Guess what? Some do, especially if they continue to make choices that place a greater demand on their resources than they can bear.
olivesmarch4th, can I ask a favor? If you’re going to castigate all the posters in a thread, make sure it’s for things that all the posters are supporting. I know I’ve spoken out against sterilization, or government control of fertility. It’s annoying to get hit in the face with your broad brush, especially since I think we’re mostly on the same side of this argument.
When you have complaints it’s far more effective to make them specific, not general.
I was going to spew some of my anger your comments have been leaving me with, but it’s not really going to be constructive to get into that.
I want to make clear – we’re not flaming large families per se, are we? Because I know some very large families – eight, ten children in some cases. Their parents are employed, so they manage. They don’t have a heck of a lot of money, but they do OK. And I don’t see anything wrong with the choice they made.
Ed
I never said that there was “unbridled welfare luxury” out there. What I did say was that there are a variety of government programs out there that give you free (or reduced price) shit when you make bad choices. You are a poor single woman who has a kid? The state will pay for your kid’s medical care and, depending on the state, your medical care, too. It will also subsidize your housing. It will also give you food stamps. It will also give you a monthly check (although to get this you’ll probably have to jump through some hoops, such as going through job training or actually getting a job). Simply check out the eligibility guidelines for TANF, Medicaid, SCHIP, food stamps, and other things in your state. You’ll get a good idea of who qualifies.
I’m not saying this is a life of luxury. But your basic needs will be met. Your irresponsible decision to have a kid when you couldn’t support it will be rewarded with help from the U.S. taxpayer.
Yeah, blame the system for getting pregnant by three or four different guys, dropping out of high school, taking drugs, dating loser after loser who is in and out of jail, etc. I grew up among people living in poverty and my wife works with people living in poverty. Not everyone living in poverty makes the bad choices I mentioned above, but quite a few do. If you are truly concerned about getting out of poverty, then it’s not too much to consider using birth control.
Yes, many people who use public assistance only use it for a short period of time to get back on their feet. Many are hard working who have been set back by some unfortunate circumstance. Guess what? These people don’t continue to use welfare. These people move out of the system of dependency. On the flip side, there are a ton of people on public assistance who live day-to-day, looking for immediate gratification without trying to get their shit together. We, as taxpayers, subsidize these bums, and we have every right to bithch and moan about their horrible life choices.
That just made me remember something that one of my former professors said years ago upon hearing of a parent who claimed that God had “given” him and his wife their huge brood: “No, idiot. You HAD SEX.”
But…since sex is such a nasty thing in the minds of so many, perhaps we are to believe that all these babies are conceived in quite the immaculate fashion.
As long as they are not asking the government to support the families, rock on.
Which is all true, in my opinion (I had my kids in my 30s), but we have a few factors working against us:
“If you wait until you can afford kids, you’ll never have them” - for most people, pretty true. Even middle class people. Few people - college educated, experienced beyond being a teenager, stop to consider how expensive kids are before they have them. Most people find a way to afford the kids they have, not the kids they plan.
How do you tell, married at 22 or so, out of college, both partners having decent jobs - that you are going to stay married or stay employed? Society has never been very stable for the majority of people - and while the instability factors have changed in the past 100 years, there is still a lot of instability.
“Hey, I’m almost 18, I’m a grown up!” It took me a LONG time to realize that I wasn’t as grown up as I thought I was, regardless of my age. Maybe into my 30s…there is still plenty of wisdom to be gained, the difference is now I recognize I don’t know it all. I don’t think I’m unusual.
“My mother (grandmother/cousin/friend of a friend) managed to have a baby at a young age and unmarried and ended up doing just fine.” There is a tendancy for people to imagine the best possible outcome for themselves, not the worst. Anna Nicole Smith was a high school dropout and teen mom.
