And this sounds so familiar… why is that? Who posted this almost same exact, word for word, OP a year ago? And why do you think only poor people have a child they don’t want or can’t handle? Money is not an indication of good parenthood, nor is it an indication they will “pay” for the child.
Look, I’m a single person, an honest tax payer. I really don’t mind that more than 60% of my property taxes go to schools; I guess I look at it as a paying back for what I got. I object to subsidizing water and roads… I think those two things should be paid by use; true cost. Call me persnickety but if you use more water you should pay more. If you use the roads more you should pay more. I guess I’m a maverick!
And as for children. Hon, we are always going to have women who get pregnant and men who walk. It is and has been for thousands of years. Do we hold them up, condemn them, and then subject them to cruelty because of this?
Hey, regardless of what these women or men think, what their grand plans are, we, as a society, are left with the child. An innocent… sadly, you and I have to make the pay off. But I’m shocked that we should condemn the women and children and yet somehow, the men, who are also ACTIVE participants, go free.
Lovely.
Why don’t we just sterilize anyone who earns less than 40 K a year? Why don’t we sterilize all “poor” women; that’ll fix the problem. Or all women who have had more than 2 kids who earn less than 40 K a year? Wait, I know! Let’s just kill everyone who doesn’t have a good strong background! It’s called eugenics. And it’s ugly.
The problem is that we need to make birth control more accessible. You think the population problem is here, in the U.S? It isn’t. Birth and death is almost held in tandem here. We need to make birth control available to developing nations. Their birth rate is staggering because they have no adequate means of birth control.
Rather than rant and rave, over the very little, 5% of welfare costs here in the US we would well look to helping curb the tide of unwelcome children by offering free or cheap birth control. Hell, I’d give the other 40% of my property tax dollars for it.
You bitch about it, and so does everyone else, great, fine, bitch… but when it comes to the rubbing nub what will you DO about it? I work for Zero Population growth. What do you do besides bitch?
I wasn’t a member of these boards a year ago, and so I didn’t see the OP you speak of at the time it was posted. I can’t find the discussion you referred to through search so perhaps you’d be kind enough to link to it for me? I’m getting the insinuation that you think I’m either ripping off the other person who posted on this topic, or that I am the other person who posted on this topic. Rest assured that neither is true.
I am not ranting against poor families. I am ranting against the eternally unemployed who have never and will never have jobs. Specifically, I am ranting about a couple who not only have never, ever, ever had a job in all of their lives, but who aren’t actively seeking work and who at one stage were cheating the welfare office by lying about their living arrangements. I don’t believe it takes money to make a good parent, but I do believe that whatever money you have should be your own. I don’t believe that it is right to plan for a second child when you’re living on welfare.
I don’t live in the US. Where I live, we pay for our water as we use it. We pay for our roads with our car registration. Our property taxes don’t go towards schools, our income taxes do. I’m sure some of the costs of maintaining our roads come out of our income taxes, but even though I don’t drive, I use the roads when friends drive me, when I catch a bus and when I get a taxi. I find it hard to imagine being able to live without using the roads, even if I can live without a licence.
I referred to couples, not women. Men are equally responsible. Sadly, they are harder to identify than the women as they have more freedom to walk away. That doesn’t make them less responsible, and that’s why they were included in my rant. I also excluded couples whose circumstances change after they conceive a child.
Again, I don’t have a problem with poor families having children. It’s their choice. I object to people planning to raise families on the welfare system - I don’t mean low income earners who get a government subsidy. You don’t need money to raise well adjusted, happy children who will become useful members of society. On the other hand, if you can’t afford to feed your children, live on welfare, move from rented dive to rented dive and expose your children to the miseries of poverty, then you are less likely to raise happy, well adjusted children. It’s not elitist to say that there are some basics that children need, and if you can’t afford to give them to your children, perhaps you need to think about changing your circumstances before having children.
