15 Reasons You Still Love 'Teen Mom'

In December of 2009, a reality show premiered on MTV that truly changed everything. Of course, that show is Teen Mom, which has had several seasons with several different girls. Tears have been shed, people have grown up, and us viewers have been totally inspired. That show is, of course, a spin-off of the popular 16 And Pregnant. The truth is that you never stopped loving this show and now you have even more of a reason since Teen Mom O.G. is currently airing on the channel. The latest season features the original girls -- Maci, Catelynn, Amber, and Farrah -- and it's pop culture gold. What's so awesome about this series is that it's not like any other reality TV show. It's not exploitive, it's not fake, it's not lying about anything and it's always relatable. It's truly a work of reality television art and we're going to stand by that theory. We just love it. Here are 15 reasons you still love Teen Mom, all these years later.

15 It's Real

This isn't made up reality. This is actual reality. We weren't sure it was a thing… until this show premiered. The four main girls are honestly just regular girls. They could be you and your best friends. They could be your neighbor or at that girl at school who you always say hi to and make small talk with but aren't super close with. This is honestly as real as any piece of reality television comes, and that's pretty awesome. We can tell it's real since there are so many lows in the girls' lives that are captured on camera, and some of the stories are so sad and emotional that they can't possibly not be true. Plus since the show deals with such serious topics, it would be really rude and ridiculous to even suggest that everything was totally made up. So we know for a fact that this stuff is true to life and that everything has really happened.

14 It's Moving

We can't watch Catelynn and her one true love Tyler get married or talk parenting or, well, do anything at all without tearing up. They are seriously the cutest couple ever. Well, Maci and her beau Taylor are pretty adorable too. But we get to follow these girls as they become young women and it's a pretty amazing, moving, and emotional journey. When we first meet them on 16 And Pregnant, they're each dealing with having a baby at the super young age of sixteen. In season one of Teen Mom, Farrah is living at home and going to culinary school and raising her baby Sophia along with her parents. Amber's trying to make it work with Gary while raising baby Leah, Maci's got her hands full raising Bentley with her immature boyfriend Ryan, and Catelynn and Tyler are reeling since they gave their baby Carly up for adoption. As the years go on, they really do get older and wiser, but not with a few bumps along the road.

13 It's About Love

To say this show does not have a whole bunch of love stories at its core would be pretty crazy. As mentioned above, Catelynn and Tyler are super sweet and super in love. We watch them grow together as a couple and become even more in love. They have a common bond since they both had a really difficult childhood but going through the adoption changes them and brings them even closer together. Farrah is a single mom and we see her dating journey through the series, for better and for worse. Maci has a boyfriend, Kyle, in season two and moves to Nashville, but then returns home and ends up with the adorable and sweet hipster Taylor. Amber has recently found love with Matt after the chaos and heartbreak of getting back together with Gary constantly. It's amazing to see these women find true love after struggling so much.

12 It's About Growing Up

It would be impossible to not think about growing up and coming-of-age stories when watching this show. Even the fact that the past two seasons have been called Teen Mom OG because these episodes feature the four original girls prove that there are still so many stories to be told about these amazing women. It's pretty interesting that these girls had to become moms before they even became women themselves. They had to grow up super fast and suddenly they had so many adult things to worry about, from the cost of diapers and baby food to how to pay rent to how to balance school and a part-time job and parenting. And oh yeah, dealing with baby daddies, which wasn't always a picnic. Thankfully, this show proves that growing up is difficult and tricky and confusing and all that, but there are also a ton of magical and exciting moments along the way, especially if you just hang in there.

11 It's Entertaining

We can't ignore the fact that Teen Mom is, at its core, super entertaining. After all, it's supposed to entertain us, and it definitely does a really good job. There are ups and downs like any good and juicy drama, but since it's reality, it seems even more dramatic. Because this series is so relatable -- we may not all have had babies at sixteen, but we can relate to any struggles of growing up and getting older -- that makes it even more fun to watch. We cheer every girl on as she finds love and finds herself, and we love watching everyone succeed, especially since we've been there from the start. Teen Mom OG is probably the most entertaining of all the seasons since it involves a lot of talk about the fame and fortune that the girls have gotten through their appearances on the show. They're often talking about the media and what they're saying and whether it's true and not.

10 It's About Change

We're all used to watching reality shows where the people don't seem to learn from their mistakes or change at all. They seem to have the same arguments with the same people (like a certain popular franchise that involves a whole lot of fighting… but we won't name names). Honestly, we could watch any season and nothing would be too different, except maybe the hairstyles. But Teen Mom is honestly and truly about change. The girls really do learn about themselves and we literally watch them grow up in every single episode. It's pretty amazing when we think about it. They also take the time to learn about themselves and to think about their mistakes so they can become better people. We definitely loved them from the moment they graced our TV screens, but a lot happens in the change from adolescence to young adulthood, of course, so change was inevitable. Just look at Catelynn: she recently went to rehab so she could get her mental health under control, and that took guts and courage and maturity.

9 It's Not About Being Perfect

If we called any of these women perfect, they would probably laugh in our faces because hey, they're definitely not perfect… but that's exactly what makes them so totally and completely awesome. They own their flaws and mistakes but really, we can't blame them for anything since they were so young and dealing with such a difficult thing. Catelynn has been super open about her struggles with her mental health and Amber, of course, went to jail and suffered from addiction issues. She was released in 2013 and since then has been clean and sober and doing really well. This show proves that anyone can turn their life around and that perfection is not the main goal in life. You have to learn from what you do wrong and do better next time and move on. It's a pretty hopeful thing, really, since it can be hard to know if people can ever really come back from difficult things like that.

