If we had any $$ at all, we would move. Being on bedrest for much of my pregnancy combined with a complicated early infancy on our baby’s part pretty much depleted everything we had and then some. Our hospital bills for one week of care were close to $40k.
Hey, captain ignorant- it was much better when we moved here. Then RSOs were placed on the block, but that wasn’t released information until this January. Yeah, Megan’s Law and all that, but the records weren’t publicly updated until January. Which is when we found out. Since then we’ve been weighing our options.
Also, ever consider some people don’t have extended family? Or that maybe any family they might have is 3,000 miles away? Or that the child in question might not have been medically stable enough to move? Or that families may not have space?
It’s really easy to Monday Morning Quarterback this, but it’s not an easy or clear-cut situation once you really look at it.
Dub ist ein arsche-auffe.
It has been conclusively determined that there is no meth lab here in this building. Just a lot of cat pee. And those poor folks had their car tore up last night.
So, knowing that I’m stepping full into the fire here, I have to ask why you decided to have a child when it seems you weren’t in a good financial position to do so? I might surmise from the ‘got pregnant before you were married’ comment that you weren’t exactly planning on having a baby, so (in the chance that abortion wasn’t a personal choice you wanted to make), why didn’t you give the baby up for adoption to a family with the financial means to give it a safe place to live and a lifestyle above the ‘working poor’?
It’s obvious that you love the baby more than anything, and I’m not doubting your parenting skills, but I am honestly baffled by people who make clear choices that result in being ‘working poor’ and then bemoaning their ‘fate’. Do you and the boyfriend/husband/partner have college degrees? Why are you living in an area with such a high cost of living? Is this a temporary situation while the two of you are finishing school? Were you well off before (better than ‘working poor’, anyway) and a downturn in fortune brought you to this?
Was any of this thought out before deciding to have a baby?
Try moving with a woman on bedrest. It doesn’t happen.
The homeless problem is a major point of contention anywhere in the Bay Area. It has gotten unbelieveably bad since the bust. How bad? The county of Alameda no longer accepts applications for government housing assistance since they have a 3 year long wait list.
Do I “blithely accept” I’m having another baby? Fuck no. We use 3 methods of birth control. Every time. Since 2 methods failed to work last year.
You are the kind of ignorant and myopic asshole that drives me batty. Of course, I’m not surprised- you named yourself aptly, after a dick.
Ahem. I’m a therapist actually. I made a very nice living pre-baby. My husband also has a college degree and works in management. I haven’t worked a blue-collar job since high school/early college. But then I went on bedrest for 3 months. And my husband got laid off in January. And our son racked up close to $50k in hospital bills in his first 6 weeks. Welcome to life.
Now then, let’s discuss why this country has very very little in the way of provisions for working parents- 6 weeks of maternal leave with partial pay is obscene. Day care is exorbanent, not regulated as well as one might hope or expect, and frankly, not a place I would ever leave my son.
This country shafts its working class. Do you suggest any non-upper class family should give up their children? Because that’s just fucked up. Where would you suggest we put them? Or should people below a certain class simply not have babies? Perhaps we should be sterilized? Compulsory abortion? Please tell me.
We don’t really have family. I mean, they exist, but I would not leave my child with them even for an hour. It might be physically dangerous. This is not hyperbole. I left home at 16, and worked my ass off to get through college and grad school.
Also, what people fail to remember is that neighborhoods change. One or two really crappy groups of people moving in can easily bring down an entire block. Was it like this when we got here? No. But in the past year alone people have stopped letting their children go down the street to the playground without them. The county moved RSOs in. Once that happens, it’s like rats off a fucking ship.
We are trying to be said rats. However, our son is only now getting better, after a very rocky early infancy. When you are spending days at the hospital week after week after week, you can’t look for a new place, much less afford one (leave is unpaid). It sucks. Welcome to a capitalist society. Welcome to America, home of the No Middle Class.
Me too. I just launched a home business as a private career counselor. Right now I’m making around $50/hr. It isn’t steady yet, but it allows me to work for cash (heh, cash) around my husband’s schedule. No child care costs, flexibility, nice profit, etc.
Holy Shit! I thought we were fighting ignorance here, not spreading it!
Have ya ever lived somewhere not so great, 'cause the rents were a little cheaper, hoping that at the least the neighborhood would stay where it was? And you could put some money away? I didn’t realize that SDMB were full of priviledge white upper middle class WASP types. The very people we tried to hard to move 3000 miles away from. I grew up affluent, in an affluent community. But given the economy and my refusal to move back into my parents house at 30, I have to do what I do. I was a stock broker and a mortgage broker, but between market instability and cold call burn out, I ended up delivering pizzas. And I was happier for it. If I didn’t have a wife and a kid, didn’t need benefits for them, I’d probably still be working in a pizza place. But life doesn’t work that way. Fix the government, remove Republicans from important positions and this will be a better place, but until then, we’re all going to do what we have to do. Otherwise we’ll all be living in Iowa or some damn place.
Ah, but now you run the restaurant. Much improved. And I highly doubt you’d still be working for Johnny, honestly. It was a fun gig, but it was obvious you were outgrowing it. The good part is that it sucessfully transitioned you to a new career, outside the vile pit of mortgage sales/stock brokering.
I still think where it all went wrong was 9/11 when you were working as a broker in NYC. That was the start of the Doom.
