Recently I was watching one of the weekend talk shows on the
television. The “talking heads” were
talking about single moms who are taking the benefits provided by this country
and continuing to have children so they can get more money from the
government. Many have several children
by several fathers and many of the fathers are now in prison. The talking heads acknowledged this; all of
them, liberal and conservative. They said
we need a new way to incentivize the country to get the women to stop having
babies. They didn’t offer a way to
accomplish this task but thinking back to my childhood, I think there is a way
to do this easily.
When I was 11 years old my father died. He had been 49 and my mother was 44, and 2 months
pregnant with her fifth child. My oldest
sibling was 19 so Mom couldn’t get any survivor children’s benefits for the
oldest (too old), and the youngest hadn’t been born. That meant she would only get benefits for 3 of
us until the new baby was born. Mom had been a “stay-at-home” wife and
mother so she was taken to $0 income with the last breath my Father breathed. We were very fortunate that she had seven
brothers that jumped in to help her.
After her fifth daughter was born Mom decided she needed to take every
penny she had to go to school to get a degree.
Mom had a blood disease and had been taken out of school two weeks into
the 10th grade and put in a hospital. She wasn’t expected to live. She spent a year and a half in the hospital
and learned to walk again prior to her discharge. She had to be taken, during the depression,
back and forth across Michigan once a month for treatment at the hospital in
Ann Arbor, Michigan. There were no
highways at the time. When she decided
to go to school she needed to first take a GED to be able to attend. She passed and for the next two years she was
a college student and a single Mom who hadn’t planned for life to go this way. Mom graduated at age 47 with a Junior Accounting
Degree and went to work to better support her family.
The story of my mother is very important because as I
listened to the talking heads last weekend I was amazed that it felt like they
were saying women have extra children to stay on welfare rolls and avoid
work. Mom got social security for four
children but there is a maximum benefit for children who are survivors of a
deceased parent and this amount is still the same today. The fund still equals what would be for two
children. http://www.ssa.gov/survivorplan/onyourown4.htm
It doesn’t matter how many children you have,
the amount of your benefit is the same amount no matter if you have 2 children
or 5 children. It is a maximum benefit and
they expect you to divide it by 4 if you have 4 children or 2 if you have 2
children. When I turned 18 I could have
taken my quarter of her check, until I was 22, and headed off to college but I
chose to go to work and to support myself because Mom needed the money for my
sisters. Perhaps this limit should be used with those receiving benefits just
for having more children. Why can’t
there be limits on the amount of support that is given to women who just keep
having babies to get more money? I was
told that each child a Mom produces equals more than $900 each month in welfare
for housing, the WIC program, food stamps, and Medicaid, not to mention their
Obama-phone. Even if the amount were
half of this amount, it is a lot to a household each month. Do the math yourself and you’ll see how much
this is per year yet a husband who breathes their last breath leaves only
enough for two children, even if you have four or five. Why
should a parent who has their loving spouse (and father to their children) who
was taken through death have a limit on their children’s support but not
someone who wants to sit at home having more and more babies so they can get
more and more money? My husband taught
in a state prison for many years. He
taught the 13-22 year old convicted felons who were tried as adults by the
justice system for the crimes they committed.
Would you be surprised to learn that many young men had several children
by several women all before they became an inmate? One 19 year old had fathered 5 children.
These are not fathers to their children, yet they thought that having children
made them a man. They sat in prison
unable to have any input into their children’s lives; unable to give them any
monetary support at all and yet proud they had “spread their seed”. They
depend on the “Village” that the talking heads said is so important. It doesn’t take a village to raise a child,
it takes a parent who loves their child, who has a child that they wanted, not
for monetary gain but because they have a desire to nurture and love the child. When my Mom became a single Mother, it was not by choice. It wasn’t to increase the money brought in to
the home. She had a heart for her
girls. She went to college to provide
for her children. Oh yes, one more
thing. When Mom retired she went back to
school to get the one thing she hadn’t received in her younger years, a high
school diploma. She obtained that at age
67 by going to night school.
The talking heads spoke about incentives for single
parents. My mom’s example as a parent
was the incentive I needed to live the life I have lived and to have my
children with their wonderful father. I
am now in my 60s and can say that even though we had very little money while I
was growing up, we always knew we had the best family ever and a mom who loved
us more than life itself. Mom lived to
be 91 years old and died in 2008. What
will the children being raised by moms who have no incentives to work give to
their children? Will they be a great
example for anything more than breeding more children who think having children
is the way to get out of working for the rest of their lives?
I realize others will have their own opinion, and this is
America so you are able to express them.
I can only tell you what my Mother’s example has meant to me. She was amazing!
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