When did I ever suggest we should force women into destitution? Or say that the children should spend their life in an orphanage or whatever it would be called? My suggestion is only that anyone that is living on the public dole should not get extra money for any baby born during that time. If that person (usually a woman) cannot afford to support that baby, it goes to the “orphanage” until she can afford it/gets off the public dole/gives it up for adoption. The idea is to stop the breeding of children to get more money, and to break the chain of welfare thru the generations.
A huge side benefit might be to teach the general population about responsibility as well. Somehow it has become common for folks to claim they are entitled to a house, children and nice cars as soon as they want them, not when they can actually afford them. And when it falls apart, they just assume the government will take care of it.
As for Romania, since you cannot be bothered to answer any of my questions about it, I fail to see how my not knowing anything about it’s history could be scary. What happened in another country under a dictator doesn’t seem to be applicable to the US today, or really at any time in our history.
By doing this you are pretty much guaranteeing that the child will NOT grow up to be a properly functioning member of society, and will be a drain on society for their entire life. The state makes a worse parent than all but the most heinous actual human parents. Plenty of countries have had just such a draconian system for taking away the children of “undesirable” or “incompetent” parents and its universally been a disaster. The current policy of taking children into care only as a last resort has been learned the hard way, at the cost of many ruined children’s lives.
When you are suggesting copying their child welfare policies thats pretty scary. Every heard the term “those that do not know history are doomed to repeat it?”.
Why should the government type have anything to do with it. The Romanian government tried to solve social problems by intervening in families and taking kids away to raise them by the state, JUST as you are suggesting. The result was tradegy
Anyone who wants us to support their decision to have and keep a baby, rather than them doing it on their own dime.
And plenty of gruesome, sensational stories about unfit “natural” parents. Most if not all of these parents are apparently very young, living in poverty and uneducated. It appears that a child has a better chance in an adoptive home than if it is born into poverty, but that would require trusting the media to be reporting facts…
Except you said in your OP that there wouldn’t be any welfare assistance for people in this case, so that is no longer distinguishing factor. Why would anyone want try and get welfare for their child support knowing that the result would not be any welfare cash forthcoming, but would there would cops coming to take their kid away.
Cite? One that actually applies please, not 18th century England or something like that.
Anyone done this in a situation as the US is in now? Democracy, millions living on the dole, generations of welfare lifers? Again, when this was done did the women have access to reliable birth control? Did they commonly work? Or were these draconian systems back when women basically couldn’t avoid pregnancy and were not generally allowed to work?
Am I? Noone seems to be willing/able to answer any questions on this. It appears that you are just blinded by da kyute babees and not concerned with what those babies grow up to be.
Because a government by dictator would tend to have much less oversight. Also, I am not trying to solve any social problem, I am focusing on the financial. Allowing people to breed freely on the government is bleeding the responsible dry.
You aren’t making any sense to me here. My OP on this subject was about not using “illegitimacy” birth rates as a way to tell if welfare reform is working, so I think you must be talking about some other post I’ve made here.
As for why would anyone want to have a baby while on the dole, many do it just to up the amount of their payments. If there was no extra money my belief is that they would quit having these babies. But because birth control isn’t perfect and some folks are anti-abortion, there would be babies born to folks who, by accepting welfare, have claimed they are so poor they cannot get by without financial help from the government. Are we to believe that they now can afford to support another person on the same money? Should we let them try?
I’d suggest consulting any social work text book for dozens of them… Here are couple:
From the BBC. Notice that that is the number that go STRAIGHT to jail, not go to jail later in their life…
Yes, you are. The system you proposed is EXACTLY that which Ceausescu used in Romania. Folks who, by accepting welfare, claimed they are so poor they cannot get by without financial help from the government, had their kids taken by the government.
I like this idea. We have to instill a sense of duty and social responsibility in people as well as a sense of value and worth. That also means that the work done is enough to maintain a living. Per the OP. I’ve seen some awful parents who subsist on welfare. It’s a shame but it ain’t going away soon. Oversight also costs a lot of money if we train people to check on welfare recipients and see how they and the children are doing.
I think something in the way of work should be required of welfare recipients if they are able.
Note the big hole in the story of David Akinsanya in that article. He was fine until Betty Ives retired then suddenly he was expelled from school due to behavior. Why? He doesn’t mention what happened to him, where he lived & who took care of him, between Betty’s retirement and when he was sent to the boarding school for bad boys. I don’t know about any of the other kids in the UK system (which may or may not apply to life in the US) but David’s story has a hole in it that could explain him going to jail for some reason other than he was a foster.
This one is kinda useless. “It is known”? By who? It’s also UK so again I don’t know how it would apply here.
