What are the motivations for low-income people to have so many children?

You seem to be under the misapprehension that many people have children deliberately.

@CWOTUS Obviously, that’s not the case. I’ve heard that over half of all pregnancies in the US are unplanned. I don’t think I would be asking this question if I grew up in an area that was religious or where birth control was taboo, but that’s not the case. Even the sh*tty parts of New York State are pretty progressive on family planning and our school had comprehensive sex ed. Our teacher even told us about IUDs (which I got when I was 19 and are usually covered under Medicaid and affordable through Planned Parenthood).

I think they don’t even think about the fact they are making a choice. There is no choice involved, just a whatever, attitude. Lack of education and a careless mindset is the biggest problem IMO. There is no law that says you are irresponsible if you can’t afford to send your kid to Harvard but when you live hand to mouth, can’t afford the basics and keep reproducing you are, clearly, a selfish and irresponsible idiot. More so if you are sucking on the government teat to support your litters.

Lack of proper knowledge and understanding of, and lack of access to birth control.

@Coloma @Darth_Algar Both of your answers are perfectly sensible. I guess my problem is that I’m trying to ascribe reason to that which is unreasonable.

Since I’m a woman, I tend to see it from the woman’s perspective, which is a limited one.

When it comes to the guys, I think that honestly, a lot of them could really give a shit. Fatherhood to them is “Hey look, my boys can swim!”. They’re enamored with the idea of the child for the first several months or maybe a couple of years but then the excitement quickly fades and it’s back to their old lives of being bar flies and sperm-flingers. Many of them have no concept of what fatherhood really is and perhaps never had a father who stuck around for them. Sure, they may get hit up for child support, but they can always split town and even if they do have to pay something, at least they don’t have to raise the kid.

Now, the cynic in me knows that some of these women have multiple kids they can’t afford because it’s what their mom did and they think they turned out just fine. At least a few may do it because they think they can squeeze some extra government benefits out of it two. Even more, do it because they think it’ll make their lover stick around. (We all know how that goes)

On a deeper, psychological level (and yes, I’m playing armchair psychologist on the internet), having kids is something to do. If you don’t have a lot of life experience, skills, education, or much to look forward to in your future, kids may seem like a way to give your life more meaning. Babies are adorable, they seem to love unconditionally, and they are easy to bond with. Plus unlike a deadbeat dude, they can’t abandon you (at least until you manage to alienate them as adults). They depend on you, they need you, they make you feel important. “Mother is the word for God on the lips of every child” as the saying goes. Motherhood is a revered status in natalist societies and a lot of these girls don’t get a lot of love or attention in their day-to-day lives. These are often the women you’ll see on FB posting memes about how their “kids are their entire lives” and it’s true. They have no other life and feel they have little else to offer or define themselves by. Pregnant women and moms of newborns get tons of attention and it may be their only chance to taste what that feels like.

But goddamn, is it ever stupid and selfish.

@LeavesNoTrace Agreed and yes, you are spot on. many, many females seek unconditional love and validation from having children. The only truly viable reason to have kids is becasue you want to SHARE the best of yourself with another human being. It’s about wanting to give, not burden a child with fulfilling YOU. I am biased, admittedly. My only child, my daughter, was well planned after almost 7 years of marriage and my motive was to share with a child not use them as an ego booster.

This clip from idiocracy might help They reproduce because they can’t stop.

@Coloma Indeed, kids can be a great source of fulfillment if you have them for healthy reasons. My partner and I hope to get married and have at least one someday, but I’ve pretty much resigned myself to being a 35–40-year-old first-time mom and likely keeping our family to just one. We’d also like to enjoy a few blissful, childfree years of marriage before we start piling on the responsibilities and added expenses that come with caring for a dependent.

@RedDeerGuy1 Love that movie!

I feel like my thought process is a little classist, but it’s hard to wrap one’s head around why someone who can’t for themselves would add another human to the balance.

@Wise decision and while there are no guarantees that life won’t throw you a curve ball ( I was wiped out in the recession in my 50’s and divorced about 10 years prior ) but…big difference between a life event beyond your control vs. choosing to make poor decisions when in an unstable position. Any relationship can fail and finances can be strained but not the same as choosing to have kids when you know your relationship is bad and money is really tight. My daughter is 29 and has a good job as does her partner of 4 years she lives with and they are either opting out on kids entirely or maybe having one, at some point down the road as you are choosing. I think your approach is the most safe and sane.

Respectfully, what is the actual question? Is this just a discussion?

It reads very naive, and a bit insulting, but if it’s a genuine question then I think this is very much the best place to ask. That’s not to denigrate you, just to say you’d never approach someone and ask something like this in person, right?

If you’re just wondering why people have kids they can’t afford, here’s an earlier discussion where people stayed pretty civil. The good old days.

And there’s the one from a few weeks ago, where the group consensus seemed to be that people are stupid.

Govt bennies grow. If you are using those for yourself, instead of for the kids it’s probably a nice “perk”.

What do they care if the kids eat etc. They gave them life, so they probably reckon they’ve given them plenty.

I believe it’s worth mentioning that the drive to reproduce is instinctual. All life forms do it. Many to excess.

Perhaps they love children and desire a large family?

For some people, it is validation they are grownups. Not everyone has the ability to get a college degree. For many women, having a family is what validates them.
They don’t think in the same terms of finances as others.
Some women are simply born nesters. They need family all around them, and don’t consider any consequences.
Also consider spare time. When other people are having dinner parties, seeing a show, etc.
Poor folks have tv, bbq, and sex.
I doubt anybody sees it as a get rich scheme.

@funkdaddy I think my question is self-evident in the title. I elaborate below. If you feel insulted, I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention. I’ll check out the other questions you suggest as well for more insights. Would you ask every question you ask on Fluther to someone in person? I doubt it very much.

@Ltryptophan That’s a little cynical, but it could be true for some. Not all people are well-intentioned.

@Hawaii_Jake I hear you there. As I get into my late 20s I myself start to feel a little “eggy”, especially since I have a partner I’m wild about and the feeling is mutual. However, we resist and hope that the best is yet to come.

@janbb True for some I’m sure.

@Patty_Melt Good insights. A lot of people describe having children as a turning point of maturity in their lives. Although TV, BBQ, and sex don’t sound so bad either…

Well..times change and people need to change along with them. Reproductive instincts can be squelched in favor of the greater good of the planet. The fact is this is no longer 1817 when large families happened because of a need for children to run the family farm, lack of BC and because of high infant mortality. it is 2017 and there are 7.5 billion hominids walking around this plant and resources are dangerously limited.

We should be able to use our bigger brains to their best abilities and look at the big picture IMO. If you don’t have 5 children, 4 other people could enjoy having one.

@Coloma Agree 100%. In some ways, humans are victims of our own success.

@LeavesNoTrace Yes, and..in nature, most species quit reproducing when habitat and food sources dwindle. All except the human animals, that is. Hey, as long as you can slap some McNuggets and fries on the kids plate and have Froot Loops in the cupboard it’s all good right? LOL

@Coloma That mentality works for college kids but the fact that people think that that’s a long-term sustainable strategy for raising multiple children is really depressing.

@LeavesNoTrace I’m with you in that there may not be a kind way to offer an opinion on this topic (Good topic, by the way). I’m not sure there is any one real reason. I think that mainly we have taken away responsibility and have set up some rewards for having extra children. Many entitlement programs pay per person in the family so if you have more children you get more money. Along with that all the medical bills are paid, there is extra food stamps and WIC benefits, and other things like that. We don’t ask people in this situation to do anything, don’t expect anything from them, and oftentimes don’t get anything. If people were responsible for paying the medical bills or buying the food, or knew that another mouth to feed would stress the food stamps instead of adding to them then they might think about taking precautions to prevent the pregnancies. Additionally we have developed a society in which families are not staying together and we have an entertainment industry that inundates our world with sex and sexual innuendo.
BTW, your observation isn’t reserved to just this country either. If you look at something like teen pregnancy rates around the world, you find that the poorer countries have higher teen pregnancy rates. Maybe the answer is just as simple as people get bored and fill the boredom with sex.

@seawulf575 I’m not against having a social safety net and we actually rank pretty low on so-called entitlements compared to other developed countries and yet they have lower rates of teen pregnancy and poverty. Probably because one of the benefits they offer people is an excellent free education for kids and teens and free and affordable college (if you can crack the vigorous academics). There are also more trades opportunities for skilled laborers who are paid a living wage and feel less stress and less of a need for escapism from their lives. When your life has purpose and meaning through a career, you find that you don’t need as many outlets to feel fulfilled like having kids you don’t really need.

Also, I don’t think that hypersexuality is the problem either, IMO. You can screw like rabbits and never get pregnant with today’s birth control like IUDs and hormonal implants. I’ve had both and I’ll tell you, I had plenty of fun in my early 20s and my partner and I still have a rocking good time without ever gnashing our teeth about unplanned “surprises”. Sex isn’t the problem or the sole cause—it’s a lack of personal responsibility and education around it.

I think that there needs to be a confluence of having a hand up if you need it and personal responsibility.

@LeavesNoTrace Very depressing, and agreed again, lack of personal responsibility and big picture thinking. Hey, people don’t have to justify their desire to have a kid but, if you are even remotely, socially and environmentally conscious, anyone with an IQ above that of a Hamster should realize the world is under tremendous duress from the billions of humans sucking up everything like a plague of locusts.
Perhaps, just perhaps, you might take that into consideration before you pop out multiple offspring like a mouse in a grain silo.

@seawulf575 Welcome to Fluther, nice to have new blood in the gene pool. Bouncing baby newcomers on Fluther is a positive thing. haha

@LeavesNoTrace You are spot on…a hand up and personal responsibility. My jaded opinion is that we have crafted an entire part of society that is not a hand up but is a hand out. That is harmful to all. It doesn’t truly help those getting the hand out because it is just enough to keep them dependent on the government and it doesn’t truly help society since there are generally no incentives for getting work and getting off the public dole. I, too, came from a middle class family. At one point I might have said we were upper middle class, but then my dad had a bit of a mental breakdown. Couldn’t hold a job if he had to. Mom ended up working 3 jobs at one point to keep us going. But we never went onto public assistance. But that also taught me self-sufficiency and responsibility. I didn’t like what was going on at the time but I did learn from it and it has helped to mold me into a better person, I think. I have a firm belief that you should really rely mainly on yourself and your wits to meet challenges in this world. Okay, I’m a bit religious and give God a good bit of credit for giving me those wits ;-)

@Coloma Thanks for the welcome! This is an interesting site. So far I haven’t come up with any questions I felt I needed answered, but there appear to be some energetic, imaginative people here for when I do.

For some religion does play a part. Many lower income Catholics, especially if they go to Catholic school, really are fairly clueless about birth control, about when they are fertile, and are still taught that birth control is a sin.

You have to remember people basically are their environment. If they are accustomed to people around them having lots of children that is their normal.

Many people don’t plan when they have children. Lower income don’t tend to have a long term view (I’m oversimplifying and over generalizing here). They are check to check, so that means make money today to pay for today. Saving for the future? They can’t. They don’t make enough even if they wanted too.

When you worry about food on the table day to day, then your head is there. This spreads across many aspects in life. Plan to have kids? When? When will it be good to have the baby if I live check to check, and all I see in my future is living that way, because that’s all I’ve really been exposed to. Even if they have dreams of making a great income, work hard, and succeed in getting out of poverty, a portion of them still have what’s called a poor man’s mentality, and they still continue to live check to check.

Planning for the future, and planning out ones future is not something everyone does. Many people live day to day. They also live in a bigger state of acceptance. Things happen and they just continue. They don’t overthink it. Religion helps with that. They accept a baby is coming, or that someone died, or that a natural disaster happened. They move through life letting Jesus take the wheel, whether it from their religious belief, or just simply they were raised that way, and so they live that way too.

Many people don’t know, or don’t believe, the formula for middle class is hard work and delaying having a baby. If you say it, then a whole bunch of people will jump on you for being mean regarding single mothers. Some families in poverty are married, so I do realize it’s not all single moms. Married people have more of a chance to not be below the poverty line since they can have a double income. Being married I think also makes you less likely to have multiple children that you can’t afford, but I don’t actually know the stats on that.

I suggest holding your breath while sneering at the power of instincts. There’ll be no sex at all, and that includes masturbation. You will also want to throw out the groceries. They won’t be needed. The list of things you’ll want to shelve is very long.

@Hawaii_Jake I’m not sure what you mean by sneering at instinct. The instinct to have sex and procreate? In nature, without medical intervention, many infants die, and many women die in childbirth. If you believe nature and instinct are there for a reason, then one could argue multiple births help counter balance the amount of losses destined to occur. Now, we interfere with the losses, people live to reproducing age in much greater numbers, and so we don’t need as many births. If we keep people alive with medical advances, then prohibiting births through medical advances is logical.

It might also be instinct to kill but having the brain power we do most of us choose not to kill. You can still have sex but choose not to conceive children, plan accordingly and have only one child not 7. Large families are an arrogant and downright obscene show of gluttony towards the planet.
The argument is not just about poverty, it is the argument to not take more than your fair share of resources in these troubled and over populated times. The biology of reproduction is to replace the 2 original parent organisms not spawn a family the size of a school of minnows, unless you are a mouse where 85% of your offspring will be eaten in the first year of their life.

Massive reproduction is for those life forms at the bottom of the food chain whose lifespans are only a couple of years at best, not for humans that are living to be 80,90, 100+ years old. Time for a major shift here, the days of cheaper by the dozen are obsolete and long gone.

Who knows?
You might even say who cares.
But the question eventually becomes relevant when asked by taxpayers of middle to high incomes if or when they conclude that they are probably paying for the children.
It’s tough enough paying for your own.

Simple horniness, mixed with way too much stupidity!

This has got to be the snobbiest question I have ever read on here.

Throughout history, family size goes down as living standards go up.

That’s what people do. It’s how humans are.

@chyna You really think it’s snobby? I don’t, I think we have a moral obligation to not continue to over tax our already over taxed planet and resources by continuing to breed like rabbits. Rich, poor or in between. Doesn’t matter, we’re already teetering on the brink of disaster.

I do think it is. You don’t make enough money? Stop having kids. Who do you think you are? No kids for you! I’m stunned by this attitude.

More working hands will earn more money if they happen to live together ( may not be applicable here but in other parts of the world). Also in some countries they will keep reproducing till you have a boy as he will continue the lineage.

