The Other Spears Does The Bump

"Jamie Lynn was quoted as saying she was shocked" by the news, Sheets adds, "which shows she's not ready to be having sex." Message received: One should never be "shocked" that intercourse can result in babies.

In many ways, Spears is a pregnant little symbol of these conflicted times. Do we want True Love to Wait, or do we want to buy those belly shirts for our third-graders?

The Bush administration recently increased funding for abstinence-only sex education. The teen pregnancy rate has risen for the first time in more than a decade. One in seven girls has sex before she is 15, according to the National Campaign's research, and 60 percent of teen girls who have sex say later they wish they'd waited.

Like a lot of the country, the Spears family has been big on touting Christian values. Mom Lynne was scheduled to release a parenting book with Christian press Thomas Nelson in 2008; on Tuesday, the publishing house announced that the book's printing will be delayed . . . indefinitely.

And out of this maelstrom: Jamie Lynn.

"This is a teachable moment," says Bill Albert, the deputy director of the National Campaign. "Parents tell us time and time again that they want to address [this], but they don't know where to start. Jamie Lynn Spears is the perfect place to start."

Albert suggests that parents open the conversation by posing a series of questions to their teens and tweens: What do you think about this? What do you think will happen to her life? Do you think a 16-year-old is ready for sex and for the lifetime commitment of having a child?

The answer to that last question, teen readers, is No.