(Assume/take into account only people who are engaged and want to get married. I’m not talking common-law..)

On the one hand, it makes sense. You get to see another side of the person you otherwise wouldn’t. You see their quirks, how they behave, how they react to certain things, what they think about in terms of household chores, whatever. It also makes more sense financially, splitting the bills in half.

On the other hand, it seems risky. What if you 2 break up? You’re stuck with the other until they can launch themselves out of your life, and it can get to be quite awkward. Also, the whole idea of marriage would be to finally start your life together and get that butterfly sensation in your stomach seeing them every morning in your home instead of having to drive to theirs.

Me, I’m on the side for living with the guy before marriage or any major commitment. I need to see what they’re like when they’re (sort of) alone and in their own environment. How they sleep, when they wake up, how they live to see whether I could adjust to that kind of lifestyle and if they could adjust to mine in return.

For example, I love to snack. I’ll go into the fridge and eat leftovers and finish the whole dish. But if a guy gets irritated at that because he wanted that as a meal for later on, or if he doesn’t like me eating as much because I may get fat (true story), then we’d have to work something out, like where fruit and other small veggies are snacks, but actual leftovers are going to be meals.

You learn things you never knew about the person until you live with them, like the fact that I hog the entire bed AND blanket and then wake up the next morning totally remorseful at how selfish I was when I was sleeping…. *embarassed* I’m workin’ on that. Maybe a pillow barrier would do the trick.

I’m sure there are more quirks but I can’t remember them at the moment.

Earlier this week, Jamie Lynn Spears, the 16-year-old sister of Britney Spears, said she was expecting and plans to keep the baby. She’s hardly alone. Lily Allen, Nicole Richie, Bridget Moynahan and Keisha Castle-Hughes are among the stars who have recently announced surprise babies.

And two of the year’s biggest movies, “Juno” and “Knocked Up,” deal with the same issue.

For some pro-choice advocates, the proud parade of surprise pregnancies is a cause for concern.

“It certainly shows any young women watching these movies or following these celebrities that the best option is to have the baby and it glorifies that choice,” Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada said Thursday.

Many abortion opponents in the blogosphere have loudly voiced their support for Spears’s decision to keep her baby. But Arthur warns that the unplanned baby bumps of well-heeled young celebrities, along with movies that make light of boudoir mishaps, send extremely unrealistic messages to impressionable young fans.

“Single motherhood, for the average teenaged girl, is just about the least glamorous thing you can possibly imagine,” Arthur said. “It’s very, very difficult. There is just so much evidence out there to show the poor results from teenagers having babies, just all sorts of social ills for both the mothers and for the children.”

Read the entire article here.

I totally see the point when people mention: Look, when you have sex, you’re making a choice and you’re confirming that you’re OK and READY to have a baby because even contraceptives are not 100% guaranteed. There’s always a chance you’ll get pregnant.

Sure, I agree with that, but I also know that a lot of people (including me) have not thought about that before having sex. It’s really just for the pleasure of the moment.

But is Hollywood really making it seem glamorous and wonderful to have a baby that was unplanned, and to in Tim Gunn’s words, ‘make it work’? Is abortion not even a choice any more in these movies? Or is the idea of abortion something societies are still trying to accept as being a valid choice?

I had no idea little Spears was preggers, but I wonder if this is really setting a bad example to make this a glorified sort of situation to be in (must be a bit of a high to be pregnant for 9 months and have people ooh and aah over you and your bump), or is it just to make girls who ended up in that position feel better about their choices?

One of my good friends thinks that having a baby bump is the hottest accessory right now. I kind of gave her a weird look, and kept my opinion to myself, but to have her use the word “accessory” to describe the bump she’d be growing if she got pregnant, was very surreal to me. I mean, that bump turns into a baby. It doesn’t stay a bump forever. And to use the word accessory, like it was a necklace or something.. made something in me feel quite uncomfortable, but I couldn’t put my finger on why.

Then I thought about it later, and I realized what bothered me was that it didn’t seem like she had thought about the implications of a baby. That having a baby to carry around for 9 months was ‘hot’, but then actually taking care of the kid after would not be as hot.. at least, that’s what it seemed like to me. Although since I know her very well, I know she’d be a great mother, but it seemed so wishy washy at te moment.

Am I just too old fashioned?