People who are poor are more often than not poor because of behavior. The common thread is that most are unable or unwilling to think about long-term consequences and also there is a general lack of self control. Paying it forward and working for the future is simply not in their vocabulary. Watch Idiocracy, it’s actually a documentary.

@chyna I’m not coming from some elitist position here, i am coming, strictly, from a position that A. Poverty is not conducive to a positive child rearing experience for the parent or the child and usually promotes an ongoing cycle of poverty, and from B. a global, big picture perspective that we need to reach a zero population growth position if we hope to sustain. the lives that are already here. Again, I’m not talking private schools and a Harvard education, but if you cannot afford to feed, clothe and shelter a child in a decent, middle of the road manner it is selfish to bring a new life into the world. It may not be PC to say so but…when the more educated and solvent people are choosing to have fewer or no children and the uneducated and poor are reproducing with reckless abandon we are, absolutely headed down a bad path.
More violence, abuse and poverty stricken futures for these kids and fewer productive citizens in the big picture.

I mean, it’s in the news every day, fucked up lowlife people neglecting, abusing and murdering their innocent children.
It is a huge problem and a tragic one, so yeah, I am opposed to fucked up poor people having kids. There’s a big difference between not having a lot of money but being able to make ends meet and being a loving and devoted parent vs. being some illiterate POS that keeps cranking out kids to abuse them and sentence them to repeating the cycle of abuse. Anyway, I’ll beg off now before I end up being blacklisted again for my unpopular opinions.

People who are poor are more often than not poor because of behavior

You can make yourself poor with bad choices.

But to pretend the odds are the same for everyone from birth is the smug ignorant attitude of people born with advantages.

I don’t want to start debate any here but just stating the fact. Some religions encourage people to reproduce more so that they can outnumber others.

I’m not going to debate my opinion.

@Call_Me_Jay Agreed, life throws us curve balls and the hands we are dealt are not always favorable but it still comes down to choice.

@imrainmaker Absolutely, certain religions factor in heavily as well.
I grew up in the 60’s and there were many families with 5 or 6 kinds in my neighborhood that were staunch Catholics. They all had good parents and while not wealthy they had decent homes to live in and loving, stable parents.

@chyna I’m really not looking to debate, just stating the obvious, the world is grossly over populated and it is tragic how many children are born into horrible families and life circumstances that, in an ideal world, would not happen if more people took child rearing seriously not selfishly. Same goes for animals. Getting pets on a whim and then abusing or abandoning them, r not being able to meet their basic needs for food, shelter and medical care.

Well, I know that when I am depressed or feeling let or put down sex makes me feel worthy again. At least in the short run. And, as I understand it (and I have the benefit of a college education) that sometimes leads to children.

As I have pointed out in previous times, we are wired to create new generations. We are taught that having a family is crucial.
How many times have we seen threads here from jellies who feel socially shamed for choosing to not have children? I can recall at least two.
It likely became part of religon in a panic at the time of the big DNA bottleneck, when the world population was reduced to just a few thousand.
During the plague, people died in such shocking numbers lots of people probably felt we faced extinction. To have healthy babies after that made mommy like a hero. Seeing healthy new life was celebrated with gusto.
The same goes during and after wars. In the face of high death counts, babies are a welcome view into new life; new beginnings.
This stuff gets passed on to new generations.
Sure, tradition for most involvescareer, marriage, kids, grandkids.
For many, that is an unattainable goal. They settle for whatever portion they can do.
What needs to be done is change the eons of focusing so much praise toward repopulating so heavily.
We have media which influences more heavily than people could have imagined even just twenty five years ago.

There are supposedly writers here. Use your creative influences as a way to portray overpopulation and poverty in a hard hitting wave.
Show next generations new ways to prove themselves. Develope new rites of passage.

@chyna I was more specifically talking about people who choose to have several children for non-religious or cultural reasons knowing full well it will put them at a disadvantage or keep them dependent on the state. Even middle-class earners can be decimated by multiple dependent (I sure as hell would be right now), not to mention how it can derail someone’s future career prospects—unfortunately, especially women. If observing facts and asking questions makes me snobby, so be it. I’m sorry if my question triggered you.

I’m usually pretty PC, but @colomba is 100% right. It’s not right to try to police anyone’s reproduction, but there are ethical considerations.

You lot were brought up on frontier bullshit like The Walton’s & Little House…those families were dirt poor but bred like rabbits, one theory why generations have copied suit.

@LeavesNoTrace I think a lot of them don’t “know” it will put them at a disadvantage. When you’re very poor, and don’t see another way of life (which is a failure of our society in more ways in one, including we don’t pay people enough, I’m not saying they are stupid, my poor relatives are not stupid) then another child means you just continue to be poor. If they get public assistance, then they get a little more money when the next baby is born.

A lot of middle class people don’t want to lose their socio-economic level and status, so they do things to avoid it. They also worry about saving $50k or more for college per child. The poor want college for their children too, but it’s so out of their realm to save the multiple thousands, that it’s not in their equation in the same way it is for the middle class. Plenty of people in the middle class don’t save to pay for college for their kids either, you can’t paint with a wide brush how the middle class saves and spends, it varies a lot. Plus, things like going on vacation the flights really add up with each kid you add, that is a middle class thought. A bedroom for each kid. Some send their kids to private school. Cha-ching, cha-ching.

Even if people aren’t religious, for some, abortion just isn’t on their radar. I don’t know the statistics for pregnancies and abortions, but the middle class might be getting preggers a lot too, but just they abort more. I don’t know what those stats are like. So, it might be easy to sit back and say the middle class are smarter about birth control, but that might be statistically false. I don’t know. I don’t assume.

A lot of it is cultural norms, which is what @ucme is saying, and what I said about most people do what their community is doing. Plus, once someone has one kid, a lot of people feel they should have a sibling. People have all sorts of ideas about that. So, if the first one was an oopsy, then the next one might happen “accidentally” on purpose.

Plus, their babies might bring them great joy and purpose. Not everything is money.

I’ll go that other direction nobody has touched yet.
Slave owners bred slaves like livestock. Slaves came to think of themselves as breeders. It was one of the few things they knew well.
When slaves were freed, they were taught very little about freedom. They were offered no occupational training, budget keeping. They were sent out to figure things on their own. One thing they did know was that breeding led to prosperity. More offspring meant getting a strong team, and more gets done.

@Patty_Melt White people have a history of lots of children too. Especially, when we were a country of farmers. Larger families meant more hands to work the land. Plus, the religious push to make babies back in the day (still alive in some communities). It’s more about economics than race. Sure some norms vary from one culture and ethnicity to another, but the bigger influence is money, not race.

People really bothered by lots of babies being born, I’m not assuming you’re bothered, should look at the underlying causes, which in my opinion include low pay, unsafe neighborhoods, education inequality, and some religions that actually promote having as many children as God will give you.

If you scroll the thread, you will see slavery was only one of the explanations I suggested. It would be nuts to think only one cause is responsible for the behavior.
I stand by each of my points as being contributing factors.
I will add one more.
Some people are so afraid of aging alone, they look at more babies being a stronger chance that at least one will take care of their old parents. I know this to be true, because I have met some who think that way.

^^I worry about that being childless. Scares me quite a bit.

@Patty_Melt Unfortunately, back in the slave days, slave women were also raped by their owners, slaves for the next generation for the owner to sell or keep for himself. It’s not like the women had opportunity to use birth control. It was either risk dying from a bad abortion or birth the baby. I don’t know how far back they did abortions.

But, in the 1950’s black families had similar marriage and divorce rates to whites, and similar birth rates too I think.

Edit: now, there is more ethnic divide regarding marriage and divorce rates.

Your fear is legitimate.
We need to restructure social alliances and behaviors in such a way that needs are met and repopulation is more responsible, but who to do it, how, when?

By the way, I answered the question several ways, but that does not mean I believe wealthy people are better parents than poor people, or than large families are bad.
I don’t think money makes parents better.

@JLeslie My parents didn’t pay for my college and I took out the loans to fund my education. That’s not the same as growing up in squalor with 5+ brothers and sisters and exhausted or derelict parents (or parent) who can’t stop having babies while being heedless to any potential hardship it may cause. I don’t think you need to be affluent to be a good parent and I know people who grew up with modest means who had great childhoods. I also know people who grew up with a lot more who did not. gone through periods of hardship myself, I know it can make someone quite creative and resourceful. Every situation is different.

What I’m talking about is a pattern myself and many others have noticed that those who have the least tend to have larger families—and not always because of religion or culture. I’m also not saying that people who make less than a certain amount shouldn’t have kids. But is it really ethical for anyone to bite off more than they can chew in that regard?

I don’t think there is any such thing as neither religon nor culture being an influence in family size.

@Patty_Melt One could argue that everything we do is influenced by our culture. But I think in many of these cases people think that more children = more meaningful life, regardless of any problems it causes for themselves, the kids, or the system.

Slave owners bred slaves like livestock. Slaves came to think of themselves as breeders. It was one of the few things they knew well.

When slaves were freed, they were taught very little about freedom.

I guess we got the racial undertones right out in the open.

It’s been 150 years. This is like saying white cops can’t help beating blacks because their great-great-great grandfathers were so used to it. They think of themselves as slave masters.

I find the whole tone of this question demeaning.

@janbb Sorry you don’t like my tone. Can’t please everyone.

@funkdaddy I’m not talking about any particular race. Remember I grew up in a white poverty county and that was my first introduction to this practice.

Here you asked about how to deal with classism in NYC. By asking this question aren’t you doing the same thing that bothers you?

@chyna I treat everyone I encounter with respect whether or not I agree with their life choices. I don’t think someone’s net worth defines their personal worth (if that were the case, I wouldn’t have much worth!). However, you can critique a specific behavior without devaluing someone’s humanity. This isn’t about a specific person, it’s about something that seems to happen en masse and merits discussion.

@LeavesNoTrace – but there’s all the little implied and direct elements…

although some inner-city blacks had migrated 3+ hours up from the Bronx and settled in some of the more urban areas

What? Is this one family? Is there some reason anyone would move from the Bronx specifically? Do you and your friends “migrate”?

I moved to NYC seven years ago and have noticed the same pattern but this time, mostly with inner-city people of color.

With all intentional kindness here, maybe a parallel would illustrate this better.

What if my question was “What are the motivations for people who do not save enough for retirement?” and I explain that while I myself had a large inheritance, even without that, I would be fine, but I just can’t understand why others don’t save the same way I do. As examples I explained how especially single women seem to have trouble saving enough.

I offer no further evidence, but my gut feeling is it may be women’s inherent love of shoes and spas that does them in. Again, I don’t value these things myself, but I know some on facebook who do.

Then a few comments in someone says something along the lines of

This is probably a holdover from before women had access to education. Women simply came to think of themselves as breeders and once they finally had access to education noone really taught them to be good with money. They are used to a man handling numbers and in some cases just don’t have the capacity for all the complexities associated. They just knew babies made them happy.

How would that go over? Is that solid reasoning?

I think it’s interesting that people are condemned for even asking this question, that there are certain things we’re not meant to know, certain things we shouldn’t ask about, certain motivations we shouldn’t ever learn. I don’t think that’s ever the right attitude to have, but that’s just me. I don’t think anything is ever “unquestionable”. I’ve had people ask me why gay people seem to be more promiscuous—a question that seems like it’s impossible to ask without offending someone, but I wasn’t offended, and I attempted to answer it honestly. If necessary, I’ll point out logical flaws in the question, but if I can see they’re coming from an honest perspective, I’ll answer it as is.

So the question seems to be asking why someone who knows having more kids would make life harder would choose to do so. That assumes that they accept that having more kids would make their life harder or that it actually would in reality. So this question comes with a set of assumptions as a premise.

Accepting this premise, I’ve wondered about this question myself beyond the reason “because they want kids”. There are a lot of things I want, but I know that it would be unrealistic to try and get them right now. We can establish that wanting kids is more of an instinct than other “wants”, but that doesn’t mean that a person couldn’t consider that having more kids might make their already strained financial situation more strained. It’s not about me having less sympathy for people on welfare with a bunch of kids or whatever, and obviously some kids are unplanned, but it is something I’ve been curious about. Clearly I would say the instinct to have kids seems to override financial considerations for many people. Or maybe people are confident their financial situation is enough or will improve.

Remember how much “Octomom” was criticized? Clearly there are some instances where desiring more kids and not being able to afford them are acceptable to criticize.

The funny thing is I’ve actually seen more well-off people criticized for having more kids (I remember even my family being criticized for having 4 kids!) almost to suggest that more well-off families have more of a choice in the matter (that seems a bit offensive to me, as it’s not as if lower income people have less agency, though access to birth control might be more difficult).

Anyway, these are just my out-loud thoughts.

@DominicY Exactly. Fluther is a community that exists to ask questions and engage with people in a different way than you would in real life. People can disagree but we shouldn’t condemn for asking. Also, I tend to hand out “Great Answers” even to people who criticize/disagree with me if their answers are insightful and well-thought out. An echo chamber would be pretty dull after all.

And, It’s not like I’m running riding around on a broomstick, glaring at children and wearing an “If you can’t feed them, don’t breed them T-shirt.” I’m simply looking for insights. If that bothers people, I’m not sure what to tell them other than “Sorry, my bad.”

“Live and let live” is usually how I think and there’s nothing about asking a question that prevents people from doing exactly that.

@funkdaddy My friend, I think the answers to either of our questions would be pretty similar. Humans are not always rational and there’s not always an easy way to explain their behaviors. I’m not holding myself out as some paragon of virtue, and who hasn’t been guilty of spending money they don’t have on things they don’t need? (Yay, capitalism!)

However, the idea of people’s decisions involving intentionally bringing several helpless and ill-cared for human beings in the world just seems innately problematic and frankly unethical.

It reminds me of a conversation I was having with my future MIL. We have a great relationship and I love her dearly but one of the things we always disagree on is abortion. I’m pro-choice and she’s devoutly Catholic and leans pro-life. She frequently talks about what a tragedy she thinks abortion is and how some women use it as “birth control”. (A huge fallacy but I digress…) What I always want to tell her is that I think it’s more ethical to have 10 abortions than to (knowingly) create mouths you can’t feed.

