"Experts": Is Nadya Suleman Looking For Love, Or Her Name In Lights?

As details about Nadya Suleman, mother of the Bellflower Octuplets, have emerged in the past week, speculation has begun on whether she’s motivated by a love of children, or a need to be famous.

Nadya Suleman has yet to speak to the media and any information about her has come from her mother Angela, or her newly hired public relations representative, but that hasn’t stopped people from guessing what Suleman’s motivations are for adding octuplets to her previous brood of six. Over the weekend, Angela revealed that her daughter has been obsessed with being a mother since she was a teenager, but a “plugged up” fallopian tubes meant “luckily, she couldn’t.” But the NY Daily News, which describes Nadya as a woman with an “irrational, seemingly pathological, need to conceive” has reviewed the sketchy details on her life and concluded that her background leaves “the impression of loneliness.” The paper and experts quoted within theorize that Suleman may be trying to fill a manless void (!!!) in her life with children. “They give back so much love, attention and caring,” says Dr. Jennifer Hartstein, a psychologist who doesn’t treat Suleman, “And if she’s not feeling she’s gotten that anyplace else, that could be the primary reason.”

But others believe that Suleman’s thirst for fame and lack of talent may be the motivation for her to turn to motherhood. “If you want to find a way to be famous and to be, in your mind, a celebrity, there’s lots of ways to go about it,” says Cooper Lawrence, author of The Cult of Celebrity, who has never met Suleman. “If you’re not a good singer and you can’t write books, go have babies,” he says. Whether or not her goal was to become famous, Suleman is poised to become one now. Her public relations representative, Joanne Killeen, has been inundated with offers for media appearances. (According to The Telegraph the offers have reached $2 million in a “bidding frenzy” for her first interview and Oprah Winfrey is the front-runner.)

Killeen has already started making the rounds to various media outlets on behalf of her client, appearing earlier today on Good Morning America. ABC News reports that Nadya was a “working professional” before giving birth and claims that despite the gossip, there have been no financial offers for Suleman to tell her story. In the clip below, Killen says that though Nadya has not started looking at offers yet, she is “very excited and looking forward to telling the story and setting the record straight.” She also adds that “Nadya is a very balanced and together woman. She looks at this as an opportunity from God and she loves children and she’s very very excited.”

Nadya Suleman Must Be Kidding! [NY Daily News]
Mother Of Octuplets ‘Inundated With TV And Book Deals’ [The Telegraph]
Spokeswoman: Octuplet Mom “Upbeat” Not Overwhelmed [ABC News]