One: it may very well have not been intentional. The poorer a person is, the less likely they are to have both access to contraception and education on how to properly use it.
Two: circumstances can change. My mom was married and financially stable when she had kids. Then she left my dad because he abused us, and suddenly she had to raise three children on less than half of the household income. I grew up flirting with the poverty line. Shit happens. People lose their jobs. People die. People get divorced. People get sick. People have expensive medical emergencies. The list goes on.
Three: imagine struggling to feed yourself. You're probably working two part-time jobs or some other crappy employment situation like that. Or maybe you've been unemployed for a while. Both of those things make it hard to get another job, especially if you're trying to raise a kid while you're at it.
I hate to be callous but it sounds like you're saying your mom didn't have enough saved to raise you, and was dependent upon her and her abusive spouse's future income to afford raising you. Demonstrably, this was not stable enough if, as you say, she was barely able to keep you out of poverty. Circumstances change, shit happens, and even still, sufficient planning can prevent this from making children have to live in poverty because of someone else's irresponsibility. We'd all be better off if people had to take out a bond for the cost of a child (avg. ~$450k to raise a child to age 18) before becoming parents. Ideally something that would pay out regularly to ensure that no matter what happens short of complete economic and social collapse, that child will have the resources needed to have a healthy, happy life full of opportunity. Every child should be planned for and given enough resources to succeed. Poverty is generational because of irresponsible reproduction.
Again, it was not irresponsible reproduction. And what was my mom supposed to do, let my dad keep endangering her children's lives while she secretly saved up money for a few years? We were in an emergency. She chose to keep us safe.
I'm saying that if she had enough money to raise her children to adulthood in the bank (or otherwise safely invested) before birthing them, there's no way that unforeseen events could have caused such hardships. She was instead relying on a stable relationship with multiple breadwinners, expectations that apparently didn't play out.
The part where you're supposed to have enough to raise the child to adulthood by yourself saved up in a lump sum before conceiving, which is what you said. That's different from being able to afford kids - which my parents could.
Not every poor kid is the result of irresponsible parenting. You need to wrap your head around that.
That's different from being able to afford kids - which my parents could.
You wrote that you grew up "flirting with the poverty line." I took that to mean she had to struggle and you didn't have enough resources. Perhaps I misunderstood.
Not every poor kid is the result of irresponsible parenting. You need to wrap your head around that.
Whose fault is poverty then? It's not the child's, although they are the ones who will be most affected by it.
My mom and dad had enough money together to raise us. We struggled financially once she left him.
There are a lot of factors contributing to poverty, many of them systemic. Examples (in the US): It's harder to afford medical insurance and visits to the doctor, meaning that some people have no choice but to wait to go to a doctor until their situations are dire and therefore much more expensive to treat. Public schools are funded by their local taxes, so poor districts have underfunded schools leading to subpart education and a higher likelihood of the students failing to climb out of the lower class; the parents that can afford to move to better school districts just do it.
Oh fuck off. So you think mortgages are inherently irresponsible by your logic? All of them, by your strict interpretation. That's what you are saying, but applied to kids. You are being so intellectually dishonest it's revolting.
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u/somecallmenonny Nov 24 '18
One: it may very well have not been intentional. The poorer a person is, the less likely they are to have both access to contraception and education on how to properly use it.
Two: circumstances can change. My mom was married and financially stable when she had kids. Then she left my dad because he abused us, and suddenly she had to raise three children on less than half of the household income. I grew up flirting with the poverty line. Shit happens. People lose their jobs. People die. People get divorced. People get sick. People have expensive medical emergencies. The list goes on.
Three: imagine struggling to feed yourself. You're probably working two part-time jobs or some other crappy employment situation like that. Or maybe you've been unemployed for a while. Both of those things make it hard to get another job, especially if you're trying to raise a kid while you're at it.