And Baby Makes Three

So, in case you haven’t heard, Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant.

Cue the jokes and the whining about how she’s just like her sister and yadda yadda yadda. The point is, a 16 year old girl is pregnant. NEWS FLASH: this is nothing new.

What’s new is that it’s a public figure at 16, someone on a series oriented towards young teens. And suddenly it’s not just the trash girls who smoke in the bathroom who are showing off baby bumps before graduating high school, it’s the Spears some of us wanted to believe was the stable one.

Teenage pregnancy isn’t something that is just suddenly becoming a problem. It’s not just now rearing it’s ugly head. But at the same time, it seems like it’s something that America, at least, is unwilling to take a logical approach to. Plenty of time and money has been spent on abstinence education…and it’s CLEARLY not working. Simply telling teens “DON’T PUT THAT THERE!” (or in French “Ne-la mettez pas la!”) isn’t working. Because, believe it or not, teens are still putting that there.

Here’s a crazy idea: teens shouldn’t be kept in the dark about safe sex.

Whether the information comes from parents or school sponsored programs or television specials, the idea of safe sex NEEDS to be impressed upon people. It’s okay to teach that yes, abstinence is the only true way to be 100% safe, but if you’re going to have sex there are items like condoms and oral contreception that will do you a lot of good. Make sure you’re using them correctly, make sure you know how to obtain them, but mostly MAKE SURE YOU’RE USING THEM.

There seems to be this opinion that intelligent and realistic discussion about sex with teens will cause them to have sex at a younger age. But not talking about sex with them isn’t really doing us any favors, now is it? I can’t say that it won’t cause younger people to have sex, but I know that informed talks about birth control might lead to SMARTER sex. 16 year olds are already bumping hips, let’s at least be sure they know how to come out of it with few stretch marks or burning sensations when they pee.

Jamie Lynn, I wish you luck at this time. I know you’ve got an easier/harder situation…easier because of your money, harder because of you being in the public eye. You’re going to be the butt of a lot of jokes, you’re going to be compared to your sister, but I will say this: I know many teen mothers who turned out to be fantastic parents because they took responsibility for what happened (I won’t say “mistakes” because I know at least one of those mothers wouldn’t trade her children for the world. It might have been unexpected, but I don’t think she would ever consider her children a “mistake.”). It’s how you deal, really, with the situation at hand. Yes, I DO think that this sort of situation can and should be prevented, but I salute those women who DEAL.