Jamie Lynn Spears Pregnant Again: What Naive Parents Can Learn

I have a sister, so I know a lot about female sibling rivalry, the main thing being that it ain't pretty. You fight over who is wearing whose clothes and makeup; one sister is jealous because the other has longer legs and the other is jealous of that sister's big boobs; you bicker about boys, who can use the car you're forced to share, and so on. There's a lot of hair pulling and shouting matches, and it can get pretty out of hand. Jamie Lynn Spears seems to have some sort of sister sibling rivalry going on, but she's acting out on it in a very weird way: by having babies.

The Spears sisters seem to get along pretty well, but once Britney got pregnant and eventually had two baby boys, you know Jamie Lynn probably felt a little jealous of all the attention Britney was getting over her children (even though most of the attention was not so great). In many families, when one sister has a baby, the other sister of child-bearing age will really start thinking about having one of her own (watch out, Sarah Palin!) as a way to not be outdone by her sister. They just usually don't try to catch up at such a young age, but the Spears clan did grow up in a part of the country where women generally do things at younger ages (White Trashville, USA). So maybe Jamie Lynn Spear's "accidental" pregnancy wasn't so accidental after all.

Yes, we've seen Bill O'Reilly condemn Jamie Lynn Spears and condole Bristol Palin (he even spoke of how brave she was for choosing to keep her baby!) over their pregnancies, and it is a little unfair to poor Jamie Lynn. But what has happened to these two girls and thrust them into the spotlight really should not be played up by the media as something special in any way. If anything, these stories should reveal just how little parents talk to their kids about sex and birth control, and that you can't just ignore these things when it comes to teens and hope that you'll never have to worry about the results of your kids not using it.