Not as poor as my dad in the 30s. He was in the dust bowl, moved to California. Lived under a tree in a tent, and picked cotton as a child laborer. I’m as poor as my dad was in his 20s… as in I make enough to support myself, but not myself and two children. Its a choice I’m making of doing the kind of work I want to do, and not getting paid much for it, vs. doing the work I could do and make more money.
My point was that low income people have the means to plan their families. To not have children until they could afford it. They have the capability and responsibility to do so. My low income friends don’t have a problem understanding this. Not having children you can’t afford to take care of is something they agree with.
Yet you are right… people are having children they can’t afford to take care of all the time, and we, as a society are failing to take care of them as well.
WIC and SNAP and medicare are all really crappy programs that aren’t even enough to subsist on, and people get hit hard with that.
I think we differ in our ideas of whats more valuable… a persons right to procreate, or a child’s welfare. I say a child’s welfare trumps a persons right to procreate.
Thats not to say that existing children in poverty shouldn’t be supported. I’m arguing for that. I’m arguing people shouldn’t bear children into poverty. I’m arguing that we should support families more than we do. I even work to do that. However it doesn’t change the fact that children born into poverty don’t get assistance from their parents or society.
So in answer to your question, what do we do for the impoverished children now… everything we can do given the resources we have, including trying to get more resources. I don’t mean as a society but as individuals and communities. I’d love for us to do more, but in case you haven’t noticed, no one seems to be able to unfuck our government, which continues to cut services to the poor, particularly poor children.
One relatively simple way to prevent this is to not have children when you can’t afford to take care of them… despite really wanting to.
I’m implying that the support from society is grossly inadequate. Its not something that can be depended on if you have a child you can’t afford to take care of.
Its really just a perspective about the welfare of children. Their welfare is more important that their parents right to have them.
People working shitty jobs have less of a problem getting by without children. I don’t justify shitty jobs. I’m a proponent of both a living wage and a welfare system that takes care of people and their families. Those things don’t exist here however.
Thank you for not attacking me I may have needed to explain my perspective better, but I think there is a kernel of disagreement here.
I do fault parents who have kids when they can’t take care of them. They share some responsibility in that. Its why they feel guilty when as parents they have to watch their kids go hungry, get developmental disabilities, watch them try to hoard food by hiding it under beds, in closets, etc… where it spoils, or have to tell them that the family dinners on TV are just made up.
However even worse than parents watching it are the children experiencing it. Its a travesty.
I also fault our society for failing to take care of them, for failing to provide adequate care to children when the parents aren’t able to do so.
So its fair to say I blame McDonald’s for paying as little as they do, and for using WIC and SNAP to subsidize their employee’s income, as well as for selling crap to people which they call food.
I also blame the mother for having two kids on a minimum wage job. That’s a fucked up thing to do. She bears some responsibility here. She’s failing to provide for them. Its her responsibility to do so.
And I blame our society for prioritizing war for profit and religious conservatism over the welfare of children and families. This is a huge problem, and I can’t even change minds on BoingBoing, so I’m not sure how I can change the minds of the 50million or so bastards that vote in representatives that would rather destroy our economy than provide assistance to anyone. So I guess I ignore the obvious blaming society trope, because changing the way our world works isn’t a particularly practical short term solution.
But not having kids when you can’t afford to support? That works!
I’m open to alternatives to a free market economy with a robust welfare system… which is the best idea I’ve seen. Feel free to tell me about a better one.
An alternative to the fantasy of a Free Market, Inc.? You can go through my numerous posts if you’re really interested. I’m not going to repeat myself and derail this thread in the process to appease you, sorry.
So its fair to say I blame McDonald’s for paying as little as they do, and for using WIC and SNAP to subsidize their employee’s income, as well as for selling crap to people which they call food. … And I blame our society for prioritizing war for profit and religious conservatism over the welfare of children and families.
Agreed.
I also blame the mother for having two kids on a minimum wage job.
Once again, I think that most would agree that it’s irresponsible to be a breeder without the means to take care of your brood.
I just don’t think your first post conveyed that very well within the context of the BoingBoing post and you shouldn’t be surprised (feigned or otherwise) at the reaction you got.
This is a huge problem, and I can’t even change minds on BoingBoing
I think most people on BoingBoing agree with those things. As I said, it was your hasty post with a divisive, blanket statement that was flawed, not the people that read it in context of the BoingBoing post. You may be misunderstood in some regards, but you share some (if not most) of the responsibility for that situation.
Like I said, it would massively derail the thread and these are all things that have been throughly discussed in other threads. If you are sincere, then I suggest you look at my previous posts. Frankly, I always have my doubts about reaching through a libertarian’s mental firewall when it comes to that topic anyway. So, it’s probably best to simply agree to disagree, anyhoo.
If contraceptives are so cheap, then why are so many women using them inconsistently in order to save money? Are they too stupid to understand how someone gets pregnant? Do they think that abortions are fun and easy?
Even if women are using contraceptives, typically 9% of them on the pill will get pregnant while 18% of those using condoms will get pregnant ( http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contr_use.html ). Also, remember that if a sexually active woman does not want to have children that she has to consistently and correctly use contraceptives for roughly 30 years.
Your own source shows that 95% of unintended pregnancies happen to women who aren’t consistently and correctly using the pill, and that your chances of having a baby while using the pill correctly is less than 1% over the 30 years if used perfectly. That perfect use means taking a pill every day. Its not that hard.
From your source… Publicly funded family planning services help women to avoid pregnancies they do not want and to plan pregnancies they do. In 2010, these services helped women avoid 2.2 million unintended pregnancies, which would likely have resulted in about 1.1 million unintended births and 760,000 abortions.
And under the Affordable Care Act, everyone gets birth control that wants it.
People aren’t using it correctly because they don’t understand it. They aren’t educated about it, or somehow aren’t capable of getting it.I don’t know why because its cheap or free from multiple places.
What are you proposing as an alternative? Just assume that women will be sexually active, and have kids without planning it or wanting them, and that’s just the way it is? Because that seems really fucked up to me.
Yeah 30 years seems right, but they may continue to take it after that if they want.
Maybe she doesn’t know or care about the consequences for children born into poverty. Maybe she thinks a persons right to have kids trumps the suffering of those kids when they aren’t provided for.
I’d rather children were guaranteed a good life when born by someone or something.
Since that isn’t happening I’ll take not having children born into poverty by not having kids you can’t afford to take care of as the lesser of two evils.
I know! It’s insane the amount of money these companies are generating. The other consideration in this case though, is that many of the franchises set their own wages, and McDonald’s corporate doesn’t have any say.
