This story in the Muncie Star Press made me feel all judgy. I don’t know any facts except those in the article, so I realize I might have an incomplete picture, but:
#24 year old woman;
#With 5 children;
#Leaves children with her mom for 5 days;
#Goes to stay with estranged, soon to be ex, husband who is on house arrest for having previously abused her.
Just me talking here, but: Twenty-four seems too young to have five kids, you shouldn’t abandon your kids, and if a guy beats you, don’t go back to him. One fairly common theme in my collection cases is a screwy family situation. Family problems and money problems can have a chicken and egg dynamic – hard telling which causes which.
I’m not saying it’s technically, politically, or morally feasible, but some days the idea of requiring a license to reproduce doesn’t sound like an awful idea. Maybe put some sort of contraception in the water and give an antidote upon demonstration of family stability. Yeah, probably a bad idea. Still.
“…don’t go back to him.”
Sounds easy and makes common sense. Unfortunately, the psychology behind domestic abuse is much more difficult.
“…requiring a license to reproduce doesn’t sound like an awful idea.”
I’ve long thought similarly. You need a license to drive a car but not to raise a child? Never made sense to me. Maybe just a requirement that you attend a parenting class. Of course, enforcement is where things become both morally and technically difficult. Forced sterilization? Yuck.
The environment will limit our reproduction long after we should have limited it ourselves. Things will get pretty unpleasant before that, though–not that it isn’t already in a lot of places.
I know. Eugenics comes quickly to mind. Among other things.
I loath the idea of the government deciding who can and can’t have kids on just about every level.
Then I realize I’m paying for all these kids via my taxes – not just them being born, but for them to eat, go to school, drop out, go on welfare, have more kids… and that doesn’t make sense either.
It’s one of those things I grapple with.
And, what? you don’t pay for the entitlement of well-born idiots who steal from you ten ways from Sunday while you have no recourse whatsoever?
Sheesh, we outspend the next fifty countries combined militarily; we arm half the planet, even both sides of a conflict, and perpetuate others to appease voting blocs; we rush to the aid of agribusinesses subjected to bad weather, or subsidize growing vegetables in the desert, finance a revolving door/ lobbyist-fuelled pickpocket operation and reelect the grifters who operate it from guaranteed “safe” districts, while firing a few excess $ billion into space to entertain the terminally bored, and you’re pissed off that some kid born into poverty through no fault of his own might be getting some free government gruel?
Well, now that you mention it, I guess it is Dan Burton’s fault. Or we could blame Brandt Hershman.
No one’s talking about the kids – they’re talking about the parents who bring children into the world without not just the means to raise kids, but the motivation to be their parents. Not just are they lousy parents, they inflict all kinds of costs on society (not just financial).
And, no, I’m not one of those nutbars who is anti-birth control and anti-welfare for kids, which seems a special kind of cruel. Either you’re anti-welfare and you provide people who don’t want to be parents the means to stay kid-free (condoms, abortions, adoption), or you’re anti-birth control and you provide not just the government cheese, but early preschool, counseling, etc. to try to break the cycle.
Several comments here are correct, even some that appear to be contradictory are in agreement, in my view.
My younger sister had four children by three different men, two of whom she didn’t know beyond the casualness with which she became pregnant. She is now fifty years old, never worked when she was raising her kids, and only sporadically since then. She raised her kids on the government’s dime via ADC money, subsidized housing, WIC and food stamps, and the fact that about half of those years she spent living with and mooching off of our mother. Now she survives with the occasional job, the largesse of people who will take her in, and mooching off the system in various ways. Three of her four children are raising children the way she raised them, but without a grandmother or mother to bail them out.
I’ve seen this close up and personal, and now I’m seeing it repeated. It wasn’t that she couldn’t work, it’s that she wouldn’t. It isn’t that her kids can’t work. They choose not to do so, only resorting to the occasional job when all else fails, but it’s the last choice they exercise when it comes to providing for their kids. I hesitate to use the term families, since none of them, aged 32 to 26, have married or lived in a committed relationship up until now, just like their mother who was briefly married one time for about a year.
Yes, there are those who bleed the system and we all pay for it. Yes, there are those who do actually need the help. I would like to see the criteria tightened and enforced so that those who are able bodied do not get more than the necessities for a short time while they find and retain employment, and at the same time, I’d like to see those who are in need through no fault of their own get more of the help that would benefit them.
My objections to the system as it’s now constituted is not hearsay, but close observation and personal involvement. It’s a cycle, and it’s one that my brother and I tried to stop before it became ingrained. We tried to rescue her children from her negative lifestyle, but found out that the system protects the rights of even bad parents to raise their own children, for better or worse.
I agree that corporate welfare is a much bigger problem, dollar-wise, than the personal welfare system. I would like to see something done about those abuses. But the reason most of us become more disgusted by the personal welfare debacle is that we all know someone who is abusing that system, whereas the corporate abuses are more apocryphal and removed from our own observation.
I know, speaking for myself, I have been disgusted at the above situation with my sister and her children at the personal level, and I think understandably so. Not just because they are related to me, but because I’m closely aware of the situation. I feel the same disgust at personal stories of a like nature of which I am personally aware. All the years my sister was raising children, I was raising my own. She could stay home, do only those things she wanted, and not have to worry about today or tomorrow. Her kids had food, shelter, clothes, insurance, even Game Boys, cable TV, and all the rest. I was working, often seven days a week, to provide my children with those same things, plus college educations and a stable home and, hopefully, a good example. Plus, some of my tax dollars were going to provide most of those things to her children.
The proof is in the raising, however, as my kids are both college educated, gainfully employed, self-sufficient, and with homes and families of their own, and they do it all without the use of the social safety net. Her children are crippled by lack of ambition, lack of self control, lack of the ability to sacrifice, or dream or aspire to anything other than that next payment, subsidy, or whatever.
I’m not at all convinced that a thoughtful or scientific approach would justify very much in our present social safety net. Maybe it is impossible to really study these things in an impartial way. My feeling is that it could be proven that some programs paradoxically have the effect of actually increasing poverty crime and homelessness in a given community. I think this might be becuase of the way a program is implemented as much as the way the law was written and the good intentions behind the legislation.
Some of our programs work better than others and many have a deservedly terrible reputation. Although I am sounding pretty critical, I believe ending poverty while at the same time encouraging personal responsibility is a realistic goal. It is not impossible.