No weaseling, dear. We just had a multiple post discussion in which you bent over backwards to make sure it was clear that you thought if people couldn’t weather an economic downturn completely unscathed, they shouldn’t have had kids five years prior to said downturn.
So you do volunteer at something? Do tell. I’m sure we’d all love to know what you do. Take it as an opportunity to brag. Volunteering is a good thing. It would change the public perception of you considerably.
You really want me to walk through the giant door you just opened here? Nah, it’s too easy. Even you have to be able to see the setup you just offered.
That’s what you did. I don’t care about what you did. The past is the past. It has no value now. What are you doing? In what way are you presently creating value in the life of even one other person?
Apparently no matter how hard I try to make myself clear, you are either to stupid to understand or just choose to be obtuse. Either way, it’s boring to repeat myself so I won’t. If you really want answers, try actually reading what I post.
Yup
Nope. I have nothing to prove to you, and I am quite sure that you will merely state it isn’t “good enough” or some such nonsense. I am completely unconcerned with my “public perception” WRT folks like you.
I note that you couldn’t be bothered to quote the whole thing here.
Do you demand these things of people who retire at 62 or 65? At what point is it OK with your highness that people quit working - except of course when they are doing the exalted job of raising children :rolleyes:
Plus, I’ve already told you that I am presently creating value in the life of my husband - I take it he doesn’t count?
The whole point is, I contributed to society for decades, took out very little and even now am taking out less than I was due. Contrast that with a welfare mom, teenage mom, working poor mom - any who knew at the time they chose to keep their kid(s) that they were going to be applying for assistance. We spend billions on these women whose only, marginal, contribution is having children and you think this is OK for some bizarre reason. Then you take stupid a step further and berate me for taking my government mandated retirement funds. I suppose you think all retirees should be herded together and shot or something for daring to quit helping to support all these children?
Women running cities, states, countries may not be a good idea.
You can claim this all you want, but your shrieking during the entire discussion about how much money the median household in the US can actually save even under the best conditions undermines you totally.
I showed that even someone being completely responsible with their money (saving more than 10% of their net pay, and buying no luxuries) at the median income with one kid could only survive about a year of job loss even after five years of savings.
You then proceeded (When you weren’t misreading the math to try to make your point that people were wasting money) to keep claiming that the people in my example were taking on debt they couldn’t afford, and you went so far to claim that people should (in addition to the savings aforementioned) wait to have significant mortgage equity and pay off their student loans.
Keep in mind we’re still talking, here, about a family that is making the median household income and is saving 10%+ of their income.
It’s at this point that you abruptly seem to realize you’re in a hole and started throwing gratuitous insults rather than arguing any more–you, out of nowhere, switch to
and accuse me of moving the goalposts, when all along the discussion that you and I were having was that even a perfect planner with a median income would come within a few months of wiped out with a 6-7 month job loss, even if they’d had a kid when their financial situation, though average, was as close to perfect as is reasonably possible.
So yeah. You’re not getting any traction, sister, not with your insults or your silly ageism or your silly goalpost-moving and inability to comprehend basic arithmetic. (really, that’s the part where I should have stopped talking to you, when you demonstrated that you can’t keep “yearly expenses” and “monthly expenses” straight, even when they’re labeled).
Ah. Apparently the answer is B - choose to be obtuse, since I haven’t done any of that, nor most of the rest of the stuff in this post. And of the things I did say, you either completely ignore them ( I assume because you have no answer other than “chyldren are kyoot”) or appear to willfully misunderstand, as many of your responses seem to have little to do with what I said.
Here it is, plain and simple - it will be interesting (maybe) to see how you mangle this.
