I have known the woman who is now my mother’s assistant at work for 10 years. (I worked with her before my mother did.) She is one of those women who has never seen a happy ending when she wasn’t eating popcorn.
She is within a year one way or the other of my age (I’m about to turn 38). She married when she was about 19; she wasn’t pregnant when she married but her first child was conceived in the first few months. She had three children with her husband before the marriage turned hopelessly sour. She divorced when she was in her mid-twenties and he was a terrible ex- a deadbeat dad who gladly went to jail rather than pay child support or alimony. She has routinely worked part time jobs in addition to her full-time job, probably working easily 70 hours per week but, because of her lack of education and skills she has never made much more than $20,000 per year, which with three kids isn’t much. (She has a GED and a couple of semesters of junior college- I’d say she’s of average to even perhaps above average intelligence, though I’m convinced she has an LD as her writing is attrocious). She has had to go on public assistance and or move in with relatives more than once.
In addition to her other problems her taste in men is in a classlessness by itself. When I first knew here she had just learned she was pregnant by a man she was dating who turned out to be married. She had an abortion and was majorly “messed up” emotionally for some while thereafter.
Anyway, skip ahead to the present- I’ll call the co-worker Tracy. Tracy’s oldest daughter, “Julie”, is a natural athlete and she was offered a full basketball scholarship to a major state university, an opportunity to get out of the hand-to-mouth existence of her entire life and perhaps even help her mother and sisters. Instead, she found out just before high-school graduation that she was pregnant, which of course voided the scholarship as she couldn’t very well place basketball while heavily laden. The girl briefly considered abortion (I would never express an opinion to anybody on so personal a topic, but I’ll admit that it seemed a good idea to me as well), but Tracy told her it was murder and insisted that she keep the baby and she, Tracy, would help raise it.
The baby’s father is a piece of shit dumbass who works part-time at Wal-Mart and also wanted Julie to keep the baby. He promised to help: he did, using his employee discount to buy some baby outfits. Otherwise he never contributed $.01 to the mother’s pre-natal care or even to the mother’s maternity outfits. He also has cheated on her and made a pass at Julie’s 15 year old sister- swell kid; he also makes fun of her sisters because both want to be teachers, which he thinks is stupid because teachers don’t make any money. (He makes minimum wage or just over at Wal-Mart with no full-time benefits.) He and Julie tell everybody they plan to marry at some point, but not yet.
So Julie had a fairly non-eventful pregnancy and a few weeks ago gave birth (just a tad premature) to a beautiful little girl. Julie is still dating the child’s father and is taking online college courses, telling her mother (who is my age and a grandmother) that “You’re the one who insisted I have the baby, you should take care of her a lot more”, and so Tracy, still working 60-70 hours per week, babysits when she’s not at one of her three jobs. Julie meanwhile continues to have a social life, something Tracy probably can’t even remember ever having.
Tracy also uses the baby as a chance to proselytize. “Can you believe there are people who say babies should be murdered in the womb? Look at this little girl and tell me she should have been murdered.” She’s right in that the baby is beautiful, BUT if only to me her argument is roughly the same as “Can you believe that there are people who say dumbass penniless irresponsible kids should fuck around without protection? Just look at this beautiful little girl and tell me that boys should use condoms!”
So here’s my rant: because Julie has no money and the father has no money and Tracy has no money, this baby gets every form of public assistance imaginable. WIC, food stamps, ADC, state subsidized daycare, medicaid, you name it. Meanwhile women I know who do have degrees have to go without new clothing and drive ratty cars because they can barely afford daycare even without two parents working full-time. Julie doesn’t appreciate this in the least; I honestly think she believes the government is sitting like a dragon on a huge treasure and the few pieces of gold tossed her way are created by magic. She sees no connection between my tax dollars, my mother’s tax dollars, her mother’s tax dollars, etc., and her child’s sustenance. If every penny I pay in income tax went into one pool earmarked for Julie’s daughter, it wouldn’t be nearly enough to pay for its medical care and other benefits.
I don’t have a problem with people who are working and doing the best they can but, because they have some problems, have to turn temporarily to public assistance. That’s what it’s there for and there but for the Grace yada yada. But this kid and dipshit boyfriend who had a choice of keeping her own pants on or not letting her boyfriend stick it in, has a baby that drains the public coffers, and they’re only two of millions of people who have babies that cost more than I and millions of other people pay in taxes to take care of. And I see no answer: I’m not heartless enough to say “let the baby go without” or “put it in a workhouse”, but at the same time I don’t think that I should have to pay for a dumbass kid who is already talking about wanting to go ahead and have another baby in the next couple of years so that her child (Candice) will have somebody to play with and “two aren’t any harder than one”. It’s just fucking sick and wrong and hopeless, especially considering the odds that in fifteen to seventeen years adorable little Candi is probably going to be getting the hot beef injection herself from some piece of shit guy just like her mom and grandma did and repeating the cycle.
No point really, except I think kids who have kids without any regard for the imposition it makes on other should be horsewhipped and forced into porn.