My husband's thoughts about people on Welfare

[Evandril]

Nobody is arguing that it's a good idea to deliberately have a kid when you're on government assistance. It goes without saying. So I don't understand why you're bringing it up.. The question in this thread is how to deal with well-meaning people who find themselves unexpectadly pregnant.

It's not fair to call them irresponsible or stupid, because once you're pregnant you don't have a lot of options. Some people might get abortions or give the kids up for adoption, but you can't force people to do that just because it'll save the government a few bucks. A

As I said in my previous post, you can't force reproductive choices on people, because it's a human rights violation. You can only make all the options available, and let them choose for themselves.

My posts have always been talking about options *before* pregnancy, and the fact that responsible people who are having a hard time at the moment would welcome free reproductive control...and the ones who felt the need to NOT be 'limited' to not having children did not deserve the money. If someone has taken one of the 'protective' measures and still ended up pregnant, then, yes, they still would qualify for additional support. If they had not, they would still get the same amount they *had* been getting, with no additional money. I'd not said anything about abortions, adoption, ect. In my opinion, it is not forcing them to take one of the options any more than I'm forcing them to fill out the paperwork...If they don't find it acceptable, that's fine, they don't get the money.

[Boozy]

In my opinion, it is not forcing them to take one of the options any more than I'm forcing them to fill out the paperwork...If they don't find it acceptable, that's fine, they don't get the money.

It's extortion. People don't go on assistance because they want to, they do it because they have no other options. They and their familes will become homeless and starve to death without it.

[Evandril]

Again, so? The ones that deserve it would not *want* to get pregnant when they still need help to survive, and the others I don't have a lot of sympathy for. There will be exceptions to that, but there are people who refuse medical care as well, because it's not something they believe in.

[blas87]

My mom was taking the Pill so that she couldn't get pregnant because she and my father were both a newly married dirt poor couple, going to college and working all the time to try to pay for school and to make ends meet....and I happened anyway. The Pill (especially the Pill!) is known to fail, and I happened anyway.

You always gotta be prepared for the worst. As much as I claim a lot of people are leeches and just pop out babies for money, there are people out there who I am sure every day hope and pray that they do NOT get pregnant and nothing else monetarily detrimental comes their way.

I am pretty dirt poor as it is, living alone, supporting myself....I'm on the Depo shot because by some miracle, it's 100% covered by my insurance. I feel pretty confident about it, but I still make sure my boyfriend wears condoms. I do NOT want to have a baby. I cannot afford it. If I did get pregnant, I'd put it up for adoption, but I can't even afford checkups and sonograms and everything else that goes with it! You go to the doctor A LOT when pregnant. All of those sessions are EXPENSIVE...I have to pay 20-50% of those...I would rather not have to deal with that.

[Evandril]

Again, that's why I was talking birth control options... If a pregnancy happens in *spite* of percautions, then additional money would be given. There *are* quite a few people who have children simply because it earns them more money...I'm proposing a way to limit their reasons for doing so, with some 'wiggle room' for accidents and the like. Both of my sons were medically 'impossible', from what I'd been told...and they are teenagers now (Which makes them impossible for different reasons )

[bigred]

I think there are two different things we are talking about. People receiving single parent assistance, and people receiving assistance because they can't get a job for various reasons.

With people receiving assistance because they are single parents there are so many variations. I know of a woman, the mother of a person who went to school with me, who was on parenting. She had 7 kids. Her husband was in a mental institution overseas. At least two of her kids (the ones my direct age) who got post-graduate degrees and high paying jobs. She herself got a PhD when the kids grew up.

Other people I know of saw their lives as housewives and, post the divorce, are almost offended by the idea of getting a job.

Then there are the people my sister, who works in child protection, tells me about. A lot of these people couldn't get a job in almost any circumstances. No skills at all.

People who choose to be on the dole are just plain stupid. I was on the dole for a short while coming out of uni. The dole paid more than $20 a week more than student assistance, from $71 a week to $96 a week, which was a huge amount at that time. I thought I was in heaven. But, you can't really do a lot on the dole and you grow out of it. Again, people who remain on the dole don't have many skills I would want as a boss.

