Jamie Lynn Spears Pregnancy A Conundrum For Parents
6 Comments Ryan Welton on Tuesday, January 08, 2008 at 10:34 PM.
Adults are so naive.
When Jamie Lynn Spears announced her pregnancy, more than one adult told me she was done. Her hit show Zoey 101 would surely be cancelled. Her chance at riches beyond riches, instead of mere riches, was done.
I said getting knocked up would be the best thing that happened to the girl.
Little did I know that it would be one of the best things to happen to Nickolodeon, too. According to starpulse.com:
The announcement that Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant has proved good news for bosses at TV network Nickelodeon - more than double the normal number of viewers tuned in to watch the season finale of her show Zoey 101.
The fourth series of the children's programme was reportedly under threat after news broke last month that 16-year-old Spears was expecting a baby.
But 7.3 million people watched the final episode of Zoey 101's third season on Friday - over twice as many viewers as usually tune in.
Nickelodeon recently confirmed it will begin transmitting the show's fourth season in February.
I've talked with friends about this, about the terrible, terrible example this sets for our sons, daughters, nieces and nephews, grandsons and granddaughters. We're agreed, and we're concerned for those less famous and certainly impressionable who might do something stupid like toy with sex at age 16. Or below.
Truth is, I'm more of a believer in abstinence. Personally, I don't want schools teaching kids how to have safe sex. Sure, teens are going to have sex anyway, but this is merely a venue for families to behave properly as families should. Mothers talking with daughters. Fathers with sons -- or any mixture of the two.
And you can tell them this, particularly daughters, and be confident in its wisdom: Fool around and get pregnant before you graduate from high school, and you are all but guaranteeing a life of struggle, poverty and wasted talent.
No, it's not the case every time. Not nearly. But most of the time, it is.
The reason I went through this schpiel is because I knew all along that Jamie Lynn Spears would perversely benefit from getting sperminated, as the hip kids call it. American pop culture loves its train wrecks, and getting pregnant elevated Zoey 101 from an average teenybopper television program to a pop culture event.
A must-see.
How will the producers handle the announcement? Will her baby bump show? Will they introduce the pregnancy into the storyline?
No, I'm not going to watch such drivel, but teen pregnancy, drug use, rampant alcoholism, etc., are no longer the accoutrement of struggling artists and musicians. They are unintended mechanisms by which careers are boosted. Made, even.
Should we celebrate it?
No, of course not, but it is what it is. And, that's business. Nickelodeon is already on board for a fourth season of Spears' show, which had all along been planned to be its last. My money says producers and monied execs will look for a vehicle to keep Britney's li'l sis in the limelight, all along making a sweet buck or two.
I would suggest that adults turned off by this aspect of pop culture work to change it, but it's a snowball already evolved into full-fledged avalanche. It's done.
But I think teenagers can identify with not having any money in their pockets, and this I'd suggest is where adults can help to mentor teens. No, getting pregnant like Jamie Lynn Spears won't end your life. Heck, that baby might grow up to be a Nobel Peace Prize winner, or at least a productive citizen.
However, any hopes today's kids might have to truly emulate their pop culture heroes in terms of wealth or fame, such as is bestowed for no good reason upon Jamie Lynn Spears, is pretty much gone with a foul up such as her's.
They'll work two jobs. They'll forego college to avoid the expense. They'll bust their asses with no thanks only to have that baby turn into a teenager who does the same thing. They'll drive a crappy car.
So, you want to keep your kid from being another Jamie Lynn Spears? Forget the sugar-coated parent-child discussions.
Show them what it's like to be poor.
Labels: pop culture
Bud, you are way off base. Sure families should teach their kids about sex.Too much of the time they don't. Keeping sex ed out of schools will not alter that fact. It will not encourage families to step forward and assume the responsibility. It just leaves kids to cobble together their own sex education from a variety of dubious sources.
Increased sex education in our public schools have been shown by numerous studies to decrease teen pregnancy,lower std and abortion rates, lower frequency of teen sex and increase the age of first time sex. The belief that sex education makes teens have sex is like arguing that teaching people to wear seat belts makes them drive more recklessly.
