The Good, The Bad And The Babies

June 20, 2008

Jamie Lynn Spears gave birth to a daughter Thursday in Mississippi, and the paparazzi rejoiced. Another celebrity baby!

Since Spears, 17, mated with a civilian (her pipe-layer fiance Casey Aldridge), that makes baby Maddie Briann more of a muggle. But before Spears debuts her bundle of love to the world, she has a lot to learn.

As we all know from "Mommie Dearest," exploiting your children for positive publicity is a long-honored tradition in Hollywood. There are degrees, of course. Inviting the paparazzi to Christina Crawford's birthday party is one thing. Lana Turner letting daughter Cheryl take the rap for stabbing Mummy's boyfriend is another.

For a while there, photographers respected the privacy of the family. Rosie O'Donnell hid the faces of her adopted children from the paps. Michael Jackson draped his in gauze. Demi Moore and Bruce Willis whisked theirs away to, of all places, Idaho.

The celebrity press busied itself with snapshots of George Clooney's potbellied pig and then fell in love with Paris Hilton's Chihuahua Tinkerbell.

It was a time of truce.

And then all hell broke loose.

Open Season On Suri

Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah's couch, Katie Holmes became a Scientologist, and this series of events led directly to the production of a hype heiress named Suri.

Not that we could prove it. The general public was denied even a glimpse of God's gift to gossip -- reportedly Tom and Katie were worried that Suri was already overexposed.

Finally, after months of speculation (Suri's ugly! Suri doesn't exist!), she made her debut nestled in Tom's leather jacket on the cover of Vanity Fair.

Suri may want to stay snuggled there for a while. "The fallout psychologically for the child could be intense," says Rebecca Roy-Jarboe, an L.A.-based therapist with a background in the entertainment industry. "If they are sold as commodities and hounded by the paparazzi, as their parents are, anxiety, depression and phobias can set in."

When bloggers such as Perez Hilton suggest that the progeny of Seal and Heidi Klum are less than aesthetically pleasing, it can hurt -- just not right away.

"They are simply too young to understand what is happening around them and, like all children, they must rely on their parents for protection," says Roy-Jarboe. "If that sense of safety isn't there at this young age, emotional issues such as anger, hypervigilence and a kind of posttraumatic stress response can set in. It's a horrible precedent that's being set."

Robs Them Of Childhood

Dianna Gould-Saltman is a lawyer who has represented Ireland, the daughter of Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger. Without talking about specific cases, she stresses that these children didn't ask for celebrity status, and that kind of scrutiny makes it extremely difficult to just enjoy their childhood. That said, "Celebrities can be excellent parents," she says. They just need to put the kids' needs first, and think a few steps ahead to protect their children. That can mean extra security guards, or it could mean getting out of Dodge for a few years.

Paige Ferrari, a Radar magazine reporter who has covered the phenomenon, says, "As for why we want to look at celebrity spawn --you've got me, personally. But I think the 'pretty factor,' our obsession with what two pairs of dynamite genes will produce, is part of it. Also, if you consider the demographics of the celebrity weeklies, a lot of readers are young women of childbearing age, or just about to reach it."

Emma Loggins, founder and editor of the entertainment site FanBolt.com, sees it from the fans' point of view. She wasn't surprised when Christina Aguilera and Jennifer Lopez sold photos of their babies to magazines. "For some celebrities, it is about the money, whereas other celebrities take a more honorable route and donate that money to charity."

It's not bad necessarily, she says. It's just a sign of the public's interest in these celebrities, and their need to see them humanized.

And let's be honest here: It's not just celebrities who are exploiting their children. "Think mommyblogs, think YouTube," says Ilya Welfeld, a public relations executive. "So many parents are posting images and videos of their children for the world to see. Privacy means something different these days, and celebrities are just like other proud parents, eager in most cases to show off their little ones."