I just was skimming, so please point out the post(s) where someone pointed out the element of choice and how it is often not available to the impoverished?
Women without means often don’t have access to birth control, abortions, education on the subject. Some women live with men whom they feel they can’t leave because of a level of financial dependence. And as nasty and sexist as this sounds, it is still a fact that in lower and lowest income circumstances, women have to “service” the husband/partner when he wants or risk physical harm.
Very often it’s about not having choices. To get birth control, one must be able to get to birth control. To get @LeavesNoTrace‘s “ten abortions” one must be able to take the time and get to the facility that provides abortions.

I used to work in a battered women’s shelter. All of this was made abundantly clear to us.

If I missed these posts, sorry for the repeat.

@DominicY – I think the tone of the question is the problem, not the question. At least for me.

There’s a question linked up there from @nikipedia a while ago that’s essentially the same, without the racial and judgmental elements.

Why do people have children they can’t afford?

@LeavesNoTrace – I feel like I’m about three comments too deep here, so I apologize, but want to see if I can possibly get my point across.

I think we can both understand the other’s position. But your view on your future MIL’s opinion is exactly what I’m trying to get you to see here. To the world, you sound like your MIL does to you, or my grandmother did to me when she’d ask about “all the blacks” at my schools. “How do they treat you?”, “do they learn well?”... She just didn’t know.

There isn’t an answer why all the people who choose to have lots of children do so. It’s personal and you’re attributing a plan to something that many do not. But you’ve also attributed a pattern you describe as unethical to a group you don’t seem to know a lot about, at least from what’s presented here. There aren’t any facts presented.

Not everyone feels having children is unethical. Not everyone thinks one is the perfect number. Kids and families do all right outside of the top 60% of incomes, many are happy, healthy, and don’t consider themselves to be missing anything. Money isn’t everything and to some, family is.

@funkdaddy I think my tone is pretty reasonable, but if people are more interested in tone than substance, perhaps I’m not the poster for them—and that’s fine. To each their own.

There’s nothing inherently unethical about having children in general. My partner and I want to have one—when our circumstances improve, which we are taking action to make happen now. Children can be wonderful and there is probably no “perfect” time or place to have them.

While that “Idiocracy” clip @RedDeerGuy1 may be silly or even offensive to some in how they portrayed the more reproductively successful family, it also makes an important jab at the more “educated” people who overthink. If you wait for perfect—it will likely never happen and it could be too late to have a family. Unfortunately, nature does not always align with our needs as modern humans and especially for us women, that can be a cruel smack in the face. And as I approach 30, I myself may feel that zing in the next few years and not have an easy time getting pregnant.

My take on this though is that one of the things people can do to improve their lives is to know their limits. A little common sense can go a long way. If someone’s idea of a good life is living in poverty with 10 rugrats, that’s fine and I’ll never be rude to someone who chooses differently. But don’t expect me to say “that’s wonderful!” either.

@canidmajor Thank you for doing the important work you do for women. To clarify, I was quoting something my MIL said about abortion that I don’t agree with. And yes, in areas where birth control isn’t available, sometimes women don’t have a choice at all. This is a terrifying reality in our current political environment. (Has anyone else been reading/watching The Handmaid’s Tale lately? shudders).

However, coming from my geographical perspective. Birth control and sex ed is super accessible in NYS, even in the more rural parts where I grew up. For many, it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. (A few of my friends got free and low-cost IUDs through Planned Parenthood and are so relieved not to worry unwanted pregnancy.) And unfortunately, some women grow up believing that having a baby will solidify a relationship and make it “real” and they will rinse, cycle, repeat until they get the desired outcome…which may be never.

@LeavesNoTrace My take is that those 10 rugrats, if moderately lucky, might at least be raised with some modicum of decent values and cared for with love. Sadly, the harsh reality is that, more often than not, poverty and too many children go hand and hand with neglect and abuse. Poverty puts a huge strain on people mentally and emotionally and many poverty stricken parents do not have the coping tools they so need , hence, neglect if not downright abuse is a likely outcome for many children in these circumstances.

@Coloma Exactly. Raising children even in ideal circumstances seems stressful, although it can be rewarding—especially when they grow up! For every “Little House on the Prairie” there are about 10 horror stories that would make the most steely among us cringe. My aforementioned friend who runs an after-school program had to make a call to a mother over the winter. Her middle daughter out of her 9 biological children had been sent to school in flip flops in snow and freezing temps for the third day in a row. If you can’t afford seasonally appropriate footwear for your children, why have 9? Couldn’t she have stopped at 2 or even 3? Yes, she’s poor, but this is NYC, not the Bible Belt. Even the most underserved person here has more access to resources and information to prevent pregnancy.

And let’s not get into the even more awful types of abuse that happen in these situations thanks to ADULTS making poor choices. I just can’t bear to think about it today.

^ yep, my point exactly, in the big picture far more children from impoverished families are not living the Little House on the Prairie life, they are extremely high risk for neglect and abuse.

@LeavesNoTrace: you missed my point. “Available” birth control and education does not mean “accessible”. If one doesn’t have a car, or someone to look after a toddler and an infant (or more), it is cripplingly difficult to deal with the logistics of acquiring such things.

Here is an interesting article regarding a large study by Cornell University saying that “children are just as likely to be abused or neglected in wealthy homes as in poor ones.” Wealthy families just aren’t under the same scrutiny as the poor.
Think Mommy Dearest.
The same things go on in rich families, but because of their wealth, those families get away with a lot of child abuse.

@canidmajor Medicaid covers birth control. In my hometown, there was a clinic right downtown, walking distance to many. Almost everyone has a car of some type, even the poorest. Those few who didn’t could hitch a ride. Nearest PP was about 10 miles away as the crow flies.

I think in terms of motivation there is a prevailing mindset that A) babies bring happiness and things will work out somehow. B) babies solidify romantic relationships when marriage is off the table C) babies provide unconditional love even if that relationship doesn’t stand the test of time.

@canidmajor Granted those are real challenges, however, abstinence is easy, readily available and requires no transportation. Just saying “no” until one is able to get the BC they need is the obvious solution and while some women may be pressured by less than caring partners the majority of women can exercise their personal power and refuse to have sex unless covered by BC. A woman who is involved wth a man that has no qualms about, literally, raping her of she refuses his sexual advances has no business bringing a child into that circumstance anyway, sadly, though it happens.

@chyna Well of course financial stability does not mean there cannot or will not be abuse or neglect of children but for every more solvent family that has closet abuse going on the majority of stories you read showcase the more uneducated population. Toddlers left home alone to drown in a swimming pool in the backyard, a recent infant whose skull was chewed on by rats in her crib, lowlife boyfriends murdering their infants, on and on. Abuse can happen in any financial circumstance but we can’t deny that the majority of accounts we are privy to highlight the more uneducated and poor.

@chyna There are a number of studies from unbiased, reputable sources that state the opposite. There may be a racial bias in how often child abuse is reported and investigated. But it’s pretty spurious to say that white = affluent or black = poor. Stress and child abuse/neglect (sometimes leading to fatalities, which you can’t fudge) often go hand-in-hand and poverty, which is a huge culprit for stress.

Does it happen in all cases? Certainly not! Some poor people may live with like the Von Trapp family with their dozen kids and some are even self-sufficient and don’t receive entitlements. But most of us are aware that this is usually not the case. Poverty may not cause child abuse, but living in poverty absolutely increases children’s vulnerability to abuse. And unfortunately, children are the ones who often suffer for adults’ poor choices.

http://www.nber.org/digest/jan00/w7343.html
http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/world_report/factsheets/en/childabusefacts.pdf
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/139/5/e20161616

@Coloma Every time I see one of those “mom’s boyfriend kills infant stories” I want to scream. I know that stories like that are meant to manufacture outrage but damn do they ever succeed.

Also, I’m personally dedicated to getting to the point where the onus isn’t on women to just say “no” because birth control is affordable and accessible for all. Not to mention prosecuting dirtbag partners who tamper with BC or practice reproductive coercion. (A nightmare I narrowly escaped myself when my ex, an abusive rapist, tried to pull out my IUD—in a foreign country, no less!) However, you can’t deny that there are too many people who have the access, have the knowledge, and still refuse to use it.

@LeavesNoTrace Yes, and again, screw PC, the fact is a huge segment of the population should, simply, not bring children into the world, I don’t care how elitist it sounds, the truth often hurts, and this is an absolute truth. Be it the poor little rich girl or the abusive and impoverished. The suffering and misery so many children are subject to is what is truly outrageous IMO.

@Coloma Oh hell yeah. I know plenty of affluent people who should not have kids, period. The rich tend to be a special sort of fucked-up, but that’s a different topic…

@Coloma “abstinence is easy” not. Are you so naive that you don’t understand that not every woman feels she has a choice to abstain? Really?
@LeavesNoTrace, yeah, you still are missing the point. Walking distance? Really? With a couple of toddlers and an infant? Tell me how easy that is. Not to mention the crushing fatigue that goes with a nutritionally inadequate diet and non-stop child wrangling.
Easy to see that you have no idea how this works.

Enjoy your high horse. I’m out.

@canidmajor GIDDYAP! ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iZ9JRVmJ5o

@canidmajor Has nothing to do with being naive, this is 2017 and unless you are a woman living in some remote village in India, yes, I do believe every women in AMERICA, regardless of her financial circumstance can exercise her power to abstain form sex if she so chooses to not wish to bear a child. It has more to do with being thoughtless…read: thought-less, having no thought, than any other challenge to obtaining BC. Teenagers that don’t drive yet still manage to get to PP for BC, and most counties provide transportation for those on public assistance as well. My moderately small community does.

There are always options, always and if there are, truly, no options the option to refuse sexual contact is free and always available.

@Coloma I agree and disagree with you. Humans are horny, especially young humans. I think that for many, abstinence would be a tall order and systematically isn’t a reliable way of limiting reproduction for entire human populations. Unfortunately, with our current SCOTUS and the ongoing culture wars, access to birth control may get worse before it gets better in many conservative states and we’ll likely see a skyrocketing of unplanned pregnancy, poverty, and career derailment for women. I feel genuine compassion and concern for the women who will be impacted by these policies.

While @canidmajor may not like me pointing out the element of volition that goes into many an unplanned, carried-to-term pregnancy, I am passionate that birth control and abortion services should be accessible, affordable, and untouched by the encroachment of theocracy.

However, having only lived in a state where family planning is accessible regardless of income and public schools provide excellent sex education, it will never cease to amaze me how many people “forget” where babies come from and care more about having them than raising them.

Now if you’ll excuse me. It’s martini and manicure-o’clock for this happy, child-free elitist. ;)

In states that have not expanded Medicaid, Medicaid is unavailable to adults who do not have children.

This means that some people literally cannot get healthcare unless they have children.

I don’t know if this has served as a motive for some people to have children, but I could see it happening.

That’s an interesting insight, Mariah. I’ll have to check that out later. As another poster said, I don’t think most people have kids for the express purpose of milking the system. There will always be some who do, however. For many, I think it’s an emotional choice or a lack of understanding or care for consequences—societal and personal.

Also, regardless of whether lack of access to Medicaid is a conscious reason for people having kids, it could also lead to people accidentally having kids. Female birth control requires seeing a doctor. And we know how much men love wearing condoms.

@LeavesNoTrace Of course, I understand that humans, given the nature of the beast, especially when young, may not always make good decisions, that is understandable but sadly, it is still the children that suffer for the “sins” of their careless parents. I’m advocating for the innocent kids much more so than the parents that coulda, shoulda, if only woulda, known better.

@Mariah Yes, that is a good point, I know CA. covers single people under medi-cal regardless of family status.

@Mariah Oh yes, they’re always too small, aren’t they? ;)

@Coloma Yes, CA participated in the Medicaid expansion. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming did not.

@LeavesNoTrace I’m not implying that having kids to access Medicaid would be a means of “milking the system.” Healthcare is something people should have access to. It is wrongly denied to single people in many states. If people feel they have to have kids in order to be gain access to healthcare, that’s the system’s fault, imo.

It’s blatantly obvious this question was asked seeking validation of preconceived stereotypical ideas and not really hoping for information in order to understand the reality of some peoples’ lives.

@Mariah It’s pretty sad. I think we are amongst the only developed countries who don’t have universal, affordable healthcare. It is shameful.

@Hawaii_Jake Sorry that you feel that way. I think it’s been a fascinating dialogue and even some of the answers I don’t agree with, are interesting to read.

Yes, agreed about healthcare, it is completely absurd.

Also, all birth control has a failure rate. Not sure if that’s been brought up in this thread. Someone I know got pregnant even though she had an IUD which is supposed to be more effective than sterilization. If she had been pro-life she’d’ve been saddled with a baby at 19 as an art student. Would’ve been a bad situation. But she wasn’t being irresponsible. She had done the most effective thing you can do to protect yourself against unwanted pregnancy. Shit happens. I don’t like to judge.

@Mariah That sucks for your friend. Sorry to hear that. True, BC is not fail-proof, which is why abortion services are essential to maintain. Your friend did nothing wrong. Sex isn’t wrong and she tried to take responsibility and ultimately, she did.

@Hawaii_Jake Nothing preconceived other than thousands of innocent children born into poverty and abuse.
Facts are facts and the world, let alone right here in the states, is a cesspool of misery for many, many, innocent children that never should have been born. To recklessly bring new life into the world to needlessly suffer is about as immoral as it gets. Sure, there are many factors to be considered but in the end, all I care about are the children that had no say in their existence.

@Coloma Even people who disagree can usually find some common ground. But unfortunately, those who are more interested in tone-policing rather than hearing the message itself are often not interested.

People who need the government to feed and house them don’t need a 4th, 5th, or 6th child any more than the world needs another “Fast and Furious” film.

Fact

The average household on welfare in the US has only 2.4 children, a number that has been steady for 20 years.

The stereotype that families on welfare are large is false. This question has no basis in fact. It is purely judgmental.

@Hawaii_Jake It’s also a fact that children make up the largest segment of the poor with 14.5 million poor children living in the U.S. and statistical averages are not etched in stone. CA. has a very large segment of poor Hispanics and I see Hispanic women with 3 and 4 children every day. The point is, regardless of race or averages poor kids suffer and 2.4 poor kids per poor family are are still 2.4 poor kids too many.

Here’s some more stats…

31.6 % of black children and 28.9% of Hispanic children lived in deep poverty compared to 19.7% of all children in the United States.

www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq3.htm

@Coloma “I see Hispanic women with 3 and 4 children every day.” That is anecdotal. It factually demonstrates absolutely nothing.

