I believe that if you have fucknuts for parents, your chances of you turning out to be a fucknut are greatly increased. That notion is completely independent of income leve or whether or not they are on government assistancel. Do I believe that any of the Gonzalez children will grow up to sustain jobs and be contributing members of society? No. Because that would require them to overcome the biggest influence a child has and that is the example his/her parents set.
Nonetheless there are some kids who are able to break out of cycles of (poverty/abuse/free-loading) and maybe the Gonzalez children will buck the odds. I hope so. I’m not completely heartless.
I have yet to see any good solution to the dilemmas created by stories like this.
There are three factors at work:
We can’t let children starve, no matter how irresponsible their parents have been - that’s not the kid’s fault;
Interfering with a person’s fertility choices is a drastic interference in personal liberty, one which has always led to horrible injustice in the past; and
Allowing people to deliberately have huge families they cannot or will not support from theor own labour is nothing but stealing from the productive - every time I pay taxes, there is a transfer of money I could have used to feed my kids, to give them better housing, schooling, recreation - to those of some people like those in this story. Isn’t fair.
Jim Bob and Michelle may have alot (16 and she’s pregnant again) kids, but they aren’t on welfare. Jim Bob somehow manages to support an at-home-mom and over a dozen kids on one income without going into debt :eek: . Granted the freebies from the TV specials must help, but still. It’s perfectly fine to have alot of children, as long as you can support them.
PunditLisa…you made a great point that I missed. Along with mandatory birth control, I think people on welfare should also have to work at a job of some kind. A job that most of the rest of society has, where you have to be somewhere at a certain time and accomplish a task, in order to receive welfare payments…I don’t care if the government has to set up some jobs for the purpose. It seems clear that that people who work for a living are mentally healthier and generally happier than those who are just given a living. I also think that people who actually have jobs that they have found themselves should be eligible for welfare if they can’t find work that is adequate to support them. Under no circumstances should it EVER be incentivized to not work at all.
Malthus, I would question whether interfering with fertility choices of someone who is on welfare is an interference in personal liberty. I would consider it more of a temporary bargain the recipient has made with the state. If you go on welfare, you make a deal that you will not have any more children. The state, in turn, has to consider it part of the bargain to provide real help to the recipient…help that will help the person get on their feet, so they can get off welfare and once again make their own decisions about their family.
That’s pretty much how I feel about the Duggars. I mean, I think that woman is out of her mind, don’t get me wrong, but if they can find a way to support the kids legally and without welfare, hey, more power to them.
I’m not an expert but I also doubt they pay a single penny in federal taxes. I believe Jim Bob has declared his house a church. In some indirect ways we are indeed subsidizing this family. I also object to Michelle Duggar’s “buddy system” of raising children. Basically she’s not raising her kids. Her kids are raising her kids. I don’t think that’s fair to the kids let alone good parenting. At some point I think a mother cannot be a good parent to so many children simply because of time constraints.
I also agree with the objection to families with kids named Jinger, Joy-Anna and Johanna. They allow their kids no individuality whatsoever and their parenting choices demonstrate that fact.
I think that in theory, that’s fair and makes sense, and if you were in charge of the world, that’s how it would work. But in practice, in the real world, what you wind up with is poor people being at best encouraged and at worst coerced to submit to permanent sterilization.
Governments, IMO, really aren’t to be trusted with these sorts of decisions.
I’m the last person in the world to trust the government about anything…I believe that governments are inherently corrupt…the extent to which may vary, but corruption is always present. It comes with power, and can’t be avoided, IMO. But in this case, I don’t see another option that would be more fair or reasonable to all concerned (meaning the recipeints and the taxpayers). I certainly think there needs to be checks and balances, and preferably non-governmental watchdog groups to protect the rights of the recipients.
And I think China tried something similar, and it didn’t really work out for anyone. And at least China applied it unilaterally.
As to being fair to the taxpayers, well… there are LOTS of things that the government spends my money on that I don’t approve of. As “fair” goes, I think it’s more fair to feed the Gonzalez children than to provide politicians with full-time drivers. I also think that if I ask myself whether life in general has been a little more “fair” to me than it has to the Gonzalez brood, I’ve got to say yes. So I don’t begrudge those children their $300 or so a month.
Again, none of this changes the fact that their parents are assholes. It’s just that when we make policy, we can’t assume that EVERYONE is an asshole.
I knew some people that came from a family with ten kids, and you are absolutely right - the oldest was a girl, and she didn’t have her own family because she was tired of raising children. The second oldest was a boy, and he was alienated from most of the rest of the kids because he was assigned the cop role - he was supposed to keep all of his younger sibs in line. I can only imagine the messed-up dynamics of kids dealing with, what, 16 other sibs? Actually, I can’t really imagine it.
