All the Jamie Lynn Spears That's Fit to Print

and some that's not. In the name of exploring the policy implications of statutory rape (and not at all, at all, in pursuit of ever higher hit rates), here's some of the latest Jamie Lynn news.

Jamie Lynn Spears announced she’s having the child of her “longtime” boyfriend Casey Aldridge. However, just before Thanksgiving when she supposedly revealed the pregnancy to her mom, Jamie told the Associated Press that she wasn’t in a relationship, according to US magazine:

"I kind of just keep my options open," she said. "I have a bunch of friends that I always hang out with, a bunch of guy friends." In the same interview, Jamie Lynn — who said she eventually wants to study at Louisiana State University — added that she had no plans to follow in Britney's footsteps.

So this baby could be the child of any of her “bunch of guy friends,” but Casey Aldridge is talking the fall. At least until the paternity test results followed by a lengthy courtroom drama complete with media circus. Ah, the Spears girls. Mama done raised them right.

And it looks like the father [sic] may be in a select group of folks:

Turns out that Jamie Lynn Spears' baby daddy is expressing paternity skepticism. He might check out the paper How Well Does Paternity Confidence Match Actual Paternity? Evidence from Worldwide Nonpaternity Rates:

This survey of published estimates of nonpaternity suggests that for men with high paternity confidence, nonpaternity rates are typically 1.7% (if we exclude studies of unknown methodology) to 3.3% (if we include such studies). These figures are substantially lower than the "typical" nonpaternity rate of 10% or higher cited by many researchers, often without substantiation...or the median worldwide nonpaternity rate of 9% reported by Baker and Bellis....

Men who have low paternity confidence and have chosen to challenge their paternity through laboratory testing are much less likely than men with high paternity confidence to be the fathers of their putative children. Although these men presumably have lower paternity confidence than men who do not seek paternity tests, this group is heterogeneous; some men may be virtually certain that the putative child is not theirs, while others may simply have sufficient doubts to warrant testing. Most of these men are in fact the fathers of their putative genetic children; only 29.8% could be excluded as biological fathers of the children in question.