Spear's Pregnancy Provides Life Lesson

Spears' Pregnancy Provides Life Lesson
By SARA RIMER,
The New York Times

CONCORD Mass. (Dec. 21) -- Talk about teachable moments. In schools and shopping malls and around the dining room table, the subject of teenage pregnancy and sex was suddenly and uncomfortably in the air as mothers and daughters and fathers, too, talked about — or tried not to talk about — the pregnancy of 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears, who plays the perfect, well-liked and, it is understood, virginal teenage girl on “Zoey 101” on Nickelodeon.

High school girls were wondering aloud on Thursday why no one was talking about contraception. Parents across the country, on the other hand, commiserated over the Internet about how, thanks to Ms. Spears, they were facing a conversation with their 8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds about sex. “Nowadays, nothing’s safe, not even cartoons,” said Diana Madruga, who has an 11-year-old daughter. Sharon Carruthers said she had used the news as an opportunity to talk about the dangers of teenage pregnancy with her 10-year-old daughter, Yasmine. “I want my daughter’s mind in the real world. But this is not what my daughter is going to do in her life. She knows better. She knows right and wrong.” Yasmine shook her head. “I never expected her, of all people, to do this,” she said, referring to the girl who in her mind is both Zoey and Jamie, the actress who plays her. “She’s supposed to be the good one in the family.”

Perhaps the news of Ms. Spears’s pregnancy should not have been so surprising in what has seemed to be the year of the unwed mother in popular culture. First there was the movie “Knocked Up,” in which a 24-year-old entertainment journalist accidentally gets pregnant in a drunken evening. Now there’s “Juno,” about a 16-year-old who confronts an unplanned pregnancy and decides to have the baby. But Nickelodeon has won wide acclaim as a sanctuary from the hypersexualized youth culture. That is what burned up Matt Younginer of Columbia, S.C., who was shopping with his 9-year-old daughter, Ansley, in Manhattan.“She loves ‘Zoey 101,’ ” Mr. Younginer said. “It’s usually Britney Spears who would do that stuff, not Jamie Lynn. She was supposed to be one of the good, clean actresses for girls to follow after. I think it just sends an awful message for the young girls.”

Dan Martinsen, a spokesman for Nickelodeon, said Thursday that “Zoey 101” was one of its most popular shows among viewers 9 to 14. “Nothing about the content, characters or the storytelling on our air has changed at all,” Mr. Martinsen said. He said that Nickelodeon was discussing a special on the issue with Linda Ellerbee, the television journalist who is the host of “Nick News.” “Whenever an issue becomes so prevalent that it’s inescapable,” Mr. Martinsen said, “her show is where we turn to help kids navigate and interpret and understand it.”

Sharon Otterman contributed reporting from New York.
Copyright © 2007 The New York Times Company
2007-12-21 09:27:15

Abortion Drastically Increases Pregnancy Risks

Abortion Drastically Increases Risk of Pre-Term and Low-Weight Births

Richmond, VA (LifeNews.com)

Women who have one or more abortions face a drastically increased risk of giving birth to a pre-term or low birthweight baby in a subsequent pregnancy. That's the conclusion a team of scientists from Virginia Commonwealth University drew in a new report published in the latest issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.The researchers examined data on over 45,500 mothers giving birth in the United States and found that about 11 percent of all women had low birthweight infants and 14 percent had premature births. But women who reported at least one prior abortion were almost three times as likely to have a low birthweight baby as those who carried the pregnancy to term. This risk increased to five-fold in women who had two previous abortions and to nine-fold in women who had a history of three abortions. Similarly, women with one previous abortion were 70 percent more likely to have a pre-term birth. This risk increased to two-fold in women with a history of two abortions and three-fold in those with three or more abortions. Full story at LifeNews.com.

Sexually Suggestive T-Shirts

CitizenLink 12/19

Abercrombie & Fitch Introduces Sexually Suggestive T-shirts

Family News in Focus

Retailer's new line pushes the ideological envelope.
In 2003, Focus on the Family boycotted Abercrombie & Fitch over its soft-porn catalog. Sales dropped, but it seems the retailer hasn't learned its lesson.

A new line of sexually suggestive T-shirts features messages like "MAKE LOVE, NOT BABIES" and "Awkward Mornings Beat Boring Nights."
“Their message is … go ahead and have sex, but just take all the precautions not to produce kids," said Jill Stanek, a Chicago-area nurse and blogger. Abercrombie did not return calls seeking comment.

Chris Leland, executive director of college student ministries at Focus on the Family, called it a publicity ploy.

“They are not out to sell clothes, even though they’re a business," he said. "They’re about something bigger, which is creating sort of a cultural identity for kids. It’s not surprising they would continue to push the edge of not only the advertising envelope, but sort of an ideological envelope, as well."

Kids and Internet Use

The Raleigh News and Observer released an article that covers the recent release of a study completed by researchers showing that parents have a good reason to worry about their kid's access to the internet. The study published in Pediatrics found that 42 percent of youngsters 10 to 17 years of age had been exposed to pornography in the past year. Some of this is intentional, with boys seeking out sexually explicit material much more frequently than girls. However, the rates of incidental or unwarranted exposure are high and increasing, with about one-third of teens ending up on a pornography site when they were seeking other information. The article gives readers a list of what parents can do to protect their children without taking the extreme action of not allowing them to use the internet. Click here to access the complete article.
http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/794926.html