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Man with 30 kids wants state help to pay his child support
Submitted by el cid on Sat, 2012-05-19 17:42
Story here. This guy is no saint, but if we assume for the sake of argument that all or most of the eleven mothers receive government assistance, why shouldn't the father also receive government assistance to pay his support? Why do we give welfare to moms who can't or won't support their child and jail fathers who can't or won't support their children? Wouldn't helping the man in this case also help his children?
'A 33-year-old man who has fathered 30 kids is asking the state of Tennessee to give him a hand with his child support payments. Desmond Hatchett is having a tough time making ends meet while working a minimum wage job and seeing half of his paycheck get split up between his 11 baby mamas. Incidentally, his score and 10 kids is a record for Knox County, and some of his kids receive as little as $1.49 a month once the money is divvied up. Hatchett last appeared in court in May 2009, when he had a paltry 21 kids to his name and said he had no intention of having more. Somehow, he found a way to add nine more to his legacy, so we're guessing he probably isn't done at 30.'
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Comments
Double-standard
Personally I think it is unbelievably irresponsible to father, or mother, so many kids, without the means to support them. What is also wrong is to presume that one sex has the right, and supportable right, to have as many kids as she can and still finance it publicly, while the other sex does not get the same consideration. My own belief is that there should not be publicly-supported (financially) parenthood, period. The current state of affairs just encourages women to keep having kids to get more money from the state, which is to say the taxpayers.
The original idea was to support mothers with kids to keep children from growing up in poverty but guess what, the current state of affairs does not stop that. In fact, it encourages it.
I agree, Matt
I have to say I agree 100% with what you say.
The current system encourages irresponsibility on both sexes. But as long as keep rewarding women for having babies, they'll find a man to father them.
I wonder what happens if we reverse that model: we give kids to dad and jail mothers if they don't send the support check. Would women continue to have kids without a father around?
Julia
If you haven't done so, you should check out Obama's "Life of Julia" campaign at http://www.barackobama.com/life-of-julia.
From cradle to grave, Julia is taken care of by the Obama government. She has children, but no husband or father for her child. She's married to the government. That's the Obama vision.
My own belief is that there
My own belief is that there should not be publicly-supported (financially) parenthood, period.
I disagree with this. I think that the government should encourage healthy families, but it does not. We have set up a system that is punitive to fathers even if they are able to support their kids while it rewards mothers even if they are not able to support their kids. This man shows that you cannot hold a man responsible by punishing him every time he has a kid - after a certain point a man's got nothing left to lose. If the government had supported fatherhood in a meaningful way then maybe this would have never happened.
not one of these poor children
was produced to get this man any income.
on the other hand ...
Inverted Pyramid?
Women control 100% of the heterosexual sex and men have as much causative effect of getting them pregnant as key lime pie has of making them fat! And most importantly women have the option of declining parenthood whereas presently men do not. Therefore, females should be the first source of child support not the male.
How supported financially?
I said that the gov't shouldn't be supporting (financially) parenthood. What do you suggest financial support of parenthood look like if not as it is now? Pay both the parents for having kids? Even if the dad is also collecting money for becoming a father, the problem remains the same. If people can make money by having kids (like many do now), then the formula makes for more kids and more poverty. If people on the other hand do not get money for having kids, they are a lot less likely to do so without themselves being ready to support children.
It's simple, really: If you can't afford kids, don't have them. People have a natural right to reproduce, but others have no obligation to finance the execution of that right. And indeed to do so fosters people having kids irresponsibly.
When having babies means more hand-outs from the government (ie, from working taxpayers), the result is more and more babies born to parents who would rather collect money based on their having kids instead of working, which leads to poor and dependent semi-adults who never learn by example the importance of working for a living. To finance themselves, what do they do? Have kids to get paid for it, just like their parents did, and the cycle goes on and on.
At some point, the cycle of poverty and welfare dependency has to end-- or eventually so many people will be in that cycle, there'll be no way to finance them all. The only way to end it is to tell people that the party is over, to reduce gradually the hand-out money they have become dependent on and so to nudge them into getting jobs.
Sound mean? Encouraging welfare policies that allow people to grow up poor and stay poor and dependent for their entire lives is a lot meaner, in my book.