Jenelle+(Teen+Mom+2)

== = __**Jenelle (16 and Pregnant, Teen Mom 2)**__ = **-Sara McKechnie** media type="custom" key="9160174" align="left"

Watch 1:19-1:27 (Dr. Drew tries exercise with Jenelle and Barbara)

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Jenelle Evans is an eighteen year old from Oak Island, North Carolina. Jenelle first became famous when starred in her own episode of MTV’s reality show “16 and Pregnant” in the spring of 2010. During the winter of 2011 she became one of four girls MTV choose to continue to follow after “16 and Pregnant” and a cast member to the show “Teen Mom 2”. ======

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Jenelle was with her boyfriend Andrew for over three years when she became pregnant at 16 (Dolgen, 2010). He was a successful model in New York until alcoholism caused him to lose his job and live with his parents. Andrew lived four hours away from Jenelle, but they tried to make the relationship work despite Janelle’s mother’s dislike for him. While Andrew did attend the birth of his son, he failed to make any plan to spend time with his new family after the birth of their son Jace. Jenelle’s friends pointed out that she deserved better and that Andrew’s alcoholism was not good to have around their son. After a hostile phone conversation where she highlighted his unemployment, DUI charges, jail time and lack of support- Jenelle broke up with him. ======

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Most of the footage and media stories on Jenelle highlight her irresponsible, impulsive, irrational and disrespectful behavior. Jenelle is struggling to step into her role as a mother and is constantly fighting with her own mother, Barbara. Jenelle still wants to party and be with friends and does not to take care of her son on any sort of consistent basis. Jenelle was not ready for motherhood and voluntarily signed temporary custody over to her mother. ======

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The entire season of Teen Mom 2 shows Jenelle’s volatile relationship with her mother. Any conversation they have ends with yelling and a power struggle. Barbara cannot understand why Jenelle is not completely devoted to her son and why she is not grateful for her raising Jace. ======

Jenelle’s on-and-off boyfriend Keiffer does not have a permanent residence or a job (Dolgen, 2011). He is unmotivated and dependant on Jenelle. Keiffer provides support to Jenelle when she is having trouble with her mom, but often he is the cause of their heated arguments.

Although Jenelle is struggling with her relationships, unemployment and the law, she has high hopes for her future. She hopes to one day regain custody of her son, marry a good man, be employed as a film editor and have a house of her own.

Biological Perspective Watching Jenelle on “Teen Mom 2” can be frustrating. It can be hard to understand why she behaves the way she does, why she does not take care of her son and why she is so disrespectful to her mother. The biological model is ideal for understanding Jenelle’s characteristic responses and accepting them as her natural and genetic disposition.

Pavlov theorized that all organisms must respond to stimuli in a certain way and be adaptable to the environment. There are certain stimuli that all organisms must respond similarly to. Stable differences between how one individual and another respond emotionally to the same stimuli is considered their temperament (Friedman, 2009, p. 153).

Jenelle’s temperament can be categorized as mildly active, highly emotional, highly social, and highly aggressive and impulsive. She is moderately active because while she likes to surf, she is content sitting on the beach and the physical aspects of caring for her son are too much for her. Jenelle’s emotionality is shown on almost every episode of “Teen Mom 2” when her mood changes quickly and she flares her hot temper. Almost every conversation with her mother, even ones that begin seemingly pleasant, become hostile quickly. Janelle is highly social and becomes easily bored when she is alone with her son. Janelle prefers having a boyfriend and being at parties to being alone.

The most easily visible component of Janelle’s temperament is her aggressive and impulsive nature. She has on more than one occasion attacked her mother and was recently videotaped beating up another teen girl for saying something negative about Keiffer. Her impulsive nature was made apparent when she decided to take her boyfriend to visit her parents in New Jersey. She took her mother’s credit card and did not tell her professors or her employer that she was leaving for a long weekend. Jenelle acted impulsively when she called up the father of her son and broke up with him because her friends suggested it. There were signs that the relationship was not going to work, but there was very little time, maybe a few minutes, between her friends suggestion and Jenelle calling to break up with Andrew. Temperament is not only characterized by activity, emotionality, sociability and aggressiveness/impulsivity but also by drives. Jenelle has a high sex drive and a high intelligence drive. Jenelle’s high sex drive is evident in her early pregnancy and her typical smattering of hickies. Jenelle has a talent for education and was able to graduate high school early and begin college after the birth of her son.

Jeffrey Gray theorized that nervous systems have developed to orient organisms toward stimuli and that rewards and punishments result from correct and incorrect behaviors (Friedman, 2009, p. 156). He hypothesizes that there are two physiological systems, the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and the behavioral activation system (BAS), that regulate one’s response to punishment and reward respectively. Jenelle’s BIS is evident in her constant anxiety that her mother will yell at her, or kick her out, or that she will not be able to see her son. Her BAS is evident in her orientation towards friends, parties, drugs and sex and the accompanying impulsive behaviors to acquire these rewards.

One of the downfalls to the biological perspective is the idea of biological determinism and that personality is completely determined by genes. If this theory were true than one would assume that most of Barbara’s personality and behaviors would be passed genetically to Jenelle and then Jace. Hopefully, they can both overcome any predispositions that they have been genetically passed down from Barbara. Barbara can be cold, insensitive and hypocritical. Jenelle and Jace have the capacity to avoid having those personality traits as current theory recognizes that personality is not completely biologically determined (Friedman, 2009, p. 174). Jace is not doomed to become as hot-tempered as his mother or as critical as his maternal grandmother.

