As some of you know, I work switchboard for our county welfare office. I just got off a phone call from a young woman who informed her parents yesterday that she is pregnant (she sounded like a teen to me). The parent have given her till Christmas to get out of the house.
I just spent 10 minutes giving advice on applying for welfare and looking up emergency shelter numbers for this poor girl. I am the only one available to do that right now since the office is at lunch. It broke my heart.
What kind of parent throws their child out in the snow ON CHRISTMAS? Merry fucking Christmas to you, too, you pair of Grinches! Your daughter is being tossed out on her ear on what is, traditionally, the very day on which peace and goodwill toward mankind is supposed to be celebrated. What the hell are you thinking?!
I hope you spend Christmas night wondering where your daughter is, and if she’s safe, and if her unborn child is safe. I hope you spend the next nine months wondering how she’s doing, and if you’ll ever see your grandchild. I hope you feel all the guilt you should feel, but I hold out faint hope that will happen.
“And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.”
I’m trying to think what any teenager could do, short of out-and-out illegality, that would justify being kicked out of the house at short notice. Even if she’s a drug-addled wreck with a small flock illegitimate toddlers in tow, she’s still a human being who needs shelter.
Seeing snow and driving winds outside the window right now suggest that final touch of Victorian bathos: erring girl, forced at night into the teeth of a blizzard. So maybe the details aren’t quite that dire but c’mon, decent adults don’t just summarily toss kids out of the house.
What difference do any of these make? It’s cold outside: people need shelter. And perhaps one of the reasons she shows poor judgement is due to the complete lack of parenting shown by these two prizes. I don’t care if she’s a crack whore who steals from her mother’s wallet–you don’t kick someone out of the house on Xmas. Hell, you don’t kick someone out summarily (barring murder of inhabitants or similar). Teen pregnancy is least acceptable to conservative “Christian” types* (or so it seems)–a nasty irony, as has been noted.
Because she sounded genuinely desperate. She also sounded like she’d never applied for welfare or had to find shelter on her own before (she was totally unfamiliar with what we offer, or how to apply, or what the shelters in town were). She was very near tears several times during the call and I had to talk her down off of a bout of hysteria once.
I’ve been doing this job (switchboard) for over a year, and I think I’ve developed an ear for insincerity or a sense of false entitlement in that time. This girl was sincere and in genuinely dire straits.
It is really much more fun to blame the unmarried pregnant female than it is to offer help, comfort, or solutions.
Isn’t it?
And maybe this gal is already on her 3rd pregnancy, addicted to heroin, and broken probation by stealing and selling all the valuables in her parents’ home. Maybe this is the final straw where the parents have to follow through with their threats of tough love, and remove her from the home, where she’s been threatening the younger siblings.
But lacking evidence of all that, I’d plan on offering her solutions to start with.
Heck, even if all the above is true, she’ll still need help and viable solutions.
What is the big hairy deal about kicking the kid out on Christmas? Would it be OK the other 364?
One of the absolute worst things about the alleged “Spirit of Christmas” is that it elevates normal human decency to some kind of momentous event. It’s a pretty lame fucking holiday if all it can aspire to is having folks be nice to each other once a year.
I threw my husband out (finally) during the Christmas season, 1990 I think it was. His boss called looking for him and I told him I didn’t know and that he didn’t live there any more. The dude said something along the lines of “I can’t believe you threw him out at Christmas!” I said, look here cap’n, he’s been making up his bed for three years, now he can damn well lay in it. Christmas, my ass hurts.
I’m not surprised by the OP’s account and a little disturbed that so many posters start second-guessing the girl’s story.
I used to work for an NGO whose activity was support for professionals, institutions, others NGO, etc… working with kids with issues. Even though this NGO wouldn’t normally work directly with kids, some would still knock at our door occasionally.
Kids being kicked out by their parents seem to be a relatively common occurrence. Most commonly, as far as I can tell, the very day they turn 18. Sure, you can’t tell what was really going on in their family. But I had no reason to assume that the seemingly very nice and obviously very confused kid stating that the motive was that his dad didn’t like his girlfriend was actually a drug addict terrorizing his parents or something similar.
There’s a current thread where the OP is asking whether there actually are parents who don’t like their children. The posts in this thread should be a hint that there are parents out there who can’t wait to get rid of their children and will happily kick them out if given the flimsiest pretext to do so. “You’re pregnant??? Get the hell out of here!!!” doesn’t surprise me.
Interesting comment from Lehrer in that Wikipedia link:
“I don’t think this kind of thing has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It’s not even preaching to the converted; it’s titillating the converted…”
Well, it is not nice to be an asshole any day of the year, but it is harder to find and access to those resources you might need when being thrown out your home, since many places and agencies are closed. Especially hard is the psychological impact of being in need during the holiday season.
So, it’s bad to get kicked out on Christmas because it’s bad to get kicked out on Christmas? OK. And getting kicked out on a non-holiday is what, peaches and cream?