I’m not in the US. I’m not in a third world country. I believe birth control is accessible. In fact, I know for a fact that women on welfare are entitled to a four month supply of the pill for less than the cost of a packet of cigarettes. Strangely, all the couples I spoke of smoke but apparently couldn’t afford to use contraception.
I may have ranted, but I don’t think I raved.
I don’t have a problem with people having children. I have a problem with unemployed, unprepared, young, unmarried, uncommited, unstable people having children. There is no excuse for it, not in this country in this day and age. I also believe I mentioned that children raised to think a normal family includes welfare, teenaged parents, broken relationships and a poor moral example will learn that they are normal. Some will rise above their humble beginnings, but some will perpetuate the cycle - a goal somewhat opposed to your “Zero Population growth”. I think you’re confused, because we seem to be on the same general side.
What do I do about it? Nothing. What can I do? Please, I don’t mean this in a sarcastic way, I’d like you to educated me on how we all work towards having Zero Population growth, because I wouldn’t call not having children “working” towards anything. I don’t have children. Does that mean I’m working towards that goal already? Does the fact that I plan to have children when the time is right affect my standing?
Your assumption that I’m prejudiced against single working mothers is baseless. I’m against unemployed teen mothers in relationships that are obviously doomed to fail, falling pregnant by accident. The pill is available to these people at a reduced cost, yet they chose to smoke and become pregnant rather than use the contraception offered to them. The specific people I’ve spoken of both exist and are known to me, and I’m not speculating about their circumstances. I do include in my rant all people like them, be they known to me or not, but I don’t include deserted mothers, people who become unemployed after starting their family, or others whose circumstances are based more on hard luck than stupidity. While only one of the people I’m ranting about has a drug problem, I’ve included all other people in the same situation who use drugs. I don’t think you can reasonably defend young people who have been taught about pregnancy and contraception, who fall pregnant by accident, who don’t have jobs and aren’t looking for jobs, who don’t look after their children properly because they are too lazy, who jump from relationship to relationship and who shouldn’t be parents. Your defence was of a group I wasn’t critisizing, for a reason I wasn’t critical about.
So since 46% of unintended pregnancies occur where condoms were used for contraception, and there are absolutely no 100% effective contraceptives available, excepting abstinence, then are you suggesting that no woman should have sex until she wants to breed?
Hmmmm…in ten years I might want to have a baby. I guess I can wait, I mean, whats the big deal about sex anyway? And I’m sure my fiance can wait too, and we’ll just cuddle each other and reminisce about the sheet-ripping orgasms we used to have.
What about women who had children in wedlock but who’s philandering husband’s left them high and dry? Are all of the forms of support you mentioned above (free lunches, etc.) suppossed to be cut off for them as well? Are you implying that it is somehow their fault their husband’s left them to care for the children alone?
Picture the little, angel-faced toddler tottering around the room. Suddenly, from the window, comes the sound of a car horn honking. What does the little angel say? What her daddy would say…
Repeat after me: I, belladonna*, am too ignorant to post anything about the Catholic church’s rules or beliefs. I am very sorry and I won’t do it any more.*
Sheesh.
The Roman Catholic Church holds that sex has both a unitive and procreative purpose.
The Church teaches that while every marital act must remain open to the transmission of life, it is not true that the sole, or even primary, purpose of every such act is procreation. Sex between a husband and wife builds and strengthens the bond shared between them, and the Church is quite hip to that. Indeed, do you imagine that the Church would view as sinful conjugal relations between a husband and a wife past menopause, or following a hysterectomy?
Methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods are permitted, while artificial barrier methods that render conception impossible are not. The former path “respects the bodies of the spouses, encourages tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom.” (Cat. 2370)
Now, you may certainly argue that this is a foolish belief, that barrier methods of contraception are morally indistingusihable from abstention, or from the rhythm method. Those are certainly defensible opinions. You may argue that the Church is itself a product of male-dominated horseshit, if you wish.
You may not, however, argue “… that the only sanctioned purpose of sex is reproduction,” according to the Catholic church, because it just ain’t so.
