Jamie Lynn Spears is Pregnant, Britney Spears is a Mess, and I'm Wondering: Where Are the Parents?

With the latest shocking announcement from the Spears camp, Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant, I'm beginning to wonder what kind of parenting they are getting. I could at least have slight confidence in Lynne Spears's ability to parent if Britney Spears were the only one getting negative publicity, but now that we know that Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant, I am doubting that it is pure coincidence that both of the Spears girls are gaining bad publicity.

When Britney Spears first started to break free from her cute pop princess persona I was shocked and disappointed. I was a couple years too old to be an admirer of the pop princess, I instead found myself wondering what kind of example she was setting for the millions of young girls who admired her. I can still vividly remember that VMA performance in which she donned a rhinestone encrusted, flesh toned body suit while shaking what her momma, or a plastic surgeon, gave her.

Then, in recent years, while watching her spiral out of control, first with her quickie marriage to K-Fed, and then with her more recent choice to shave her head, I began to feel sorry for her. I felt like maybe her growing up in the public eye had made her lose touch with reality. In a way, I wanted to invite Britney Spears to live a normal life with me and my girlfriends in hopes that maybe she would learn what it would be like to live comfortably, not extravagantly, and feel true happiness. I felt bad that she had gone from topping the charts and being admired by millions to being the laughing stock of Hollywood. When news broke that she wasn't speaking to her mother I felt for her mom and Briney, knowing from personal experience that it is sometimes easy to take parents for granted, and I was just hoping that she would not one day regret this decision, since none of us know how much time we will really have with our parents.

But now, after hearing about Jamie Lynn Spears being pregnant with her 19 year-old boyfriends baby, I am beginning to wonder if Britney Spears has just reasons for not wanting to speak to her mother. I am wondering if Lynne Spears is one of those stage mothers who pushes her children too hard, one who lives vicariously through her children.

There have been many child stars who have battled drug addiction, gotten married at a young age, had tumultuous divorces, and there are other child stars who have turned out relatively normal. So obviously being a child star and living a semi-normal life is not completely impossible, though it may be more difficult than raising a normal child successfully.

I can't imagine what my mother would have said to me if I told her, at the age of 16, that I was dating a 19 year-old, she probably would have told me that, contrary to what I thought, no I wasn't. Even though I was a mature 16 year-old who didn't party, and never broke any major rules, I still would not have been allowed to date a 19 year-old.

And what about my mother's reaction if I would have pulled something like what Britney Spears Spears has been pulling lately?

Plain and simple, my mother would have made me move home, and if I refused to do so, she would have been moving in with me. If there were pictures of me, sans panties, floating around, my mother would have at least given me a stern lecture.

I can imagine what you are thinking at this point, yea but we're talking about a grown woman, what could her mother really have done? I was never too old for a lecture, and my mother made sure that I knew that. But, my mother would have never allowed me to get that out of control in the first place. There must have been things going on when Britney Spears was younger that many of us never heard about. Someone does not all of the sudden marry some man that she hardly knows, who has a pregnant girlfriend, and then proceed to spiral out of control from there without there having been some sort of pattern before that, at least not when there is evidence, a pregnant 16 year-old sister, that there is some miss in the parenting department.

I really hope that Jamie Lynn Spears's pregnancy ends up being a blessing rather than just a huge first step in the wrong direction. I hope that her pregnancy will open her eyes to what may be going wrong in her life so that she can fix it. As for Britney Spears, I really hope that she can turn her life around, get her kids back, and live the rest of her days in a halfway normal manner.

Maybe Lynne Spears Spears should be taking those parenting classes with Britney Spears.