Los Angeles - On the popular kids' TV show Zoey 101, she plays a butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her mouth goodie-goodie. In real life, her character was a little different. Jamie Lynn Spears, the 16-year-old sister of troubled pop star Britney Spears, announced her pregnancy to the world Wednesday.
In an "exclusive interview" with OK magazine, the younger Spears said she was "shocked" to be in the family way after having sex with her boyfriend, Casey Aldridge, the 19-year-old son of a papermill worker in her home state of Louisiana, whom she reportedly met at church.
Spears is perhaps the most famous young teenager to become publicly pregnant in recent years, and her situation immediately became the topic of the day in the US news media.
Experts said that Spears's status as a role model could weaken the taboo of teen pregnancy. But they also acknowledged that it could focus attention on the problem and provide educators and parents with a teachable moment to talk to kids about the dangers of unprotected sex.
"This is a very shocking and bad lesson for kids," said child psychologist Judy Korianski. "Kids look up to the character that she plays. They confuse who the star is with who the kid is. This is a lesson for parents to talk to their kids about safe sex."
That's probably not what they were thinking in the White House. Since taking office seven years ago US President George W Bush has backed a sex-education policy that preaches abstinence until marriage, rather than what most professionals view as the far more effective method of advising kids to delay sex while also teaching them how to engage in safer sexual behaviour.
The news of Spears' pregnancy came less than two weeks after a government report found that the incidence of teen pregnancy was rising for the first time since 1991.
According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the 2006 teen birth rate was 41.9 births per 1,000 females aged 15- 19, compared to 40.5 births per 1,000 in 2005. It was the first increase in 15 years.
Health care professionals are unsure how to interpret the figures, whether they represent a mere blip or a reversal in the long-term trend.
"It's way too early to know if this is the start of a new trend," said Stephanie Ventura, head of the CDC's reproductive statistics branch. "But given the long-term progress we have witnessed, this change is notable."
According to Planned Parenthood, the federal government has spent more than 1.5 billion dollars on abstinence education since Bush took office. Cash-strapped states are required to match the federal spending, meaning they often have no money left over for more effective sex education.
The result is that "fewer than half of public schools in the US now offer information on how to obtain birth control, and only a third include discussion of abortion and sexual orientation in their curricula," according to Planned Parenthood.
Research has shown that in the sexually provocative society of the modern United States, abstinence education is like spitting into the wind.
Some 88 per cent of teens who pledge to keep their virginity in school still engage in premarital sex but are less likely to use contraceptives than other kids. Planned Parenthood blamed a policy that it says amounts to censorship of sex education, as one of the prime reasons that the US has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the developed world.
That sexual illiteracy might be why Spears said that both she and her boyfriend were in "complete and total shock" when they found out she was pregnant.
"That Spears was shocked that she was pregnant suggests that she wasn't ready to have sex," said Bill Albert, deputy director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. "Anyone who has sex can get pregnant, and if you don't know that, you probably shouldn't be having sex. Zoey 101 needs sex education 101."