There are people out there having children that they must know they won’t be able to support. There are other people out there who already have children and continue to live as if children aren’t expensive. All of your numbers and hand wringing don’t mean a thing unless your belief is that it is OK for people to have children no matter what their situation is, at which point you cannot claim you have the children’s best interests at heart. If this is what you believe, then you are putting a relatively brief hormonal urge above everything else. This appears to be your position when you have so much trouble with the concept of waiting to have children until one can afford them, and limiting the number. No matter what you all want to claim, it is not in the best interests of society or the children themselves to allow anyone who wants them to have them, and to allow them to have as many as they want.
Also, throwing a tantrum doesn’t do much for your case…
I like how she never even acknowledged her gigantic mistake of mixing up monthly and yearly food expenses, even after she acted all self-righteous that she and her husband/keeper spent less than that (based entirely on her own misconceptions). Really, only the stupidest person could possibly think that the average American spends two thousand dollars a month per person on groceries.
Your post was perfectly clear. Asking for a cite to clarify the numbers would have been reasonable. Getting up on her high horse because she spends marginally less on booze and cigarettes each month than the average person spends to feed their kid for an entire year was just shockingly dumb.
All part of the curlcoat school of debate.
Let’s get one thing straight, first of all. I entered the debate with information about the median American family and how their financial situation was, on average, in the interests of getting an idea out of you where the hell your line was between “irresponsibly having kids” and “planned for financial hard times, but were unlucky in ways that blow past planning”. You engaged me, with that as the obvious point of my posts, in ways that were designed to make the average family with average expenses look like free-spending idiots right up until the point I mentioned above. Don’t talk to ME about willfully misunderstanding–you’ve either been engaging me in bad faith the entire time or too stupid to understand my point.
Amazingly, I’ve never said that. What I said was, the median American family could have taken reasonable precautions and made reasonable efforts towards saving and taken on reasonable debt and STILL ended up in a situation where they cannot afford their child(ren). I don’t believe, in fact, that it’s in the best interests of anyone for children to be born who cannot be reasonably afforded. I DO believe, and continue to believe based on your comments, that your threshold for “able to responsibly afford a child” is somewhere between “not charmingly naive” and “outright classist”–but since you won’t commit to what you mean by “can’t afford it” and continue to speak in trite platitudes (about debt, and luxuries) we can only make assumptions. Your attitude doesn’t lend to those being charitable assumptions.
Of course, you’ve also failed to give any options for how one prevents children being born to irresponsible parents in a way that doesn’t harm the (innocent, obviously) children. Do you have any?
Even if anything I’ve said could be characterized as a “tantrum”, which is unlikely, **nothing **you’ve posted has done much for your case, so I’m still ahead here.
I know you keep presenting your personal sex-for-sustenance situation as an example, but is this really what you think young children should do for crayons?
Will you have my babies Gary?
Considering the thread, I’m going to have to ask how much you’re offering. An unguarded yes could lead to accusations of socialism.
I’m seeing a movie in this…'Attack of the Randroids"
I talk to YOU about willfully misunderstanding because this is still just that. I haven’t said anything that comes close to “make the average family with average expenses look like free-spending idiots” - my point was and is that children are a choice and expensive, so people who cannot support them shouldn’t be having them, as the government shouldn’t be expected to continue to pay out more and more for all these kids.
If your average family with average expenses wants kids, then they can forgo other things, like a house or two cars; or they can wait to have their kids until they are more financially stable instead of having them as teens or early 20’s. These are things that you simply ignore, except to say idiotic things like “how can you say they should wait”.
I took pains to make it clear that you hadn’t actually said those things, that is what you say is coming across. And it still sounds that way…
Perhaps the problem here is you don’t realize that the percentage of people who end up in a situation where they cannot afford their child(ren) didn’t take reasonable precautions and make reasonable efforts towards saving and take on reasonable debt. The way people here react to the idea of waiting to have kids until things like student loans are paid off, or having six months worth of bills in savings in case someone loses a job, or not buying more house than they can afford and run up a bunch of credit card debt shows me that at least in this cross section of society, financial responsibility is uncommon. Which includes you, since you didn’t like those ideas.