You are correct that there are many impoverished children. However, that’s not what this question is about. This question states that welfare families are large, and that is false. It is not true.

It is a lie.

This question and this entire thread are based on purely judgmental stereotype that is false.

@Hawaii_Jake It factually demonstrates what I see with my own two eyes.
I see a lot of low income families with more than 2.4 kids regardless of the stats. and if one is relegated to living on public assistance they should not have the remaining 1.4 kids let alone more. That’s what it means. haha
To continue to reproduce on the states dime is unethical as well as immoral towards the children born into such poverty stricken circumstances.

I don’t think any true stereotyping was intended here, @LeavesNoTrace may have used the words “so many” kids and that was a faux pas but the point is very poor people should not be bringing any number of innocent children into a life of poverty facilitated by government aide.

The people I knew who received some government assistance didn’t have all that many kids. I’d also like to point out that government assistance is needed when one of the parents has abdicated their responsibility for the kids, depriving the family of desperately needed income.

@Dutchess_III Absolutely, falling on hard times or being abandoned by a partner leaving you with a child merits help, no shame there, none, and other unforseen circumstances too like unexpected job loss, illness, all sorts of things where people need help but to choose to keep reproducing when one is extremely poor and/or receiving aide is another. You know, like all the people that have 2,3, 4 kids from multiple fathers and are collecting benefits. I’m just all about the kids and what they go through growing up as have nots.

Also there is a cap on how much you can get in government assistance, no matter how many kids you have. In Kansas they only allow for $475 in cash assistance max for a family with 4 kids. Even if you have 8 kids you only get $475. If you’re working at all you quickly lose even that little bit. If someone pays child support and you qualify for cash assistance, the state takes your support.
They may provide you with more bedrooms in section 8 housing, but that’s about it. Doesn’t mean much.
Also, if you qualify for EIC, and you can only qualify if you worked and only made about $14,000 gross, you can only claim 4 kids at the most.

So, to answer your question, there is no motivation. Certainly not government benefits. Shit happens.

According to this lower income women do have more babies.

Maybe I interpreted it wrong, but that’s how I read it.

@Coloma What you see with your eyes is anecdotal. It is not demonstrable fact.

@Hawaii_Jake So what you’re saying is who should I believe, you or my lying eyes? LOL
The low income families I see on a fairly regular basis demonstrate themselves quite accurately. haha

@JLeslie Wow..lower income women are 5 times more likely to have “accidental” pregnancies. Wow, just wow!

Flds has many children to “bleed the beast”

@Coloma and less likely to abort from what I read. But, that was unplanned. So, I’m not sure about planned. @Hawaii_Jake said lower income have 2–4 children. Today 4 children is considered a large family.

@RedDeerGuy1 OMG…those lunatics need to be gassed. Terrible abuse. Nothing like breeding your own victims. Despicable!

@JLeslie Yes, 3–4 kids is a large family by modern standards let alone even more.

@Dutchess_III I wonder if that keeps the number below 5? Do you think some women stop having babies, because that’s the case?

Most women, no matter what income, don’t have 5 or more kids anyway these days.

I wonder what would happen if they lowered the cut off to 3.

@Coloma Bleed the beast Welfare fraud .

@Coloma You should believe demonstrable facts. What you see with your eyes is only anecdotal.

an·ec·do·tal

/ˌanəkˈdōdl/

adjective

adjective: anecdotal

(of an account) not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research.
“while there was much anecdotal evidence there was little hard fact”

•characterized by or fond of telling anecdotes.
“her book is anecdotal and chatty”

•(of a painting) depicting small narrative incidents.
“nineteenth-century French anecdotal paintings”

@JLeslie I did not say poor women have 2 to 4 children. I provided a link to a factual study that says women on welfare in the US have 2.4 children on average, and that number has been relatively stable for 20 years.

^^Ok. And, how about women not on welfare? And, why doesn’t 4 sound high to you for people who can barely live on their income even if they had zero children?

Let me say that I have some empathy here. I think too often people are underpaid, and so they may be poor and working. I’m not assuming these people are just sitting around. Also, I’m not going to say a person has to give up wanting or having children because they are poor. I do want them to delay, maybe they can be financially more stable if they wait until they have been working for a few years, and I think topping out at two kids is reasonable.

@Hawaii_Jake The demonstrative evidence and hard fact ( actual living children ) was the woman with 4 kids between the ages of infancy and about age 5 using her food stamp card in line at the grocery store. Nothing anecdotal in the evidence I have witnessed many times.
We all know you can find resource material to ether support or refute whatever it is one needs to feelright about. I’m not invested in being right, I am invested in not bringing more unplanned children into the world that have deralict and impoverished parents.

@JLeslie Exactly. I have empathy too but there is a difference between being financially stable and an unforseen life event happening vs. choosing, operative word choosing to reproduce when you are living at or below the poverty line and especially choosing to repeat reproducing 2, 3 or more times. I’m a good example in the sense that, as many here know, i was devastated in the recession. I am still able to care for my two cats but I certainly am not going to go out and adopt any more pets that I cannot afford just because, oh well, I want them. haha

@Coloma A lot of women don’t see leaving it up to chance as choosing.

You guys see a stat like “lower income women are 5x more likely to have accidental pregnancies” and conclude that lower income women are just more irresponsible? Are you shitting me? That stat obviously shows that access to birth control is the issue here.

So, the question’s premise is flawed. Poor people are not “motivated” to have more children. @JLeslie showed a stat that clearly shows the discrepancy is due to more accidental pregnancies in low income people. This shows it’s an issue of access to birth control or sex ed.

If this is really about the poor innocent children and not about feeling superior to poor people, consider doing something that would actually help prevent these pregnancies, such as donating or volunteering at Planned Parenthood. Shitting on the poor on Fluther will help precisely zero children.

@Mariah No, I don’t think that. I didn’t say irresponsible. I don’t think it’s only access to BC though, but I do think that is a big factor, just not the only factor.

Its that smart people don’t have kids because the economy is bad.

@Mariah Not necessarily in every case. Condoms are cheap and sold everywhere. You can buy them in a vending machine in a bathroom at a bar for a few cents. I think it more often, as I originally said, is more an issue of carelessly leaving things up to chance as @JLeslie mentioned or activey wanting to become pregnant.

Your average teenager knows they should use a condom and most teenagers are poor, but many find a way to procure protection. Condoms are also handed out for free at many clinics.

Condoms are also the least effective form of birth control.

How else do you explain the strong correlation between income and accidental pregnancy that @JLeslie cited? Are you saying that low income people are more careless?

@Mariah I’m saying, regardless, that it comes down to taking personal responsibility and if a 14 yr. old kid can find a way to get to a clinic to procure BC anybody can. I managed to get condoms and spermicide way back in the early 70’s when I was a teenager. My daughter managed to take responsibility and get herself on birth control as a young woman for just a few dollars. Low income people have options, there are always options.

Condoms are quite effective is used properly, I managed to avoid pregnancy for years using condoms only.

You didn’t answer my question. If everyone has those options available to them so easily, why would there be this correlation with income. Maybe it is education. The system is in some way failing for these people.

@Mariah Probably multiple factors, as always. Literacy/education, lack of sex-ed, following in the footsteps of their role models, cultural and neighborhood models, drugs/alcohol lowering inhibitions and throwing caution to the wind, a myriad of reasons, but not excuses. I don’t believe in shifting the blame, people are still responsible for their actions and in these modern times while there may be reasons there are still no excuses short of being 12 years old and coerced into sex.

@Mariah Partly because of what I said way at the top, and I think it was mentioned in the article I linked, but it might have been a different one I read while googling. When you are poor you don’t have much to lose. You’re on public assistance, and if you have a baby you will get additional public assistance. I’m not saying they are purposely having babies for the additional money, I’m only saying their “status” doesn’t change much.

The middle class worries about slipping into the lower class, so they are more likely to focus on the money part. This is only a small part of what I think is sometimes part of the equation. It doesn’t apply to everyone, and there are many factors besides this.

I was going to answer this question yesterday but I was at work and I’m very careful about answering certain types of questions while on the clock.

I can tell you, as a former CPS worker with over 10 years experience working with all kinds of families, there is a subculture in our country where it’s not shameful to get pregnant at a young age and not shameful to have multiple babies by multiple fathers. Previously, it was easy for the moms to say they didn’t know who the dad was in order to get more public assistance. Now there are DNA tests that the families take for the purpose of making the dads step up with payments.

Among this urban subculture, having a baby is like a rite of passage. When all your friends are doing it, there’s nothing wrong with it. You and your baby can go hang out with your friend and her baby. Another rite of passage was having “a worker” meaning a public assitance worker or a child welfare worker. Girls on my caseload would refer to me to their frends as “my worker.” “That’s my worker.” “She’s my worker.” “My mom told me to come to the office and get a worker.” “Now that I’m pregnant I’m getting a worker.”

This is what the moms did, starting having babies at a young age and continuing until they’re done around early forties, and the kids follow suit.

One advantage of having multiple kids when you’re on public assistance is that when the household gets sanctioned (sanctioned meaning part of the public assistance gets cut temporarily due to something the parent did wrong, like not report income for example), when the mom only has one kid, the household gets sanctioned by half (as the household has two people in it, the mom is half). If the household has 5 people in it, the household gets sanctioned by 20% (as the mom is 20% or 1/5 of the household’s income). So the more people in the household, the more “cushion” the household has against a cut in income.

Also, at least in the county I work in, there are funds from DSS for things like camp and pool passes so the kids are less likely to suffer throughout the summer, bored to death and driving their mom crazy. There are funds for things like school supplies and Christmas presents. There are food banks that help out so there’s a bunch of help in the community for the urban poor.

I remember one of my coworkers saying to me once, in reference to the people in the waiting room (waiting for public assistance), “you and I have one kid, the people in the lobby have a bunch of kids with no regard to paying for them.” People that I know that are middle class, for example my friends and coworkers, will stop at one or two kids because that’s all we can afford. I can tell you that for me, when my daughter was a baby, I paid over one thousand dollars a month for child care. Now it’s a little over four hundred dollars a month for four days a week and on the fifth day she has tennis lessons. It’s still a lot of money for child care. Other people I know in the school system are squeezed in a similar way. If I were low income, the child care would be free, the housing would be not more than ⅓ of my income, and there are other benefits that the middle class doesn’t get. WIC is another thing I didn’t qualify for because I made too much money, but WIC is another benefit for parents and young children (free formula, milk, juice, certain foods for women and children under 5).

Hasidics are another group that we’d see in the public assistance office. Many Hasidics work for cash and receive public assistance, or they don’t work at all. They qualify for Section 8. It’s not uncommon for Hasidic families to have 6 or more children. All the time we’d see Hasidics in the office for public assistance.

I have one child and between child care, camp, and college which looms in the future, that’s all I can afford. For people on public assistance, at least the ones I dealt with, “affording” a child was never a thought that I heard them talk about.

@jca I think with the Hasidic they rationalize that studying the Torah is more important than anything, including affording your kids. Plus, they, like the religious Catholics, are supposed to have as many babies that God will give them. The Hasidic even are practically mandated to have sex on fertile days.

@Mariah and Hawaii_Jake I’m curious to know what you think after @jca‘s answer.

Honestly, I’m out. Continue having fun feeling superior and shitting on society’s unfortunate without me. It will obviously do a lot to help the children you claim this is all about ~

If there are truly people out there who think they can only get by if they “work the system,” that is a symptom of a broken system, not broken people. It is not my place to judge anyone.

My personal opinion about Hasidics is if your religion tells you that you should study in lieu of working, that’s ok but I shouldn’t have to pay for it.

I forgot to add that another benefit that the poor get that us in the middle class do not get is free school lunches. I pay $2.75 for my daughter’s lunch every day, not including the drink. If I qualified for free lunch and breakfast, that would be $75 saved every month (approximately, based on the number of school days in the month), on lunches alone, not including breakfast.

@jca Very insightful sharing.

@Mariah This trend here for people to assign “bashing” to hearty discussions about real issues doesn’t help anything. Just because something is controversial and evokes strong sentiments amonsgst others does not mean it is “bashing.” The facts remain, there are too many humans that continue to reproduce with no thought to the plight of their children or the planet. That’s a fact, how this global problem is resolved, well, unlikely that it will be. There may be problems with the “system” but the individuals capitalizing on that system need to take responsibility for their part as well.

That is a wonderful response, @jca. I had hoped that someone with knowledge of the system would make one like it.

I didn’t want to be the one (the only one, as I am so often) to say that “it’s a cultural thing”, but clearly it is. If some want to complain about “access” and “information”, well – maybe – but that seems to be more of a symptom of the problem than the root of the problem.

The primary root of most problems for most poor people is… culture. If you’re born into a culture that does not value education, self-discipline, work (for its own sake, sometimes), patience, planning, “exchange” of value for value and all of the other Calvinist virtues that “superior” (I went there) people and cultures value and use, then it’s unlikely that you will adopt them out of thin air. And the state certainly doesn’t push those, even if many state workers, as @jca ably demonstrates, DO live by and value those ideals.

It’s not race, it’s not specifically “class” (although these values highly tend to indicate class), and it’s not economic status – although it’s going to be very unusual for a person with those cultural values to NOT be in the lowest economic strata.

Culture tells most of the story, most of the time.

@CWOTUS Well said, and yes, I value @jca‘s personal, hands on, experience as a social worker and would hardly consider her actual, lengthy, career exposure to this problem as “anecdotal.” Proof is in the pudding.

Thanks everyone for sharing their perspectives and even their gripes. I didn’t get the chance to check in last night because I was at a work event, but I’m almost taken aback by how much engagement this topic is getting.

Clearly, it’s something a lot of people feel strongly about and I can see the merit to both sides of the argument. To quote the character Rebecca Bunch in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, “The situation is a lot more nuanced than that.” and I think this sums up the topic of reproduction vis-a-vis ethics, the environment, and the economy. There’s just no one-size-fits-all answer for something so fraught.

Sorry if I offended anyone, but as a pragmatist and a bit of a Malthusian I am concerned with our population soon outpacing resources. I’m all for having a social safety net and strongly believe that a civilized society has a responsibility to help its citizens—however, a culture of personal responsibility is key for any such efforts to be sustainable and seems to be sorely lacking in some as observed by many Jellies who have much more experience and knowledge on this topic than I do.

