BBC reported that Britney Spears did not break state law by allegedly driving with her baby in a forward-facing car seat, her record company says.

Sony BMG was responding to reports of a photograph of Spears driving in Malibu, California, with Sean Preston, one, in the back facing forward not back.

Spears, who is now pregnant with her second child, was in "total compliance" with Californian law, Sony BMG said.

In February, she was photographed driving with her son on her lap.

The 24-year-old later said she was frightened by paparazzi chasing her but admitted she had made a mistake on that occasion.

In a statement, Sony BMG said state law required that "all children under the age of six or weighing less than 60lbs be in safety seats in the back seat of the car".

It added rear-facing car seats were compulsory neither in California nor many other parts of the US.

"In fact, there are only 10 [states] that require a child to be in a rear-facing car seat, and in two of those states it is not required if the infant is more than 20 lbs. Britney's son Sean weighs over 20 lbs."


Some Polls have also been done by Star and Us Weekly and here are the current results:

Us Weekly
Is everyone being too hard on Britney Spears?
Yes: 65%, No: 35%
VOTE NOW

Star
Has Britney Spears been criticized enough?
Yes: 67.1%, No: 32.9%

Are you sympathetic toward Britney?
Yes: 51.9%, No: 44.1%

Brit is also winning People's Who's the all-time Most Beautiful woman? currently, and Sean also won cutest baby of the year for Star Magazine!

Boy, am I glad the press wasn't around to document all of the things I might not have done right with my first baby. We live and we learn and our babies survive our first time parenting skills...

If you want to be a star and in the spotlight, then you have to take everything that comes with that. Including being scrutinized for everything you may or may not do wrong. It's a sad world that some people are nosey enough to want to know stuff like this, but that's the way the world is so they need to deal with it.

Yabbut, how many of us didn't bother to check up on childseat regs before installing them? How many of us were so afraid of getting something wrong that we went to the experts? I had carseats installed in both vehicles by the fire dept. months before the birth. I already knew they were to be rear-facing and the law of 20 pounds AND one year. Britney's too busy worrying about Britney to spend enough time worrying about her child's safety. And here I already had one child, and STILL I subscribed to American Baby, and getting ready to subscribe to Parents. I don't know everything there is to know, but I'm concerned enough to wanna learn. Now if it were anyone else driving with the child in their lap, facing forward, and falling out of their high chair within the first year, do you think CPS would have closed their case? I'm really starting to wonder about that one, with three incidents now.

I agree 100% with almostheaven on this one.

You have 9 months to think about your baby inside of you and to prepare. EVERY CAR SEAT that you buy has proper instructions for installation. I know Britney has read these magazines-because that is how the rumour got started that she might be pregnant in the first place. (The tabloid photos of her reading a pregnancy magazine on the beach, I believe it was.)

I have read pregnancy and baby magazines (available everywhere!) with my pregnancies and babies-and every one of them touches on child safety. Even though the law may not require a baby to be in a rear facing car seat after 20 pounds in her particular state-every car seat manual, and every child safety commission will tell you that it is SAFER to have one rear facing until they are 1 year old. Poundage doesn't mean beans. My daughter was over 10 pounds when she was born, so obviously she hit the 20 pound mark a couple of months before her cousin who was born at 5 pounds.

If Sean is 10 pounds or 28 pounds-it makes no difference. He is still only 8 months old at the time of the "convertible" incident recently.

Poundage does not mean the baby's spinal and skeletal structure are ready for a front facing car seat-which is why they recommend not turning them around until 1 year of age. There are babies who are 20 pounds at 6 months, and there are babies who are not 20 pounds until after their first birthday. They are still not the same developmentally at ALL. The 1 year marker is not about the child's SIZE, it is about the strength of their neck and spine-and the injury that could be caused to an underdeveloped spine/neck in a car crash.

The average infant has around a 14" head when it is born. My babies both had a 15" head when they were born. Does that mean that my baby doesn't have the "newborn soft spot" in their skull? Of course they did. "Big" does not mean "developed".