Well, since I have spoken in specifics and you poo poo’d them, I’d say we are, at best, looking at more willful ignoring from you.
Well, apparently you don’t have anything against abortion, so if the government quits paying women for having babies they would probably make a better effort to not get pregnant and more often chose to abort. Money saved from having to support all these people could go to cheap/free birth control and abortions.
Since you started all of this by being an asshole right off, you started off in a deep hole.
I have never presented sex-for-sustenance, I actually told you all to get your minds out of the gutters. But of course, since you cannot agree with the idea that throwing unlimited money at parents is a bad idea, your little mind can’t be expected to hold on to facts.
What this says about what you think of marriage is quite sad however.
Until your highness shows some actual statistics regarding the number of people who are poor planners vs. the number of people who made reasonable plans and got sunk by bad luck, the discussion is academic. Your very assertion in this paragraph implies you think the latter category is vanishingly small.
Six months of savings was NOT much in this crash. We’ve had Dopers who were out of work for over a year, even with highly specialized training, simply because there were no jobs in their field (or any other field–note the consumerist report about McDonalds having a 14-to-1 or worse ratio of “resumes received” to “jobs available and hired for” in April)
If you think “fear of consequences” prevents people from having sex, especially in the poorer and less-educated parts of society, I’ve got some shares in a bridge you might be interested in purchasing. All THIS plan will end up with is “more starving kids”.
Being an asshole doesn’t make me any less right. You haven’t yet brought any statistics on your relevant point.
I think I speak for most of us when I say that it’s really only saying what we think about YOUR marriage, based on the attitudes you evidence in your posting.
Well, that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? No one seems to care enough to actually study whether or not continuing to support all these parents is a good thing, and whether or not it is simply making people more dependent and less personally responsible. There are no statistics, but there are signs.
The current recession has nothing to do with what I am talking about, except that government handouts should be limited to times such as this. However, along with planning ahead, intelligent people realize that times like this happen every so often, more or less once in a generation which is why you should do everything you can to not live on the edge of your paycheck. Unfortunately, people have learned that if something happens, like they are upside down on their house, get sunk in credit card debt or lose their job, the government will bail them out - at a cost to those who will never need this help.
Did I say that people should be prevented from having sex? No, of course not - I even made reference to birth control, didn’t I?
Neither have you. What you have been doing is ducking out on quite a bit of what I’ve said and not addressing it, such as the concept of actually waiting to have children until they can be afforded.
Yes, I realize that because I have different opinions that you do, the only thing you can do is believe that I must be “wrong” in other areas. Yet, the only thing different about my marriage is that I no longer work - how that translates into “sex for sustenance” is beyond me, particularly when you all seem to have no problem with SAHMs or any wives who have never worked.
So you agree that you have no statistics to back you up, but you’re still sure you’re right? What, pray tell, are these ‘signs’ you speak of? Are you going to rant about your neighbour and their dreaded bouncy castle some more?
Surely the first time in history that the word ‘academic’ has been used to refer to curlcoat in any way.
And in return, I’m perfectly willing to declare that to be bullshit. The average person who receives TANF, AFDC, or both gets $154 per month as of the 2006 statistics. That represents aid to a little under 4,000,000 children, or about 28% of the children below the poverty line (and just about 5% of the total children in the US). The numbers of enrolled children have been decreasing steadily since 1996 and the Clinton reforms. That doesn’t scream “crisis situation” to me, and is in fact quite in line with my understanding (that the aid we give families for having children in poverty is miniscule and represents a small portion of the federal budget). With these statistics, do you wish to amend your position to account for some proportionality?
I know from bitter personal observation that the average poor person who is pumping out babies lacks desire, knowledge, or both to utilize contraceptive resources that are available. I know this remains true even when the “handouts” that are provided by the government are inadequate to support the child in the absence of other support such as employment on the part of one or both parents or private charity. I can watch it happen right now, all I have to do is drive an hour and sit at the cash register in my parents’ general store for a few hours.
