I don't know how all of you feel out there in MNK land, but I am deeply disturbed by the situation of the young woman that just had octuplets (already raising six other kids). The media doesn't inflate this part of the story much, but in case you don't know:
- She's not married
- She lives with her mother, who is worried about her daughter
and will leave her soon with 14 kids - alone.
- Making matters worse, her mother had filed bankruptcy
- She is getting some type of "compensation" for having
these kids.
- She is said to have an obsessive/compulsive problem with
children in general. I am not a psychiatrist and can't make
this call, but she thrives on having many children and has
college degrees in child care, so she does have some
extreme "fixation" on working with children.
- She is looking at a book deal and wants to be a motherhood
expert on TV (gulp). Sorry, I don't see a "Jon & Kate plus
8" story here.
I was talking with my husband over dinner about this issue - the fact that there is a "social stigma" in telling or implying to people that they are not in a viable condition to have many children. In fact, the U.S. consistently rewards people with each additional child born through tax credits. We are now in an economic recession, and nothing is being done to discourage our nation's people from having so many kids. I think Nancy Pelosi is trying to push legislation to remedy this issue, but she probably will not get much support because guess what -- you can't tell people not to have kids.
I am all for people having a lot of kids if that's what they truly want. But the government needs to create more incentives for people to have less kids, given our current economic situation. And THE MEDIA NEEDS TO STOP GLAMORIZING THIS OCTUPLETS MOM!! OK, glad I got this out of my system :-).
