Fourteen’s Company Revisited
Okay, I’m having a few problems with this story now:
The woman who gave birth to octuplets this week conceived all 14 of her children through in vitro fertilization, is not married and has been obsessed with having children since she was a teenager, her mother said.
Angela Suleman told The Associated Press she was not supportive when her daughter, Nadya Suleman, decided to have more embryos implanted last year.
“It can’t go on any longer,” she said in a phone interview Friday. “She’s got six children and no husband. I was brought up the traditional way. I firmly believe in marriage. But she didn’t want to get married.”
…
While her daughter recovers, Angela Suleman is taking care of the other six children, ages 2 through 7, at the family home in Whittier, about 15 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.
She said she warned her daughter that when she gets home from the hospital, “I’m going to be gone.”
It’s not the marriage part that bothers me, it’s the lack of family of any kind. As the anti-abortion ad we played here the other day made clear, a child born of a mixed race marriage, where the father disappears and the mother dies, can still grow up to be president.
But it helped to have grandma, however typically white. Here, even grandma ain’t gonna be around.
And one of her six previous kids is autistic.
I still resent the hell out of the invasion of her privacy—more like a seizure and annexation of her privacy—and how we judged her solely on her having the kids, as if she were just another greedy CEO paying herself an obscene bonus.
Have we strayed so far from the biological necessity and destiny of procreation? Are children now a burden instead of a blessing?
To be sure, these fourteen children will be a burden to someone, and no child should have to be. But why were so many so quick to condemn her as public enemy number one—it sure wasn’t about the kids.
Tanstaafl said,
January 31, 2009 @ 5:17 pm
“…why were so many so quick to condemn her as public enemy number one—it sure wasn’t about the kids.”
No, it’s about the welfare payments and medicaid that we’ll ALL have to pay. It’s about the inability of any single woman to have enough hours in the day to raise and care for and educate so many children. They likely will end up raising each other, running the streets, and dropping out of school.
Carol said,
January 31, 2009 @ 6:30 pm
What Tanstaafl said. When I first heard, I assumed it would be another situation like those quints in Iowa a few years ago, where the whole town pitched in and made it work, and it was all voluntary and, as far as I know, Mom and Dad didn’t ask for government benefits.
However, I then heard things about this woman having the six kids already and not being married and it’s relaly not hard to figure out where that is going to go, is it? We’re all going to foot the bill, and that’s not right.
Cindy said,
January 31, 2009 @ 10:06 pm
I see no difference between this woman and CEO’s giving themselves bonuses after receiving bailout money. Both are taking advantage of honest hard working taxpayers for their own selfish desires. I agree with the other commenters; we know that this single mom will not be able to adequately care for these 13 children financially and developmentally. Anyone who makes such self-centered choices should be ashamed of him/herself.