of being hideously nervous and naive that I've become such a fiercely loyal  viewer of MTV's Teen Mom 2. (It's also because I believe it's important for feminists to be smart consumers of pop culture.) Teen Mom 2, for those of you who don't follow, chronicles the lives of 4 girls who were introduced on 16 and Pregnant, MTV's original "documentary" on teenage mothers. Kailyn, Jenelle, Chelsea and Leah continue to deal with raising their babies (in Leah's case, twin girls), while trying to go to school, get and keep a job, and grow and maintain their relationships with their families and boyfriends.

On a weekly basis, there is at least one moment in the show that makes me want to hurl something at a surface that will result in a loud noise. Usually, it has to do with the idea that family consists of a mother, father and baby, and that any other family structure is somehow not real or good enough, but lately, it's been the issue of child support.

Kailyn, who gave birth to her son Isaac in her senior year of high school, is now a student at a community college, working, and living in her own apartment. She and Isaac's father, Jo, are no longer together. Throughout the season, Kailyn struggles to be self sufficient, reticent to the idea of having to depend on social safety nets, such as the organization she eventually turns to to help her get her apartment. (There's a scene in which she says she doesn't want to be one of 'those people who takes advantage of the system.')  To make a long, bloody story short, Kailyn finally decides it's time to ask Jo for some child support, and it doesn't go well. He retaliates by telling her she's lazy, and she should get a better job. She files, and he decides to fight her on the amount he's been ordered to pay.

As the only child of a single parent, I was privy to my mother's constant emotional turmoil around child support. She struggled without ever approaching my father for the money that was owed to her as the custodial parent. In retrospect, I don't regard this as heroism, but I do pause to acknowledge the role of shame in her hesitation to ask for help.

I exercised extreme self control by not reading the comments in any of the blog posts or below any of the episodes that dealt with Kailyn and the child support, but the whole situation left me pondering what deep sexism there is in this entire situation; how we punish young women for being sexual, for using birth control, for not using it, for having abortions, for raising children, for choosing adoption,  for asking for help. Regardless of the undoubtedly voyeuristic character of the 16 and Pregnant/Teen Mom franchise, it has exposed, for better or for worse, the nature of women's decisions about sexuality and child rearing as public property.