Malthus, I think your second point is where we always get stuck in discussions of welfare reform and welfare moms. We have better birth control than we’ve ever had before, which is making the option of “get contraceptives with your welfare cheque” more feasible all the time, but we keep getting stuck on the idea that we can’t interfere in anyone else’s reproductive decisions. It seems fairly self-evident to most of us here that if you can’t support the kids you’ve got and you are expecting the system to support them for you, that you have already abdicated your decision-making powers, but it doesn’t seem to translate in the political arena.
China’s problem was that it was applied it unilaterally. China never intended to make it temporary or help individuals to not have to rely on the state.
If you reread my first post to this thread, you will see that the first thing I said was that I agree with you in this regard. Of all the ways I’d like to save taxpayers money, starving children is not exactly high on my list. But I do think that recipients have a social responsibility as well. Expecting any less of them is showing very little respect for them as citizens.
Of course you can. Policy is set all the time in order to make sure irresponsible people are held to their responsibilities. Not everyone is irresponsible, but the law still applies to all.
Oh, well, for every kid who resents having been raised in a large family, I can show you one who loved it…even the older ones who had a lot of responsibility. My mom was an only child, and wanted a big family because she was lonely as a kid…not everyone loves the situation they were raised in, but you can’t necessarily say the parents clearly did something irresponsible or wrong. Although the Duggars do seem to be pushing it a little!
IMHO, there are not enough hours in the day to allow one mother and one father to give the emotional support and guidance that every child needs to get from a parent, to 16 children.
If the kids were at least schooled outside the home, they would have the opportunity to go out in the world and meet mentors, like teachers or librarians or a Sensei at Judo class, who would give them what their parents don’t have the time to give. But they aren’t, from what I have seen of the Duggars they are one lone family against the world. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems as though they don’t even have Aunties & Uncles or Grandparents hovering around. It seems like emotional deprivation to me.
Anyway, back on topic: This is something that whips me up into a blue rage. featherlou is right. We need to decide, as a society, on a point at which a woman has abdicated her responsibility for her own fertility, and then act. We do it for mentally ill or incapacitated people who are unable to make other medical decisions all the time.
I find the very idea of forced sterilization to be absolutely horrifying. Perhaps mandatory birth control, but I am not sure how that would be enforced.
Is counseling of any sort a requirement for receiving welfare? If not, done correctly I think this could be immensely productive. Several sessions where the kids are looked after by someone at the agency. A counselor could sit down with mom and dad and explain birth control methods…possibly even information on adoption…try to hook dad up with a job…and teach them how to become “productive members of society”.
Speaking of dad, I think it is commendable that he is sticking around. None of the other fathers did, apparently…and so few in these situations do.
As hard as it may be to believe, I think a lot of this can be chalked up to simple ignorance. Not ignorance in that sex=babies, but ignorance in that this is not a decent life. The article I read said nothing about the girl’s parents. Maybe her mom did all of the same things? Maybe it’s all this girl knows? Someone must step in and break the cycle. Unless something changes, I think it is very likely that a few of the kids will end up in the same situation when they turn 15 or so. This is sad.
AND how the hell did they find time to have sex with 5 babies? I am assuming the grandmother is doing a lot of the work on that end.
Many of the points raised in this thread are completely valid. I just cringe a bit at the vitriol. But, I do tend to be the bleeding-heart type…so shrug.
So, I don’t think this behavior should be excused. I think the welfare checks should be contingent on the attendance of counseling sessions, and the use of birth control.
Except for women who can’t use hormonal birth control. What then? Diaphragm check?
Sarahfeena, I don’t think that we’re as far apart on this as you think. Like I said, in theory, I think it would be great if birth control were a condition of public assistance. But in practice, there’s no way it’s gonna work. Aside from the rather chilling social engineering implications, there are just too many variables. As mentioned above, not everyone is a candidate for hormones. How do we verify that those women are using something? And even the most fool-proof methods occasionally fail. How does one go about proving that your birth control failed even though you used it faithfully and correctly? And most importantly, when these women do get pregnant through lack of use, misuse, *or * fluke, we’re back to exactly the same question, which is… do we cut them off? What about the kids?
I don’t have time to Google it right now, but do other states besides Arizona not have welfare reform? Here, you are only allowed to get assistance for something like 5 years total. That 5 years includes the time when you were a child, so it’s very unlikely that people will continue the cycle as adults.
Also, unless you have a baby under one, you must work or volunteer or go to school a minimum of 20 hours a week to keep receiving assistance. They may have even recently changed that rule to “work 40 hours a week” period. And, you do NOT receive more money if you have more children, I believe. What you qualify for when you sign up is what you get period.
Whenever I hear the bitching about longtime ‘welfare witches’, it’s like the dark ages to me. Welfare reform has been in effect here for a number of years.
