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	cactuar_tamer 2007-06-05 04:42 am UTC (link)
	While I agree with the condemnation of the assholery involved in the OP's situation... I support the right to reproductive choice, but I still end up wishing that some people would make better choices. Kinda like supporting free speech but wishing some people wouldn't say offensive/stupid things. / my two cents (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	visp 2007-06-05 06:10 am UTC (link)
	nods especially if you have to pay to support it. If a woman wants 15 kids, good for her. If she wants me to help pay for the kids, hold on a minute. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	rachelmap 2007-06-05 08:05 am UTC (link)
	But since you are going to pay for those kids one way for another, it's better to spend a little money on healthcare and schools now than a lot of money on police and prisons later, right? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	visp 2007-06-05 12:57 pm UTC (link)
	Of course. But it would be even better if I had to spend even less by just paying for the birth control. Don't get me wrong, if the kid's here, yeah it's gotta eat and study and all that, I just wish that there were less of them to support, is all. (Reply to this)(Parent)

fiordispina
2007-06-05 12:16 pm UTC (link)

I wanted to ask some of the people in this wank what exactly they wanted to do about their desire for this woman to have fewer children. Most solutions would either be extremely creepy and anti-American, or would penalize the kids. So, there you are with your OP and her WIC vouchers--deal with it.

But I agree with you about wishing people had better judgment. I'm not sure I'd want to be the child of someone whose desire for a large number of kids outweighed her ability to provide for them as individuals.

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velvet_mace
2007-06-05 03:10 pm UTC (link)

The problem I have with saying it's poor judgement to have so many kids is that a persons financial situation fluctuates -- her family is permanent. She's not going to be on WIC forever (It ends when the kids are 5) but those children will be her joy until her dying day. In the years before she had kids, she probably put money into the system. In the years after she problably did the same. Just because someone doesn't have the right situation to reap that particular benefit, doesn't mean that they get nothing out of supporting the kids -- on the contrary, they get the benefit of not having starving children in the street because their parents had a bad financial turn.

I wish people who had kids that they don't want would stop having them: they are the ones that make me angry. This woman really loves all her kids.

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risha
2007-06-05 03:59 pm UTC (link)

I agree. We can't really judge from outside the situation.

Maybe they could get by without the food stamps with three kids, and then she got pregnant again by accident and the child is loved and wanted anyway. Maybe they'd be fine living in a less expensive area, but life happened and they had to move there for job reasons or a family member got sick. Maybe they budgeted and thought they were ok, but they forgot to carry the two or the car died. Or maybe one of them has a medical condition that means that they need to have the children now or risk not being able to have them later, but she'll return to the workforce and be paying taxes and paying off the credit card bill once the youngest starts school.

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cactuar_tamer
2007-06-05 07:17 pm UTC (link)

Well, I'm of the VHEMT camp, so I know very well I'm biased on this.

To me, that many children is a bad idea whether you're the OP or you're giving Bill Gates a run for his money. The WIC thing doesn't even ping me that much. I have friends who grew up on welfare, my own family isn't, but we did start out fairly well off and have fallen pretty far through a series of unfortunate and unpredictable events. I can understand all of that pretty well.

So yeah. I think it's a bad idea in general, but I'd never go around saying that to parents. I keep my mouth shut, until I'm talking to someone who agrees with me or who asks, or when it comes up in conversation vis-a-vis my own decision not to reproduce. There's really no excuse for being so deliberately rude to other people, in my mind.

My post was just to comment on how one could be pro-choice and still critical of some choices.

/ probably too much talky.

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velvet_mace
2007-06-05 07:34 pm UTC (link)

*nods* And you bring up a point -- you are child free and I bet you absolutely HATE HATE HATE when people get on your case about it. But it works the other way around too. For those who want to have a large family, having their choices being second guessed by other people is just as irritating. It annoys the hell out of me every time I see the "Vagina: it's not a clown car" because that couple made the choice for their own reasons to have a very large family. It's their own business as to why and no one elses.

See the thing is we know what is right for us. What was right for me was two kids, a third would have been okay, but I wouldn't want to go through the effort of raising, say, six. On the other hand, I would have been miserably unhappy if I were childfree. Intellectually I can understand why some women might want to never have children, but emotionally I can't do it, because emotionally I can't really put myself in their place.

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	luna_hoshino 2007-06-06 03:39 am UTC (link)
	It's their own business as to why and no one elses. I agree-- up until it starts impacting other people, and given how overpopulated the world is becoming I would argue that it DOES impact other people. Said people just might not happen to exist yet. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	velvet_mace 2007-06-06 03:42 am UTC (link)
	Dude, your car impacts other people. Without immigration the population growth of the US would be negative. The problem is not the occasional woman who wants 15 kids, it's all the women in India who would rather have 1 or 2 but end up with 8 because they have no access to birth control. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	luna_hoshino 2007-06-06 04:25 am UTC (link)
	Dude, your car impacts other people. Which is part of why I hate driving unless I absolutely have to, actually. Immigration or not, it's undeniable that the US population is growing at a fairly rapid pace. I just don't see a reason for contributing to that by having 5 or 6 kids, personally. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

velvet_mace
2007-06-06 04:48 am UTC (link)

Well that's the point, the 5 or 6 kids AREN'T having a significant impact. Truth be told very few women want that many kids, so you are talking a tiny minority. Our population is living longer, we have immigration, and our new immigrants have more than the average number of children (but even the group with the HIGHEST number of children statistically only comes out to having 3 kids per family.)

One woman who wants 4 kids or even 15 is not going to cause huge problems, and even population measures for the future assume that our hispanic population (the ones with the "high" fertility rate) aren't going to change their habits and start reproducing less in the next generation.

