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Seems like this thread has less to do with welfare and more to do with pushing another Christian ideology of "MARRIAGE MUST PREFACE CHILDREN"
Bad parents are bad parents no matter how you slice or dice it
LOL
Another idiot blames the gays for something they have nothing to do with. The only anomoly is your intellect in relation to people with IQ's above 85
It has everything to do with welfare because most of these women getting knocked up by men who won't help them raise and support the children would not make this choice without the very generous food stamps, WIC, free babysitting Head Start centers, free housing, Medicaid and much much more.
Perhaps the number of illegitimate children would go from 40% back down to 5.3%. If there were no "net" many less people would "jump".
That 40% will never go back down to 5%. lol. The number of children born out of wedlock today doesn't have anything to do with government handouts for gods sake. It has to do with changing cultural norms. Taking away the few measures we have to help lift the poor out of poverty will only make family planning more difficult for poor people. The out of wedlock birth rate would at best stagnate, and it would probably increase.
Myself and 4 of my cousins were born out of wedlock and to young mothers. None of us were born to collect a government handout and from my knowledge none of us have been on the rolls. We were born because our mothers and fathers, raised in a disturbingly religious household, had no clue how to use birth control properly. Combine that lack of knowledge with the most important human instinct there is (reproduction), and the result will be children. The parents won't necessarily get married, nor should they have to.
Then why is the problem of welfare dependence and poverty so much worse and still growing at leaps and bounds?
The War on Poverty has been the biggest failure. The number of children on government assistance is higher than ever, more women are choosing to become impregnated by men who will not help raise the children than ever before.
The number of children on government assistance is not higher than ever. Welfare dependence has been in rapid decline ever since the late 70s. There was a small increase in dependence that coincided with the crack wars that plagued urban America during the late 80s, but even that was a short lived rise. Welfare dependence went down drastically in the 90s and is now at its lowest level since ever being conceived within this nation. The only government assistance that has risen slightly over the years is food stamps, which in the grand scheme of things is a very cheap government program and the increase is at least somewhat attributable to the fact that Americans eat more and more with each passing generation.
Check out this website http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/indicators08/apa.shtml#ftanf2 for a lot of detailed information about government assistance given to families. I'm shocked actually. The number of families recieving government assistance is NOTHING compared to what it used to be. There were 5 million families in the early 90s receiving added income from the government. Today, there are less than 2 million. That is despite a 50 million person increase in population.
One reason I became a conservative several years ago is I knew a woman who decided she wanted a child and that only a random stranger at a bar was good enough for her to be the father. She found faults in every man she knew, they weren't genetically fit enough for her. So she said "I'm going to go to the club, find the best looking guy I can find, have sex with him (she said it more crudely than that) and get pregnant". That's exactly what she did, two different times with two different fathers. You better believe she is on every government handout from A to Z. Her oldest son is now a teenager and in trouble with the criminal justice sysyem for starting fires.
Yesterday a friend of mine told me abut his ex-wife who did the same exact thing recently. She got pregnant from some random "hot cowboy" at a country bar. She plans on applying for welfare, food stamps, Section 8 etc so she can afford to raise this baby.
These are not isolated examples. Over 50% of U.S babies are now born out of wedlock. Yes in some cases the mother is in an unmarried relationship with the father. But in many situations the baby is the product of casual sex with a handsome stranger.
These women having the babies of studs they meet in bars are a prime reason our country in such a major debt crisis. Married couples should raise children, not big government. What's really sick is that women who make this immoral decision have all their security needs met. They will never have to worry about going hungry for 18 years. Life will become very easy for them. They will not suffer the consequences for their bad decision.
We need to get back to 2 loving parents raising children, not the "village" funding illegitimate b*stards. The single best thing we could do is cut off all welfare for women who put themselves in this situation. This will change the dynamics of society where women will seek good husband material instead of selecting men purely on genetic fitness. The children will be better off with a loving father in the household.
Next we need to come down hard on the deadbeat dads. Now in some cases the mother doesn't want to indentify the father, she barely knows him and doesn't want him involved. This should be illegal. The father should be forced to be identified and needs to pay child support for 18 years. The payments should be HUGE to the point where it discourages men from getting random conquests pregnant. I realize some of these guys are slackers, have little or no income, and spend their time getting drunk and hanging out at bars. Well in that case the father must still pay. The state should force him to do hard labor or perhaps make him the subject of medical experiments and help pay his child support in return.
Of course none of this is going to happen. We will continue to support and encourage women to get pregnant from random hook-ups and continue to reward them with free food, housing, cash, electricity etc (what's next free gas?). Because of this our nation will continue to crumble both financially and morally.
Kind of a wierd reason to become a liberal. After all, you gave anecdotes about two people, one from the perspective of an ex-husband, who is likely very bitter.
The number of children on government assistance is not higher than ever. Welfare dependence has been in rapid decline ever since the late 70s. There was a small increase in dependence that coincided with the crack wars that plagued urban America during the late 80s, but even that was a short lived rise. Welfare dependence went down drastically in the 90s and is now at its lowest level since ever being conceived within this nation. The only government assistance that has risen slightly over the years is food stamps, which in the grand scheme of things is a very cheap government program and the increase is at least somewhat attributable to the fact that Americans eat more and more with each passing generation.
Check out this website 2008 Indicators of Welfare Dependence: Appendix A. Program Data for a lot of detailed information about government assistance given to families. I'm shocked actually. The number of families recieving government assistance is NOTHING compared to what it used to be. There were 5 million families in the early 90s receiving added income from the government. Today, there are less than 2 million. That is despite a 50 million person increase in population.
