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

Teen Birth Rate Rises

PRESS RELEASE FROM THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

Contact: CDC National Center for Health Statistics Office of Communication, 301-458-4800

Teen Birth Rate Rises for First Time in 14 Years

The teen birth rate in the United States rose in 2006 for the first time since 1991, and unmarried childbearing also rose significantly, according to preliminary birth statistics released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The statistics are featured in a new report, "Births: Preliminary Data for 2006," prepared by CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, and are based on data from over 99 percent of all births for the United States in 2006. Although the findings in this early version will not change, the final report will have more detailed data.

The report shows that between 2005 and 2006, the birth rate for teenagers aged 15-19 rose 3 percent, from 40.5 live births per 1,000 females aged 15-19 in 2005 to 41.9 births per 1,000 in 2006. This follows a 14-year downward trend in which the teen birth rate fell by 34 percent from its all-time peak of 61.8 births per 1,000 in 1991.

"It's way too early to know if this is the start of a new trend," said Stephanie Ventura, head of the Reproductive Statistics Branch at CDC. "But given the long-term progress we've witnessed, this change is notable."

The largest increases were reported for non-Hispanic black teens, whose overall rate rose 5 percent in 2006. The rate rose 2 percent for Hispanic teens, 3 percent for non-Hispanic white teens, and 4 percent for American Indian teens.

The birth rate for the youngest teens aged 10-14 declined from 0.7 to 0.6 per 1,000 and the number of births to this age group fell 5 percent to 6,405. The birth rate for older teens ages 18-19 is 73 births per 1,000 population - more than three times higher than the rate for teens ages 15-17 (22 per 1,000). Between 2005 and 2006 the birth rate rose 3 percent for teens aged 15-17 and 4 percent for teens aged 18 and 19.

The study also shows unmarried childbearing reached a new record high in 2006. The total number of births to unmarried mothers rose nearly 8 percent to 1,641,700 in 2006. This represents a 20 percent increase from 2002, when the recent upswing in non-marital births began. The biggest jump was among unmarried women aged 25-29, among whom there was a 10 percent increase between 2005 and 2006.

In addition, the non-marital birth rate also rose sharply, from 47.5 births per 1,000 unmarried females in 2005 to 50.6 per 1,000 in 2006 - a 7 percent one-year increase and a 16 percent increase since 2002.

The study also revealed that the percentage of all U.S. births to unmarried mothers increased to 38.5 percent, up from 36.9 percent in 2005.

The report contains other significant findings:

• The preliminary estimate of total births in the U.S. for 2006 was 4,265,996, a 3 percent increase -- or 127,647 more births -- than in 2005.


• Birth rates increased for women in their twenties, thirties and early forties between 2005 and 2006, as well as to teenagers.


• The Caesarean delivery rate rose again in 2006, to 31.1 percent of all births, a 3 percent increase from 2005 and a new record high.


• The percentage of all births delivered by cesarean has climbed 50 percent over the last decade.


• The preterm birth rate rose slightly between 2005 and 2006, from 12.7 percent to 12.8 percent of all births. The percentage of births delivered before 37 weeks of gestation has risen 21 percent since 1990.


• The low birthweight rate also rose slightly in 2006, from 8.2 percent in 2005 to 8.3 percent in 2006, a 19 percent jump since 1990.


• As a result of the increases in the birth rates for women aged 15-44, the total fertility rate - an estimate of the average number of births that a group of women would have over their lifetimes - increased 2 percent in 2006 to 2,101 births per 1,000 women. This is the highest rate since 1971 and the first time since then that the rate was above replacement - the level at which a given generation can replace itself.

The full report is available at www.cdc.gov/nchs. More information on maternal and infant health birth characteristics, including the latest information on multiple births, can be found in another new report released today: "Births: Final Data for 2005," also available at www.cdc.gov/nchs.