Please try to focus on facts in your posts, belladonna. “Fighting ignorance since 1973 - it’s taking longer than we thought” is the motto of this board. Perhaps you could help in this endeavor.
This is going to be kind of a conflicting post, but it’s how I feel, regardless of how it is interpreted.
I honestly don’t wish any bad upon you or your child, my twin brother was a single parent for 5 years. My parents didn’t let him take the easy way out. They made sure he wasn’t receiving any help, but rather, going out and working his ass off to provide for his child that he created.
I feel the only way to fix the problem, is to do as was suggested, and remove all help. Does this sting the “accidents”? Sure. Does it fix the problem? Yes.
Let me explain. While I agree with you that it isn’t necessarily humane to bar governmental help to children who were born under irresponsible parents, at the same time, it isn’t feasible to accurately assess each and every “single parent” case. I feel that people don’t learn by being consoled about their mistakes. I had a roommate that went out and got a public intox. He was in serious shit with the law because of a prior PI. A friend of ours bailed him out with a lawyer and all of the money to pay the fines and court costs. My roommate was thanking his lucky stars… for about a week. Two weeks later he’s out getting plastered at a bar again, and basically begging for another PI.
That is a rather odd analogy, because a child and a PI charge are obviously very different. However, the moral of the story remains the same. If he had to spend time in jail or take out a loan to pay fines (I’m guessing jail would have been the option), I’ll bet he would not have been back out getting hammered again. At the same time, if a single female has a child, and she can’t afford that child, I’ll bet she doesn’t have another one if she knows that she isn’t going to be receiving any money for even the first child!
It’s a negative reinforcement… “Hey, it’s bad to have a kid that you can’t care for, now take our money… but don’t do it again!” A year later: “Hey, it’s bad to have that second kid that you can’t care for, here, take more money… but don’t do it again!” ad infinitum.
So my vote is to take the hardass stance. You fuck up, you deal with it.
BP
PS - Why do I have a feeling that this is going to be an unpopular opinion?
Rick,
Sorry to have answered Gazoo incorrectly. I went to Catholic school and that (what I posted) was the line we were fed in every health/sex ed session there. I incorrectly assumed that meant it was the official stance of the church as well. Your cites state otherwise and I am truly sorry if my misinformation has infected others, thanks for the clarification. Peace?
BP,
I feel the only way to fix the problem, is to do as was suggested, and remove all help. Does this sting the “accidents”? Sure. Does it fix the problem? Yes.
What problem are we fixing here? 1.) The problem of children born out of wedlock? 2.) The problem of women having children they can’t support without help? (either from the father or the govt.—guess who I would rather see chip in) 3.) The problem of women becoming baby-machines for a “free-ride”?
Well---
1.) children have always been born out of wedlock. Sure, it happens more often now, but do you really want us to go back to the days when unwed mothers were locked away for 9 months +, ridiculed, stigmatized or, even worse, pressured into abortions/adoptions they didn’t feel right about? Furthermore, not all women getting help are unmarried. I was married almost two years before I had my son. Does the fact that it ended disastrously somehow make my child less deserving of a full stomach or up-to-date immunizations?
2.) Babies are expensive BP. Ask your brother. Everyone needs help sometimes. As I said, I have the luxury of a decent job and a supportive family but that isn’t the case far too often. Add on to that the fact that many single parents are mothers working low paying jobs with inflexible schedules and shitty benefits. Do you have any idea how much child care costs? When a woman sits down and does the math and it comes out to…
A.) I could work sixty hours a week and make X$, subtract Y$ for daycare, healthcare, formula, and diapers and that leaves me with, oh, $13.86 to last the month but that’s OK because I don’t need to eat
OR
B.) I could stay home and watch my own kid on the government’s dime
Is it so hard to understand the appeal of option B, or the impossibility of option A? If we’re going to eliminate per-child assistance then we, as a nation, need to seriously think about instituting some form of national child-care/birth control/health-care.