Even if she was within the law in her state as far as being forward facing, he was still strapped in improperly-as his entire body was slumped over to the side. The car seat straps are made to secure their torso-and his was not. If she would have crashed, his spine/back and neck would have been jerked/thrown all over. Poor kid. Since he was not even strapped in correctly to protect himself in a crash-honestly, she might as well just have sat him in the seat and put the adult seat belt on him. Without his torso being secured-then what is the point of the car seat???

We all make mistakes as parents-but she is making some pretty BIG ones. They are not "uninformed" mistakes because any seasoned mother or anyone who reads any baby magazine at all will know these basic things-her mistakes are more like "lazy" ones.

I, on the other hand, will (and have always) use my car seats properly, put my child to sleep on his back, will have a gate on the stairway, and will have him strapped into his high chair during meal time-as well as other measures for his safety. (Didn't Britney's son recently have to go to the ER because he fell out of his high chair? Did she not strap him into that properly, either??? If a kid is strapped in and the tray is put on properly, they don't just "fall out"-it is pretty much impossible.)

Yeah, she has money. Yeah, she is cute and famous-but all that doesn't make it okay to simply be a lazy mother who doesn't put her child's safety first.

Also, those polls don't really mean anything-because it isn't like everyone in the world voted on them. A lot of the voters could have been fans of hers-rather than seasoned mothers. I guarantee if the poll was taken and the voters all had to be mothers, that the results would have been a lot different.

Well, I've never really been a great Britney fan, myself. I've always thought she encouraged little girls to embrace their 'inner sex pot' a little to potently for my taste. I was, however, starting to like her more as a grown up singer, until she started being photographed with her boyfriend-now-husband on the beach smoking and looking like she had just rolled out of bed on an all night sexcapade. And I thought... ...now that she's married to him and they're starting to pump out a couple kids...she's reminding me more and more of the Osbornes...what happens when trashy people have way too much money.

Anyhow...back to the carseats. You have to be living under a rock to not know how to put your baby in a carseat. And if Britney is so clueless as to how to keep her baby safe, she has plenty of money to hire a staff to keep her baby taken care of while she mills around town, gracing LA with her presence. I'm sure she loves her baby very much and I'm sure she loves being a mom, but she doesn't appear to be embracing the full responsibilty of it all. I mean, really, if she's willing to risk her baby's life to escape the evil paparazzi, then she just shouldn't bring Sean out in public like that. She, of all people, should know that within 5 seconds of going out into daylight with her baby in tow, a dozen peopel with cameras are going to swarm her. In fact, why not just say to the paparazzi, "Hey, hows it going?"...pose with the baby, give them what they want and they'll go their merry way and she can go hers? Safely! I've never understood why famous people are so darn afraid of having their picture taken? Isn't all the attention what they wanted when they decided to become famous for a living? Now that they've got it, they're willing to risk their infant's lives by trying to escape a camera? Its not like they're trying to attack her, they just want a picture? And besides, their pictures would become less of a hot commodity if everyone had a picture of Britney and her baby. The tabloids would tell the photogs, "Oh, we have a hundred pictures of Britney and her baby...go shoot someone else." At least, that makes sense to me.

Just my opinion...

Even I was making allowances for the first two incidents. Thinking riding with the child on her lap was a stupid mistake made in the heat of the moment trying to get away from a mob. And thinking the high chair incident is possible to happen to anyway...since I saw something somewhere (COPS episode maybe) where a baby kicked the table or something and managed to tip the highchair all the way over and it fell with them in it. Accidents happen. But a third incident this close....I can no longer suspend my disbelief.

I'm sure she is intimately familiar with CA carseat law now. : )

It is so funny, because in my circle of friends-we all read up on parenting and pregnancy. We all exercise (I am still teaching dance class at 6 mos. pregnant, as well as walking, yoga, etc.) and my former dance instructor and another troupe member also danced and exercised pregnant as well.
We all use safety precautions, we watch what we eat, we breastfeed...and so on. My former instructor also teaches "Mommy & Me" dance classes, where the moms can wear their babies in carriers/slings while they dance.