I have no idea what my comments had to do with complaining about waiting to have children. I don’t know why you said this, or how I’m expected to respond. Most young people DO need to wait before having children because it would be fiscally irresponsible to have children they cannot afford. HOWEVER, you seem to be implying that a young person who starts off from a middle class background and a young person starting off from a working class background are going to be on equal footing except one’s just going to have to wait longer to have kids. This is not a fair assessment.
Erm… okay, let me put it in a more concrete way–the difference between my husband and me. My husband was raised in a middle class family but has incredibly, ridiculously wealthy grandparents who gifted him with an $80,000 college education as well as a monthly allowance. He did not have to work during college.
I was raised in a lower-middle/working class family and I have been financially on my own since the age of 17. I came to college mostly on scholarship and am pleased to report that the damage to me personally is only about $10,000 in student loans.
Now. Let’s ignore the day-to-day differences in our respective lives during our college careers, and jump ahead to now. We are both the same age-- 24 (give or take.)
His current financial situation:
Zero debt, $10,000 invested, $4,000 in personal savings–and he’s making $14 an hour at his current job (living wage here is $12/hour.)
My current financial situation:
$10,000 student loan debt, $0 savings, barely scraping by.
Now. Neither of us have the financial or educational preparation necessary for having children, but it should be pretty clear who’s in the better position overall.
And it’s pretty clear that compared to him I’ve had a major disadvantage in becoming upwardly mobile. 10 years from now (assuming we didn’t pool our resources, which we now do) the disparity between the two of us will be even greater. I might eventually make enough to have children, but he’s going to have a healthy retirement nest-egg long before I’ve even scraped up enough for a basic savings account. He’d be able to contribute more to his child’s education than I wold and thus the disparity would perpetuate itself.
That’s the only point I was trying to make.
Mostly the, '‘Sterilize ‘em all!’’ and your comments. You seem to think anyone who wants a job that pays more than minimum wage can find one. It’s a notion that seems very disconnected from the reality I and many of my peers are living in, and it smacks of entitlement.
I don’t disagree with a single thing you said here, and I thought it very eloquently expressed as well.
Yes, some do. I should have written, ‘‘NOT ALL poor people deserve to be poor.’’ And the stupidity of people who make poor life decisions that place demands on their resources and in the long run become a burden on society at large is not something I’m debating. Believe me, there are plenty of these idiots in my own family.
Ditto. I think large families are great. We just expect so much more out of life these days, in terms of material things. I have a friend who has a wife and one child. He was saying the other day that he wants to move to a bigger house, because they have no space. I was teasing him about it, because the family that lived in that house when we were growing up had 10 kids! (And my friend knows this perfectly well, because he went to Catholic school with them, and there were probably at least 4-5 of them attending the school at any given time.) How is it that a family could once squeeze 12 people into that house, and now it’s too small for 3? Different expectations…and not necessarily better ones, IMO! 
Yes, I apologize for that (think I’d have learned my lesson given the recent BBQ nightmare.)
I was specifically addressing Malacandra’s ‘‘get a job’’ attitude and whoever it was that suggested mandatory sterilization of people on welfare.
Why, thank you very much!
Actually Sarahfeena’s comments have gotten me back to the heart of the OP’s original intentions. How, realistically, can we minimize the likelihood of people making poor decisions for themselves that perpetuate their poverty?
I would have to strongly agree on the sex education part.
I would also find it refreshing if schools taught some modicum of fiscal responsibility as well. I had a good sex education thanks to my Aunt (and watching many of my family members deal with the consequences of having kids before they were ready.) But nobody taught me how to manage money–or even how to develop a healthy attitude toward money, and I had to pay for that with some stupid mistakes that harmed my long-term financial outlook.
I completely believe the parents are responsible to teach their children about birth control and money management, but we all know that’s not going to happen so I would be very pleased if it became a fundamental part of every secondary school education.
Many schools have trouble teaching kids to read, so why do you think they’d do a better job teaching kids life skills? This is especially true in schools in inner cities (which are notoriously bad) or schools in very rural areas (like where I went to school). These are precisely the areas where kids need these type of life skills (how to manage money, not to get pregnant, etc.), but I certainly don’t think schools are equipped to provide them.