Also, Fluther should be a place where people can come and ask hard-hitting questions without being silenced, piled-on and shut down. I’m not shrinking violet, but let’s not be complicit in losing the open-minded culture that makes this forum great.

Have a great Friday, everyone and be well!

@LeavesNoTrace Very well said, I concur 100%. Good discussion.

@Mariah I absolutely agree. Broken system.

@CWOTUS In the 50’s blacks and whites had similar marriage stats, and similar children per family stats. Many people point to this as the welfare system creating a culture of dependency. I think we can look to the system as a problem. I’m not saying we should let people go hungry, or without shelter, absolutely not. But, I do think improving our system would help to shift the culture. Some may see that as none of our business to try to shift someone else’s culture, I guess that is an ethical question, but outside influences already have shifted the culture most likely.

For me, it’s not so much the welfare system, but much bigger that. Our society needs a shift. Socialized medicine for all would eliminate healthcare from the equation. That would be huge. Increasing wages would help. Lastly improving education at the high school level where students really see different futures to explore. It’s not just anoutvtraining abd academics, it’s about believing life can take new and unexplored directions.

That’s my opinion anyway.

I can’t really judge people very harshly, because if I was born into the same circumstance I’d probably have a similar thought pattern as them. I don’t know. I do know how I think partly has to do with how I was raised, and what people around me do.

Also special thanks to @jca for sharing her experience as both a Social Worker and a parent. Thanks for the important and challenging work you take on. You’re a good person and those kids are fortunate to have you in their corner.

This might be an “anecdote” but it comes from my actual life. One of my good friends, let’s call her May, is 12 years older than me. When I met her, she had 3 children, all from different fathers. At the time, the oldest was about 25, the middle kid was about 20 and her youngest was about 12. She was poor and receiving some assistance and living with her mother. The 2 oldest kids were out on their own. Let me amend that. Her oldest kid was out on his own, her middle daughter was in prison (for the first time) and that woman, let’s call her June, had her 2nd child while she was in prison the first time. She already had another child, who was about 5 at this time, and my friend and her mother were caring for him.

Once May’s daughter June got out of prison (having 2 children by different fathers) she hooked up with another man and got pregnant again, and then committed some more crimes and went to prison 2 more times. In the meantime, she just handed off her kids to her own mother and grandmother. The cycle just continued.

June, in my opinion, was a POS. She liked getting high, she liked thieving, and she like having sex, and she thought it was “cute” to have babies. She had no intention of raising those children herself, however.

My friend (who I love, but often shake my head at her own choices) didn’t mind having to take care of her own minor child, and her daughter’s 3 kids. She received assistance for all of them. Plus, she also thought it was kind of cool to have all of those kids. She never says a bad word about her grown daughter (the druggie, jailbird). It her world, all of this stuff seems totally normal. Most of her daughter’s friends are also drug addicts, and have been jailed multiple times. All of the daughter’s children’s fathers have been in jail, and on drugs at one time or another. None of the fathers pay any child support, because they are poor, and the mother doesn’t demand it. She doesn’t need to because her own mother has taken in her kids.

I think @jca is correct that there is a “subculture” in which certain people think it’s perfectly OK to keep on having children, doing drugs, and going to jail. It makes me sick, but there’s a lot of people around here doing just that. Birth control is easily obtainable, my friend’s daughter was even on (free) norplant for awhile, but then she had it taken out when she got together with the father of the most recent child. She wanted to get pregnant. Partly because she thought it was fun, and partly because she got more stuff from the government.

June’s oldest daughter is now 17 and is showing signs of continuing the trend. She already smokes pot, and has committed at least one theft that I am aware of. This girl’s cousin, who was also caught in the same theft, is also on drugs, and had her first baby (so far) at age 15. Everybody in the family thinks it’s “cute.”

The whole family has always been poor, and so have a lot of their friends. There has always been females in the family who have had multiple children by multiple fathers, with no marriages, and there has always been drugs flowing freely, and crimes being committed without any kind of shame, for at least 3 generations. I don’t see any sign of it stopping.

I guess the contrast is that my friends and family members, who are not considered poor, have had only one or two children, while they were married, and at least 2 of them had to use invitro to try get pregnant (both of those families had no success with invitro and ultimately adopted children). Some of these people have been divorced, but the ones I am aware of, did not continue having children with other people, after their divorces.

That is my “anecdote” for the day.

@JLeslie Good, well-thought-out points. Shifting the culture would be quite an undertaking and wouldn’t be accomplishable in one generation. I think that both sides of the political aisle tend to be very one-sided and extreme about the issue.

The Republicans are all about “bootstraps” and pulling yourself up by them, but how can someone who doesn’t have bootstraps in the first place even know how to do that? They want to fight a war on poor people, not a war on poverty.

The Democrats? They think that unlimited entitlement and subsidies for every possible thing will fix the problem. But I think most reasonable people know that simply throwing money at a problem rarely offers a real solution.

As I said before, there needs to be a confluence of outside assistance and personal responsibility. I’ve heard that the majority of Americans are 1–2 paychecks away from poverty, usually through no fault of their own. Sometimes even people who seem to “have it all” are barely holding on by a thread. However, no sane person would ever think it’s laudable or even remotely acceptable for people who are already impoverished to have several children they cannot afford.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Even 10 abortions is more ethical than one child raised in poverty, susceptible to abuse and neglect—with which there is a proven correlation as supported by the very people who work on the frontlines of these issues. A factual observation does not mean a lack of compassion. It may be an important first step in solving a societal problem.

Y’all need to get off of the “Scam the welfare” kick. Men and women do not have children thinking they will benefit from the government, because they won’t, and they know it. There is a cap to all the benefits.

And we need to stop pinning the “blame” for all these kids on the women.

@Kardamom Very sad but the scenario you share IS a very common one, and hence, part of the stereotypes that do have much truth to them.

@Dutchess_III You may be right, I never played the scam the system card just stated that it s immoral to keep reproducing if one is on the government dime. I’m not saying that people make a conscious decision to play the system but , regardless of the cap in their states and counties they still know they can receive a goodly amount of assistance so even if they still struggle they know they are eligible for the most they can get. I agree, men should take 50% of the BC responsibility but since it is the womans body and since most of the child rearing duties still fall on the woman she needs to be very pro-active and not leave it up to the guy to make sure they are covered.

I do not consider $475 a month in cash at the most to be a “goodly amount of assistance,” do you @Coloma? Plus you have to pay that back.
Have you ever been stuck in that system? It’s a nightmare. It’s not easy living. You deal with your own embarrassment, as well as the shame that the rest of society heaps on you to boot, while trying to figure out where to come up with the money for soap and toilet paper and school clothes for the kids.

@Coloma @Dutchess_III Agreed. I never said that I thought it was the norm for people to reproduce for the sole purpose of getting more assistance. And I also state several times that men are equally culpable for reproduction and the situation the kids live in. It takes two to tango and all.

Benefits caps vary from state to state and even county to county. NYC is super generous and will basically care for someone cradle to grave with basic and not so basic amenities. Now, this is purely anecdotal but my neighborhood is economically mixed with a number of public housing projects. I swear on my mother’s dust, my partner and I frequently see brand new premium cars sitting in the housing development parking lot. Did you know that a basic parking spot in NYC will cost you $200—$500 a month? Even their parking is free; true luxury in this town where space is a premium. And not just a few times, but quite often. I’m not just talking about Mercedes and BMWs—I’m talking Lamborghinis, Maybachs, etc. Beautiful, immaculate foreign cars that most middle and upper-middle class people can only dream of.

Now, I know that these people represent only a small number of the poor and that what happens on Wall Street is far more damaging to the economy. But scamming can and does happen and more often than some of us more bleeding heart types want to admit—myself included. Just a couple of years ago, a local bodega was running a racket on food stamps that came out to $2.7 million.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/2-7m-stolen-east-harlem-food-stamps-scam-article-1.2277126

As liberals, we often want to ascribe the best intentions to people, but sadly that’s not always the case. And just because Wall Street is worse—doesn’t make this remotely okay. Like I said, this could be a regional thing and doesn’t necessarily reflect what’s typical everywhere, but this is the truth in my neck of the woods.

@Dutchess_III Sorry if you had the experience of being in the system. You strike me as a hardworking and reasonable person so I’m sure it was hard for you. Hope things are better for you now. Of course, any compassionate, reasonable person can recognize that bad things sometimes happen to decent people despite their good faith efforts. That’s why there should be a system and it should not be abused—so those with a legitimate need and a desire to better themselves can get the help they need.

@Dutchess_III Well of course, $470.00 a month is not anything someone is going to thrive on, but, with a hefty food stamp benefit as well it certainly is hundreds of dollars more a month than the zero dollars the family has available on it’s own. I have always said that I don’t believe in the whole welfare king and queen mindset, that is a rarity, but any help is better than none and getting $6–700 a month in cash aide and food aide is a goodly amount even if it still relegates one to extreme poverty. If the person had to work to earn that same amount they would have to work 70 hours or more at min. wage which is $10.00 per hour in CA. now. Also, in my state a single person does not qualify for any cash aide, so those with kids have the advantage while a senior trying to live on a small pension and S.S. has no help available.

As a single woman who was financially devastated in the recession, if someone was giving me $475.00 a month in cash it would make a huge difference, huge!

@LeavesNoTrace Yes, it does happen, maybe not as much as some may claim but it certainly does. Read the article above that @RedDeerGuy1 posted on the FLDS cultists that hate the government but a huge majority of them are receiving welfare. Exactly, the best intentions thing but it comes down to the old saying that if you aren’t an idealist when you’re young you have no heart but if you are not a realist when you get older you have no brain.

@Kardamom God damn that is a sad story. Shows you that you can genuinely like someone as a person but also not agree with their choices while still rooting for them to turn themselves around. Sorry to hear that your friend’s situation. If that’s all someone has known, they don’t realize it’s wrong.

General question for someone who may know: Do certain states make people pay back their benefits? That would essentially make it like an interest-free loan. NYS is a gravy train compared to some places. (“gravy train” being relative and all.)

My ex tried to scam the system in Washington State. He kicked my daughter, who was 15 at the time, out of the house, but continued to try and claim benefits. He succeeded for a time, then got busted. And THAT lead to the state of Washington becoming aware that he was $27,000 in arrears in child support to me. At that point they made him start paying $150 a month for our 3 kids (my daughter had moved back home by then,) although I had 4 to take care of (my daughter was pregnant when she got home.)

@Coloma I got $700 a month in food stamps. Three times more than I needed. But you can’t wipe your butt with food stamps. You can’t get medicine for your kid with food stamps.
Yeah, if someone handed me $470 a month, in addition to my other income, and I had no one else depending on me, it would be great. But you won’t get it just for being a single woman. You have to have dependents.

What is $470 a month when you have 4 kids? You don’t get it, at all.

PLUS the one month I did get cash assistance, they kept my $150 in child support. Do the math.

There is a lot of low key poor-shaming going on here, whether some of you realize it or not. Shame on you.

@LeavesNoTrace I’m kind of scratching my head over the “premium cars” thing. How do they buy them?

@Dutchess_III So sorry to hear about your ex and how he treated you and your daughter. So glad he is your EX now.

To answer your question, I don’t have an answer and it makes me scratch my head too. Compared to most places NYC is super generous with benefits and entitlements which really breeds certain subcultures like @jca and @Kardamom have observed. It’s pretty easy to fly under the radar and not report your income or to make income illegally through selling drugs, stealing, etc. A lot of these criminals aren’t too bright and like to display their ill-gotten wealth with flashy cars, designer sneakers, and symbols of conspicuous consumption. Like I said, it’s not the norm and there are a lot of honest people out there who are just down on their luck, but it happens enough in my area that it’s becoming a problem. The dumb, flashy ones usually get caught so their high ride doesn’t last long, but the smarter ones are more discreet and can get away with it for quite a long time.

The middle class and the working class is really feeling the squeeze right now. I try to direct more of my ire toward Wall Street and the corrupt 1% elites than these idiots, but I’m only human and it’s very irksome to see it in real life. Admittedly hearing someone who lives on the system brag about having 11 kids is a real smack in the face when just the other day, my BF and I were crunching the hypothetical numbers and even though we desperately want a family, I feel like it’s further and further out of reach and it may not be a good choice given the scarcity of resources and just how hard things are right now. I’ve floated the idea of being child-free by choices but he swears that we can do it even if it won’t be perfect. Just don’t know anymore…

He treated all 3 of his kids like that. Just up and abandoned them. Moved 2000 miles away.

When my daughter had her son she applied for cash assistance. She got $200 a month. It got her through the next two months. They turned around and garnished the baby’s father’s paycheck for that $400. In retaliation the father, who has a very good job with the city and plenty of money, and who had seen the child all of one time, when he was born, hired a lawyer and sued for custody and child support. He was awarded 51% custody and child support. She’s been paying ever since. Her son is 11.

Welcome to the system.

To be clear on my points, I never said having babies is scamming the system. I said having a baby just means being in poverty with a baby, if you already are in poverty. I am not saying they do it without a second thought. I mean a few might, but I’m sure the majority think about the costs of having a baby and the time to some extent. Having said that I know people at every income level who don’t think it all completely through before the positive pregnancy test.

To someone in the middle class who lives check to check, it either means giving up something they used to do with the money, or maybe dunking down into poverty. Maybe they sell their motorcycle, or don’t take such nice vacations anymore. Maybe they keep their 4 year old car a few more years than they would have otherwise, or stop eating out so much. They don’t get extra money for having their baby, unless it does actually put them below the poverty line.

@Dutchess_III Not shaming just saying that it is one thing to experience extreme life losses like divorcing with small kids, job loss, health problems that prevent one from working but entirely another to start out in the system and keep bearing children when you have no hope in hell or desire or ability to change your circumstance. I am no stranger to hardship this last 4–5 years after maintaining a stable, middle class lifestyle for my entire life. Again while not enough to actually live a quality life on $700.00 a month in food aide and another $475.00 in cash aide is nothing to scoff at. As a single, older woman now I am very unhappy that I need to take medical assistance but I also paid into the system for 40 years, and no longer qualify and could not find a decent paying job with medical benefits in my 50’s and in my geographical zone and can no afford $500—$600.00 a month or more for good, private medical coverage.

