Christina87

This is such a good post! That’s exactly what I think about Cole’s parents. They probably wish he had done better (not financially, but character wise), but now that it’s a done deal, they appreciate the grandchildren / the fact cole is happy (although he seems miserable to me lol, but he would absolutely claim to be happy!). Part of me also wonders if the move was partially to get Cole away from his family, or the family away from them. I thought it was interesting when Cole so casually said, “they’re devastated.” If my parents were devastated that I was moving, and I didn’t HAVE to leave the area for a good reason like work, I’d push to wait to build a house until land becomes available in the area. I thought that exchange was so odd! I feel like Chelsea has so much more control as a result of this move. It ensured that cole had to quit his job, unless he wanted a super long commute (and there is no way that would be okay with the princess! More hours alone with the kids is a no go). She’s closer to her enabler, randy, but further from Mary, who keeps it real. Cole’s family is not around. Most importantly, they are presumably further away from Adam and his family. It seems like a way, to me, for Chelsea to kill multiple birds with one stone. It also seems like a way for her to more easily hide her childish and demanding behavior, with no one around to witness how she is acting (except possibly randy, who is not critical of it).

Very true, but he brags about everything else! 😂 Chelsea would waste no opportunity to point out that her perfect husband was college educated. if she didn’t value education enough to care, Randy would brag that cole did things the “right” way and got a college degree.

I’ve always wondered if cole played soccer for college, but didn’t graduate. I feel like Chelsea would have bragged about him being a college graduate, or at least randy (because Randy would have some appreciation for how hard college is). I’m just not sure I see him being a graduate, with his vocabulary especially. Can you imagine his term papers? “Romeo thot Juliette was hot and she was a Smoke Show he was like Dam! My mind created these Gifts for Juliette. If her Nurse wants Juliette to stop seeing me I’m gonna get up off the toilet and the old lady is gonna wish she’d never messed with me! I’m gonna tell Juliette like let me talk to her Dam. Juliette was like we are the most beautiful couple and I thank God everyday for blessing us with the most dam Hot life! Ur always my smokeshow!” I could definitely see him not being able to do the work. I’ve never seen anything that suggests he’s very intellectual, and while less intelligent people graduate college every day, most don’t spell damn like “Dam” consistently. His writing looks and sounds like a first grader! you’d also HOPE college would have widened his worldview. For instance, you’d hope intro to psych would have let him see that sometimes even non-crazy people need therapy! I’d really like to know if he graduated. I accepted it at the time, but after knowing his intellect better, and the lack of bragging about his degree, I wonder...

Very well said! You put it into such good words about the difference between a normal professional’s reaction to being on Teen Mom, vs something like marrying someone of a different race or religion. That is spot on! My parents definitely don’t care about judgment either if something fits their values (which being on a trashy MTV show never would!). That is such a good point! Now I am really curious to learn more about randy! It would be so interesting to see how he got interested in dentistry, and who encouraged him to pursue it.

He is sooooo much like cole! Both of them really get their kicks from people writing them about how great they are as husbands and dads. They probably are so much in that little world that judgmental comments from community members just go unnoticed! If 63927493 people on social media are fawning over you, while 20 you know in real life are judging you, I could see how you could ignore the “haters!”

