'Who's Your Daddy?' In Hollywood and D.C.

Where a Love Child Isn't Politically Incorrect

Love Child. American culture seems to adore Hollywood babies. Follows their every step, starting with the speculative bump under glittering gowns flowing down the red carpet.

Millions of dollars are paid to allow us a glimpse at the first photos of the most famous love children.

We climb onto soft covers with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and peek at their lovely love children. We admire Halle Berry and anticipate holding photos of what could be the most beautiful love child. We read blogs about the love child of Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves. We watched Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, who married after their love child was born. And we peer at magazine covers of Jamie Lynn Spears. How cute, we think, as more love babies are born: Salma Hayek. Nicole Ritchie. Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber, holding the new baby in a green snuggly.

We admire their beautiful, beautifully rich love children.

American culture has this love affair with Love Children in Hollywood whether the couples are honorable or hypocrites, but unleashes a chorus of damnation when it comes to a politician having -- or even possibly having -- a Love Child.

Jesse and Strom's babies were not glorified but hidden as the character failures of their fathers. Hardly anybody anymore mentions Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the baby of Strom Thurmond . Or Jesse Jackson's love child. Or Thomas Jefferson's. Once discovered, the political Love Child has with her the power to reshape her daddy's place in history.

Questions began swirling a few weeks ago, about whether former presidential candidate John Edwards had fathered a Love Child. A blurry photo in the National Enquirer shows a man who could be Edwards or could be any other middle-aged man in America holding a blurry baby. While Edwards admits that he had an extramarital affair with Rielle Hunter, a filmmaker on his campaign, he and Hunter deny that her 5-month-old baby is Edwards's child.

Perhaps only the baby's parents know for sure. Still others hover like an impatient grandmother, sifting for clues. Wanting it to be so, so that we can continue to scrutinize this rivalry between the babies of Hollywood and those of politicians. Comparing the two, as if one offspring were uglier than the other.

"The acceptance among movie stars is an acceptance that reflects a change in the national mores, but is not held consistently across all dimensions," says Bruce Carter, associate professor of psychology and child and family studies at Syracuse University. "We have expectations that movie stars will misbehave."

But politicians, especially those who create images of themselves as "wholesome," are held to different standards. "Ma, ma, where's my pa?" went the Republican jeer against Grover Cleveland, who was accused of fathering an illegitimate child with a widow of questionable reputation. "Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!" was the Democrats' answer after he was elected.

"There is a sense that public figures are providing a model and they need to be above question," Carter says. "If they can't control their private lives, or private behavior, how can they be trusted with our governance?"

Christina Groark, co-director of the University of Pittsburgh's Office of Child Development, says, "There are certain positions we give people the status of having to be more ethical, more morality-based because they are running our country or running our churches. We may not hold them to the same standards."