Also, anything reported in the newspaper or TV must be taken with a truckload of salt since I have yet to see any subject that I knew anything about reported without a big dose of bias. There is no way to know in these snippets what hasn’t been mentioned, such as who “knows” that “Looked after” children in the community have very high rates of psychiatric disorder. What about - do they have high rates of psychiatric disorder because they were crack babies? Because they were abused by their birth parent(s)? Or does being “looked after” actually cause psychiatric disorder? If it does, what kind? Worse that being left in poverty/abuse/whatever?
Nothing exists in a vacuum, so posting a snip of a story that agrees with your emotional response doesn’t prove much.
If they had existing kids taken when they started welfare, then it is different since I have said at least twice that I am talking about babies born while on the dole.
Even if it is the same thing, as I said nothing exists in a vacuum. A policy enacted by a dictator, who apparently wasn’t a very nice person, would very likely turn out much different than one in a democracy and a society as we have in the US. You cannot blame the idea for failure if the circumstances surrounding it essentially doomed it from the beginning.
The story of that one guy is just an ancedote, so meaningless from statistically point of view. The thing I was citing was that statistic (I’ll repeat it as its pretty horrendous, and make my point quite succinctly):
Even the child of the worst kind of, irresponsible, welfare mother will stand at better than EVEN odds of reaching their eighteenth birthday without being incarcerated.
Its a peer reviewed scientific paper, I’m sure they have source for all those stats. If you think they made them up, you are welcome buy the paper and look at their sources.
Only one of the items I quoted was from the MSM, and it was a direct quote from a government study. Do you really think the BBC MADE UP that study to push their socialist agenda ?
Nothing emotional about either of those things. It was cold hard facts…
HALF of all children who are raised by the state go STRAIGHT into jail.
FOURTY percent of the child criminals in that study had been raised by the state.
The state makes an appaulling parent. Social workers the world over have cottoned onto this fact, and now only take children into care in the most extreme cases.
Both sets of children were covered by the Romanian system. And in your proposed system, what would the cut off point be ? Are you saying that if you can get through the first X months of you child’s life without claiming benefits you are welcome to stop working and claim dole with impunity for the rest of their life ?
Never mind that the OP is a Brit and was talking about Britain. When did this become an America-only discussion?
So NOW you want all the facts? Go and read about the history of Romania, then come back and tell us that again, just so we’re on a level playing field. Please.
Here’s the difference that some people are talking about. You made a concerted effort to take care of yourself and improve your situation. I prefer being part of a society that helps people as well and I know no system will be perfect. I just think we can do better and insist on some effort from those needing help. An effort you made and admirably so.
Is it, or is it indicative? Hard to know unless one does more than read something on the internet.
Cite? Do you have any that apply to the US?
Well, that really helps your opinions, doesn’t it?
I don’t think that any media story is made up, but I do know that at times they only report bits and pieces, causing the story to end up looking far different than the truth. I don’t know how often it happens, but it happens often enough on subjects where I am more than passingly informed so it does make me wonder about everything else.
OK, ignoring whether or not it was all the facts, which I rather doubt, I was talking about your emotional response to this. You aren’t providing any facts in regards to whether “HALF of all children” raised by welfare go “STRAIGHT to jail”. You appear to feel that children will do better raised by a parent, no matter what their situation might be, so you are looking for statistics to back this up. Remember what is said about statistics.
The state may make an appalling parent but is it worse than an abusive/extremely young/druggie/whatever parent? Do social workers the world over cotton onto this fact, or do they only take children into care when they have to due to a lack of foster homes, or maybe because of some misguided idea that children are always better off with their parents? I dont know - do you? If you think you know, why?
Noone is ever welcome to stop working and claim dole. However, I’d say if the woman was actually working and not on family leave during those first X months of the child’s life, that would make a big difference. I’ve seen plenty of women get a job that has good maternity coverage, get pregnant within a few months, take every bit of paid leave available and then quit. Which tends to make me suspicious of any woman who suddenly needs to go on welfare just a few months after the birth of her child. So a woman who just quit working right after having her child? I probably would resist giving her anything.
It didn’t, just my part of it. I can’t affect policy in the US, much less in the rest of the world, but at least I have a much better grasp of what is going on here than in the rest of the world. And to flip that around, since I know next to zip about the UK I have no idea if there are real issues over there that make my proposal unfeasible there but not here.
I have always wanted the facts, not just some guy in the internet teilling me to go read about Romania. You are the one claiming that my idea has been proven to not be viable by what happened in Romania, so it is up to you to back that up.
This post displays exactly the prejudices and shortsighted ignorance that sex discrimination law has been battling against for decades. Bloody hell, have we still got this far to go?