Upshot, it's not reason to get on someones case. If you really care about population growth rates, you will push for equality for women (since women who earn more statistically reproduce less)and women's health care (because even in the US access to birth control isn't universal).

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	chester_w 2007-06-08 05:13 am UTC (link)
	While we're pushing, can we put selecting for intelligence on the list? Future generations will thank us. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	velvet_mace 2007-06-08 02:48 pm UTC (link)
	Nope. No we can't. Because the horrors of walking down that path by far outweigh the benefits. I know you aren't being serious -- sadly some people genuinely are on that one. (Reply to this)(Parent)

iwanttobeasleep
2007-06-10 08:56 am UTC (link)

On one hand, you have a good point, a few big families mean nothing in the long run. On the other hand, wanting a big family isn't a defense for having a big family when you can't afford to feed them. And while we're at it, on one hand it's definitely the state's responsibility to make sure all children have food, clothing, and a place to live, but it's also the parent's responsibility not to create more children when they can't or can barely afford the ones they've got now. It's not just about the mother having a right to have a family as large as she wants, it's also about the children's right not to suffer unnecessarily because the mother wanted to have a large family even if she couldn't properly support all of them.

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velvet_mace
2007-06-10 03:33 pm UTC (link)

Well, lets put it this way. Do you believe that we as a society should force a woman to have an abortion? Force her to give up her religious beliefs? Force her to give up her children if she isn't abusing them? Because honestly, that's the alternative. Giving up sex entirely is a harsh thing to sentence a woman to as well, especially if she's married.

It's really easy to say "then she shouldn't have these children." But in order for her to not have these children, that means somehow or other you will have to take her right to have children away from her.

I support easy and cheap access to contraceptives (which, surprise, we don't have), and heavily subsidized childcare to help women with children get back to work and off of welfare. I think that's a much more supportive than simply tut tuting and telling these women to stop having sex.

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penguinfaery
2007-06-10 02:33 am UTC (link)

It's their own business as to why and no one elses.

It's not their own business when they're paying for it with other people's money. Granted, if you read farther in the post, the poster just got caught. But the post it's self is badly representative of this and without back information, is a perfect example of what unfortuantly there is a lot of out there. "Gimme money, oh, by the way, preggers again."

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	velvet_mace 2007-06-10 03:32 am UTC (link)
	That's the price of living in civilized society. I, for one, appreciate living in a first world country. "Gimme money, oh, by the way, preggers again." You know, I don't think you can come up with a shallower, meaner, and more selfserving way to look at the situation. Kudos. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

penguinfaery
2007-06-10 03:43 am UTC (link)

Yep, as am I. I'm also aware any good system can be abused by the right people.

I'm not saying the OP is like that. I'm saying there ARE many people who are (And if you believe there not, poke around a welfare office for a while), and the OP touched on that reaction, without meaning to (As she does not, by all mean, appear to be anything like that. I do believe she was just shoved into a shitty situation)

You're right, someone putting their kid into that situations IS shallow, mean, and more selfserving. And yes, I'm quiet aware that's not how you meant it. I'm sorry, I've been a kid living with in welfare family. It's HORRIBLE. If it's a necessary evil because hard times come, then thems the breaks. But I do know people, personally, who are of that mentality. And have, personally, heard the phrase "Well, at least my check will be bigger."

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velvet_mace
2007-06-10 04:03 am UTC (link)

Giving birth to a child you love is shallow, mean and self-serving? Listen, I'm upset when poeple who don't want children have them, but that's not what we are talking about here. We are talking about ordinary productive people who have come upon a hard time.

The system can be abused, and it sure is. Look at the CEO's of giant corporations and you'll see a system abused to the max. But that is no excuse for hating on people whose life stories and circumstances you know nothing about.

It sucks to be poor -- but making generalized statements about their motivations in absense of any evidence to back it up? That sucks, too.

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penguinfaery
2007-06-10 05:26 pm UTC (link)

Reading comperhension > assumptions.

I'm not TALKING about just poor people who hit upon hardtimes, or people who are having babies they love (Althought I still think, if you can't afford a baby, don't have one. Sorry. You don't have to be flamingly rich, but you should be able to afford the basic. it's just the resonsible thing to do. I want a baby right now, and could love it deeply. However, I couldn't pay for it's diapers, and if I had it now never COULD because I'd never really get my feet under me.) You can't survive on love. Just like you can't survive on money.

I'm talking about people who abuse the system, and just DO have kids to leech. And yes, they exist. My mother worked in welfare for year, so she DID know all their circumstance. WE are talking about people who don't want their children because we're NOT talking about the OP, or people who've come upon hard times. We're talking about the leeches of the system, not the one who use it as it should be used.

And for the record, I think the system is worth supporting the leeches, and wish we'd put more money into it. But that doesn't make me happy about the leeches. And it really doesn't make me happy about the woman I've seen, both on and off welfar, who see babies as thing and not people they are going to have a GREAT responsibilty to. And unfortunatly, I've seen WAY to many example of that prsonally in my life.

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velvet_mace, 2007-06-10 05:38 pm UTC

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penguinfaery, 2007-06-10 08:18 pm UTC

	velvet_mace 2007-06-05 03:11 pm UTC (link)
	Oops I put this in the wrong place. Sorry! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	fiordispina 2007-06-05 06:05 pm UTC (link)
	'Sokay, it's a good point and the email reminded me to come back to the thread. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	velvet_mace 2007-06-05 03:13 pm UTC (link)
	I put your reply in the wrong place, my bad. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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