Then there is disability. For some people working with a disability would be impossible, while others with the same do work. I can't comment. I don't have that disability.

[Peppergirl]

People don't go on assistance because they want to, .

Unfortunately, there are many that do.


But in the majority of these cases, I blame the program itself for making it easier to be on assistance rather than out looking for a job.

There are scammers and EW's everywhere. Unfortunately, many welfare programs are flawed and and allow them to flourish.

[Slytovhand]

Anyone seen the movie (or series) Logan's Run?

The world was so over-populated, and therefore under-survivable for all concerned, that come 30 years of age, you enter a 'cage' type thing, and out of a large number of you, only a couple come out to live another year.

While this may come across as incredibly irrelevant to the topic at hand, the way things are going, the various governments are, at some stage, going to have to implement various laws and the like that will impose themselves on our 'human rights'. China has recognised this, and implemented various laws regarding the number of children you are allowed - for the future benefit of the country (remember, it's taken only a couple of centuries for our human population to go from less than 1 billion, to over 6 billion... and it won't take long to get to 10 billion... etc etc).

If we recognise this possibility, then where do we stand on this discussion? Do we only bother with such draconian laws when it's basically too late? Or, do we bite a bullet and do something, anything, now? Even if it seems inhumane (for what that's supposed to mean!)

[AdminAssistant]

Well, we can stop giving tax benefits to people based on the number of dependents. I can't tell you how frustrated I am that I won't qualify for EIC - because the income level for a single person with no dependents is so ridiculously low. Yet, if I got married or popped out a baby or two, I'd be getting all kinds of help. Our current system (and culture) rewards and encourages children.

[AFPheonix]

That would be because the current system recognizes that as countries move into a certain level of prosperity, reproduction rates drop to less than tenable levels. If the US didn't have such a huge influx of immigrants, we would have negative population growth like Japan is now.

So no, we don't need to enact any laws that infringe on people's reproductive rights. We just need to make sure that everyone gets an equal shot at prosperity and people will start having fewer kids automatically.

[anriana]

That would be because the current system recognizes that as countries move into a certain level of prosperity, reproduction rates drop to less than tenable levels. If the US didn't have such a huge influx of immigrants, we would have negative population growth like Japan is now.

So no, we don't need to enact any laws that infringe on people's reproductive rights. We just need to make sure that everyone gets an equal shot at prosperity and people will start having fewer kids automatically.

And to be more specific than "prosperity," that everyone who wants access to contraception is allowed to have it.

[Seshat]

Also, aged and disability pensions. (One cultural reason for having children is so that there will be someone to care for you when you're old/if you're disabled.)

[AFPheonix]

And to be more specific than "prosperity," that everyone who wants access to contraception is allowed to have it.

Very true. I was lumping in a level of education for ALL members of society, a certain monetary level, ability to get and retain work, not having to rely on subsistence lifestyles and many other factors into that one word.
Women here get to choose to not have kids because we don't need them to better our own lives. We get to have the opportunity to choose whether or not to have them for the sake of having one. We're pretty lucky compared to women who didn't get to be in this situation, past and present.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

3. if you're on welfare, you need to either be on birth control or be snipped so you can't make any more babies ... ever.

I have a friend who was on welfare once. She made a mistake and had a child out of wedlock. Not a problem since she did have a job. That job dried up and she found herself out of work and unemployable with her skill set (either under qualified, or in many cases so over qualified that the employers wouldn't hire her for fear of her jumping ship as soon as something better comes along) and with no means of support.

She found herself on Welfare for a while. She used the resources available to her and managed to get retrained and rehired. She has now since doubled her income through promotions within the company, married and has two more children.

I can understand that the sentiment above comes from frustration of all the people who abuse the system by having more and more children to have more and more welfare income, but what advantage would have come forth from sterilizing my friend? Did she abuse the system? Or did she use it the way it was intended and moved on with her life?

M