Jamie Lynn Spears, Britney's 16-year-old sister and the star of Nickelodeon's "Zoey 101," just announced that she's got a little Sean Jayden Preston James on the way. Ditto Lily Allen, who at least has "has spoken on numerous occasions about her desire to start a family and leave music behind," according to the Guardian. Which makes me wonder: is there no birth control in Hollywood?
Seriously: These people are rich. They've got minders, publicists, personal shoppers — all the amenities of the modern world. And yet they're reproducing at the rate of 16th century French peasants. Or, if you want to go in that direction, of certain third world countries. If Hollywood were a malarial backwater, there would be a UN group devoted to teaching its citizens about planned parenthood, and then the Bush administration would cut its funding because it preached methods other than abstinence.
I've been baffled about this ever since the knocking-up of 16-year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes, the teeny star of the movie Whale Rider, though Nicole Richie's ridiculously unplanned pregnancy is what really made me start wondering: I mean, would YOU want to raise a child with Joel Madden? People bitch about birth control pills, but honestly, they're pretty easy to manage. Ditto condoms, though I can imagine that it would be tough to wrangle someone like K-Fed into such a contraption. Most of the women I know have made it past the age of 16 — hell, past the age of 30 — without accidentally bringing new life into the world. Why is it that much more difficult for celebrities?