3.) I think as far as baby-machines go it’s pretty obvious what’s going on. Do you really think people are incapable of recognizing such situations for what they are? In these cases I would support revoking “free money” and giving the mother the option of working with subsidized day-care, WIC support, etc., or of relinquishing her children to families ready and willing to work to support them.
While I totally see your point, I stand by my position. Those children whose parents are “irresponsible”, as you put it, are those most in need of outside help. A society is only as good as the manner in which it treats its most helpless citizens. And while revoking all aid might fix some problems, I think it far more likely that it would only create a whole new slew of them.
Okay, Bricker kinda hit Beladona a little hard there, so I just want to say, go talk to a priest. I was raised Catholic, and a lot of people have this impression that the Catholic Church teaches all sex is wrong unless it’s to make babies. If you talk to a priest nowadays, you’ll find out the Catholic Church doesn’t even condemn premarital sex, they just highly recommend you wait. Why? Because sex is viewed as a special spiritual gift that should be shared to help expand a very special relationship, which for this level of “splendor” as it were, it believes can only truly be found in a marriage. As for the Church’s stance on birthcontrol, this is another one of those funny little quirks with the Catholic Church, because there was a case several years ago where the Pope himself said it was okay for people in this one specific country to use birthcontrol because the population level was incredibly high and just seemed to be getting worse. This is one of those funny little things with the Church that makes me proclaim that although I still consider myself a Catholic, I’m not too keen on religion.
Now onto something relevant to the original post…I took a government class a while back, and at some point we were studying the levels of unwed mothers and pregnacy in poverty and all that jazz. Something people don’t seem to know is that a lot of “single mothers” are single not because they were abandoned by their child’s father, but because they don’t get support from the government if they’re married. Many couples live together, but choose not to get married because it would be damn impossible to raise a child with no income accept that coming from the fathers minimum wage job. Taking welfare away from people is not a well thought action and would be foolish. If you feel that “people who can’t support a child on their own don’t deserve to have children,” then you’re restricting a huge portion of this country from having that right. People who live in ghettos and housing projects aren’t all degenerates and drug dealers simply having babies for the sole purpose of stealing from the government. There are plenty of people that work long, hard hours to help get enough money to support themselves and their families, but I’m sorry, Burger King just doesn’t pay that much, and when you come from the ghetto, you don’t have much choice.
On the flip side, there are people who do have children simply to get a check and support themselves. A lot of the time, the child never sees the benefits of the welfare checks their parent(s) are recieving. This is where the problem lies. Ending welfare is a dumb idea, but there is definitely room for improvement. But before that can be taken care of, other whole aspects of society need to be reorganized and taken care of. People living in poverty need to have a way to get out of poverty before you take away what little support they have.
Two things: 1) sorry for misspelling your name
2) sorry for taking so damn long to post my thing that you already seemed to have gotten the point from another source. I just wanted to help in a more calm manner. But if someone could look up where the Church has sanctioned birth control, that would be swell. I have no luck looking up anything but porn on the internet, and 80% of the time, it’s by mistake (the other 20% of the time, it’s a waste. Have you noticed how everyone advertises free porn, yet no one has it? Sorry, I guess that’s for a different thread).
Bella, I like your train of thought, I can really appreciate your POV.
While I haven’t necessarily thought through the backlash of potential problems that removing help might cause, I too stick by my position.
Here’s hopefully a better analogy of how I see things. If a lion mother has a cub (let’s just say 1 cub to make it easy), and then she breaks her leg while hunting for food for her baby… she now lacks the necessary tools to provide for her cub. What happens then? She will presumably do everything in her power to heal herself and take care of her cub. Reproduction would be at the BOTTOM of her list. Regardless, the mother is forced to do everything in her power to help herself and her offspring.
Our (America’s) priorities are such that a mother who is “disabled” (ie - unable to care for her child) no longer places reproduction at the bottom of her list. As a matter of fact, some mothers are probably placing reproduction at the TOP of their lists in these situations. How backwards is that?