While this model is helpful in explaining Jenelle’s less than pleasant personality, it reduces all personality to behavior and all behavior to biological tendencies. This does not fully explain Jenelle’s personality as one of most noticeable behaviors is her lack of desire to care for her son. Although caring for one’s offspring is typically considered a biological tendency, Jenelle could have genetically inherited the inability to properly care for children from her mother. Removing personal responsibility and attributing child neglect to one’s genetics is an unfortunate an unacceptable consequence to using this perspective (Friedman, 2009, p. 183).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Another issue with this perspective is that it minimizes a person’s potential for change. If genetics, the nervous system and hormones are determinants of behavior and therefore of personality, there can only be changes in personality if there are changes in biology. Although Jenelle does not change much between “16 and Pregnant” and the end of “Teen Mom 2”, she does have hope to change. She wants to learn how to take care of her son, how to not be argumentative and how to pick better partners. The biological perspective does not have room for possible improvements.

**<span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">Behaviorist Perspective ** <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The behaviorist perspective view personality as conditioned behaviors that comprise a person’s traits and tendencies. Ivan Pavlov discovered classical conditioning and its importance in learning behaviors. He learned that the repeated pairing a neural conditioned stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus leads to an unconditioned response and eventually when only the conditioned stimulus is presented to a subject it elicits a conditioned response. Pavlov also discovered that generalization happens when a stimulus only similar to the conditioned stimulus elicits the same response (Friedman, 2009, p. 191).

<span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Generalization can be used to understand Jenelle’s hot-temper, one of her defining personality traits. Jenelle and her mother have their differences and they are constantly dissatisfied with each other. When they communicate it typically takes the form of Barbara wants Jenelle to do something, Jenelle is hostile, Barbara yells and then Jenelle yells. Anytime Barbara tries to communicate with Jenelle, no matter if it negative or neutral, Jenelle has been conditioned to respond with yelling. She has generalized all communication with her mother as aggravating, hurtful and mean and responds with yelling. She does not have the ability to discriminate between the different intentions that her mother has when she tries to talk to her.

<span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">At the end of the season of “Teen Mom 2” Jenelle and Barbara sit down to talk to Dr. Drew. Jenelle tells him how her mother is never kind or loving towards her and that they constantly argue. Dr. Drew tries to un-pair communication and hostility by asking Barbara to list 3 of Jenelle’s positive traits. Extinction occurs when the conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus are not put together as frequently and the conditioned response decreases (Friedman, 2009, p. 192). If Barbara could show Jenelle on a regular basis that she could communicate without negativity then Jenelle’s angry responses may desist and the cycle could end. When Dr. Drew asked Barbara to try the exercise, she could not think of three positive qualities and the conditioned response of yelling did not become extinct as hoped for.

<span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Systematic desensitaization occurs when a person is afraid of a certain stimulus and the stimulus is separated from a fear response (Friedman, 2009, p. 195). Once Jenelle signed custody of her son over to her mother she was constantly afraid that her mother would take him away from her completely. She had reason to be afraid because her mother was constantly threatening to not let Jenelle even see Jace if she was disrespectful or misbehaved. Jenelle was systematic desensitized to these threats as Barbara continually took Jace away and kicked Jenelle out, but each time Barbara allowed Jenelle and Jace to reunite. Although they were initially incredibly distressing, Jenelle was desensitized to her mother’s threats.

<span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Fred Skinner hypothesized that rewards and punishments for particular behaviors reinforce them and shape personality. In his studies of behavior at Harvard Skinner developed his understanding of operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is when one changes a behavior by manipulating the consequences to the action (Friedman, 2009, p. 198).

<span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The root to many of Jenelle’s problem behaviors can be found in how her behaviors conditioned. Barbara is trying to shape mature and responsible mothering behavior from Jenelle, but she is always reinforcing the wrong behavior. <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Barbara is trying to shape mature and responsible mothering behavior from Jenelle, but she is reinforcing the wrong behavior. Barbara’s punishment for any disrespectful is punished by getting yelled at and getting kicked out. Barbara rewards Jenelle with getting to live at home and spend time with her son when Jenelle says that she has learned from her punishment. Barbara rewards Jenelle with attention when she is misbehaving, but never rewards and good behavior. Barbaa could shape Jenelle’s behavior if she rewarded the small thing she does for Jace. If Barbara thanks Jenelle when she feeds or changes Jace she could condition Jenelle to enact more constant and mothering care.

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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The biological and behaviorist perspective are both beneficial to learning about Jenelle’s personality. When watching reality television shows it can feel like you get to know the cast members really well. Watching Jenelle go through the difficulties of being a teen mother from the birth of her son to his first birthday has allowed viewers to get a full view of her personality. ======

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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">It can be challenging to understand someone who is portrayed as so disrespectful, ungrateful and irresponsible. The biological and behaviorist model help to understand Janelle’s personality in a way that removes some of her responsibility for her actions. Neither model has much room for free will and both claim to be entirely responsible for human behavior. ======

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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">If Jenelle begins to use other more positive qualities that she has a natural tendency for or if she is conditioned into some new behaviors, she defiantly has the potential to be the successful person she hopes to become and mother Jace needs. Jenelle is a resilient person. She gave birth to her son, she took care of herself when she had nowhere to stay, she is aware of some of her short comings and she is hopeful for a brighter future. ======

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Radar Online. (2011). ‘Teen Mom’ Jenelle Evan: ‘Motherhood Is Not What I Expected’. Retrieved from http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2011/03/exclusive-interview-teen-mom-jenelle-evans-motherhood-not-what-i-expected ======