Exactly. So seriously addressing this issue would require equal funding for schools.
sigh
nyctea scandiaca suggests all people on welfare be sterilized. I find that troubling. But I wonder, if working along these lines… what if there were some kind of financial incentive for people on welfare to use birth control? Would anyone here be opposed to that on moral grounds? Is it financially feasible? Would it work, or would it just create lots of single childless moochers? Would it cost the government more than it’s already paying toward state programs?
(I don’t know the answers to these questions, I know nothing about economics.)
Any other ideas?
I don’t believe in mandatory sterilization, but I think that welfare itself should be the monetary incentive to use birth control. That is…if you are receiving welfare, then you must be on birth control. If you don’t want to use birth control, then no welfare. The only other alternative I can see in terms of incentive is to tell people that there will be no additional benefits for additional children, and that is not fair to the potential children.
This is idiotic. Many, many teenagers don’t have the foresight to figure out that a $12 box of condoms is cheaper than a child or an STD, as evidenced by the fact that so many of them have unprotected sex. Listen to the radio show Lovelines some time – teenagers of all walks of life know next to nothing about birth control and are frequently very impulsive when it comes to having sex. Putting condoms in their hands will make a difference. It won’t completely solve the problem, but there would be a noticeable reduction in accidental teen pregnancies if free condoms were widely available.
And even if it doesn’t work, so what? Why not do it? What’s the harm? Condoms are a hell of a lot cheaper for us as a society than unwanted children.
And it’s not one that I was making either, but go right ahead and attack a viewpoint that I didn’t put forward. That always flies well around here. I didn’t say: let the poorer person wait a little while, and all will be equal - I don’t believe that’s even part of the American dream. But I was closer to saying: let anyone short of the necessities to bring up children see about mending matters before they have the children.
Oh. “Some people have more than others”. I knew that already. 24 is not exactly ancient, hon. I was 15 years older than that before my first son was born. And yeah, being short of money, having kids, bringing them up while short of money, and being forced to deny them opportunities available to the better-off, is going to perpetuate the cycle. So would a rational creature suggest that (a) you go ahead and do it anyway, all the while whining about the unfairness of it all, or (b) you do what you can to make opportunities available to your offspring that you had to do without?
Okay, coupla notes. First off, never mind what I “seem to think” and “seem to imply”. How about you address yourself to what I say, and if in doubt, ask for clarification? Second, I imagine most people can graduate to non-MW jobs sooner or later. Some of us, it takes longer than others. Third, if there’s any sense of entitlement going on here, it belongs to those with the apparent belief that they have the right to have children without being able to support them.
One final thing: until you have a lot more life experience, and maybe know a bit more about me, do not presume to lecture me on walking a mile in another’s shoes. Can do? :dubious:
That sounds reasonable… though I can see there being complications. Some people cannot handle Depo shots physically without health complications, but I can’t think of any other non-permanent method that would be effective. Personally, I don’t know. Given that I had no risk of pregnancy while receiving Medicaid and have always known better, I can’t help but feel this option could be quite demeaning to responsible individuals.
What if it were based on some kind of track record? Say you only had to use birth control if you ended up getting pregnant while on welfare? That way responsible folks wouldn’t feel unjustly denigrated.
Not to get off on a tangent, but “equal funding” does not mean better education. There is little evidence to suggest that more funding for schools produces better education. Washington, D.C., has incredibly high per-pupil funding for its schools and they are among the worst in the nation.
Are you using the ‘‘general’’ you here? Because I’ve specifically made it a point not to have kids until I have a degree that will enable me to work in my field professionally. I will be just fine (being married, it’s easier to pool resources.) I was using the disparity between my husband and I as a hypothetical.
Sounds good. I let my emotions get the better of me and I apologize. At this point I’m more interested in figuring out a reasonable solution to this phenomenon anyways.
But I do have to leave now. Olives.