Chelsea Houska — one of the original four teens featured on MTV’s groundbreaking reality series “Teen Mom 2” — explained in this week’s episode why she’s stepping away from the series after 10 seasons with the full support of her husband.
The mom from South Dakota — who had her first baby, Aubree, in 2009 when she was a softball-playing high school senior in “16 and Pregnant” — said she will no longer participate because she wants to give Aubree more space and privacy as she gets older, and because it was “time.”
“As [Aubree’s] getting older … I just feel like that’s not something that needs to necessarily be out there for everyone to have their opinion on,” Houska told her father on the program.
Houska, 29, said the most difficult part of her decision was losing the TV production crew, which has become “like family” through all her highs and lows. Houska announced in November that she was leaving the show, and discussed the decision on air on Tuesday, saying a tearful Zoom goodbye to her producer.
The program followed Houska as she grappled with single motherhood, got her GED, and earned a certification from a beauty school. Aubree’s dad, Adam Lind, reportedly has struggled with substance abuse and was in a dangerous car wreck in 2014. He stopped regularly appearing on the program in 2017.
In 2016, Houska married traffic control specialist Cole DeBoer, and they have since had Watson, 3, and daughter Layne, 2. Houska is now pregnant with her fourth child.
“I want to be a good mom and wife. That’s what I’ve always wanted,” Houska said on the program. She and DeBoer also have a clothing line.
Houska thanked everyone for following her story, and gave a shoutout to “all the single mamas out there … feeling like they’re stuck in bad relationships, I’m rooting for you. You got this,” she said.
Cole DeBoer congratulated his “sweet, perfect” wife for participating in the series and knowing when it was time to step back. “She has become such a badass already that I know the sky is the limit for her,” he said in an Instagram post.
“If you always watched from the beginning you will know how much shit Chelsea has made it through, she is tough as nails,” he added.
Houska is the second of the original teen moms to leave the series. MTV fired Jenelle Evans last year after her husband, David Eason, fatally shot the family’s dog, after he said the French bulldog snapped at their 2-year-old daughter.
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