Lots of babies, public assistance, theft and relating the lot to SL

Last night I sat watching Dateline, completely baffled by the justification being given by a young, single mother as to why she had given birth to 14 children, one of them autistic, one ADHD and one a combination of the two (octuplets being the most recent addition to her humungous family). She is single; has no job; has no husband; and just "wanted a lot of kids". OMG, what am I missing here?? So then I log on to SL and see "Nikki Clarity" posting for a handout as well as Satyra's post about having her designs ripped. So I started to muse about the idea of "entitlement"...the profound lack of self-respect that has seemingly permeated most aspects of our society...and then I asked myself, "What would the posters at RA think?" Yeah, it was a long night indeed.

So...what DO you think?? Are these three examples related beyond the scope of what I've posted? Is there a conspiracy afoot to undermine those of us who still consider ourselves to be honest and fair? Is the world coming to an apocalypic end? (Ok, that was a result of watching "Fringe" before Dateline).

This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLk-3Xm0RtY
was the first thing that came to mind when I read your subject...

...followed later by reoccuring nightmares of woman at SL clubs with talking baby belly's.

I did overhear a talking baby belly the other day with someone who was pregnant with Satan's baby. That was actually kind of humorous...

I think, to be on topic though.... I do not understand the people you speak of.... then again, I'm a guy. Maybe it's a motherly instinct? I don't know.

What is RA?

I like the way you think....kind of a Joycian stream-of-consciousness that you need to read and then reread to finally come to the conclusion that you'll never understand.

Not sure about the motherly instinct thing....I'm a mother....maybe I missed that.

Resident Answers.....sorry...my shorthand gets the best of me.

No conspiracy. The world is just full of greedy, selfish people.

I have a mentally ill brother, and when I saw octamom, I immediately recognized she's mentally ill. Really, it's a no brainer. When my parents died, my brother became the responsibility of myself and my other brother. What I have learned over the years is that we have a system in the US that allows mentally ill people, even profoundly mentally ill people like my brother, to not receive care for their illness because they think they don't need it. It's almost impossible to have someone committed against their will in the US even if they are violent, like my brother, until after the act.

I have discovered that there are all kinds of do gooders who will step in on the behalf of mentally ill persons and give them whatever they want, even 8 babies, because they have a flawed belief that somehow all people are entitled to what they want even if they shouldn't have it.

It's only ging to get worse as more people find themselves out of work. They will be relying more on Government assistance, and while some will just use it temporarily and get beack out on their own, many won't, and will become dependant on it to survive, which is how the beauracracy sustains itself.

That's kind of how I see it too, don't know if you were being facetious or not, but I'm not. I *do* understand school loans and obtaining any level of education you want to obtain, as long as you don't have other obligations, like 14 kids to support, at the same time. By the time I started having kids (I had one, only because I felt that's all my former husband and I could afford) I was done with school. Using money you are provided to live on while getting your education, to raise 14 kids seems 'off' to me. I also fully expected to pay back any student loans I took out while getting my degree. It was a pain, too, but that's what the word 'loan' means. Just musing here, I don't get the sense of entitlement that I see today in so many, like they can make any choices they like, and someone else is supposed to pay. The mentality escapes me.

I agree. The real question is why would a doctor do such a thing.

All of this is true (the selfishness, the possiblity of mental illness). What I'd like to know also, is who is the doctor that allowed this to happen?

Didn't someone have to prescribe the fertility drugs that created this multiple birth? Weren't they aware she was unmarried, unprepared to raise such a massive family alone? Already was struggling in life? Or am I mistaken? Was this a natural occurence?

Somehow I feel that to raise this many children there should be some kind of psychological test given. I know that's unreasonable in the grand scheme of things, but maybe there should be SOME guidelines as to who should be allowed to have these drugs? I mean, they aren't meant to be given just for the sake of "wanting a lot of children"; they are meant for helping those who are unable to conceive!

I could be getting this all wrong of course, I haven't been following the story at all, I tune it out mentally each time it comes on.

