So Much For The Gene Pool

Lord have mercy.

Apparently I've been telling the wrong Spears girl to keep her drawers on. Yep, as I'm sure you've heard, 16-year-old Nickelodeon star Jamie Lynn Spears is officially knocked up - by her 19-year-old live-in boyfriend, no less. Lovely - heaven knows the world needs more of the Spears family genes floating around.

Where do I start? This will require a list. Not only does little miss innocent Jamie Lynn turn up preggers, these ridiculous facts also emerge:

• Mom Lynne is "shocked" - really? You'd done such a bang-up job with certifiable wacko Britney that you thought Jamie Lynn would magically find morals and a sense of responsibility from - I dunno - the Easter Bunny? Uh, Lynne - here's a friendly piece of advice - when your 16-year-old child wants to live with her older boyfriend, red flags should go up.
• Mom Lynne is so "shocked" that she apparently takes Jamie Lynn straight to that paragon of journalism, OK! magazine, to spill her guts and make a cover story splash. In Lynne's defense, they don't get paid for that story. Uh, that makes it okay. Geesh.
• But Lynne, ever the resourceful grandma, negotiates a million dollar payment for exclusive photos of the baby once he/she arrives. Yeah, I'm sure that's all going in the baby's college fund. Lynne, have you thought through the conversation you might be having 18 years from now with your grandchild? "Gee, Grandma, thanks so much for selling me out to a tabloid rag before I was even born. Did you enjoy all the designer clothes and the new Mercedes the photos brought you?"
• Jamie Lynn also is "shocked" (apparently a popular world in the Spears household) - uh, sweetie, here's a tidbit of info your mom probably should have shared with you at some point. If you have sex, you could get pregnant. I know - shocking.

Here's what "shocks" me about this whole situation - the number of people I've heard on radio call-in shows and read online comments from saying "don't judge her...most teenagers are having sex...they're gonna do it no matter what...let's just make it safe for them...yada yada." Huh?

OK, then by that theory, we should just put our teens in a room somewhere with as many drugs, bottles of booze, and naked people as possible and let them go to town. As long as we monitor them to make sure they wear condoms, don't OD or try to drive, that's the best we can do.

No - dang it - no. That's NOT the best we can do.

The best we can do is teach our children from an early age that they are valuable, precious people who deserve to always seek the best for themselves they possibly can. We should teach our little girls that they are so much more than just pretty faces - they are intelligent, interesting people who don't have to wear tight clothes or push their boobs up to grab someone's attention. And daddies of girls - you dang well better step up to the plate and stay as involved in your little girls' lives as you possibly can. If they don't get attention from you, they'll spend a lot of years and find a lot of heartbreak trying to replace your presence in their lives.

We should teach our little boys that when they hit puberty, their hormones will go stark raving mad, but that the biggest part of growing up is learning that you can't do whatever you want whenever you want, and mastering self-control over their penises will - no kidding - translate into the self-control they need to focus on school, find a successful profession and eventually be a leader in their own homes and families.

We can also teach boys and girls that they are precious, entirely unique people created specifically by God to do great things. Their beautiful, magnificently designed bodies and brains are to be cherished and treated with respect - and that eating well, exercising, getting an education and being oh-so-selective about who you share the privilege of sex with are all part of that respect.

It's sad - really sad - that we think so little of our children that we believe this is impossible. It's sad that a beautiful young lady who was a role model to lots of young girls never learned this lesson and went searching for something she was missing in her life in the wrong place. And it's sad that so many parents will not even try to have these conversations with their children and do the work that's essential to getting and keeping kids on the right path (and yes, Virginia, there is a right path - "anything goes as long as no one gets hurt" is not okay, because chances are, someone is getting hurt, even if it's you, and you matter).

Parenting is hard - it's the hardest job in the world - and it should be. It's a God-given responsibility for another human life - and it's a responsibility that many people, especially 16-year-olds, don't even begin to understand.

For Jamie Lynn, this probably won't matter - she'll hire a succession of nannies to parent this child just as her sister has done, and in 16 years or so, we'll probably repeat this Spears family train wreck with the next generation. That's something fun to look forward to, isn't it?

But for millions of teenagers, this does matter. So please talk to your kids - spend time with them, tell them over and over that you love them, that God loves them, that they were uniquely created by God, and that all He desires is for them to live their best possible lives. Tell them and show them that they are worthy of love and respect, most notably from themselves. Don't just give up on them. Our children are counting on you.