Ariel Gore on Jamie Lynn Spears

Hip Mama founder and mother of two Ariel Gore on Jamie Lynn Spears:

People have dozens of reasons why they say having a baby before the magic age of twenty is uncool, but mostly it’s a class issue.

Some schools of feminist thought have allied themselves with the elitists, arguing that women should get their educations first, get their careers on track first, go through years of therapy first. Because the institution of motherhood has been used to oppress us, they insist that we should delay or forgo child-bearing rather than reinvent the whole freakin' institution. That’s fine if it’s our true choice. But what if it’s a teenagers true choice to parent? Should we not have that right? Instead we're ridiculed and, adding injury to insult, we're denied equal access to education.

I mean, I don't know Jamie Lynn. Maybe she's a total nut job. Maybe J.Lo is, too. And maybe that straight, married, 40-year-old neighbor of mine is, too. But who gets to decide who's fit to parent?

When I got pregnant at 36, a few magazine editors asked me to write about how different it was from my experience as a teen mom. When they realized I wouldn't dis my first pregnancy or characterize it as a sad reality I’d valiantly “overcome,” they decided they weren't so interested.

I’m glad I got pregnant when I did. The first time. And the second time.

Why are we allowed to discuss only the downside of teen pregnancy? And why aren't we allowed to admit that by delaying child-bearing, we risk our own health as well as our children’s? We certainly risk not being able to get pregnant at all.