I think it's the feeling of "staticness" that's become common in the modern day. Certainly you hear comments like "that's just the way things are" or "it is what it is" quite often now. The idea of "upward mobility" has reached a ceiling for most people, since nowadays it seems most middle-class people just plain expect a white-collar job, and going higher requires either being fortunately talented, or making tradeoffs that may mean it's not actually upward any more from that person's point of view (eg, a city banker might make more money and have a huge house, but have to work so hard they barely even see the inside of it; for me certainly, that would be worse than my current life, even though it would be technically be a "better" job). In fact I've read that young women in the current generation are increasingly abandoning the whole feminist ideal, and just focusing on trying to become the wife of a rich man or celebrity, because it's the only way they see upward from where they currently are.

The problem is.. when things are static.. if you want something, you have to either get it by whatever means you can with things as they are, or do without. And that isn't the nice tactical "do without" that you teach your children, it's not "do without it in order to save up and get something else later on". It's just "do without, and later die". Improving things so that you can get it doesn't feel like an option anymore because, after all, that would require things not to be static.

Ok, you think octupmom is really the OP from the Help **** thread.

Seriously, her excuse that she was an only child and hated not having brothers and sisters is BS. I am an only child. Although I didn't want to have an only child, I certainly didn't have 14. I had 2. Two rhymes with through. If she wanted a big family, she should've married into one. To me, as in the hood we say, she is pimping them. That is it!!!

*Adjusting my Tin Foil hat before climbing on Soap Box*

If you give the masses bread and circuses they won't realize they are being taken for a ride. Pass out rose colored glasses with all that government money they are "giving" you and you won't realize they have have tightened their grip even more around you.

Responsibility has been an endangered value for quite awhile- "It's not my fault I'm fat- McDonald's shouldn't fry in that kind of oil!" "It's not my fault I can't get a better job- I'm (insert favorite excuse here)- the list is endless.

Promise the masses an end to struggle, to trying and many will line up for the dole. Before you know it, you have a nation of indentured slaves- slaves to the state- oh wait a minute.. there's a word for that..hang on, thinking.. it will come to me..just a minute- starts with an S, I think...

ETA- the relevance to the OP is, the mother in the multiple birth thing, thinks she is entitled to have all these kids because she can-

I come from rather large family... my cousins' families are also quite large, and when the baby question came up I was not interested at all (for the longest time),

but I had a conversation with one of my little sisters, who was pregnant with her third child and gleefully told me that she was going to keep on having babies and make a big family like the one we'd grown up in.

I was shocked and couldn't help but ask whether her husband's job could support this family she was imagining.

That stopped her for a moment, and she said, "Uh, no, actually. It can't."

She stopped there, thank god... but whew!

This woman on TV, on the other hand HAS thought about it, and when they talked about all the work that it will take and the money, she said, "I expect to have help from friends and family and volunteers..."

VOLUNTEERS?

It's a kind of blackmail. To purposefully create a situation of helplessness like that... it's just wrong to manipulate people in that way.

Oh Key, you are SOOOOOO right!! It IS blackmail! What happens if no one volunteers?? I'll tell you--the KIDS suffer. Since no one wants to project the sins of the father onto the son, it's a catch 22--and I have a feeling octamom is smart enough to know that.

I think we also need to look at the whole student loan thing. Octamom stated over and over again that she had been supporting her family with her student loans. I have student loans, but I was never permitted to borrow enough to cover all of my living expenses in addition to the books and tuition. There was always SOME left over, but I generally used that to make a payment or two that wasn't yet required. She was given HOW MUCH?? Obviously enough to help feed and clothe six kids. I'd love to know just how much that was. Which leads me to the disability payments..... I have an ADHD son who is SEVERELY ADHD. He is in a special school for students with behavior issues, and we've been in therapy with him since he turned TWO (he's now 15). I have NEVER asked for a DIME from the government. WHAT are they paying her for??? ADHD kids don't need any in-home care beyond perhaps someone to teach mom how to deal with the child's behaviors. I MIGHT support the government allowing her a small subsidy to cover any meds (Ritalin, Adderall, etc.), but beyond that I think she's simply STEALING the taxpayer's money. Maybe the disability for her autistic son can be justified (additional child care needs, theraputic devices to help him cope, etc), but the payment for ADHD just scalds me.

Sorry for the rant, but this one just got my hackles up!

