I’m trying to make sense of my coworker’s behavior. She’s 21, just had a baby in September, and is already pregnant with #2. She works about 15 hours a week, and the father doesn’t have a job.
Which seems more likely -
(a) She’s stupid and hasn’t learned how to prevent pregnancy, or
(b) She’s shrewd and did this on purpose for the economic benefits
She’s shared a lot of TMI in the workplace - she said she “needed” the first baby, and she said her doctor told her she could get pregnant a week after giving birth.
I can almost understand needing the first baby to get free food and free medical care, but do the economic benefits of having the second one offset the costs? Might she need to keep having children to keep receiving Medicaid, or might the housing subsidy be meaningfully bigger for the second child? I don’t understand how these things work.
Apologies in if this is less than coherent - I’m too disgusted to think clearly.
I suppose, if “venomous” means “full of sperm”. Although she did say something about him threatening to take their son if they split up. (Why oh why does she talk about these things in the workplace…)
I’m mostly trying to understand whether her choice even makes economic sense - I really don’t understand how these things work.
Option C: She wanted to start a family and figured she could somehow make it work out.
And in most cases it does work.
It may be lean and unpleasant, especially when she is young. Indeed, on our current sparse, limited, and string-filled public assistance it will be sparse. But plenty of people raise kids in pretty poor circumstances and manage to have reasonably productive and meaningful lives. People raised in poverty have a reasonably good chance of going on to poverty themselves. But for someone who has grown up and lived in that all of their life, it doesn’t seem unusual or all that bad. Even the very poor have fond memories of their childhood, beloved family members, and all those other things that make life meaningful. For lots of people, poverty is a given and it’s just how life is. The whole middle class dream is something other people do. She’s probably doing what is normal in her family and peer group, and she probably thinks her life is pretty decent, and doesn’t think she is subjecting her kids to some horrible existence.
On a practical note, some women want to get the “baby” and “toddler” stage done with in one fell swoop, so that you are only spending three or four years of your life dealing with that level of helplessness rather than stretching it out over five or six years (and taking the career hit that involves.) If she is working limited hours now anyway, it may actually be relatively smart timing. Babies don’t need a ton of money, but they do need time. In the future she will probably hope to move forward with her career. By that time, her kids will have more independence but probably need more expensive stuff, and she’ll have more freedom to work to provide that.
Again, not the best choice if your goal is the middle class dream. But it could be a perfectly reasonable plan if your goal is to raise a family and you don’t mind doing so with limited resources.
Option C gives her far too much credit. I’m reasonably certain the first one was an accident. She said something recently about, “I said XYZ too and then six months later I was pregnant.” She also called her first pregnancy a “mistake”.
I’ve listened to this girl’s TMI for over two years now, and I hear no evidence of “dreams” or “goals”.
My question remains - do the economic benefits of social services offset the costs of having a child? Is the answer different for baby #2 than for baby #1? How so?
All I can tell you is we had a one-income, two-child family. At my lowest income, we were given a three-bedroom home with garage for $200ish a month rent, free medical insurance for everyone, and so much food assistance that we had extra assistance left over each month.
This all happened after the birth of my son. So yes, two can make a big difference over one.
No, he was actually one hell of a surprise, given that we learned of his existence like, three weeks before he was born. But that’s a story for another day.
I have heard of others doing it on purpose, though. An ex-friend of my estranged wife’s appeared to be doing so, but never admitted to it.
They may have been accidents, but I suspect they were foreseeable accidents, if you know what I mean. She said she got pregnant with the first one while on vacation. (Why why why does this girl talk about this shit in the workplace?!)
If she can nail down the time, then presumably she knows what she was(n’t) doing to prevent the pregnancy.
I keep reminding myself that whatever minor rewards she gets for being pregnant twice in one year, she’s the one who’s going to be stuck with two babies she can’t afford, not me. But it doesn’t make me feel better.
Well, she might be able to nail down the time because she had sex only once that month, or at least had penis-in-vagina sex only once that month. I could have told you the day and time I got pregnant with the condom and foam pregnancy (as opposed to the pill pregnancy or the IUD pregnancy) because my husband was in another country except for a pretty narrow window, and we made it once.
Even the best birth control is not 100% effective. Do you know what the odds are of getting pregnant when using condoms AND contraceptive foam? Because I managed it. I got pregnant three times in two years, had two miscarriages and one full term pregnancy, while using birth control correctly and consistently. Women are supposed to have problems with getting pregnant right after a miscarriage or birth…not me! And that’s why I had my tubes tied when I was under 25. I had a hell of a time getting a doctor to tie them, too.
I don’t know. Even if she made a good faith effort to prevent both and is just unusually fertile, her attitude bugs me. She said she “needed” the first baby. The idea of expecting a tiny baby to provide for her needs disgusts me. I’ve never once heard her talk about what she’s going to do for her baby (babies?) - it’s all been about what she’s going to get.
It’s not gaming so much as an inability to see a future, to look past today. Well, it’s kinda gaming, but with some people, it’s a mindset that’s hard to change.
She “needed” the first baby because she doesn’t have the skills to get and keep a decent job. By “skill”, I mean a work ethic, an example set by a parent or sibling, a little bit of ambition, and the ability to look ahead. A baby gives her some financial security, at least for a few years. If all she’s ever had is the bare minimum, she might be satisfied with that.
The main benefit to a second baby is that (if I understand correctly), as long as she has children under a certain age, she won’t be required to work or go to school in order to keep getting public assistance.
Just MHO. I don’t know anyone currently getting public assistance, but I do watch Springer and Maury occasionally. There’s a lot of ignorance out there. More ignorance than scheming, I think.
Oh, her attitude about needing the baby bothers me, too.
But what if she said that she didn’t want the babies? Society is not exactly supportive of mothers who say that they never wanted kids. I think that she’s pretty confused and might be trying to put a positive spin on it, and failing.
But she does work. Well, sorta. If you’d call moving at a glacial pace and talking about her personal life “working”. Her behavior would almost make sense if she were using her pregnancies as an excuse not to hold a job.
Or do they only let you stop working if you have two babies? Again, I have no first-hand knowledge of this sort of thing, and never want to have such first-hand knowledge. I like working and pursuing goals. I don’t want children. I don’t want the government to write my grocery list. I just want to understand what’s going on with someone I have to see every week and who gets gold stars for showing up.
I could respect someone who admitted to not wanting their babies, but I would expect her to actually do something about it. Even if she didn’t want the first one, she made a series of choices over nine months. Plan B? Abortion? Adoption?
I’ve read what you’ve posted about your situation, and it sounds like your hands were tied. Hers were not.
I really don’t see how she could benefit financially from having kids, as govt help never covers the costs of raising children in even a basic way.
However, if she got pregnant by accident once and has good, cheap or free childcare in place (the non-working dad, maybe? Sounds like she probably would have shared that info with you) then it wouldn’t cost a hell of a lot more to have a second child. Especially if she doesn’t want her eldest to be an only child, it could be easier to have the kids close in age.
But that’s a story for another day.