I didn’t start out being a burden and continuing to reproduce at will and that is what I am “shaming” if you want to call it that. I am just saying that whatever amount someone receives is still better than a kick in the pants and the difference is the difference between needing temporary help or medical coverage due to hardship vs. looking at the system as a means of lifelong support when young, able bodied people can choose to not reproduce and better themselves and their circumstances. I am talking about the subculture discussed here not those like yourself or myself that came about our circumstances through no fault of our own.

I think it is very unfair that young, able bodied people can live off the system while middle aged people and seniors that have worked hard all their lives, raised families, held jobs, and lost it all due to the recession or health problems don’t qualify for jack shit. So yeah, I do hold little sympathy for some stupid little 23 year old that already has 2,3 or 4 kids and is living on welfare because of poor choices.

@Dutchess_III Sorry to hear about your daughter’s experience. Unfortunately, women and children are the ones who are most disadvantaged by financial hardship. By the sound of it, her ex is a really petty and fragile guy. That must be horrible for her. It also sounds like both you and her have made good faith efforts in your lives and that this is an example of benefits actually doing their job—helping people who need help. If only it could always be that way.

I sincerely hope things get better for your daughter, if they have not already.

@Coloma Also sorry to hear about your financial situation. That recession was and is a real bitch. I graduated in the midst of it and finding stable employment that will pay me what I’m worth has not always been easy. I also cannot afford health insurance and avoid getting sick and getting injured at all costs to the point of being hyper-cautious. The definition of “livin’ on a prayer”.

However, it’s important to note that the same recession that wiped you out also took a lot of jobs. My generation is having a hell of a time finding stable employment and the problem goes beyond just “millennial laziness” people like to gripe about. While we have dedicated a lot of time talking about people who don’t want to work (and yes, there are too many), it’s worth mentioning that most people do want to work and sometimes there’s just no available jobs.

I have no problem with the poor receiving assistance, especially as a temporary stop-gap to prevent absolute ruination. However, people also need to be basically responsible. For example, you have two kids and things are tight, maybe consider not having a third just yet until things improve. Of course, that doesn’t account for all cases, but it seems pretty sensible and doesn’t fall under the purview of “poor bashing”.

Oh, it gets better! So she’s been paying child support all of this time, but not through “the system.” She was giving them cash and they gave her receipts.
Well, all of this time she thought it was all good. Then she found out that all of that money she gave them didn’t count toward child support, even though she has the receipts, because it has to go through the system to count. She didn’t realize she was going deeper and deeper into arrears. No clue. But she knows now. They took her entire tax return, some $5000 with her EIC, this year, and I imagine they will for years to come.
She doesn’t even get to claim her son on her taxes.

She’s worked SO hard @LeavesNoTrace. They are getting better. She’s a fork lift drive so she makes better than average factory worker pay. It’s still hard, though.

@Coloma If you think $700 a month in worthless foods stamps, and $475 in cash to support a family of 5 is “a goodly amount,” I can only say with certainty that you have never been there.

@LeavesNoTrace My sentiments exactly. The “system” is there for those in need but should not be seen as a means of long term/ life long support and not birthing more children when under extreme financial duress is not “poor bashing.”

@Dutchess_III No, I have not been there in your exact circumstance but..you yourself said that $700.00 a month in food stamps was 3 times what you needed. I also agreed that $475.00 a month cash aide was hardly a supporting wage for a family, so what am I missing here that seems to have gotten your feathers ruffled? How is $700.00 a month in food stamps “worthless” exactly? Sure, they don;t buy TP, Toothpaste of dog food but having more than enough to provide good food is hardly a “worthless” benefit. You also went on to find good work teaching, got your R.E. license and didn’t just sit on your ass for 15 years raising your kids on public assistance.

@Dutchess_III Sorry if you already answered this, but this is a long thread. What state are you in? It sounds very different than my geographic region.

Your daughter’s ex is a real scumbag. A lot of men’s rights activists complain about child support. And yeah there are a lot of problems with the family court system, but they fail to account for how many women also pay child support only to have it squandered by their horrible exes.

Forklift driver is a good job. A lot of my former classmates who are doing alright drive forklifts at distribution centers around my hometown. Seems like stable work with good benefits. $5k is a lot of money to have to cough up, ugh that really sucks. Does she at least get partial custody or visitation with her son?

Yes @Coloma. I spent $200 a month on food so what GOOD did that extra $500 a month in food stamps do me? None. You can’t pay your rent with it, and I paid my own rent. Can’t pay your utilities with it, and I paid my own utilities. When my daughter was in section 8 housing, right after she had the twins (lovely places, section 8) they gave her a flat rate of $50 a month to put toward the utilities. She always scrambled to come up with the rest every month. But she got boat loads of food staps.
Do you understand what I mean by worthless now? $200 wasn’t worthless. The rest was.
You keep acting like that $700 can be counted as income. Only a fraction of it can.

I can’t blame you really. If you’ve never been there you have no idea what a hard scrabble, miserable existence it is. If you’ve never been there it’s easy to assume that people who are are getting a free ride. To a certain extent, they are, but it’s a miserable ride.

Edit. Section 8 gave her $35 a month for her utilities.

She was scared shitless to apply for cash assistance, though, as you can imagine, so she was always broke. I bought a lot of staples for her and she’d give me her food card in return and I’d get that much in food for us from the store. So all that extra wasn’t AS worthless, but many people will just shake their heads in disgust at the trade, won’t they.

When she was able to go back to work she got a part time job at Taco Bell. The state paid a set amount for child care, but the baby sitter was greedy and kept demanding more and more and more per week from my daughter. Plus she had to start paying rent. She was soon further underwater than she’d been before. You know. The easy life.

But to get back to the question, with the first two my daughter thought it would mean a home, a family, kids who had a mom AND dad around, financial security. When the guys were trying to get her to have sex, they promised her that. Of course, it didn’t turn out that way.
The twins were an accident. She was so pissed off at her self, she called me in tears. “I can’t believe I did it again Mom! I am so stupid!”

@Dutchess_III I never insinuated that food stamps could be used as income, simply that &700.00 a month in food stamps is a huge amount of extra help. Clearly you are getting worked up because of your personal experiences and I can understand that.
Brings up emotionally charged memories I’m sure, however…. I do know what a hardscrabble and miserable existence can be, I have lived it myself the last 4.5 years now and while I have a home with utilities included for my work arrangement.
I also am living on about $800.00 a month cash for all of my other needs.

A big fall from the grace of my old life so do not assume your experience is any better or worse than mine or anyone elses. For the first time in my life I live in terror of a major car repair, vet bill , dental costs after not having these worries since my 20’s. Digression in ones older middle age is just as sucky as your experience as a single mother with children trying to get by with what you were eligible for. Lets not go down the dueling tales of woe path, waste of energy.

Shit is shit, but….my point is that working to better yourself and get off public assistance is the noble path opposed to those that see coasting on the government dime for years as a way of life without putting forth any effort to change their circumstances and continuing to irresponsibly push out children they cannot afford. You bettered yourself and got off the merry-go-round, many do not.
Your daughter sounds like she was naive, not necessarily stupid but there is plenty of just plain stupid out there.

You’re refusing to look beyond the dollar amount of the food stamps. Yes, of course it’s a help, duh, but the sheer dollar amount means nothing special, because you can’t use them for anything else. Man, if we’d gotten $10,000 a month in food stamps, we’d be RICH, right? Wouldn’t have to worry about a thing. Except everything else that can’t be bought with them. So all but $200 of that $10,000 would be worthless.

So you’re living on $800 a month for everything. No bad for single woman. Not bad at all. I would also be comfortable on that if everything else was pretty much paid for.
I was earning ~$1000 a month and had to make that stretch around 4 kids, rent, utilities, and gas for the car and everything else except food.
$800 a month just for me, though, with the big bills already paid, would be more than enough. More than enough.

@Dutchess_III I get it, but now YOU are assuming my income is more than enough. No, it is barely enough to get by with no savings whatsoever after having several hundred k in the bank for years. It takes me months to stash away a little extra. It’s all relative. $800.00 a month is just barely enough to keep food on the table, gas in my car, buy pet food and personal products with zero extra for emergencies. Pretty shitty after years of solvency.
Anyway…we have gone off the rails here and I have a friend coming for dinner soon, over and out.

I understand. But with just yourself to take care of is a whole lot easier than having 5 people trying to live on that. Whole lot easier.
And yeah, if the government was to give you an additional $470 a month it would be great. But $470 a month, period, is not so great.

Last one, and I’ll quit. Interesting that you say it’s tough living on $800 a month just for you, but you consider $475 a month for a family of 5, with no other income, a “goodly amount.”

@Dutchess_III Really? I never said I considered it a good income. I said it was better than nothing when it comes to free money. I said it was hardly a supporting income.

I said that $700.00 a month in food stamps and $475.00 in cash aide was nothing to scoff at and yes, a goodly amount, but nowhere did I say it was adequate to care for a family of 5. Nowhere. $1,175 a month combined cash and food benefits IS a goodly amount even if inadequate. Read my posts above

You said, ”...they still know they can receive a goodly amount of assistance…” For a family of 5 I wouldn’t consider $475 a “goodly” amount. Food stamps, yes. More than enough, but they can only be used for food nothing else. That’s what you need to understand, and quit combing the two to come up with figures like, ”$1,175.” In reality it’s more like $475 + $200, if that’s all you use.

$475 to buy personal items, diapers, cleaning supplies, clothing, school supplies, medicine for 4 kids, gas, no. And if you have any other income, like child support, they take it from you. If you actually get a job you don’t get cash assistance.

So no. For all intents it is not a “Goodly amount.” It’s more like $675 combined, plus throw in a passel of kids. And yet you struggle with only $800 for just you alone!

For the sake of argument, lets say a person gets $100,000 in food stamps and $475 in cash. Holy crap! Combined, that’s $100,475 dollars every month! They’ll be on easy street FOREVER!!

Don’t forget WIC, people. WIC is a federal program so what you get is the same whether you live in Idaho or New York. Each child gets a major amount of food and the mom gets a major amount, too. Read on:

https://www.fns.usda.gov/wic/wic-food-packages-maximum-monthly-allowances

I was not fortunate enough to be eligible for WIC. People that I know that received WIC got so much formula they’d give it away or sell it.

The nerve. Poor people getting money to eat!

Ask these people the last time they were able to drive a brand new car, take their kids to tennis lessons, take a vacation for a week or just be able to get out of their neighborhood for a couple days.

Food is never a problem for Welfare recipients who have children. It probably contributes to the obesity problems! It’s the other things we need to live that is the problem.

Did you know that in Kansas they passed a law that people who receive their sorry bit of cash assistance can not use that to send their children to the pool? Not that they could afford to anyway (I couldn’t. My kids had to make do with the river!) but to make such a thing a law is unconscionable, in my opinion.

@Dutchess_III I stand by my sentiments, it is a goodly amount because it is all FREE aide. Any FREE help is a goodly amount for those that have zero other resources. $475.00 in cash aide is $475.00 more than $0.00.
I never said it would support a family in any sort of, remotely, decent fashion just that you can’t scoff at being handed almost $500.00 a month for free.

I’m sure if a single, homeless person qualified for $475.00 a month they’d feel pretty happy about it even if it wasn’t going to rent them an apartment. Something is always better than nothing, that is my only point.

@djbabybokchoy Agreed, it sucks to be really poor no matter what aide a person qualifies for.

Who is scoffing? I’m not. I’m saying $475 is not a “goodly amount.” You can’t possibly live on it.
Yes, you get a goodly amount of food stamps but I never used even half of it, so the rest just went to waste. I’m saying you can’t add the two together and act like, “So what’s the problem? You’re getting $1, 200 in benefits a month!”

A single homeless person with no disability would not qualify for cash assistance. That $475 is the MAX. They will only pay that amount for a family of 5. If you have 8 kids you still only get $475. If you only have 1 kid you don’t get nearly that much. If you have 0 kids you get $0 assistance.

Different counties have different benefits.

In the county I work in (very wealthy, one of the wealthiest in the country), a single homeless person with no disability would qualify for some benefits but would have to go to a “drop in shelter” where you take what you own with you in the morning when you leave and you return at the end of the day with your belongings in hand. However, a single person with children (a family) who is homeless qualifies for a shelter that is not unlike an apartment. This answers the question for some – what are the motivations for low income people to have so many children? You get the nicer shelter in addition to all the other benefits. Score!

@Dutchess_III Okay, you’re right, you can drop the bone now Dutchie, it;s been chewed to death.

@jca Yes, score for some.

No…wait…you only need ONE child to qualify for shelter, not several, which is what the question is asking. You might qualify for more bedrooms depending on the ages and sexes of the children, like my daughter did, but you don’t get a bigger living room or kitchen or whatever.

And then back to what I described above. If you get sanctioned, the more kids you have, the more of a cushion you have for the sanction.

What is “sanctioned”?

Oh, sry. I did a search and found where you described it.

So, you mentioned a cut in “income” due to sanctions. Are you referring to cash assistance? What “income” are you referring to?

Around here, if you don’t file your paperwork they just cut you off!

Cash and food stamps, @Dutchess_III.

I don’t work in NYC but here’s an explanation of sanction and how it works. The explanation explains that only the one parent’s share gets cut, temporarily, not the children, hence my description of one reason why it’s beneficial to have a few children.

http://www.informationforfamilies.org/Theres_No_Place_Like_Home/Welfare_15.html

Seems like we should just go to supplying decent housing for everyone, so that’s not an incentive. Maybe give less money to women who have a baby while on public assistance, so they’re more likely to not have babies. The system is giving them incentive to have babies. I’d want the kids to be safe and fed, so somehow we would have to accomplish that without making it better for the women to have babies.

For teens we could give them money for not getting pregnant, but it’s not just teens getting pregnant. It’s manipulative, and again some people might object on ethical reasons, but people are already being manipulated in a way.

Or, we can just decide as a society that we should spend more money on everyone growing up in good conditions, and remember that new births are part of what we hope for to sustain social systems like social security. I wish they would revamp that, but for now, young people paying in, help pay what money is paid out.

@JLeslie: I think Republicans will never go for cash payments for people not to get pregnant. In addition, the majority of college kids would qualify, which would mean big tax increases for everyone. Republicans would rather cut welfare and social programs so that would be a disincentive for people to have babies. I think that is unethical because then who suffers? The kids, and they didn’t do anything to deserve it. Also, crime would probably go up because people would be desperate to feed their kids.

