Monday, May 09, 2005

Here we go again.

I just could NOT let this one pass.

A woman in our area had sextuplets last year. She already had 3-year old twins. Now she has 8 children under the age of 5.

For the last year she has had an LPN for 30 hours a week helping out - paid for by Medical Assistance (even though hubby is gainfully employed by . . tada! the state government). No, this is not a rant against MA and those who need it. The operative word here is "need." The LPN's services will soon be terminated because MA pays for it for one year only. The family was petitioning the state for continuance of the services because it was "not safe for the mother to care for 8 small children alone."

Now let me stop here and say that at first - I was thinking, "Yeah, I understand that reasoning." But THEN I heard on a local radio newscast that the mother is saying that "society should pay for the extra help, because society produced the fertility drugs that created so many children."

Whoaaaaaa, Nelly! Back up! Rewind the tape. What did you say?

"Let me get this straight," mother-of-one says to mother-of-eight. You ALREADY HAD two kids and you took fertility drugs to have more and think it's partly MY responsibility to help YOU take care of them. I don't THINK so.

Ya see, honey. I was a working woman when I got pregnant. I went right back to work after she was born and I've been working since. I knew I would have to continue to work and that our family income could not support more children. Therefore - now listen carefully - therefore, because of the financial realities of life, I limited the size of my family.

Honey, you made the choice to take the drugs, to extend your family that already had two children. You seem to be smart enough to have realized that child care, along with money, does not grow on trees. You did this; you take care of it. Maybe the next woman who "wants just one more baby" and needs drugs that could give her a multiple birth, will make a better decision that you did.

Suck it up, sweetie.
Those kids are your responsibility. NOT mine.
If that logic can work for the pregnant black teenager in the 'hood, it can work for the middle class mom. In fact it works more for you. You should have known better.

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