Nickelodeon in turn made the following announcement:
“We respect Jamie Lynn’s decision to take responsibility in this sensitive and personal situation. We know this is a very difficult time for her and her family, and our primary concern right now is for Jamie Lynn’s well being.”
It’s an interesting turn of phrase, this “taking responsibility,” seeing that the statement would have been completely apolitical without it. Considering that the network is aimed at tweens and children, and that the star in question is herself a teenager, I suppose it’s reasonable that the network would want to make some kind of statement on the controversy of teen sex and parenthood. I still find it curious that the network appears to be taking a stance, that the only way to “take responsibility” for an unplanned pregnancy is to carry it to term and raise the resultant child oneself, and it’s an especially curious stance to take when considering the network’s audience.
Some media outlets are jumping on the “trailer trash” wagon (ahem, Perez Hilton, CNN, and Fox News), throwing out unreal misogynist epithets, like it’s fucking surprising that a professional sixteen-year-old in a three year relationship might possibly have sex. Most of these news outlets are more interested in the young star’s relationship with her older sister, whose recent personal and parental antics are admittedly bizarre. Young Spears doesn’t stand a chance in this environment, no. But what’s interesting too is that Britney Spears followed the Happiness Script and ended up decidedly unhappy. She did the “right thing” by marrying and then having babies, retiring from her career to raise them, only returning to the spotlight as the situation demanded. (Britney deserves her own analysis, so I’ll leave it at that.)
Meanwhile, across the country, healthcare networks and opportunistic politicians are making it more difficult for even college students to access birth control, never mind that lower-income and poor women have to pay up to four times as much for reproductive health access than ever before. The global gag rule remains in place today, maternal mortality rates are shamefully high across the globe in part thanks to conservative U.S. policy, fetal life is prized over the lives of born children, uterine punctures are an unintended blessing if it makes a woman reconsider aborting a nevertheless unviable pregnancy, and Medicaid is funding penis pumps but not birth control. Millions of women around the world are trying to take responsibility for their reproductive health, pregnancy and otherwise, and are running into unrealistic obstacles and outrageous emotional and financial costs. But whatevs, right? Because Jamie Lynn is pregnant. OMG!
Take it from me — former teen mother, single mother, who got pregnant shortly into a bad relationship, and who didn’t have all the resources at hand that Spears will — not everyone believes that having a child as a teenager is a “responsible” act. And while some media outlets are slipping in this curious phrase in support of her apparent nobility, others are concern trolling about what kind of message this decision will send to the children. Nevermind that before the celebrity baby blogs and baby bump trends that the “smart” choice for a female celebrity with an unplanned pregnancy was clearly abortion, and enough celebrity women from another era had abortions to save their careers, publicity, and unblemished bodies to assemble a list like this (registration only). I wonder how many suits at Nickelodeon wished Spears had decided on an abortion just to keep her on the money train and keep her from marring the network’s family-friendly reputation.
Because just like premarital sex isn’t family-friendly, neither is teen parenthood. Neither is single parenthood. Neither is gay parenthood, neither is minority parenthood. In fact, no kind of parenthood is family-friendly unless it’s white, heterosexual, intermarital, relatively wealthy parenthood, preferably church-going, breastfed, privately-educated parenthood, with extra points if one of y’all stays home to tend to the children firsthand instead of shucking off responsibilities to daycare, nannies, and the professional babysitters employed by the public schools.
What our celebrity subject will soon find out is that despite trying to do what is best for one’s particular family in one’s particular place in a particularly controversial situation, “taking responsibility” doesn’t actually mean what people say it means. In the end, doing what’s right for you doesn’t matter if the “correct” decision was to stay classy by quietly terminating the pregnancy and going forth in the wave of paparazzi like nothing ever happened at all.
[Cross-posted at Unsprung]
For a variety of reasons, Lauren, I’m not going to do my own Jamie Lynn post. But if I were, this is close to what I would write — except that I’d have a massive cred gap that you most definitely do not. Brava, my friend, brava.
I wonder what Nickelodeon classifies as “not taking responsibility”.
