How to Talk to Your Child About Jamie Lynn Spears

Everyone's all in a tizzy and it isn't about Christmas. It's about poor sixteen-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears, sister of Britney, who has just announced to O.K. magazine that she is pregnant. The entertainment news shows and online gossip sites are having a field day. And even the parenting sites are getting in on the action. Just a moment ago I got an email with the heading "How to Talk to Your Kids about Jamie Lynn Spears." To be fair, while that heading has a tinge of hysteria, the advice the site offers is fine. What I really don't understand is the apparent panic from parents and educators. Get a load of this, from an Associated Press story:

"It's very disappointing, but face it, the bubble is burst," said Dr. Judy Kuriansky, a clinical psychologist on the faculty of Columbia University Teachers College. "Thank you, Jamie Lynn, you have ruined the innocence of lots of kids and mothers who would rather not talk about this."

You know, because everyone's still telling their children that they were delivered by storks or plucked out of cabbage patches. In fact, if that quote of Dr. Kuriansky's is to be believed, many mothers themselves have not yet fully grasped the facts. Those poor innocent mothers.  The timing of this "scandal" is particularly interesting. Poor Jamie Lynn (who is said to be a devout Christian and probably is) would be well-advised to call a press conference and  announce that the angel Gabriel visited her in a dream and told her that the father of her unborn child is not her eighteen-year-old boyfriend but God. Mothers across the Western world could heave a collective sigh of relief. "Phew. So that's okay, then. Everything's all cleared up. There is no longer a pressing need to talk about this issue."  I just hope it's a girl. It'd be nice for Jesus to have a sister.

(Seriously, though: when I stop to think of her at all, and I don't intend to do so for much longer than it takes me to write these sentences, I feel sorry for Jamie Lynn, who will have to endure intense media scrutiny while struggling to care for an infant when she is probably not emotionally ready to do so.  Happily,  she is not struggling with poverty as well. Of course I don't think it's a good idea for a teenager to become a mother. But it's a fact that many of them do. And one's children should be made fully aware of that fact, for their own protection.  I'd love to read journalist Amy Benfer, who was herself a teenage mother, on this topic.)

Comments

[Mary]

This is a perfect take on the situation. Thank god my fourth grader seems to be completely unaware of it, as she is of the, ahem, details of baby-making (we keep waiting for her to ask, but not even a baby sister and multiple pregnancies raised her curiosity). I don't credit her pop culture ignorance to superior parenting, though, I've realized it's just a personality quirk. I fear the baby sister shows signs of being a potential party girl who will be singing along with all the pop tarts by the time she is six.

[Stephany Aulenback]

Hi Mary!

That's so funny about M being completely unaware of baby making details. She's such a reader, I wonder if she's simply researched the topic herself and doesn't feel the need to ask any questions. There are so many good books on the subject, even picture books for fairly young kids, that would be available even in school libraries, I should think.

I've been thinking a bit more on the JL Spears thing and I just can't get over how het up parents are getting about it. It's not that I think teenagers having sex is something to be taken lightly, it's just that our culture is so sexualized. It's okay to have all kinds of sexual imagery/innuendo everywhere (it's almost impossible to avoid it) but it's not okay to be aware of the consequences of sexual activity? It boggles the mind...