So my stance is simply to put the priorities back where they belong, by any means necessary.
What you’re speaking of is called fraud. People who lie about their circumstances to get extra money from welfare are breaking the law.
I’m not damning all single mothers without exception. The people I’ve spoken of don’t work - any of them. You say they can’t marry because their welfare payments would be reduced. Justify this however you want, but it still amounts to fraud! And in all the cases I speak of, the fathers don’t work. The welfare system in my country is reasonably fair. If you are on a low income, you can get part payments to help you out. An unemployed couple get slightly less than two unemployed singles, but this is because it costs less to run a single household. A single mother and an unemployed man who share a house bring in more money than a pair of unemployed parents. Also, when both parents are unemployed, both get benefits, but both have to actively seek work. This last reason alone is enough for some to avoid telling of a marriage-like relationship, because a single mother doesn’t need to look for work.
Let’s call this couple “Alice and Darren”. Alice and Darren have been a couple since they were in school. When they dropped out of school, they both went on unemployment. In my country, you can get unemployment payments forever so long as you follow the rules, and so they did what they needed to just to keep on the payroll, but did nothing to find jobs. Darren did apply for a couple of jobs - and when I say a couple, I mean no more than 3 or 4 - back in the early days, but decided it was more fun to hang out at home than to work and so he quit searching. Alice never even got that far. She decided that work wasn’t for her, and not once did she apply for a job or take any steps towards getting off unemployment. Darren continued to live at home, but Alice moved out and got herself an apartment to live in.
Alice is 12 months older than Darren. She was 19 the first time she fell pregnant, so he was just barely 18. He thought she was on the pill, she (later) confessed that she hadn’t taken the pill in nearly 2 years. “I thought I was infertile because I didn’t get pregnant in 2 years that I wasn’t taking the pill” she said, which was supposed to justify the fact that she wasn’t taking the pill when she fell pregnant. Never mind the fact that this means she was dancing with danger when she was 17 and Darren was just 16, and only through luck did she not fall pregnant then. Darren was devestated, and begged her to abort the baby. At first she refused, but eventually gave in and had the pregnancy terminated. She told people that she’d fallen and hit her stomach, and miscarried. She also made sure Darren’s parents found out, because Darren wouldn’t let her tell them. She told some friends of theirs instead so they’d know.
Darren sat her down after the abortion and told her that he wasn’t ready to be a father, that he was too young. He told her if she would only wait, he would “give” her a baby when she was 25. She agreed readily, told me all about this deal she had with Darren.
Two months later, Alice was pregnant again. She hedged her bets early in, and told Darren’s parents before she told him. She told me before she told him. Hell, she told everyone before she told him. The result was that when Darren begged her to abort again, she airily said “I can’t. Everyone knows”. Darren reluctantly came to realise he was going to be a father and that was that. Alice moved into a house with no heating, a spider infestation and holes in windows and walls. She got the place cheap through family friends, though I was of the opinion that the house should be condemned, not rented. Darren moved in with her during the final months of her pregnancy - the first time they’d ever lived together. Even before the baby’s birth, they had begun to discuss ways to con more money out of welfare.
It was decided that Darren’s name would be left off the birth certificate, and the father would be listed as “Unknown”. This meant that the couple could live together as man and wife, but claim that they were merely housemates. The baby would be listed as the child of Alice only, and when asked how it was possible that she didn’t know the identity of the child’s father, Alice signed a statement swearing that she’d been drunk when she conceived and slept with at least 5 men whose names she didn’t even know. The second part of this plan meant that, even if Darren got a job, welfare couldn’t identify him as the father and couldn’t force him to pay maintenence, for if that happened Alice’s welfare payments would be reduced. Thus, Alice could stay on welfare for the rest of her life, even if Darren was working. This is illegal. This is something you can serve prison time for. This is immoral. This is disgusting, and I can’t believe they did it. But they did.