Besides her “young” age, Spears has it pretty good. She’ll never have to worry about financial issues, and it seems as though friends and family would be around to support her. Not a lot of 16-year-olds who find themselves faced with unplanned pregnancies are so fortunate.
Also, I’m very tired of the “wait until marriage” bullshit. It isn’t rational, and it isn’t what our youth needs.
“like it’s fucking surprising that a professional sixteen-year-old in a three year relationship might possibly have sex.”
I had the interesting opportunity to watch the pilot of Doogie Howser, MD tonight, an episode from 1989 or 1990. Mostly, I was watching out of curiosity to see how knowing that Neil Patrick Harris was a homo all along changed the show, due to that extra bit of heretofore closeted information.* I was, frankly, kind of knocked out of my seat to find that they were openly and frequently talking about premarital, recreational, hormonal teenage sex all the damn time.
It made me wonder how Fox News would report on their sacrilege and on the Hogan Family’s first primetime use of the word ‘condom’ and what that utterance would mean to pious American families.
*- It makes the show hilarious, and totally contradicts those who lament that while straight guys play gay characters (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhall, I am glaring at you), supposedly no gay guys play straight characters. NPH’s fabulous boyfriend is no doubt super-proud that he has made a career out of it, so can we shut up about that relatively mundane point now?!
With all due respect to the point of your post, with which I do agree, the entire Jamie Lynn Spears saga (as it relates to her specifically) can be distilled into one simple phrase.
like it’s fucking surprising that a professional sixteen-year-old in a three year relationship might possibly have sex.
I find it rather surprising that they wouldn’t use birth control.
I find it rather surprising that they wouldn’t use birth control.
I suspect that they probably were using some form of birth control, but that it failed. For example, the pill fails for 8 out out of every 100 women with “typical use.” That’s what might have happened.
So you think she should have had an abortion or what?
Blair from ‘Facts of Life’ is in support of Jamie-Lynn.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/FallConcert/story?id=4032940&page=1
“the pill fails for 8 out out of every 100 women with “typical use.” ”
The what now? 8% is way high - According to Contraceptive Technology: Seventeenth Revised Edition. Hatcher RA, Trussell J, Stewart F, Cates W, Stewart GK, Kowal D, Guest F, New York NY: Irvington Publishers, 1998, typical use failure is 5% - 5 women per hundred per year, not 8%
With “perfect use” failure is only 0.1% with the pill.
But I agree - most likely they *were* using contraception. Probably condoms, which have a 14% actual use failure rate. That’s more than a one in ten chance of getting pregnant each year if that’s all you’re using.
I dunno why anyone would assume they weren’t using something - most teenagers are having sex and most of them don’t get pregnant.
Or, she might have been given abstinence-only sex education and told that using contraceptives and condoms was sinful, because it meant you planned on having sex.
Somehow, I doubt she’s had a comprehensive and accurate sex education.
Many people do not realise that oral contraception can fail if one vomits at any time during the course.
and who are these ‘Families’ who are so UNfriendly.
boring, that’s what.
“she might have been given abstinence-only sex education and told that using contraceptives and condoms was sinful, because it meant you planned on having sex.”
Seriously, even 16 year olds are not that stupid. Obviously, having sex can get you pregnant, and there’s no way she could have not known at the very least to pull out, or use a condom. In fact, I think if she was expected to stay a virgin, she’d be even more careful, so as not to have an obvious sign (the baby) as to her nonvirginity.
Teenagers do tend to think their “invincible” but I know when I was a teenager I knew, and my friends also knew that sex can get you pregnant. I think where the invincibility lies in this case is what the effect would be on your life if you had a baby as a teenager. That is the meesage we should be teaching. Even the very best birth control education will have to effect if the kids still think that having a kid would be “kind of fun”
Generally, people know that sex gets you pregnant by the time they are having sex, and they do it “less responsibly” when they really kind of want a baby, whether they realize they want it or not.
Anyhow, whatever the statistis are, no method is 100% and if she was truly shocked, then she probably was being “responsible” with sex. Even if the method is 99.9% there is still a chance.