You wrote:
*** The belief that sex education makes teens have sex is like arguing that teaching people to wear seat belts makes them drive more recklessly. ***
At no point did I remotely even make that argument. My argument relative to sex education is that it should be left to families, period. This is on two points:
First, mores and values relative to sex are highly personal and familial, and often the beliefs, mores and standards of teachers do not fall in line with those of families.
Second, the method by which schools would teach about sex -- even with a set of standards -- would be highly subjective. Heck, my high school biology teacher insisted on including creationism in his curriculum. So, there is no guarantee that your desire to teach about sex in school wouldn't completely backfire.
Your point relative to increased sex education in schools might be right, but it's also highly politically charged. It is a liberal point of view, and the studies that produce them typically come from people of a liberal bent.
Factually, the only way -- proof positive -- to decrease teen pregnancy, to lower STD and abortion rates, etc., is abstinence. Likely? Hell, no. But factually true.
Parents have to step up.
Yes sex education should be the responsibility of parents. Too bad most parents feel burdened with this and would rather not tell their child about sex. Teens have sexual feelings, no point denying it. The less they know about sex, the more they're going to want to try it out for themselves. Would you rather teenagers learn about sex from other teenagers? Lines like "girls can't get pregnant if its their first time" come to mind. Be glad schools teach teenagers about safe sex. Teenagers should've learned appropriate sexual behaviour from their parents long before that.
Personally, I could care less where teens learn about sex: A) I'm not a parent and B) if a teen wants to doom herself to poverty, then so be it. Fewer people in the overall competitive pool.
However, most schools do not actively have sex education programs, particularly in the south. So, am I glad that schools teach sex education? ...
Most don't. However, that has always been the solution of the left, politically. Sure, there is data that shows it helps. However, there are bigger societal issues with this than the desired cause-effect associated with sex ed. in schools.
The primary point of my post is that parents who are concerned by the behavior of a Jamie Lynn Spears, who are mortified by its glorification ... they had better jump on the reality train because there is no more influential teacher than pop culture. Period.
No school can replace it.
My secondary point is that the best way for parents to get this message across is to speak to the teen's materialistic mindset. Forget the social and health ramifications. Teens are immortal and have very poor sense of future.
However, they understand poor.
So should we all hold hands and wish for better parenting ? It's not going to happen. Even those of us without kid's pay the price in one form or another for other's bad parenting skills. Most of the rest of the industrialized world can teach their kids about sex in a fairly objective manner. Why can't we ?
Kudos to all the parents who sit down and talk with their kids about Jamie Lynn Spears. The same liberal studies(I guess that most scientific studies fall under your liberal label)show the positive aspects of sex education are equally achieved through sex education at home.
You wrote:
*** So should we all hold hands and wish for better parenting ? It's not going to happen. Even those of us without kid's pay the price in one form or another for other's bad parenting skills.***
Totally agree with your sentiment, but here's where we disagree. You say that the onus should fall onto a willing public school system to teach such things. I say that, for good or for bad, this is the purview of parents, primarily because those parents who DO teach their kids about sex do NOT want to be undermined by an institution they support with taxes.
You also wrote:
*** The same liberal studies (I guess that most scientific studies fall under your liberal label) ***
Actually, I never disagreed with any study you quoted. Again, here's the difference. That the study scientifically shows a reduction in pregnancy, STDs, abortion, etc., does not make widespread sex education in schools necessarily the acceptable route, in my opinion.
Why? They don't include the moral aspects of sex, as I noted before, in our society, from the beginning of time, sex is as moral in its consequences as it is scientific in its act. And it's precisely the instruction of morality that is off-putting to some parents, particularly more conservative families (not necessarily Republicans or evangelicals ... think a Muslim/Catholic parent wants his/her kids taught sex ed in a public school setting?).
I merely sympathize with them. They pay taxes just like we do, and while the study isn't necessarily a liberal entity, your interpretation of it and suggestions for its implementation are classically liberal. Which is fine ... however, I also recognize it as being highly politically motivated.