You are just looking at TANF, the big government cash giveaway but you need to include all the many welfare programs. Food stamps, WIC, Medicaid, Section 8 housing, Head Start programs, free breakfast and lunch programs, EITC.
How many single mothers could support their brood without all the many handouts?
All the children living off welfare programs have a mother and a father and it's time the fathers provide support for the children they sire. Eliminate all welfare for the able-bodied which of course includes the unwed mothers popping out babies every 9 months or so.
I pity anyone with this mentality. They are dooming themselves to a life of poverty and low life living. I don't understand how this can be anyones "goal"...can you?
I agree...Not having any ambition or desire for fulfillment through effort is no way to live. And it's bad for the children as well. I personally know one man who fathered a child in this way. Does not support his daughter at all.
People need to take responsibility for themselves, their actions and esp. THEIR KIDS. When a newborn human being is brought into the world, those bearing it have a responsibility to make sure he/she has everything they need to be healthy, happy and comfortable. When you become a parent, it's not just about you anymore. This issue makes my blood boil.
The only government assisstance that I and my brother were a part of growing up was the Florida Healthy Kids program. That is a public/private program too. I believe my hospital birth was waved. It was an extremely extended and expensive stay as there were complications with my birth. She had no means to pay it and she would have died without medical care.
My mom re-married when I was around 2 years old. Their combined incomes were too high to qualify for any type of welfare or food stamps. I didn't even get a discounted lunch at school. My mother snagged a GED and went back to college in her late 20s. She is actually doing quite well now as a high school teacher and is well on her way to finishing her Masters degree. Her current husband and she make far too much money for me to recieve any government help with college. I have never been on government assisstance. Not even in the first year and a half of my life did she get government help because her mother claimed both her and me as her dependents. My grandmother made too much money (which is bs, considering all the kids she had to feed) for my mother and me to get any government help.
She has done very well for her life, despite not just my father, but her other son's father turning out to be a deadbeat as well. She learned to work hard from her mother, who had to raise eight children on her own after their father ran off.
You're mom did fine - but there are many women who keep doing the same thing over and over and as long as they can lay around and get welfare, they will.
It shouldn't be made so easy to simply give birth and never have to work a day in your life.
It's not that some single women won't have one -night stands and children out of them, they should have to work hard to provide for their children and not expect some free ride the rest of their lives.
Prior to the 1960's, most women refused to engage in pre-marital sex without an explicit or implicit promise of marriage in the event of pregnancy. With women presenting a united front, men were willing to make and hold to such promises of marriage; they had few competitive alternatives. Shotgun weddings were expected and were common.
Easily available contraception and abortions dramatically altered this process. With new technology to lessen the threat of unwanted children, the cost of pre-marital sex to women fell rapidly. When costs drop, prices should follow suit. And they did. Without the threat of unwanted children, many women no longer demanded promises of marriage in the event of pregnancy. In essence, they lowered the price charged to men for pre-marital sex. Not surprisingly, when the price went down, the quantity demanded by men went up.
But not all women embraced these changes. What happened to those women who tried to cling to the earlier technology; those who wanted marriage and/or who opposed contraception or abortion? Just what an economist would predict in a competitive market -- they were undersold and driven out of business. They lost their bargaining power. With pre-marital sex readily available elsewhere, they no longer could extract promises of marriage in the event of pregnancy. Many responded exactly as any other competitor trying to protect market share; they lowered their prices to compete. When unplanned pregnancies did occur, they absorbed the loss. They bore children out of wedlock.
Men's reactions reinforced the trend. Many men reasoned that they were not to blame for unwanted births. After all, women had access to contraceptives and to abortions. If women choose not to avail themselves of contraceptives or abortions, they should bear the consequences of that choice. Many men felt absolved of guilt, absolved of responsibility. When pregnancies occurred, they walked away.
Once a dam begins to leak, floods are not far behind. As out-of-wedlock births began to increase, the social stigma associated with them started to ease. When the unwed mother is your sister or your daughter or your close friend, it becomes far more difficult to cast her out of polite society. As the stigma eased, so did the cost to women of bearing children out of wedlock. Lower costs meant more such births, which meant less stigma, which meant more such births, et cetera.
What now? Should we roll back the technology? Probably not. The technology has increased choices and options for millions of men and women. Denying access to it at this point would probably increase the number of unwanted births significantly. Cuts in welfare benefits are not likely to have much impact either. Despite their political pizzazz, such cuts will do little other than to further impoverish the recipients.
A more appropriate policy would reverse the competitive position of men and women in the market for sex. If the new technology disadvantaged "women of virtue," policies that disadvantage men could restore balance in the market. For example, heavy taxes on men for fathering children and/or aggressive child-support programs might alter the terms of trade and change male behavior.
OMG, I read this entire post, and only one or two mentions of all those dead beat dads that screw and run, or dump the woman when they find out she's pregnant, or divorce the woman, or pretend they had a vasectomy, or refuse to partipate in the child's life or any number of other reasons women get stuck with the entire burden of single motherhood!
The bigger point is these sk@nks are only attracted to the dead beat losers, ie "bad boys" so they get what they deserve.
The bigger point is these sk@nks are only attracted to the dead beat losers, ie "bad boys" so they get what they deserve.
Actually they don't get what they deserve. They get my money to pay for their mistakes.
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