I agree with every word of this so much! Randy is definitely a fame whore, and loves being on TV. We don’t know much about his background. Who knows? Maybe he wanted to be a movie star, or some other kind of entertainer, but decided doing something academic was more realistic? Maybe his parents were in the circus, or were stand up comics. Perhaps he came from a family where ignorance was celebrated, and crudeness wasn’t shunned. It’s very possible that he didn’t grow up in a “classy” environment, and perhaps grew up in an environment where fame was considered the best thing ever. His being a dentist might be a complete anomaly for his family! One thing I have ALWAYS thought is that randy was a stage father in a way, encouraging Chelsea to be on teen mom. He seems to thrive in the spotlight, while she doesn’t. She strikes me as introverted, and so insecure that being in the spotlight wouldn’t be fun. I definitely see randy encouraging her to get started with it, when she was a teenager and fame sounded at least somewhat cool, and wanting her to keep going when she was tired of it. He could tell her, “it’s not that bad! Just control the narrative, and don’t show them anything bad, and then nobody will criticize you.” Sure, he might have realized that MTV was realistically her best shot at supporting herself. However, most dentists would vastly prefer to shoulder the cost themselves than be on teen mom. I think randy saw teen mom as HIS shot to be on MTV, and I would argue that was his primary motivation for encouraging her to pursue it (though he would tell people it was to help others, and for Chelsea to support herself). He also seems to thrive off of Chelsea being the “best one,” and loves being the “example” of a good dad. In fact, he might even claim he does the show himself to show the world what a good father should do. But deep down, I think he wants fame. I get this feeling from him more than anyone else on the show, with the obvious exception of javi! Bottom line, Chelsea would have been fine without the show, and most upper middle class professionals would much rather have taken the financial hit of a baby than be on a trashy MTV show for everyone to judge. It’s not hard to see why the others signed up. Leah was living in poverty, Kail had no family, and while you could argue that Barbara and Jenelle were financially stable (owned a home, both had cars, jenelle wasn’t expected to get a job, seemed to have everything they needed), Barbara had to work nonstop to provide those things, and being on the show allowed them to live a drastically more comfortable life, with less work. The Houskas would have been about the same day-to-day, at least in the beginning. Nothing can convince me that the driving force behind Chelsea joining the show wasn’t randy! This was his chance, and he wasn’t going to lose it. Now that I think about it, cole is pretty similar in being a stealthy fame whore, who loves setting the “example” of what a good man looks like. The difference is that randy is a lot smarter than cole, and just shows himself in a good light, without the outright bragging like cole does.

I couldn’t be attracted to someone so full of himself either! I work with a guy kind of like cole, and it’s super annoying. He skips no chance to brag! It would suck if everything your husband did was for an Instagram audience of sad women who swoon over him. He’s totally the type to swoop in and load the dishwasher when you’ve been doing chores for 3 hours, and make a big deal about posting it online. I couldn’t be with someone who needed all that validation!

This is really good insight! I think it does depend on community, as well as your own professional aspirations, like you mentioned. I grew up in a small town in the South, but not a rural area where everyone got married young, etc. Most people in my small town aspired to a professional job, and being a doctor, dentist, lawyer, or banker in my town was the ideal. You are also soooo right in that children of these kinds of professionals who didn’t attend college were considered “losers,” and it was better to scrape by and barely graduate with a degree in underwater basket weaving than not go to college! I can’t think of a single one who didn’t go, but I can think of a few who spent yeeeeears in community college, and then spending yeeeeears at a four-year college, finally graduating at 28 or so. Still, that is considered a better path than not going. Chelsea’s experience is sooooo foreign to me, and I absolutely cannot imagine her growing up in my small town, and how trashy her family would be viewed. They would literally be gossiped and negatively talked about constantly, and people would cast a HUGE side eye at randy for raising his kids to be trashy adults. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but that’s how it is here, and I just can’t imagine a town where Chelsea is considered the norm. Of course, this goes for anyone on Teen Mom, but the others didn’t grow up in Chelsea’s socioeconomic class. It is interesting in general, though, how different communities can be. My last boyfriend, who I was with for several years, grew up in the city where I currently live. His childhood and social dynamic is so different from mine! His family is more or less anonymous, and he never hears anything about his high school classmates, unless they are Facebook friends. Some smaller communities within the city are like a small town, but his family was not in any of them. Even the community I live in now is so different, because it’s mostly middle to upper middle class professional families, but the kids take much more diverse paths. I have met several who are not going to college for one reason or another, and there isn’t the same outrage of, “your dad is a lawyer! You have to go to college!” However, no matter how different the community is, Chelsea’s remarks are super trashy! Sheesh! She put images in my head that I don’t want, lol!