8 It's About Actual Problems

We have all seen the reality shows (and even non-reality shows like dramas) that feature zero actual problems. The people seem to have not a single care in the world and they have more money than they know what to do with. Seriously, they just shop and go on lavish and sophisticated vacations, but there has to be more to life than that. Well, if we watch a single episode of Teen Mom, we know that these girls have real problems and that they are dealing with stuff that so many people do. While it is definitely sad to see people struggling, especially such young people, they do turn their lives around and they do learn how to be mature adults who have everything together. So that is super inspiring and proves that having problems is just a regular part of life and something that happens to everyone, no matter what.

7 OG Is Like A Doc

Episodes of Teen Mom OG feature the MTV producers as part of the show, so it's got a real documentary-style feel to it, which is really cool. They will interview the girls and be part of the action and part of the storyline. Sometimes a producer will sit with Amber and Matt in their house, for example, and chat with them about how they're feeling and what's going on in their lives. That's a really awesome use of the television medium and makes a lot of sense for this particular show since it's so much about thoughts and feelings, and so the interviews really help convey all that inner stuff. It's an interesting choice since the earlier seasons didn't feature this, but we really love it and think it should stay for as long as the show stays on the air. Which should be forever, please and thank you. We're pretty attached to these women at this point and need to know what's going on in their lives.

6 It's Got Cute Boys

OMG is all we have to say about Tyler and Taylor. (Side note: it's also pretty hilarious that they basically have the same name minus the "a." But anyway.) Tyler has been there for Catelynn since the start, and sure, they had their ups and downs and he was pretty jealous of her ex-boyfriend for a while there in the early seasons and he didn't trust her. But now they're good and they've gone through so much together and they honestly and truly love and care about each other. Also worth noting: Tyler has grown up so much, and wow, he looks awesome. We just had to say that and be super honest about that. Maci's now husband, Taylor, is absolutely adorable (and pretty hot if we do say so ourselves). He's an amazing stepdad to Bentley and now Maci and Taylor have a daughter together, Jade, and a son named Maverick.

5 It's About Business

We love that this show features the girls becoming women and learning how to be business savvy. We see Farrah have a podcast in L.A. and move there so she can be closer to her work stuff. We also recently saw her open a frozen yogurt shop, which is super cool. We've also seen Maci and Taylor start an online t-shirt business that seems to be doing incredibly well. And we're just incredibly impressed of Amber, too, because she and Matt have been flipping houses and investing in real estate. It's cool to see people want to be successful and want to care about business, especially on a reality TV show. Honestly, we don't always see that since this genre of television is known for being super silly and ridiculous (and that's the understatement of the century). We'll keep watching because we also want to see what new business ventures they become a part of.

4 It's About Big Moments

It's safe to say that we've definitely followed the girls through some tough times… but we've also seen them through some big moments in their lives. For better or worse, of course. We've seen the highs, like Farrah's business savvy, her move to L.A. and becoming more comfortable with who she is and learning that she's truly happy where she is right here, right now. We've seen Catelynn and Tyler's highs like giving birth to their sweet daughter Nova and buying a new house. We've seen Maci have two kids with her one true love Taylor and really have a family and a forever home. And we've seen Amber find love with Matt, get more time with Leah, prove that she's sober and on top of things now, and buy a house in her dream neighborhood, something she never thought she could ever do. These are big moments, and those are only the highs, but we probably know the lows by now so we don't have to say anything.

3 It's Addictive

The thing about good reality TV shows is that they are pretty much crazy addictive. We become into them super fast, sometimes even faster than the amount of time it takes us to get into a drama or a sitcom, and after even a single episode we're insanely invested in the people and storylines. We can't wait to talk about it with our best friends (and to nag them to watch if they haven't yet or seem to refuse for some reason). And we search the Internet for all kinds of news and episode recaps, not to mention how much time we spend checking out the stars' Twitter feeds and Instagram accounts. This definitely happened with Teen Mom, especially since we learned about these girls in their own separate episodes on 16 And Pregnant. So really, when the spin-off premiered, we were primed to fall in love with them all over again.

2 It's Relatable

Sure, maybe we haven't given birth in high school, and maybe we don't even have kids at all yet. But we can definitely relate to these four girls, no matter what's going on in their lives or what stage they're at (or what season or episode we're watching). We can relate to their love stories, to how much they want to grow up while still retaining a sense of agency and identity, and to how much they want to follow their dreams despite their hardships… and definitely because of them at the same time. We know what it's like to have a rough time, even if our rough times don't look like what these girls have gone through, and we've all had to grow up when we didn't exactly want to. That's not unique to having babies at sixteen, that's for sure. But at this point in our lives, we're probably figuring out who we truly are and finding our careers, just like these girls.

1 It's Inspiring

The thing is that at the end of the day, we watch Teen Mom and Teen Mom OG because, yes, we're super attached to these four girls. We've watched them grow up essentially and we want to continue along for the ride. We're super proud of where they are now and how far they've come, and we really think it's great. But we also find this show incredibly inspiring. Honestly, it's like, what excuse do we have for not following our dreams and meeting our goals and trying to make something of ourselves and our lives? These girls have done it and they've had bigger obstacles than us and struggled more than us. So really, we have no reason not to just go for whatever we want and make it happen. The Teen Mom girls did and they are amazing inspirations to us. And we're super motivated when we watch later seasons since we're watching them shine. But we always knew they would succeed.