Looks like I don't even need to type my opinion here. Aside from the fact that I do not have a mentally ill brother....I agree with you 100%. What I do have....is a step-sister....roughly 15 years older then me.....who is quite obviously mentally ill. It was a situation where the family simply chose to turn a blind eye.....noone would even speak of it since she was able to function somewhat normally. She's intelligent and able to hold down a job....in fact in some ways she's probably highly intellectual. But that's where it ends........she has zero ability to interact normally with others......and has very irrational anger behaviors. Without my going inot great detail....suffice it to say this woman should have received help a looooong time ago, and guidance so she could live a fuller life with-in her capability.
Instead.....she was allowed to flounder. She wound up with three children 9tho she didn't actually know how they were produced).....and not by the same father. She married once, briefly....and had an almost normal life for maybe 2 years (the husband appeared to also have some sort of mental disability)

It's sad....really really sad......her kids are great kids.....but they suffered terribly from her lack of ability to mother or discipline them. Their only saving grace was the rest of the family....aunts and uncles and grandparents who stayed well involved in their lives....and still are. I wonder tho.....how will these kids find any normalcy in their own lives and relationships. Anyway......I spose it's safer to act out selfish impulses in SL then it is IRL.....IRL one does not have the option of logging out....and real lives are affected, or worse, lost.

And because it's "not against the TOS".

Mentally ill or not, she couldn't have done it without fertility treatment of some kind.

If I had my way the doctor(s) responsible in the case would be TOSsed out of the medical profession and straight into gaol without passing 'go' or collecting so much as a change of clothes and a toothbrush.

--
Aes

I'm with you. I'd also like to know who has been giving her Botox while she was pregnant.

Not sure what you meant, I added that cause after my rant I wasn't sure if i was contributing or derailing.

Perhaps, but then we would have to pay to clothe and feed him.

This idea that a doctor should have the right to make decisions for a patient makes me a little queasy. A doctor is a doctor, not a parent. It's a slippery slope from this idea of doctor as gatekeeper to not assisting a homosexual couple have a child with IVF and a surrogate, or refusing to assist a single career woman with a adequate resources and familial support system, in having a child with these tecnologies, because you don't agree homosexuals or single women should have kids, ever.

However, the fact that the doctor didn't recognize this woman's wishes as symptomatic of mental illnss, or that he even considered inserting all 6 embryos at a time in a woman who had undergone this proceedure multiple times and easily concieved, is completely unethical. For me, it's the fact that he knew her history and has seen her often enough to realize something wasn't right, and yet he went and did this anyway, without seeking any form of evaluation of her mental state that bothers me.

I saw an interview with a physician from another fertility clinic and he said he had a couple that came in with a duffle bag of cash. He presumed it was "drug money". He did not have any legal reason turn this couple of away. But, ethically he felt compelled not to provide the service to this couple because of his concern for the unborn child. He said it just didn't "feel" right to him.

The interview went on to say there is no law that would've stopped the physician from implanting the embryos in octomom. However, from an ethical standpoint perhaps there is. THAT physician did not have to do those implants but chose to. I am concerned about the motives behind this. Was it to gain additional notariety for him and the clinic. Was octomom some sort of experiment? Who knows? I do know whatever state this clinic is in the physician is supposed to go under medical board review for possible ethics violation.

In addition to feeling sorry for the children involved, I really feel bad for the maternal grandmother. In a way, she is not turning her back on her daughter and these children, but merely drawing a line in the sand. My bestfriend irl has a daughter who has mental issues. As a child growing up, she was placed in counseling and had a strong support system However, once grew up she rebelled. In the process of doing drugs and whatnot, she gave birth to 7 children. 6 of which my bestfriend is taking care of. The 7th, the other grandmother has and she is not even the blood grandmother. She just loves that boy to death. My bestfriend painfully decided to draw the line in the sand and said if her daughter has another child she will not take that one in. She struggles with the possibility daily.

Actually, I'd have them tossed out of the profession, but make them pay for the care of the 8 kids, for the rest of the kids' lives.

I know this is going to sound really harsh, but if you are going to be on welfare and without a job at all then you should be limited on the number of children you are allowed to have and still be covered.

I have heard of people who pop kids out like living pez dispensers, just to collect the welfare. Nothing chaps my hide more than to see people like this getting the benefits when I've seen struggling families of all sizes who are working or are trying to find a job, but are refused aid for various reasons.