If you can't feed 'em, then don't breed 'em!

[Kimmik]

I don't know about everywhere else, but Planned Parenthood is an easy way to get cheap/free birth control. Condoms are not expensive.

Actually it depends. Condoms that I require are not cheap.

I can understand household caps on benefits but to say because someone is poor that they can not have children?? Punish those that abuse the system, harshly. I have a friend who has 5 children and her family is on food stamps and I have gone shopping with her.
Does she buy soda, yes
Does she buy ice cream, yes
Does she buy chips and snacks, yes
Do they own a game system, yes

So from the first glimpse her family must be abusing the system right? She buys generic soda and they are rare treats. The ice cream is one of those huge vanilla buckets and they use that rather then milk and sugar in their plain oatmeal. Snack are also rare treats and the chips are for lunches. The Wii... well that took them over a year to get and they bought it used. Any games they get for the Wii are used and the children do things to earn the money for the games they also sell back games they dont use. They have nice clothes but they do a lot of Second hand store shopping and yard sales.

So should she give her children up because they are on state assistance? Should she be fixed because they fell on hard times? She goes without a lot so that her kids might get a 5 dollar movie because they did well at something, or at the beginning of school they all get a new pair of nice shoes. And let me tell you she is raising some shrewed shoppers.

It is always the dick wads that stand out, and who we notice. It is easy to spot those that flaunt the system and make us go screw it they must all be this way.

[Lace Neil Singer]

It's not so much having a game system and buying junk that makes a sponging family stand out, as it is one having luxuries that a working family could never afford in a million years. Also, the point is not "Poor people can't have children", but more "If you're on benefits, you should think about whether or not you personally can afford to pay for children before you choose to have another".

If, as a family, you are buying two bottles of whiskey, three crates of beer, a £50 carton of cigarettes and lobster at the supermarket; can afford two weeks in Magaluf for your summer holiday and a computer for each child with your benefits, then you're obviously getting far too much and need them cut.

Incidentally, I had a console as a child; however, I had to share mine with my two little brothers; it was all ours equally and had been a joint present for Christmas. That's a far cry from having three kids each with an expensive console paid for by benefits.

[blas87]

I was poor growing up as well. Wore almost competely hand me down (BOY!) clothes or second hand not so cool clothes until I was old enough to earn my own money, or for Christmas or my bday I'd get a little shopping trip. We had my cousin's old NES console and games. We had the occasional treats here and there.

Echoing Lace, again, it's NOT that poor people shouldn't have kids, it's using common sense in the fact that if you can barely feed and take care of yourself, why bring more kids into your world?

Just to bring my daily amount of sickening conservative view here, because I'm not me without it.....really, these women with multiple kids from multiple dads (and I'm talking more than a few kids) are really good examples as to why politicians are trying to put more limits on or attempt to yank benefits, along with generation welfare families, where a woman's mother and grandmother were also on welfare and they never strived for anything more.

This may be a little bit of a drift, but my "favorite" coworker, Drunken Victim, was recently whining about being sick, as always. When a chorus of all of us shouting "GO TO THE DOCTOR!" got an "I don't have insurance!" response from him (besides the fact it's about to be illegal not to), we asked him why he doesn't have ours at work. Oh, that's too expensive. I chirped "You should have Badger Care, since you and your gf have a kid and you're poor." and he responded that Badger Care usually doesn't give benefits to the FATHER of the kid(s), just the mother and the kid! What BS is that?!

[Racket_Man]

IThis may be a little bit of a drift, but my "favorite" coworker, Drunken Victim, was recently whining about being sick, as always. When a chorus of all of us shouting "GO TO THE DOCTOR!" got an "I don't have insurance!" response from him (besides the fact it's about to be illegal not to), we asked him why he doesn't have ours at work. Oh, that's too expensive. I chirped "You should have Badger Care, since you and your gf have a kid and you're poor." and he responded that Badger Care usually doesn't give benefits to the FATHER of the kid(s), just the mother and the kid! What BS is that?!

unfortuneately what he says is TRUE Blas. esp if the "Father" is being sued by the state or the "mother" for court ordered child support or the Mother is ALREADY receiving court ordered child support. the father can not received State Medicare (in Wis BadgerCare) or Food Stamps or welfare of any kind.

I guess the logic is that the "Father" must have a job that can be wage garnished and while under garishment all state bennies are blocked to prevent said father from just going on the dole and skipping out on support payments claiming to be "too poor" to make said payments. this is esp true when the "parents" are unmarried and really true esp if the mother "pops back" into the "fathers" life like 5 or 10 years after the child was conceived (and the father is totaly unaware of said child)


Fucked up logic but that is the rules here in Wisconsin

[smileyeagle1021]

I am always astounded that those who complain about big government usually want policies like that, which would raise the invasiveness of government.

Oh, no, it is entirely consistent, see they do want a smaller government because it will fit in the bedroom better, a large government may also have to take up the kitchen and the living room and we don't want that, but bedroom is just the perfect size

As far as benefits for children, I'm a big fan of making all welfare benefits for children to be done like WIC. Put the money on cards that can only be used on approved food items (and I guess be expanded to include medical care and possibly school supplies). Then, tell the parents if at the end of the month there is any money left over, it gets rolled into a high yield savings plan that can only be redeemed for the child's higher education (be that at a vocation school or college or university).
My mother recieved welfare for me when I was growing up, but that was in the form of survivor benefits from Social Security. I got $1,000 a month and you know what she used it for? First she used it to pay any medical expenses, then she bought whatever school supplies she couldn't afford, and then any food that she couldn't afford, the rest (nearly half of it) went into a savings account for my college fund.
The taxpayers got the better end of that deal, my best estimate is that my father (and his employers) during his lifetime paid in over $200,000 to social security and I over 13 years pulled out $156,000 ($12,000 per year)... and now I'm able to go to school without taking further government payouts because so much of it was wisely invested. If every parent who received benefits for their children had the same attitude as my mother, then there would be a shitload less problems with welfare abuse and underfunding of higher education to boot.

Oh, and as to the OP, I do have to agree with the guys opinion, if you can't feed any more children, stop having children. It is cruel to expect child to grow up in a household where they can't even be guaranteed the essentials needed to survive.

[blas87]

When I worked at the gas station, I saw so many dirty, ragged, awful looking and smelling children, but their parents needed their smokes and beer more than Little Johnny needed a bath and clean clothes. It made me ill and seething with rage.