The joys and challenges — but mostly the challenges — of young motherhood are explored in Baby/Girls, a sympathetic if conventionally constructed documentary co-directed by Alyse Walsh and Jackie Jesko and premiering at SXSW this year.
Revolving around a bevy of white teenage women who all spend some time at Compassion House in Springdale, Arkansas, a charitable Christian group home that helps troubled kids get to grips with parenting, the film unpacks the sadly cyclical nature of teen pregnancy. Unsurprisingly, the teens we meet are all daughters of teenage mothers. In addition, it’s clear that patterns of addiction, negligence and vulnerability to sexual abuse will probably keep recurring in these families, along with mental health issues, passed down through generations like hand-stitched heritage quilts of misery.
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The Bottom Line Sympathetic, though dispiriting.
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