In a couple of weeks, MTV will start airing their new documentary series, "Teen Mom." A follow-up to the hit "16 and Pregnant," this new show takes you back into the lives of four of the original "16 and Pregnant" girls -- Maci, Amber, Catelynn, and Farrah -- for their first year of teen motherhood, asking whether you can live like a teenager once you've become a parent.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I first heard that MTV -- the network that arguably started the reality TV craze with "The Real World" nearly a generation ago, and is now known for launching the careers of Lauren Conrad and Spencer Pratt -- was planning a documentary-style series on pregnant and parenting teenagers. After watching the initial six-episode run of "16 and Pregnant," I know one thing... I'm hooked and I'm going to watch every single episode of "Teen Mom."

I don't ponder this often, but if I were to consider how to define the word "sex" to someone, I'm fairly confident that I could come within striking distance of an accurate description. But according to a few articles floating around today, I might be a little overconfident...it turns out, Americans have almost no common definition of sex. In fact, about 37 percent of women consider oral sex "sex" -- and 63 percent of them don't. Somewhat surprisingly, men are more likely to consider oral sex to be "sex" (though Amanda Hess of The Sexist Blogs has an interesting take on this finding).

Why the confusion? Have years of philandering politicians and their fast and loose (pun intended) definitions of sex made the American public less sure of themselves? Well, maybe they're not all to blame. According to Erick Janssen, a scientist at sex-research Mecca, The Kinsey Institute, "Sex is a word and nobody is really in charge of that term. In a way, our thinking of sex and definitions of sex is more complex than they were in the past."

And even in the (admittedly recent) past, things weren't very clear. In 1998, two other Kinsey researchers were publishing a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association on how people see sex. The answer: We can't really agree. "These data make it clear that general agreement regarding what constitutes having 'had sex' and how sexual partners are counted cannot be taken for granted," Kinsey researchers Stephanie Sanders and June Reinisch concluded in their JAMA paper.

So, what's the big deal? Who cares if we can't come up with an official definition? To my mind, it doesn't much matter if my definition and yours don't match up...but sex is a big enough deal that, if you're having it, you should be able to talk about it. And to borrow a point from the Sexist Blogs' Sexist Beatdown, "it's not as important to define what 'sex' is as it is to define what we're comfortable with people doing with us or with other people."

For the past several years more than half of teens surveyed in our occasional polls have told us that they wish they had waited to have sex. Martino and colleagues explore this concept in greater depth in the June edition of Perspectives in Sexual and Reproductive Health. They test the idea that TV contributes to these high levels of regret because TV sets unrealistically high expectations about the positive outcomes of sex (and teens might not actually experience these positive outcomes). The authors use data gathered from the same teens at 3 different time points from 2001-2004 to determine the impact of TV on feelings of regret about sexual initiation. They determine that their hypothesis is correct for teen boys who watch a lot of sex on TV, but not girls.

In other words, teen boys who watch a lot of sex on TV are more likely to report that their expectations about sex fall after they actually have sex. Girls' (who incidentally report much higher regret) expectations about sex remain consistent before and after they first have sex. Other reasons why teens regret having sex have to do with their readiness for sex, their partner, or the status of their relationship. Clearly this article raises a lot of important questions including...

Why do you think so many teens wish they had waited to have sex?

Do you think access to more sexually explicit material on the internet will influence sexual regret?

An important new study from the Rand Corporation is the first to directly link sexual content on TV to the likelihood of teens getting pregnant or causing a pregnancy. Primary finding from the study published in the journal Pediatrics? Teens who are drowning in sex-saturated TV are twice as likely as their peers who watch little sexy stuff on TV to get pregnant or cause a pregnancy by age 16.  So, will turning off the TV prevent teen pregnancy?  A few modest thoughts to consider and discuss:

• Research once again has caught up with common sense.  Of course TV helps shape the social script for teenagers.  We take it as a given, for example, that Hollywood fashion influences what people outside of Hollywood wear, why would it be any different when it comes to teen sexual behavior?
• Don't assume TV is the whole story.  The RAND study and others have noted that sexual content on TV has grown over the past 10-15 years. If the influence of TV on teen sexual behavior is so profound and so direct, why might it be that teen sexual behavior has become more responsible over the past 10-15 years, the same time period that sexual content on TV has gotten raunchier and more prevalent?  Put another way, teen sexual activity, pregnancy, and birth rates have all declined dramatically during the Lohan, Spears administration.
• Media influence versus other influences.  Ponder this...the influence of media probably grows as other important influences in a teens' life wanes. On the job parents, for example, can do much to help teens interpret what teens see, read, and hear.
• Turn that crap off is not an effective parenting strategy.  The National Campaign has long encouraged parents to use what is on television---both good and bad---as a conversation-starter.  Parents should...gasp...sit down with their teens, watch shows that their children want to watch, and discuss what they have seen.  "Do you think that was a responsible decision Dick?"  Do you think she was really ready to have sex Jane?"  "Is that what a respectful relationship looks like Sue?"  "Why didn't that character discuss contraception Tom?"
• Show us more consequences.  National Campaign public opinion polls make clear that teens (76%) and adults (72%) want the media to focus more on the consequences of sex.
• TV isn't the only influence.  For those alarmed by the findings of this report, here is  something else to fret about.  The RAND report only studied the influence of TV, not other mediums that teens consume in vast quantities...think text messaging, social networks, music, etc.

Somehow I managed to live 30+ years without having to change a single diaper, but that all changed eight weeks ago today when my wife and I became new parents to our daughter, Lucy. While I am not a parenting expert yet and still have a lot of questions, I think I am getting the hang of life as a new parent. Dirty diapers, it turns out, are only the tip of the iceberg. In the last two months, I have learned a great deal about babies and what it means to be a father - things I never knew before.

Get your Mr. Mom on after the jump.

For those still unsure about the power of celebrity culture, please note today's sign of the apocolypse.

Seems porn star Jenna Jameson is in a motherly way. (In fairness, I note parenthetically that news outlets are dutifully reporting that Jenna is a "former" porn actress...whatever.)  Here is what the proud mom-to-be had to say about her relationship with mixed martial arts maestro Tito Ortiz : 

  "I think I'm gonna stay unmarried and just go for the babies!  I'm following in Angelina's footsteps!"

Oh joy.

The increase in the teen birth rate, Jamie Lynn Spears, the Gloucester un-pact, and---who knows, the performance of Michael Phelps in the Olympics---have all elicited a serious round of media finger-pointing.  You know the argument; the media is providing a heavy coat of coarse to teen culture and they are to blame for our increasingly sexualized culture.

Fair?  Of course not. 

Read what Sarah Brown thinks about all this in an op-ed that appeared in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and check out the accompanying editorial.