Alice and Darren’s baby girl Lisa was born, and shortly after Darren’s grandmother took ill. She needed to be nursed so Darren and Alice moved into the grandmother’s home while the grandmother moved into Darren’s mother’s home. The agreement was that Darren and Alice would pay rent to the grandmother, Darren’s maternal grandmother. Darren and Alice then went to the welfare agency and reported that they were paying X amount in rent each week, which entitled them to an assistance bonus on top of their usual payments. Each week they got slightly more money to help them afford rent. Because the grandmother was the maternal grandmother, she had a different surname to Darren and the welfare agency were unaware that Darren was renting from a family member.
Alice and Darren were always broke. They spent money like it was water. Both smoked heavily, a pack a day each. They would spend a fortune on junk food. Darren’s mother clothed them and the baby. She waived the rent most weeks because they couldn’t afford it. She supplied them with diapers, formula and food. In short, Darren’s mother met their living expenses while the welfare payments went on fun times, junk food and cigarettes. I am not exaggerating. Alice has never purchased a single item of clothing for her child, and probably bought a single week’s supply of formula and diapers out of every month. Alice and Darren have never bought their own shoes, or underwear. Darren’s mother takes care of everything. Yet they kept collecting their welfare payments.
Alice brought the 9 month old baby to visit me one day, and asked if I had any soda to give the baby. I didn’t. She said sorry, but she’d have to go home because the baby was thirsty. I said she could have water. Alice said “Oh no, she won’t drink water”. I took the bottle from her, filled it with water, gave it to the baby, and she drank it. Alice murmurred “Well look at that”, and said nothing else. Alice personally didn’t drink water, so she wouldn’t give it to the baby. Lisa had never been given water before and Alice was lying when she said Lisa didn’t like it.
Within six months of Lisa’s birth, Alice was talking about having another baby. She anguished over the decision, fussing over whether she could handle two children, if she was up to another pregnancy, how far she should space her children - yet she never took a moment to think if she should be having babies when she was living off the public. To her thinking, welfare was a right, and she had the right to have as many babies as she wanted. In the end, she waited until Lisa was four before having another child. By then, I was no longer on friendly terms with her. I couldn’t stand by and watch any longer.
These were the first people I ever saw doing the things I described in the OP, and I was horrified. Since then I have been ever more horrified by the sheer numbers of people doing the same things. Too young, too irresponsible, yet they’re shaping the future of our nation. Their children sit in classrooms, unable to pay attention because they don’t have proper bedtimes and they don’t get decent food, disrupting the class and making things difficult for the children who are cared for properly. Then they go home and listen to their mothers and father ranting about how their welfare payments were delayed this week, or something, and become aware that they are given money to exist, and that’s their right. They see their parents using drugs in the home, and they think that normal people always use drugs. In short, they grow up with a vision of the world that is skewed, and repeat the cycles of their parents.
Not all children of losers grow up to be losers, but those that break the cycle are a rare breed, and what a shame those special children don’t have a chance to grow up in a decent home.
Yes - and I, in turn, apologize for coming down so hard on you. I see the Catholic Church get bashed a fair bit, and while some of the bashing is based on fact – the basher doesn’t like what the Church says or does – much of it is based on an inaccurate or incomplete understanding of the Church. It’s those that (as you might be able to tell! ) really frost me. Still, I probably loaded the flamethrower a bit too strongly, there, and I regret it.
Just ‘cuz I didn’t want to look like I tucked my tail between my legs and ran off, I looked for a cite site to support my 46% schtick. I looked for a freakin’ hour. I know I read it in the SF Chron by a Stanford woman. I know it. But I can’t find it. Which supports that crap about 87% of statistics being made up on the spot.
But really it’s true. I swear–not that I’m proof of 46% of UPs (that’d be a lot of…) but we are proof that condoms used EXACTLY, ANNOYINGLY, according to directions can still fail. We joke about my fiance’s turbosperm, but really, it’s not funny.
personal confession over. what a LAME post. I humbly apologise, but it is my duty to be a WARNING to all.