Hey, inkleberry, don’t sweat it. There are people in similar situations to yours (in many cases, worse) who do a fine job raising their children. Not everyone has the means or the resources to move to a lovely home in suburbia the second they find out they’re pregnant, contrary to popular belief.
When Whatsit Jr. was born, we were living in what could best be charitably described as a shack. It was a one-bedroom house in the University district of Seattle. The sole source of heat for the house was a gas-powered stove situated directly in the middle of the living room. It got red-hot when it was going full blast. Our car was broken into three times while we lived there. There was broken glass all over the street from where drunken frat boys would toss their empties. It was not optimal for raising a child, but we were in a similar situation: got pregnant unexpectedly, and brought the baby home to the only home we had. MrWhatsit got laid off literally five days after I found out I was pregnant, and Whatsit Jr. also had a lengthy hospitalization in his first month of life, costing us several thousand dollars that we really didn’t have.
And you know what? Three years later we’re in a much nicer neighborhood (although still not the bucolic suburbia that my mother wishes we lived in) and a much nicer home, and Whatsit Jr. seems to be a pretty happy, well-adjusted three-year-old.
To all those people bitching about how you shouldn’t be raising a child under such God! Awful! Circumstances!: shut the hell up. You do the best you can with what you have, and sometimes it isn’t optimal or ideal. Why did I have a baby when I knew our house wasn’t good for raising a child in, and when I knew our financial situation was extremely rocky? Because it happened, and I didn’t want an abortion, and I knew we’d eventually make things work out okay. And through all of that, it was really, really none of anybody else’s business.
Hang in there, inkleberry. It sounds like you have a good handle on things, and a plan for improving your situation, and it also sounds like tinkleberry is doing great. Which is really the important thing.
*inkleberry. don’t worry about these folks. Remember that the SDMB is largely made of people who are able to read messege boards at work, and they have a lot invested in to defending the “in America, everyone can be president if they just work hard enough” concept. They, too, are a couple bad breaks from buying ramen by the case, and they’ve got to get their white-collar “sure ya libertarianism is great!” kicks while they can. It can be very I-got-mine here, and pretty much any posts you make involving being broke (and probably the rest of the threads you post for a few years) are going to turn in to a big bash-you-athon where everyone pretends like they know something or another about your life and can do a better job of things.
There are plenty of fine kids being raised in the slums of Bombay and the shanty-towns of Mexico City. Compared to that, Hayward is great. Kids need love and not a lot else- certainly not a picket fence front lawn and a $700 stroller. You’ve got access to museums, theater, great libraries, zoos, and all those wonderful things that city kids thrive on. When the kids get older they’ll have great work and internship oppertunites, can take night classes at some of the best universities, and can be in great shape even if their schools suck ass. Don’t let self-rightous people that have never faced the choices you have make you feel bad for a moment.
Do people not understand that moving costs money? Is this really a foreign concept? Do you not get that part of the whole plight of being working poor is that you basically have enough to get by from month to month but not enough to make any real improvements to your situation? Is the theory here that only the middle-class and above should have children? Are you people really that over privileged? What is the matter with you people?
Think of it like this: It is in the best interest of society. I suspect that what I am going to say will fall on deaf ears, due to ideological differences, but I will try to put this in terms that I think will make sense to you.
Let us completely discard the notion of any kind of caring for our fellow man. Let us leave to the side any notion that we are only as good as a people as can be seen in the way that we treat those in need. Forget all that stuff, and think simply in Capitalist terms.
If we, as a Capitalist society, wish to keep succeeding we need to have more and more consumers. By doing what we can to give future consumers a good start in life, we ensure that they grow up to become better consumers. Think of it as a long-term investment.
Now I know that this idea is not perfect. We will still need people to do our gardening, nanny our kids and serve us our half-caf double decaf espressos with a twist of lemon, but we can always hire illegal immigrants to do that.
Why was she even out of the kitchenin the first place? That’s what I want to know. I bet she even had shoes on or something. Disgusting. What the hell is this country coming to?
Do you similarly object to vacation pay and unemployment pay?
By suggesting that companies shouldn’t provide paid maternity leave, you are essentially suggesting that only women who 1) don’t want kids and are willing to get an abortion if they become accidentally pregnant, or 2) have sufficient means that they can afford to just quit working for six or more weeks, should enter the work force. This seems rather elitist to me, but perhaps there’s some nuance I’m missing.
No, that’s silly. I don’t object to vacation pay or maternity pay at all. What I obect to is people who think that they are somehow entitled to it. Or people that are actually receiving it, but have the gall to complain about it.
inkleberry stated her opinion that 6 weeks leave with “partial pay” is obscene. What is the partial pay? 30% 50% 80%? It doesn’t matter in the end. 50% pay is more than the 0% anybody is actually entitled to.
Look at it this way, do you pay 50% of the price for food you don’t eat, clothes you don’t wear, the rent on an apartment you don’t live in, or the payment on a car you’ll never see? No. So why should business pay even 50% wages for labor they don’t receive?
Should businesses pay for vacation and maternity leave benefits to attract better, more productive workers? Almost certainly true. Are said workers entitled to the extra bennies? No.
Much improved. And I highly doubt you’d still be working for Johnny, honestly. It was a fun gig, but it was obvious you were outgrowing it. The good part is that it sucessfully transitioned you to a new career, outside the vile pit of mortgage sales/stock brokering.