I’d like to point something out here–the majority of people in this thread who have expressed an opinion think you come across this way. They also think you’re not supporting your views very well or expressing them very articulately. Either we’re ALL willfully ignoring you, or you are not making the impression you intend to make. I strongly suspect the latter.
The slight problem here is that no-one (other than you) is talking about throwing money at parents. They’re talking about providing shared resources for primary school art classes.
As for marriage, well what else can I conclude about your relationship with your husband (or pimp daddy, as I believe he likes to be known). You’ve already stated that you feel justified mooching off him because you “bring value”. Now, either this value is from him enjoying your personality and companionship, or it must be the sad, tawdry exchange I suggested earlier. Having read your posts, I think we both realise just how credulity stretching the former is.
Still, I’m not one to judge. Your personal sexual-business dealings are an issue for you and your conscience, whatever the moralistic right might claim.
It’s only when you suggest that young children should resort to the same behaviour to fund their crayons that I become concerned. For shame! Surely even one as immersed in a moral quagmire as yourself can see this is a terrible thing to suggest. I urge you to retract this proposal, before people contact the authorities.
I notice you say “Strong and influential voices”, but not “scientists” or “pedagogists”. I know that many strong and influential voices in the US have not acknowledged over 100 years of pedagogic and psychological research in learning and child-raising, so I don’t consider them important. Just as there are strong and influential voices in the US against evolution or AGW or modern Bible science, which I also ignore. If people don’t want to accept evidence, me recounting the evidence is a waste of time.
As for “the cruelty of the world is natural” - that is a fallacy that I often hear from right-wingers, and thus discount as both factually untrue and not part of my ethics. First, factually, nature is not cruel. Cruelty requires an intention, and nature does not have a personality which could have intention. It is true that nature is uncaring - if you are outside in the cold without clothes, you will freeze to death, and the snowstorm won’t care. But that is just a logical consequence of actions, not cruelty.
As for human society, that depends on how we shape it, and what we want from it - it can be cruel and unfair, or not. And my ethics and moral system is NOT that of a right-winger or conservative, who believes in the “strongest will survive, life is a battle” fascist ideology, but rather, that society is there to help the weaker ones.
As for self-confidence coming from being exposed to the cruelty of life - that must be a different definition than normal. Usually, in the pedagogic/ psychological defintion, self-esteem or self-confidence is established by
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a stable, predictable enviroment with non-arbitrarly rules. If the child does the same thing five times, the reaction of the parents should be roughly the same, not wildly different (the example from an alcoholic, though that is not the only kind of unstable household: Yesterday Mummy laughed when I pulled the cat’s tail, today she slaps me when I pull the cat’s tail - why?)
This gives the children confidence that rules exist and they can discover them. -
non-demeaning correction. If you denigrate or emotionally abuse children, they will lose the confidence to discover and try out new things, because they will be afraid of making mistakes.
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a general loving atmosphere. Children will need to know that there is a backup even when they mess up. Otherwise, they will lose trust in other people, and again will be afraid to make mistakes, which are a necessary part of learning anything.
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opportunities to do things for themselves, at the right pace. This is the tricky part for parents and teachers:
if you understimate children, they become bored. If you praise them for small things, and they feel that this is not worth it, this leads to precisly that over-inflated, hollow false self-esteem.
If you over-estimate them, they will believe that they are incapable of solving problems and give up.
If you set a pace for them and make them do things regardless of their own inclination, they will only work for reward (or punishment), without knowing the joy that comes from making a discovery by yourself, because you are interested and set about finding out. If you do everything for your children, because they do it wrong, they will never know the joy of building their own wooden toy boat, climbing a tree, hiking a mountain or mastering a difficult sports technique after months of training.
Wait a second, this topic isn’t about sharing in kindergarten anymore is it?
Oh my God, a topic drifted to a semi-related topic on the Dope? Stop the fuckin’ presses!