Chelsea Kaplan’s Musings About Life... After Birth

Momtourage member Amy recently sent me this article from the New York Times, which once again makes me thank God that I have two boys. Here’s the deal:

Jamie Lynn Spears, the TV actress and sister of the singer Britney Spears, sent the celebrity gossip machinery into a lather last December when, at the age of 16, she confirmed to the world that “I’m pregnant.” Today, she’s rocketing to the top of Google’s search charts with the arrival, reported initially by People magazine, of Maddie Briann, weighing in at 7 pounds, 11 ounces. (The child presumably has a surname, but it isn’t mentioned in the report.)

  As summer vacation begins, 17 girls at Gloucester High School are expecting babies — more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1,200-student school had last year. […] All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Then the story got worse. “We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy,” the principal says, shaking his head.

Once again, the news has touched off a round of soul-searching and finger-pointing. According to the Time article, adults in Gloucester variously blame a depressed local economy, broken families, adrift children, difficult access to birth control and hit movies like “Juno” and “Knocked Up” that they say glamorize pregnancy to young audiences. Bad examples set by celebrities off-screen did not come up, though, and no one Time talked to in Gloucester seems to have mentioned the most famous teen mother of the moment.

Oh. My. God. Kinda makes me yearn for the days that the most idiotic thing American teens were doing was getting Botox and facelifts.