On the other hand, my SIL is just a few weeks behind me in her pregnancy-and she still smokes, I haven't seen her eat a piece of fresh fruit or a vegetable YET, she doesn't exercise, and she most likely will not breastfeed.

*I am assuming this, because she never wanted to give my children expressed milk in a bottle-she thought it was gross. I had to mention that cow's milk IS breastmilk just the same...just from an ANIMAL.

Pretty much half of my husband's family are not "up" on all of the safety precautions, and proper parenting skills. I wonder sometimes how my husband was not killed, poisoned, abducted, and so on... (I am not embellishing!)

Luckily, my husband sees the errors of their ways, and he is a very responsible parent-and is 100% supportive of me.


I agree 100% with this as well. And, I have seen the 8 month old babies with Kool-Aid, Hawaiian Punch, and even MOUNTAIN DEW in their bottles...

My FIL once gave my son (at 5 months!) a bite of mexican layer dip (the refried beans/sour cream/taco seasoning/etc. stuff) and he didn't know what the big deal was when I got upset at him! Over at the in law's, they figure as long as it is "soft" it is okay. Tell that to a child who has had nothing so far but the bland diet of breastmilk, rice cereal, and maybe a bit of mashed banana! The simple fact that it was very spicy and his stomach was unaccustomed to it, and then the danger of food allergies putting something in his system with about 40 different ingredients in it!!!

"Oh, He'll be all right!" they said...bring on the bean dip!

I went ahead and deleted my initial thoughts cause...well, they just showed my frustration at the week I have had.

I think it's recommended, but not law about the rear-facing thing. So nobody can really convict her on anything except stupidity...

It's not like a lot of mom's don't do that, but she signed on for her "career" herself. So unless Louisiana is located under a rock somewhere, she knew the press and public scrutiny that would come with it. IMO, choosing that path also means choosing an obligation to set a good example.

Well, you know, I haven't read a mainstream parenting mag in years as they annoy the living daylights out of me. I have, however, always read the installation manual on my carseats...And the carseats themselves. All carseats have stickers on them with, at the least, their rear-facing weight limit. If you don't read the books, if you don't read the magazines, if you don't read the manual...that car seat is still staring you in the face. Whoever installed it--and I have no idea if it was even Britney--should have seen that sticker & known better.

By the way...the latest recommendation, although it is not official, is to keep the infant/toddler rear-facing until the seat's rear-facing limit is reached, as it has been shown time & again in crash tests that rear-facing is the safest for passengers. (Any passenger.) Of course, I woudn't dream of kvetching at anyone who turned their kid around at the one-year mark instead of staying til the kid hit 25 or 30lbs, but I thought I'd get that info out there. I don't think it's too widely known. It was recently explained to me that each step 'up' in carseats--from rear-facing to forward facing to booster and so on--is a step down in safety (as you're moving more towards what just the car offers).

As far as new moms being informed...When this first came up, I looked at one of the original blogs where it was posted, and out of well over 800 comments, easily half were defending that it was a-OK to turn your baby around at 20 pounds. I was floored at how many people out there don't know any better!

Sabra-

Some of the mainstream mags are getting a little bit better than they were a few years ago. They have great articles on breastfeeding, organics, making your own baby food, and things like that now.

I just have to skip over all of the "Eddie Bauer" baby gear ads (diaper bags, etc.) for the soccer moms who have to match their diaper bag and playpen to their SUV.

Aphil

I have to admit I hated parenting magazines when my kids were little. I agree, however, on the carseat position. My children are practically grown, and there weren't backward facing carseats when they were small, but every carseat I had was equipped with instructions fastened to the seat - and they were very difficult to remove.

In defense of myself as a soccer mom who didn't breastfeed or go organic, though, my sons have grown tall, strong, healthy and intelligent, and are both supremely talented musicians.

This may inflame some, but I just have to say re: Britney and Kevin--stupid people shouldn't breed!