I think a solution is pushing education as a way to get out of poverty. You have a promising future ahead of you if you just go to school, stay in school, choose a career path, get something for yourself and then you can think about having kids. Having kids to “get a man, keep a man, be with a man, steal a man from another woman” is not the answer. It’s the way to get yourself stuck in a shit hole.

When I started doing child welfare work in 2001, the families I dealt with were moms with little toddlers and young kids. Now those toddlers and young kids are already having babies themselves and the moms on my caseload that were around 30 in 2001 are now grandmothers. Now those new moms have caseworkers of their own, a rite of passage like I described above.

Wow so women’s have lots of kids so that if they don’t bother to fill out the paperwork one month they won’t be so hard hit? That is just ridiculous! I imagine they lose everything if they do it two months in a row.

@Dutchess_III: They can be sanctioned for a whole bunch of reasons. Failure to comply with a meeting, a program, failure to report income, etc. If you have a job and get fired from it, that’s another reason. I don’t make the rules.

It’s a warning though. If they keep screwing up they lose it all no matter how many kids right?

The mom can lose it but not the kids.

So if she simply quits filling out paperwork every month the benefits just keep rolling in?

I don’t think they’re filling out paperwork every month. There are things they need to do but it’s not necessarily involving coming to the office to fill out paperwork.

I had to fill out paperwork every month and report any changes in income. I had to provide pay stubs every month.
I’m asking if they quit doing what they’re supposed to do to keep receiving benefits they keep coming in for the kids anyway?

Yes, @Dutchess_III. Like I said, the kids still get their benefits, the moms don’t. Hence the advantage (one of the advantages) of having multiple children. If there is one child, half the benefits stop. If there are 4 children, 20% or 1/5 of the benefits stop. I explained it that way up above.

@jca More than a few people where I live who worked in varying professions from robotics to economics, and who are very interested in how to solve unemployment and poverty, all firmly believe there simply won’t be enough jobs for the population in the future. The suggestion they think that should be seriously considered are a universal payment to all citizens, they usually say $10k a year. A shorter work week is another. These are people who I don’t feel are driven by political party or ideology, but rather they have really looked at possible options for the problem that seem feasible.

I would love a shorter work week!

Maybe instead of payments for not having children, tax breaks for not having children might be more do-able.

@jca Tax breaks for the poor don’t do anything I don’t think. The poor don’t pay much in taxes. Unless you mean exempt them from paying into social security and Medicare, or something like that? They kind of are already exempt if they get EIC money.

I would love a shorter work week too! I asked my husband what he thought about running our business only 4 days a week. Sometimes M-TH and sometimes T-F so at least once a month there would be a 4 day weekend for everyone. We couldn’t do it during our peak season, but during the summer we could possibly. We already do 4 days for July 4, Memorial Day, and Labor Day weeks.

The problem is the customers, they expect you to be open M-F. If the expectation in the country changed that would be really helpful. If the government changed the work week to 36 hours, or maybe as low as 32, but that seems like a very big cut, it would help.

Anything under 40 hours would be considered part time and not eligible for any benefits. Again, the worker would suffer.

We have a job opening that pays $12 an hour and this one guy interested in the job told my husband he “currently makes $15 and is barely making, because he has 4 kids.”

@chyna Not if the federal government changes the work week.

I think it was back in the 1940’s when the fed made the 8 hour day and 40 hour work week standard. When I started at Bloomingdales in 1990 they paid overtime for anything over 8 hours a day, you didn’t even need to meet 40 hours a week. Possibly, NYC Bloomies still abides by that, I don’t know, I doubt it. Bloomies used to do a lot of things the union fought for in all stores, but then they got away from some of that in other branch stores while I was employed there.

I don’t see how less hours will help.

Thanks to everyone that left a comment on this topic. I know that we may not all agree about this, but I think it was a worthwhile discussion and an enlightening one. Please keep in mind that opinions are just that—opinions, and don’t keep anyone from living their lives. What’s important is that we have the opportunity and the venue to express our opinions. Whether you love or hate what someone has to say, I find it beneficial that we use our right to debate and have an open dialogue as much as possible.

@LeavesNoTrace Yep, freedom of speech in all its glory. haha

@chyna It was a suggestion regarding unemployment. Less hours means more people would hopefully be employed.

Well, that makes no sense @jca. So the Mom starts receiving all these benefits for the children and they never, ever end, no matter what. She could go back to work and simply not report it and keep receiving benefits.
That makes no sense to me.

@LeavesNoTrace Speaking of the conspicuous consumption. My friend’s daughter (June) has about 20 tattoos. I’ve heard folks here on Fluther say that they would like to get a new one, but it is very expensive so they have to save up to get one. This woman has a lot of them. I don’t know how she pays for them, but I suspect it is through drug money, or theft.

She also scammed the system, somehow, regarding her mandated living situation after she got out of prison the third time. She was supposed to be in a half way house for 6 months or a year, not exactly sure, so that she could be watched. After a month, she moved in with some guy, who she claimed was her boyfriend. I believe he was simply her drug connection. I’m not sure how she was able to just walk away from the half way house without some kind of repercussions. She also took possession of her 2 minor daughters from my friend (their grandmother who has been caring for them for all these years) because she gets more financial assistance when they are with her. She is probably the worst mother I’ve ever known. Over the years, Child Protective Services has been called out to her home multiple times, but nothing ever seems to happen that helps.

It pains me that my friend (the mother of this dreadful woman) doesn’t seem to view any of this as terrible, just a few minor nuisances.

@JLeslie How would less hours make more jobs? Do you mean that if I was given less hours someone else could take the hours I wasn’t working? So that would mean they would pay two salaries and two sets of benefits. Also, with less hours, I would have to take on another job to make ends meet. I don’t see the logic in less hours giving more people jobs.

@chyna If the work week was less hours I would likely have 4 mechanics instead of 3 to handle our workload. It happens to cost me more, because I would need a 4th work van, but if we had a shop where we did the work it wouldn’t cost me anything more to employ 4 people instead of 3.

It depends on the type of business how realistic it is. If the business is open 7 days a week like retail, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, then they would employ more people to handle all of the shifts. Hospitals already use 3 days weeks, 3 12 hour shifts for nurses isn’t uncommon.

Remember that this is suggested by people I know who also see part of the equation having socialized medicine, and in the extreme some of them are for $10k from the government.

The employer doesn’t have to worry about benefits that much if healthcare coverage is through taxes.

Many people like the idea of a 4 day workweek even if it’s still 40 hours, but that’s different. It would be great for a lot of reasons though. One day less commute saves gas, 3 days off can wind up being more productive than longer evenings at home after a work day. People might travel more, which would increase the tourist revenue. It’s tricky when it comes to kids and childcare though.

So this is way beyond your first simple answer of “less hours will make more jobs.”

@chyna My answer above was:

@jca More than a few people where I live who worked in varying professions from robotics to economics, and who are very interested in how to solve unemployment and poverty, all firmly believe there simply won’t be enough jobs for the population in the future. The suggestion they think that should be seriously considered are a universal payment to all citizens, they usually say $10k a year. A shorter work week is another. These are people who I don’t feel are driven by political party or ideology, but rather they have really looked at possible options for the problem that seem feasible.

You said If the government changed the work week to 36 hours, or maybe as low as 32, but that seems like a very big cut, it would help. This is what I was referring to. But due to the fact this question has been totally derailed, I’m going out now so as not to be more of the derailment.

I said all those things. It’s all part of the conversation. The smaller work week would mean more employment for more people, and for it to work well across many industries we probably need other changes made.

@JLeslie what you say is partially true. Shorter work weeks do lead to more people being employed. But I give you the current situation. When Obamacare was passed into law, businesses started cutting out full time employees in favor of part time employees. Part time and seasonal employment is higher now than it ever has been. However, the median family income also dropped about 20% at the same time. So yes, more people are working, but they are falling farther behind because once you make it part time, you can get 0–39 hours per week. Most get 15 to 20 per week so there is little chance they would ever be considered full time.

@seawulf575 I never agreed with the federal government mandating employers offer healthcare for full timers. Moreover, if the government makes the work week shorter, then full time is not 40 hours, it’s whatever the government says it is. Keep in mind the fed rules under ACA for offering healthcare is not 40 hours (your 0–39 is incorrect, but I don’t remember the number). I’m not in favor of it anyway, never have been. I hate healthcare through employers, I think it’s a terrible system. My company is so small I don’t offer anything, so it’s moot for me anyway, but a lot of businesses in America are large companies so it matters for the discussion. Better yet, as I said, put socialized medicine in place and none of the healthcare question matters.

Like I told @chyna, I’m talking about a whole system change if we shorten the work week.

If we keep the work week 40, and just go to 4 days, that is better in many ways, which I mentioned above, and should save employees money on commuting and wear and tear on cars, even needing less clothing if you take it to an extreme.

At the lower income levels if you shrink the workweek to 32 hours you probably have to increase wages or have the universal supplemental income from the government. At the higher income levels many people are happy to make less for less days working. I would happily make $80k instead of $100k for a 4 day, 32 hour work week. I don’t make $100k, but I just use it as an example.

Also, my guys don’t always get 40 hours anyway.

By the way, my husband used to get 4 weeks paid vacation. If I had stayed in my career I would have the same, maybe 5 at this point, plus 2 personal days. 4 weeks, 20 days, means almost half the year my husband could theoretically work 4 days weeks, then add in when the business was closed on Monday holidays anyway, and Christmas and Thanksgiving, that’s another 5 at least. My former career was in retail, and many retailers only let you take a week vacation at a time, which is stupid, maybe that has changed.

@JLeslie I only brought up Obamacare as the catalyst that brought on the economic change. We can debate the benefits of Obamacare or some socialistic healthcare all day long, but the point I was making is that we do see more people working and losing ground. Now, it sounds like what you are proposing is that we actually bump wages for people to make up for working less. As a business owner, does that make sense? “Hey JL….I’m going cut your hours from 40/week to 32/week, but I’m going to bump up your pay to make up for the fewer hours. Yeah, I get less productivity out of you and I will have to hire more people to actually produce what we are currently producing, but at least you will be happier.”
You mentioned supplemental income from the government. I can’t tell you how much that disturbs me. Our government should not be paying everyone in the nation to not work. That will break the economy quicker than anything. While it sounds like a great idea for people to get something for nothing, that is a falsehood. The government would have to crank up taxes to be able to cover the costs. I don’t know about you, but my taxes are high enough and I have zero confidence that our elected leaders are capable of spending them responsibly. Giving them more money is foolish at best.
I currently work a 4 day work week. But it is 4 ten hour days. I like working that schedule because I get 3 days off every week. But I do work 40+ hours every week. The company gets the same productivity out of me. But here is another key…we are humans. No one is satisfied with their lot. People I know that are working 4 10 hour days would feel they were being screwed if they had to work 5 8 hour days. They feel they are entitled to pay raises whether they earn them or not. They feel they are entitled to bonuses and if they aren’t big enough they complain. If you were to lower the work week to 32 hours, people would then start complaining that was too much. They should be able to work 20 and get paid full time wages for it. I have already seen changes in attitude like that. I have seen recent college grads trying to enter the workforce. They feel that they ought to start at 5 figures. They feel it is unfair that they actually have to be at work at 8 in the morning. They feel 40 hours a week is ridiculous. They want to start with 4 weeks of vacation every year. They state that they ought to be able to work from home all the time, regardless of what the employer wants. All that really does sound wonderful, but it is not realistic all the time. And employers need to watch costs. I have seen business that I never thought could close up, do exactly that because operating costs were too high. Closing the business and putting all the employees out on the street is a better option.

^^Agreed that employers won’t like paying more, except to say that if minimum wage went up, then all my competitors would have to pay more too, and prices to the customer would go up a little bit to cover it, and I would be very happy with that. I would love to pay my mechanics more, but I can’t raise prices because of competition. I already pay more than many, and I give them a week vacation, which none of my competitors do that I know of. If my competitors were forced to raise what the pay, it would probably be a better situation for me as an employer, and better for society. The jobs I do run from $35 to $800 usually. The price point most often is $79—$250. Adding $5 an hour into a job is so minimal for the person buying our services, but huge for my mechanic. He would not get the full $5 because I pay taxes and insurance for him, but it would be $4 an hour at least.

However, I was primarily talking about this discussion and lectures I’ve been to regarding a universal income. I was reluctant about it too, but more and more I’m very interested in the idea.

Poverty has all sorts of terrible for the individual and society. It’s much better if we can have everyone living at least a minimum standard of food, shelter, safety, and education. If everyone gets the money then you can’t accuse the lower class of getting an entitlement, because everyone is getting it. The money for it can be skimmed off the top. People don’t need to earn $5million a year in salary. I’m sure CEO’s would happily do their jobs for $1million if that was the norm.

@JLeslie I believe I am far more cynical than you. Mankind is a flawed bunch. There are too many of the 7 deadly sins and not enough of the 7 heavenly virtues. And because of this, the idea that you could do away with poverty is folly. Man has always had the haves and have-nots. Poverty is not fun. Been there and done that and didn’t like the ride. But especially in today’s USA, we have CEOs that are getting multi-million bonuses while the workers jobs get cut. We have politicians that decide how tax dollars are spent not based on what is good for the country, but rather what is good for them. We have a whole section of society that lives on the public dole. In fact many of our entitlement programs are designed to keep the poor down. We have several generations that believe that they are owed whatever they desire…not what they deserve or earn. As long as we have money (the concept, not the cash), there will be greed and people that will try to screw others over so they can get more of it. I would say that if you took all the money in the country and split it evenly between every man, woman, and child, within about one generation, we would be right back to where we are now….with some having a lot and many having very little.

^^I agree that there isn’t a perfect solution. There are flaws in everything. The government right now does do a lot of spending I disagree with, but the private sector does too, and thieves are everywhere. Every day I see doctors here robbing the system, I hear of people discussing their stock holdings and all the profits being made by big corporations. The other thing I see though is the majority of residents who don’t work, but stay busy all day having fun, helping other people, and a few people still work. It’s a very nice way to live. Even the least expensive parts of my town ($85k for a mobile home) enjoy all the services and facilities here.

