News that 17 girls at a Massachusetts high school became pregnant this year is raising questions about whether pregnancy has become something alluring to teens.

Many teen pregnancies still take place against a backdrop of economic distress or a search for love, experts say – that’s been the case for years.

But counselors say they now are also concerned about a combination of factors that may make it easier for teens to become sexually active without fully understanding the potential consequences: Glamour shots of pregnant celebs are featured in magazines and on TV alongside increasingly sexualized fashions and images of younger girls.

Nationwide, the teen birth rate rose 3 percent from 2005 to 2006, the most recent year with data available, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That was the first increase recorded since 1991, though federal officials said it might be a one-year statistical blip.

Some say teens’ understanding of pregnancy and parenthood may be skewed by real-life celebrity pregnancies as well as some recent fictional movies.

While there have always been celebrities who had babies, today’s teen girls absorb coverage of their favorite actresses and singers voraciously: A report issued by Experian Consumer Resarch, found that that 23 percent of teen girls surveyed in 2004 had read Us Weekly in the last six months, compared with 6 percent in 2000, for example.

Front and center in those celebrity magazines: Babies and their fashionable mamas.

Barely a week goes by without some kind of celebrity baby coverage – speculation about “baby bumps;” coverage of swanky celebrity baby showers; and of course, loving pictures of the babies themselves, often with their adoring, perfectly styled moms.

Carol Weston, who writes an advice column for Girls’ Life magazine, says the glamorous images of pregnant celebrities can inspire young girls to become mothers. Teens get the idea that pregnancy is fun, says Weston, author of “Girltalk: All the Stuff Your Sister Never Told You.”

Kimberly Hughes, a 16-year-old from Glen Rock, N.J., who reads US Weekly, People and CosmoGIRL!, agrees.

“I like reading the stories. It’s really interesting seeing the lives of celebrities. It seems to be so easy for them, but in reality, it’s not like that for them at all,” she says. Baby pictures in particular send a certain message, she says. “It’s like look at what you can do if you have a baby. Look at these cool perks you get out of it.”

Magazine editors say celebrity pregnancy has always been news.

“People has been covering and celebrating celebrity babies for over 34 years from Cher and Greg Allman’s son to Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony’s twins,” the magazine said in a statement. “Our readers have come to expect these kinds of intimate family moments in the pages of the magazine, and we plan to continue to deliver this inside access.”

Us Weekly declined to comment.

Movies can also influence teens, Weston said. After “Juno,” an Oscar-winning 2007 movie about a regular high school student who becomes pregnant, came out, Weston received lots of letters from teens who wanted to have babies, she said.

Weston said girls may not realize that most stories don’t end like Juno’s, who found a beautiful, rich woman to take care of her baby and still kept her boyfriend.

“It’s not that pretty, especially if you have no degree, no job, and no mate,” she says.

The Hollywood endings suggest that the U.S. is not taking pregnancy seriously enough, says Bill Albert, spokesman for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

“To me, it just seems like another choice in life,” he says. “Like, ‘what color clothes am I going to wear on Friday? What movie amd I going to go to? Should I have a baby?'”

Tierra Townsend, 18, of Tampa, Fla., who has a 1-year-old son, says there’s no glamour to being a teen mom. She thought the baby’s father was going to be there for her, but he is no longer part of her or his son’s life. She never finished high school and is working at McDonald’s to make ends meet.

“I would say to any young female who is trying to have a child at a young age, ‘Don’t,'” she says. “Stay in shool, get a good education, save kids until later when you are married.”

Sex also seems to be everywhere: The number of sexual scenes on television has nearly doubled since 1998, according to Sex on TV 4, a biennial study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. And there are plenty of children’s dolls and characters – not to mention teen stars – who wear skimpy clothes or have exagerrated, sensual shapes.

Of course, no one thinks teens are running out to have babies because they saw a pretty big-bellied woman in a magazine or a cartoon character with cleavage.

But for girls searching for direction or low on self-esteem or parental support, the combinations of these factors may make it easier for teens to have sex and figure the consequences won’t be such a big deal. Girls from poor homes are especially vulnerable, experts say.

“When communities are stressed and families are stressed, it’s very difficult for parents to be providing the kind of love and nurturing that adolescents need,” says Ellen deLara, an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at Syracuse. “When that happens, adolescents will try to come up with something that will meet their needs for love and support.”

If the problem is pop culture, perhaps part of the answer is, too. A new NBC reality series, “The Baby Borrowers,” features five couples, ages 18-20, tasked with taking care of babies, toddlers, pre-teens, teens and senior citizens. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy worked with NBC on the show and created a special discussion guide.

Next week, ABC Family is airing “The Secret Life of an American Teenager,” with “good-girl band geek Amy” who is “smart, talented … and pregnant.”

Most teens are certainly not longing to have babies, says Nadine Kaslow, a professor in the department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine. Parents can use the images of pregnancy in pop culture, and the pregnancy outbreak in Gloucester, Mass., to talk to their children about their attitudes toward sex and pregnancy.

“Parents and schools really need to be open in talking about all sorts of topics including premarital sex, having babies and contraception,” says Kaslow. “We need to really help kids think through this.”