For a girl with an involved, loving father, Chelsea always shocks me. I would never publicly say something like that (even if I had the urge to, which I absolutely do not lol!) because of how it would reflect on my family, and how grossed out they would be! As a dentist, my dad has a reputation to uphold in the community, and my family would be so mortified if I put such trashy business out there, and they had to face their peers who had heard it. I’m not saying that if you’re not upper middle class that you’re trashy, or that people expect you to be trashy...but it’s just so weird to me. I had a lot of dentist, doctor, lawyer, and businessperson kids’ friends growing up, and none of them would ever behave like Chelsea. She is SUCH an outlier. It really makes me wonder about randy. Is he trashy deep down? Does he have no shame? Is he friends with other people in his socioeconomic class, or is he one of those “I don’t care what they think of me” lone wolf types? I don’t ask this to be stuck up at all, but genuinely super curious. I’m at such a loss as to how Chelsea can behave like this and ever show her face around town! And how randy goes to the country club and says, “congrats, Mike! Your daughter just got into law school! Well, mine announced on her show, Teen Mom, that her husband came in her last night.” Barf!

I agree! I cannot imagine, in any universe, my parents putting up with that. And I can even less imagine them letting me move my loser boyfriend into the home they’re paying for! My parents have always been generous, but also expected me to uphold my end of the bargain. I have always really wondered what Chelsea’s life would have looked like without aubree, and I literally can’t imagine it. Without aubree, she couldn’t have lazed around and played house when Adam, because instead of a single mom, she would have been a bum. I wonder if she would have scraped into the college with the lowest admission requirements ever, and partied hard for a year, before failing out. If she didn’t try any school, would she have been able to stick to a job? I’m guessing no. I think best case scenario would have been living at home with randy (so he could stay on her), starting beauty school with friends, and wanting to finish with them, thus being motivated. Still, it’s so hard to picture her life without aubree. I feel like I know exactly what Leah, jenelle, and Kail would have been doing without their teen pregnancy, but it’s hard to imagine Chelsea’s life any other way!

It was actually junior year! Remember in her 16 and pregnant when she started the school year, and randy told her he wanted her to graduate with her class? She turned 18 in September, but for whatever reason was just a senior then. She had aubree early in the year, and then ended up dropping out. Remember when she went to that homecoming event with her friends and Adam got mad? That’s why it took her 73927493 years to get her GED, since she dropped out during senior year. She was supposed to go back after having aubree, but just never could get it together.

Yes!!! I find the timing so suspicious, getting pregnant midway through junior year. Second semester junior year is intense, because it’s when most people are taking the SAT and applying to colleges. I could definitely see Chelsea panicking because she didn’t have the grades, didn’t want to disappoint randy, and didn’t want to figure out a plan. If she could just graduate, marry Adam, and stay home and raise aubree, then she would have a legitimate option that didn’t involve furthering her education, OR losing face by being the only dud in her friend group.

Awwww thank you!!! Yep, still around, but just swamped! My school started out virtually, which was crazy enough, and now we have been sent back at 100% capacity! I’ve absolutely never felt this swamped. I heard Chelsea quit the show, so I had to come see what the boards were saying, lol! I hope I can relax a little at Christmas and reconnect with everybody! I love and miss you guys! 💕 here’s to the craziest year of teaching ever!

I feel this! My Adam was not outwardly a “bad boy,” but I didn’t realize that a guy could look wholesome, come from a good family, be a good student, and still be a complete asshole. He was a total “bad boy” at heart, soooo similar to Adam! It makes me wonder if maybe Adam wasn’t quite as bad at first. Grandma Donna seems like a normal middle-class person, and his brothers all turn out okay. Maybe Adam appeared more normal at first, before he made his transition to total douche!

I absolutely love your description of her rocking in the fetal position because she gained 3 pounds or grandma Donna wanted to talk! Hilarious and spot on! 😂😂😂 Yes!!! I love that you mention cole being willing to take all that on so young. It would have been different if he were 40. However, some people love to insist that Chelsea waited an eternity to meet and be “saved by” cole! I just turned 33, and I’m single, so it makes me laugh that people consider Chelsea meeting cole at 22 to be “late in life.”