You’re right some will always have more money than others, I’m fine with that, I want that, but our economy has a lot of money. The have nots, as you call them, still seem to have smartphones and all sorts of things that surprise me. What I want is safety. That’s one of the biggest things I think is a problem in poor urban neighborhoods. Living unsafely affects you mentally. It changes who you are. The birth rate, to come back to the Q, can make things worse, because having a lot of children born into bad urban conditions makes things even harder. On a farm it might be different, but we aren’t living in a lot of farms anymore.

Having the attitude that there will always be poor, and so too bad that’s just their lot in life isn’t acceptable to me. Plus, you don’t have to be poor in America to wind up in a financial crisis, and you don’t have to be poor to be affected by poverty.

@Dutchess_III: I never, ever said the mom receives benefits forever. You’re equating “doesn’t have to fill out forms every month” with “receives benefits forever.” All documents on Section 8 and public assistance say not only do people have to recertify once a year, but whenever their circumstances change (change in household composition, change in income, etc.) they must notify the department in writing immediately, which may or may not mean coming in to fill out forms. If anybody chooses to continue receiving public assistance once they return to work, they risk arrest and they will definitely at the very least have to pay the money back.

This conversation is becoming very tiresome.

@JLeslie: Your most recent comment about the “have nots” having all sorts of things like smart phones, you’re right. I can assure anybody that if you come to the outside of the Social Services offices you’ll see people with the best smart phones, beautiful new sneakers, manicures, the latest designer handbags. They’re standing there smoking cigarettes, which in NY are over ten dollars a pack. It’s almost ludicrous.

@JLeslie Agreed, after being devastated in the financial crisis and having to file a bankruptcy I felt extremely ashamed, an emotion have never had to cope with, ever. My bankruptcy attorney told me that my case was quite straighforward and that the stigma of bankruptcy is not what it used to be. That the top reasons for filing these days are job loss and medical bills. In my case it was the job loss that fueled the ultimate trickle down effect culminating in my little Titanic being bashed against the iceberg of the horrible economy. My attorney also told me he had clients that had, literally, over 200 creditors, can you imagine?

Didn’t completely remove my extreme unhappiness at finding myself in that situation after decades of solvency and prosperity but it did help me to not feel quite so terrible, as if it was my fault due to reckless spending habits. So yes, one does not have to be poor to experience a financial crisis.

I asked you, @jca, if sanctions were just a warning, and if they kept screwing up month after month, they’d lose all their benefits. You replied, “Only the Mom.”

Here.

Your response is just below that.

It certainly sounds like they can keep rolling in no matter what.

OK @Dutchess_III: It was a misunderstanding, a miscommunication.

Every state is different and I don’t answer for the rules. Any further questions, see your local public assistance website or call a worker. I’m tired and I’m done.

@JLeslie It would be nice to be able to solve these problems here. But I will be honest, I am just not smart enough to solve them. In my mind, most of the problems come back to personal responsibility. If you have personal responsibility, strive to rule your own destiny, you make choices that benefit you and your society. Being poor is no excuse for being a jerk. MLK Jr felt that education and perseverance were the keys to overcoming racial boundaries. Yet today, many blacks have totally ignored those ideals in favor of the entitlement life. Many of the troubled neighborhoods are filled with people who demonstrate little to no personal responsibility.
I took responsibility for my life long ago. I made choices that were designed to help me as a person and in life. Choices like obeying the law, having standards, career choices, choosing to work hard and believe that giving an honest days work for an honest days wage was the way it should be. Some of these choices do not come with instant gratification, and that is where, in my opinion, many people fall down these days. And not all my choices were good, but I knew that if I made a bad choice, I could make more choices to correct my path.
Imagine if we had everyone in society doing that! We would have new businesses cropping up, more jobs, people willing to work, etc. But the problem that we will not solve is how do you get people to accept that?

@seawulf575 The system does play a part though. We can’t just blame personal responsibility. We also can’t blame race or ethnicity, but we can look at cultural norms I think.

I’ve lived in the South where the history there effects the present day. I have a hard time blaming the people in poverty for their situation, when I know how different it is in places that don’t have the history. I do NOT mean they are racist there now, I mean they were in the past, and they deal with some of the effects. Not that there wasn’t racism even in parts of the North, but the difference is really surprisingly quite different.

My MIL never planned how many kids she would have. She told me she never thought of such a thing. Her daughter certainly did. Different times, different circumstances, different education level, different religiousity, different expectations.

In CA. if you receive medi-cal, you are allowed to own a home but, upon your death the monies will be taken from your estate. If you own no home and have no assets you are under no obligation to reimburse the state. You are also only allowed to have 2k in savings. Things I found out during my crisis.

In Kansas, if you don’t comply, you’re cut off completely, including kids.

My point was, if a parent gets sanctioned, having a bunch of children is only a temporary benefit, month to month. I can’t imagine people having a bunch of kids reasoning that “Well, if I don’t feel like complying for a month I’ll still have these benefits.” What is a month?

@Dutchess_III: In the state of Kansas, you are correct in reference to TANF only when the sanction is from work requirements. Then yes, the whole household gets sanctioned. When it’s for fraud or drugs, only the adult individual gets sanctioned. (Page 13 and 19).

http://content.dcf.ks.gov/ees/KansasTANFStatePlan.pdf

Those rules are not for Medicaid or food stamps, which are federal programs. For TANF, the state gets a block grant and has some leeway with how to use it and enforce it.

@jca, but sanctions are a warning right? They keep screwing up month after month and they lose everything eventually. Is that correct?

I am not sure what Kansas does, but I forgot to mention the recipient has the right of an appeal, also.

Well, that still doesn’t answer the question.

I said I’m not sure what Kansas does.

I already know what Kansas does. They flat cut you off completely, in a heartbeat.

I’m asking about NY, or where ever you’re from. Will they cut them off completely if the mother continues to not comply month after month?

@Dutchess_III It varies county-to-county. I grew up in Montgomery County, NY, currently the 8th poorest county by household income out of 62 counties. In the 90s, a lot of low-income people from other parts of the state moved in because the entitlements were generous and it was pretty easy to get assistance since we’re a blue state, that tend to elect Democrats.

For some, there was a legitimate need and I do know people who received temporary help when they were in a bad situation and then went on to be totally self-sufficient and financially stable. However, welfare fraud was always an issue since there isn’t much accountability and people can pretty much fly under the radar in any number of ways.

NYC is even more generous and there’s pretty much nothing you can’t get here on public assistance. To be fair, they do have their reasons for it. With homelessness always an issue, they want to prevent that in any possible way. So giving people food, shelter, education, cash benefits, and any number of other resources is a way to keep people off the street, even if it doesn’t provide a great life necessarily.

This not-too-old article from the NY Post goes into it in more detail. Granted, they lean more to the right than I do, but their info is correct. NYC provides more entitlements to low-income residents than Sweden or France. However, for the segment of society that has little to no interest in improving their lot in life, it can also be detrimental as it creates an underclass of people who are docile and accustomed to being incentivized not to work and focus instead on reproduction and merely existing.

http://nypost.com/2015/08/25/new-york-welfare-more-generous-than-sweden-or-france/

As you’ll see, NYC’s anti-poverty initiatives are fraught with problems and abuse:
“A recent government report found that New York had almost 11,000 families with income over the statutory limit still living in public housing, by far the most in the nation; one family earning almost $500,000 continued to receive assistance.”

Could explain some of the Lamborghinis I’ve seen parked outside of the projects…

From what you describe, it sounds like Kansas is much stricter and requires a lot more accountability from people on public assistance. However, since it’s pretty easy to go undetected, New York State can be a gravy train for someone whose main interests are hanging out and pumping out kiddos.

The question was a specific one, not a general one, so maybe you can answer it. From what @jca said, sanctions can be established, whereupon the one parent loses their benefits, but not their 67 kids. The question is are those sanctions warnings? If they continue with not complying will they lose their benefits altogether, eventually?

Yeah, Kansas is strict. One year the kids lost their state health insurance because I made $12.00 a year too much in income. Sucked.

@Dutchess_III In NYC it’s pretty rare for someone to lose their benefits even if they royally f*ck up. That would not have happened to you here.

Huh. So the benefits just keep rolling in, no matter what. No wonder abuse is so rife. So, people have kids n kids n kids so they can keep scamming the system. What a life.

I found a thang that lists NY benefits for house holds. Looks miserable. Livable I guess, but miserable.

I always try to go right to the government document when I look for info, rather than a secondary source. Here’s what I was researching to try to learn about sanctions and what happens when you keep f’ing up.

https://otda.ny.gov/programs/applications/4148B.pdf

What I should do, and will do, is just email one of my friends that is a “worker” and see if I get an answer. I’ll have to specify that it’s for the online community and not something specific, because I don’t want him to get paranoid that I’m trying to help someone get over with their benefits.

The document I linked tells all about what kind of money and help is available in NYS.

I can tell you that there are legal ways of hiding your assets and receiving Medicaid (Medicaid is the federal program for medical care for the indigent). I know that from working for an elderlaw attorney during college and then now, working for the local government and doing home visits to Medicaid recipients, and knowing of affluent people who hook up their parents with Medicaid.

@Dutchess_III It depends on what the circumstances are and what other types of aid you may qualify for. Keep in mind that in addition to a cash EBT they may also receive free and low-cost housing, free childcare, free lunch, utility assistance, WIC/pregnancy entitlements, free healthcare (which I think should be a universal right), free career counseling, etc. It’s not uncommon to receive a benefits package valued at more than 28K and the state/city also will allow them to work if they want to.

Tacking on to what @jca just said, If you look at the NY Post article I linked to above, in 2015 there were 11,000 families with incomes over the stated limits still living in public housing and even a case of a family with an annual income of 500K receiving benefits. With our current mayor, De Blasio, this is an ongoing issue and harkens back to our darkest days under Dinkens.

Oh and they are building two more billionaire apartment towers which mar the skyline as we speak. This is not a city for people who work for a living and sometimes, as much as I love it, I think my partner and I should consider getting out.

In NYC, now, developers of market rate rentals can get tax exemptions if they set aside a certain percentage of new development for low or moderate income renters:

https://ny.curbed.com/2017/4/11/15257926/nyc-affordable-housing-revival-developer-incentives

Keep in mind that in New York, “Market rate” means a studio for $2500 a month, minimum.

I know @LeavesNoTrace. I was in “the system” for quite a few years. I was in the system when the state suddenly decided that adults who weren’t disabled didn’t qualify for state medical no matter how poor they were. Fortunately I’d had life-saving surgery just weeks prior to that. But yeah. Kids had health insurance, but I didn’t for about 4 years. Guess it’s OK if the parent’s die.

@jca That’s correct. Many buildings do 80/20 on market rent and rent-stabilized apartments to get a tax abatement. Unfortunately, many of them have to reminded that it’s a two-way benefit. My partner is “moderate income” so we just barely qualify and feel fortunate to have locked our nice little place (which still isn’t cheap) in for a slight increase for two more years. I pay him rent but am not on the lease or else we would not be eligible and our one-bedroom in Harlem would be like 3K. Unbelievable.

@Dutchess_III Sorry to hear. I also cannot afford healthcare and don’t qualify for any assistance. I’m lucky to be young and healthy (at least as far as I know) but haven’t seen a dentist in four years or a GP in more than two years. I have an Implanon birth control from when I still had healthcare and get women’s health through Planned Parenthood, which I still pay out of pocket for $200+ just for a basic visit with a pap smear. It’s almost always a miserable experience, 3+ hour waits, and a well-intentioned doctor who is so busy they have no time to listen to your concerns or answer your questions.

I’m dreading the likely $1,200 I will need to pay out of pocket for my Implanon removal and replacement come January but I’ll take it over having kids we cannot yet afford.

Bleh.

One of the things we got was free school lunches for the kids, which I never understood. They give us hundreds of dollars above and beyond what we could ever possibly use in food stamps AND free lunches? I took advantage of it though because it might have been embarrassing for the kids to take their lunches to school. I guess they got shit because they didn’t wear top of the line designer clothes. They had nice, clean clothes, but not the stylish kind expected of Jr High and High School kids. I didn’t know that until they were grown. I felt so bad.

@Dutchess_III Kids are such assholes and will make fun of any perceived insecurity. They are animals. Our school lunches were abysmal so it was pretty common for kids to bring their own from home. Every time I forgot to pack a lunch, I dreaded eating the slop they served up in the cafeteria. They probably had superior nutrition thanks to home-packed meals.

I know. I know they can be assholes.
I don’t remember the cafeteria food being particularly good or bad. Except for some hamburger gravy they made. It was SO delish! I have never been able to duplicate it. I went as low as I could go, using the cheapest ground beef and even powdered milk. Still didn’t get it.

If I didn’t like it, I didn’t eat it. We were allowed to trade food in those days so it worked out.

This is nothing to do with coitus. Everybody has coitus all the time. It’s good for about 15 minutes of not-bored. Useless, in other words, as a substitute for entertainment.
This is about birth control and family planning.

My SO and I got at it like cats in heat and I’ve never even had a scare.

Birth control works.

Hell, even if you don’t believe in birth control, there are algorithm-based apps combined with basal body temperature + abstinence/protected sex on fertile days and voila—not pregnant!

The rhythm method almost always fails, ultimately @LeavesNoTrace.

I used the rhythm method for over 20 years when I was married. Used condoms sometimes. Only had one planned child. It worked for me but a woman has to really know her body cycles.

Hell, it took me three years to get pregnant with my first! Don’t know why. The second took 3 minutes, if that.

Other than that I used the Pill. We had a lot of sex. And we had all the entertainment elsewhere that we could want.

I’ll preface this by saying the following; for well-thought-out “natural family planning” to work, you need this:

- to be organized
– to have regular cycles
– supportive partner
– a data-driven methodology

Was on “the pill” for two years (horrible weight gain, mood swings, killed libido), expelled two Paragard IUDs (which I loved) over two years and finally tried the Implanon for three years (gained a lot of weight and had endless, heavy bleeding for MONTHS).

The NaturalCycles app, in tandem with LH tests and excellent communication with my SO, has worked. And at ~USD 50.00/annually, it’s a great value + the insights into my cycle and overall health have been invaluable.

http://www.businessinsider.com/birth-control-app-as-effective-as-the-pill-2017-2

3 of my cousins and 1 of my close friends, all highly educated women, used birth control that failed one time. Each one had one child. Birth control is not 100% effective. Luckily for them, they were all married and wanted to (eventually) have kids.

My DIL was on the pill. However, she didn’t know that antibiotics can negate the pill, and she got pregnant shortly after their last child was born.