Celebrity Baby Boom

I am so fucking sick of this celebrity baby boom. Apparently when two or more celebrities give birth, the tabloids, and mainstream media (shame on them) label it a boom, which means that until the celebrity or wife of celebrity spits the kid out, I’ve got to hear about it when I’m trying to catch the real news, or see the overdramatic updates every time I venture out to the store to purchase pesticide-free veggies.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for anybody who welcomes a child into their home, but our society seems to give a status to celebrity parents that they don’t deserve. When I had Rachael, I spent the first month sleepless trying to figure out how to be a mother. If I was lucky, I managed a two-hour stretch of sleep, and if it was a fantastic day, that sleep would be accompanied by a shower. Call it a hunch, but I don’t think Katie Holmes will be relating to my scenario.

Everyone is raving over the fact that Angelina Jolie adopts children, yet they forget that she probably has one nanny per child, a housekeeper, a chef, and a personal assistant. If I had an army of people to take care of everything for me, and all I had to do was appear in public wearing designer duds and holding the kid every once in a blue moon, I’d have my own Josephine Baker-style rainbow family, too.

There are a couple of celebrities who have been very public about the fact that they don’t use help and are “hands on” parents, but this shouldn’t be something that’s wildly applauded. You had the kid, you raise the kid, and that’s the way it is. I don’t fault any celebrity mom for having a nanny on the set, it’s the same as daycare, and I think it’s cool that their kids get the opportunity to travel. However, I’m not willing to applaud their parenting skills until the kid turns into a decent adult who makes an honest contribution to society.

I’m sure Kathy Hilton thinks she did a fantastic job hiring great nannies to raise her kids, but look at the way those spoiled bastards turned out. One thing I have to give Donald Trump credit for, despite his many deplorable traits, is that he must be doing something right on the parenting front. His kids are getting graduate degrees and working hard at his company. Ivanka has said that she looks at the New York skyline and dreams about what she can add to it. Sure, most of us will never be able to relate to the opulent lifestyle that Miss Trump has, but at least she has a dream and wants to make a contribution to society. Hopefully, when she does become a success in her own right, she will mentor young women and empower them to follow in her tracks.

All bullshit aside, it will be interesting to see these celebrity babies grow up. I know that in the mid-90s smutmeister Larry Flynt announced some contest with readers to guess who would get into whoring first, Francis Bean Cobain or Lourdes Ciccone (Madonna’s kid). My vote is for Lourdes, because Francis has seen first hand what selling your soul for fame and drugs looks like, and probably wants to settle down to a normal life and career after penning the tell-all book about growing up with Courtney, of course. Madonna is quite strict with her children, so she is basically priming Lourdes to go on one hell of a rebellious outburst.

The risk in watching celebrity spawn grow into adulthood is that they will believe they can accomplish what their parents did by birthright alone. Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell are decent actors, but the verdict is still out on Kate Hudson. To date the most significant role she’s done is her portrayal of a groupie with a heart of gold in Almost Famous, not a big stretch considering the fact that she’s married to the stoner from the Black Crows. Martin Sheen managed to produce something good with Emilio Estevez, but then Charlie came along and took the family value down several notches.

Sometimes you get real gems like Laura Dern, Kiefer Sutherland, Mariska Hargitay, and Lenny Kravitz. Much like with normal people and their children, it’s all a crap shoot. If you raise your kids with a sense of purpose and let them know from the beginning that they have to make their own destinies, then they will be okay. It might be decades before we will know if Suri Cruise, Apple and Moses (Paltrow) Martin, or Baby ??? Jolie Pitt will be people who make valuable contributions to society, but the one thing we can count is the fact that their faces will be cluttering magazines, the internet and infotainment news shows for at least the next ten years…G-d help us!