Please tell me that this is not the reason Hollywood has had a baby boom these past 2-3 calendar years… Gawker has a post asking How Much Is Your Baby Worth?, in which they point out how much money print magazines are paying celebs for the exclusive rights to the pics of their newborn babies.

It seems that the $1M paid to Lynne Spears for rights to Jamie-Lynn Spears’ baby’s pics is peanuts. Nicole Richie’s baby Harlow got that as well, but Christina Aguilera’s little boy has bids reaching $1.5M.

Why are the mags doing this? Here’s the logic, according the Gawker article. Female readers cannot resist baby pics, especially of celebrity babies. So exclusives apparently boost magazine sales – something that’s necessary for print media, I guess, with websites stealing so many “eyes” away.