The difference is, her choice brought an innocent new human being into the world who needs two responsible parents to care for it, and it isn’t receiving the care it needs or deserves. She knew this before she made the choice. Therefore it was an irresponsible decision. Her choice affects three people: her, the child, and the child’s father. My choice only affected me. That is a big difference.
I am still so angry about this thread. And yet, I have been guilty in the past for thinking things about some women (family and yes, friends) who became pregnant, with no visible means of support, (two were in school getting a paid for education because they were single parents already…)
Then I got married to an alcoholic and yes, collected welfare for three months while I waited for the spring hiring of nurses. So, yeah when people criticise welfare moms, I think of myself as part of that group. I’ve chosen to do more than that, I own a house, I work, I have paid outrageous amounts in daycare. I have found that its easy to point fingers… at the moms, at the dads, at whomever, or whatever.
My question is, what are people doing about it? Have they joined Big Brothers /Big Sisters to help one individual kid? Anyone volunteer babysit for a single mom with no support so she can take evening classes? Contribute to Toys for Tots Christmas campaigns? Create jobs? Tell your poker buddy its not cool to stiff the kids, no matter what a bitch his ex is? For that matter did you hand out condoms at the bar so people wouldnt get knocked up? Volunteer at abortion clinics? Vote for pro-choice candidates?
So to all the outraged in this thread… please tell me what you are doing, not what is your peeve of the week.
Yeah I didn’t understand this either…
It’s from a phrase: “there but for the grace of God go I”.
He wasn’t lucky at all, there was never any chance of him getting pregnant. So they weren’t making the same choice at all.
I understand that part, I just don’t understand how it is relevant to the OP’s situation.
For the record, I’m not trying to be combative here. So far, I’m enjoying the responses from both sides.
Is Pig Latin allowed?
Hmm, my dictionary says sanctimonious = “hypocritically pious or devout.”
So apparently I’m still a hypocrite and still wrong to hold my opinion, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with fucking losers and then crying “Woe is me” because they don’t support the resulting child. And I guess it isn’t really very important to really get to know someone and make sure they have a sense of responsibility before having sex with them. A clean STD report should suffice.
Juliefoolie: I have tried to help a person in this situation. Over several years. Let’s just say it didn’t take.
There was every chance of one of the women he was sleeping with getting pregnant, in which case he would have no control at all over whether or not he became a parent, so one could argue he was taking a BIGGER chance than she was.
Labrador Deceiver, I wasn’t necessarily applying that statement to the OP (at least not any more than to anyone else in the thread), but I simply meant that we all roll the dice, we all do stupid things, and that all too often people congratulate themselves for being “smart” for ending up okay in the long run, when all they really were is lucky.
And while I obviously wouldn’t attribute the OP’s or her friend’s situations to pure luck, I do think that you have to be rather spectacularly lacking in empathy to not think to yourself “Hey, you know what, I did some really stupid shit when I was 19. Thank goodness it all worked out okay for me.”
Okay, I get that & say it to myself all the time. My confusion arose from the fact that it looked like the OP hadn’t been particularly lucky from a pregnancy standpoint, but I definitely get that you are coming at it from more of a “big picture” place.
My own take on the question is highly coloured by the recent unfortunate experience with my sister-in-law, who is like a poster child for irresponsible fecklessness in choice of mate. Unfortunately, I’m likely to end up paying the price for her repeated mistakes, as I can hardly allow my son’s cousins to wind up on the street or sent out to foster homes: I have an obligation to help them out.
What annoys me is that she in particular showed and shows so little judgment. I felt very sorry for her - even before she was married, I (and everyone else) knew he was no good. He was paranoid, violent and emotionally and sometimes physically abusive, manipulative and secretive with money. Now, with the cops and Children’s Aid involved, all my wife’s parents’ cash gone supporting them, their house (paid for in large part by wife’s parents) likely to be lost because he took out a huge line of credit against it - mostly it seems to pay for drugs he did and extravagent holidays they both took - my sympathy level is less.
Thing is, every time he’s do something cruel of stupid, she’d go running back to her parents, who supported her with money and sympathy - but then she’d go right back to them and to “make it up” he’d go on an expensive trip with her - getting further in debt.
I know about battered woman’s syndrome, and certainly a lot of that applies - but she had two kids by this guy. Now that it is most definitely over, with him out on bail for assault, his guns taken by the cops, restraining order etc., we can look forward to his inevitable stalking and violent, paranoid threats - he’s someone who is definitely capable of violence and I think he shows signs of clinical paranoia (maybe caused by all the coke use), and he definitely sees her family as “the enemy”.
So because she loved this guy out of all possible guys, because she wanted so badly to make it work in spite of everything anyone could say, my wife’s parents’ retirement money is mostly gone (though they bear blame for that too - they should never have let it get so far or given them so much), she has two kids - the oldest is five and definietly showing signs of disturbed behaviour as a result of this drama - and my wife and I are likely to end up supporting parents and children all, as there is no way on earth this fellow will ever voluntarily pay alimony or child support, and she hasn’t worked in years and is unlikely to be able to support her kids let alone her parents.
I must say I’ve tried, really hard, to remain sympathetic. But it’s a struggle, as this went on for year after year. Some sort of breaking point was reached last year, when she called my wife up in tears at midnight saying that he was screaming and punching holes in the walls, she was terrified and would my sister and I please pick her up? My wife was rushing to do just that when I finally put my foot down and said “no, this isn’t right - I’m not going and neither should you; we have a son of our own, what if he finally snaps and kills us? Let her call the cops if he’s a danger - or we could do it for her”. My wife thought about that and agreed.
Now, is her husband an asshole? Definitely, also dangerous and crazy. But I’m annoyed with her as well, for allowing this to drag on and on. I know there is a psychological explaination for it, but I look at the terrible damage it has done (and will certainly do in the future) to her kids mostly, and I think - what terrible consequences her choices have had.
I assumed the point was that we should not be judgmental, because such things as unwanted pregnancies or the like could have happened to any of us.
Yes, I got that. As I explained above, I was confused because the OP experienced 2 unwanted pregnancies.
Or, behind Door Number 3, you have a person who believes they do know the other party, and it ends up when they fall out of love or into the brick wall of reality, they were wrong. “Someone I know really well and thus my hopes and trust could not possibly be misplaced, it’s the love of my life and the father of my children!” or “someone I don’t know anything about” are hardly the only two choices.
Of course it does. Did you read the same OP? Heck, CHILD SUPPORT is in all-caps. Finally, after all this time, Facebook Mom manages to get one payment form her baby-daddy. And her “friend” nyctea turns that into a screed about her* bad choices. And why? Because thirteen years ago, Facebook Mom"should have caught on to the fact that this guy wasn’t good ‘daddy’ material when you opened your legs for him." How the hell she was supposed to know that at the time, is not explained.
Oh, except it sort of is, through fallacious logic: He’s “uneducated” now – nevermind that nothing in the Facebook page says anything about his education. “Chronically unemployed” – oh, was he chronically unemployed 13 years ago? And precisely how does friend nyctea know that? “Chronically underemployed” – a lot of deadbeat dads are chronically, and intentionally underemployed, but I’m not sure how a woman’s ESP is supposed to allow her to predict that at the time of conception. So as to nyctea’s question in the OP: “Do you want us to believe that, out of spite, he has remained unemployed or underemployed for the 13-some years since your child has been around just to avoid paying child support?” the answer is: Yes. Because this is extraordinarily common. It happens all the time.
And I in turn do not think it’s too much to ask to recognize that many decisions that may retroactively seem “stupid” could not possibly have be known to have been stupid at the time. Or, maybe the stupidity could have been foreseen, but maybe not. Since we can hardly know in this case – was the guy a completely obvious loser the whole time, or not – why the harsh assumption this particular mother must have known? No one ever gets up and says, “I think I"ll do something stupid today!” Events and choices have consequences, yes, but to be irritated by events that not necessarily foreseeable seems to me pointless. And to expect a woman who is doing her best to raise a child alone to wear a hair shirt about the circumstances under which she had that child – not just initially wear the hair shirt but wear it for years, forever, apparently – strikes me as heartless.
Nobody said she was a victim; again, "blameless"or “blameful” are not the only true choices. And AFAIK you don’t have to be inspired to sympathy to acknowledge that it is actually possible to get where this lady is for reasons other than hopeless personal stupidity.
As someone who’s made all the “right” choices (only had sex with my husband, always doubled up on BC, always carefully considered what would happen in case of pregnancy), I still think you guys are assholes.
Who doesn’t bitch about things that are their fault? If I have a bad day at work and complain, I surely could’ve found another job, if I bitch because my house is dirty, it’s surely my fault I didn’t clean it, and if I bitch that I’m out of shape, it’s my fault that I didn’t exercise enough. Barring unavoidable catastrophes, nearly everyone’s bitching is their own damned fault. In fact, these women are actually less responsible for their plight than I am for all the things I complain about, because at least for them there’s another person involved.
Sympathy is free, so why are so many people so stingy with it?
How do you know the child is not receiving the care it needs or deserves? And are you seriously arguing that any child having only one parent should have been aborted?
Not unless you’re going to name your kid “Jesus”.
I think you’re failing to take into consideration the possibility that the OP knows her facebook friend a lot batter than you are giving her credit for. There is the very real possibility that the OP knows more about her than she is able to glean from her facebook page.
Nycea is acquainted with the person complaining about the lack of child support at least as a “facebook friend” - which is pretty meaningless. But it is a level of acquaintence none of the rest of us have.
Now, we all have different levels of what a child “needs” or “deserves.” Children can get by on very little and some people are comfortable raising kids in poverty. Some would rather abort. Some think adoption is the appropriate response. All are valid choices.
I have to agree - a little at least - however with the thought that if the guy you are sleeping with IS a less than upstanding citizen when you are sleeping with him, you aren’t getting huge sympathy points from me when you complain he doesn’t pay child support. To me, that is like choosing to marry a guy who works part time down at the car wash and complaining that your sister who married the cardiologist gets to go to Hawaii every year.
Now, there are cases where a person “looses it” - where they had at least potential not reached, or were ‘contributing members of society’ and then something happened. I do have sympathy for the partner in those cases. But I can’t work up a lot of sympathy for lack of child support payments for someone whose partner had a huge L painted on his forehead at the time of conception.