"You're *NEVER* financially ready for children"

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Yet what's the difference between the assistance being interrupted and someone in poverty losing or having a reduction in their job?

The same issues come up when someone is poor and doesn't have the assistance - yet in both cases people successfully raise children.

The assistance programs without question have issue, suggesting that nobody can have a family if they're poor because their children won't get the stereotypical middle-class lifestyle and they have to worry about money is also a problem.

The difference is that public assistance breeds DEPENDENCY.

Having a job and providing for yourself breeds INDEPENDENCE.

If you are on public assistance before having kids, the odds are you will never get off public assistance. If you try (at least here in the US), you'd be cut off long before you don't need something to help you make ends meet.

If you have a job and lose it, by nature you are inclined to go out and find another job or do something to EARN a living.

Trust me on this. We have generational welfare recipients here in the USA. People who grew up in a family where mom, grandmom and maybe even great grandmom (depending on how young momma started having kids) all were getting welfare checks and never had to work. These kids grow up knowing little to nothing about how to go out and support themselves because they don't observe it growing up in their homes. Instead, they learn how easy it is to just play the system and go on public assistance and be paid to just get by.

You might not agree with me that this happens, but I have seen it first-hand. Lots of people who lose their jobs would rather beg for money than take public assistance because it's structured to be a financial trap you might never get out of.

If you are supporting yourself and choose to have kids, you are making a choice because you know you are earning X dollars/month. If you lose a job, you fully expect to go out and get another job. If you are on public assistance and choose to have a kid, you are doing so because you know the state will give you X dollars/month to provide for your kid. That assistance can be taken away at any time and you probably have no experience or inclination to go out and start supporting yourself if that day comes (never mind that most employers will not touch someone without some record of reliable work experience).

In essence, one chooses to support their own kid(s) while another chooses to let others support their kid(s) in addition to their own.

Nobody has a right to compel others to pay for the consequences of their personal choices.

I have a hard time understanding how people can live on assistance and not work. I mean it's just very little money and they would struggle big time so who would want to live that way? Plus don't they ever get bored? If they have very little money, they won't be able to afford to do anything fun like going to the zoo or going to the coast or going on short trips or going to museums or events that cost money, not being able to go out to eat and not being able to buy fun stuff like DVDs or video games or books. Plus kids who live on it growing up struggle too in life because they end up with used clothes or not much presents or can't do any school activities and other outside activities such as sports or dance lessons because their parents never have the money. So I would think that they would grow up and get an education because they had decided they don't want their own kids to live that way. Plus I have seen people say at Babycenter how embarrassing it was for them when their parents were on it. They say it's embarrassing for a child to have parents who are on it. My niece and nephew never do anything fun because their mother can't afford it. She is on welfare and all but she went back to school to get an education.


But however I can understand why people would want to stay on it for life and still work so they may quit their jobs and get another job so they don't make as much because then they will end up in the gray area and not qualify because they make literally one cent over the income guideline or fifty bucks over and bam they will financially struggle with their bills. Gray areas suck when it comes to this so it forces people to cheat the system because they need to survive. But then black and white sucks too because it causes this to happen. People even lie about their incomes too like saying their partners don't live with them, not getting married so they can keep getting them, not living together so they can keep getting them, lying about room mates not living with them. There are loopholes and people do use them to survive. I do think the system is broken and even the people who work for it know it too but can't do anything about it. They just go by the rules and can't do anything for the families in need who are in the gray.

This is a gross oversimplification. You assume people who come from welfare families won't find work when they grow up and people who come from parents with jobs will have good jobs when grown because the parents provided a good example. Couldn't be further from reality. For one thing, some people work their butts off and never rise above the poverty line. Their children suffer the effects of growing up in poverty and might not be the most stable adults which increases the odds of ending up on public assistance.

I grew up in a family of workers and struggle with employment. It is much more complicated than just the parent not having a job in determining if their kids are doomed to go on welfare when older.

You need to employ some of these people. That would solve the problem. If you are not willing to employ them, what you are saying here won't change a thing or matter much in the real world.

You're distracting from the issue.

The discussion is about having kids and finances. That people who can not afford to raise their own kids CHOOSE to have kids is a matter of personal responsibility and a mentality of entitlement that someone else has a duty to provide for their children. That other people choose to not have kids because they know they are not able to provide for them reflects an attitude of being aware of the responsibility and one's ability to meet that responsibility.

Muddying the waters by saying, "well, that's too simple an explanation" is poor reasoning. As a general rule, it is true. There are always exceptions.

Nothing we say here will matter in the real world. I have no duty (or capacity) to employ poor people so they can go and have kids. It is their (and my own) responsibility that if they (or I) want to have children that they (or I) provide for the kids they choose to have. It is not your responsibility to provide for my kids. It is not my responsibility to provide for your kids. To hold otherwise is to say that individuals do not have to bear responsibility for their own choices.

Three words. Are you ready?

Diapers

Formula

Childcare

These are things that cannot be handed down from someone else, and some states have laws about donating formula (too tamperable, I think), meaning you can't get it from a food bank.

Childcare alone can be crippling, financially. I paid $1,300 a month for a five-year old. It was even more when she was younger. But if I don't work, we don't eat.

It looks a little bit like you met someone who thinks people live to have children or get laid. For some reason, I keep picturing men suggesting this between each other.... oops.

I'd rather have my own private helicopter anyway.

Selfish? Maybe just a little bit. But it's not like the survival of the human race depends on me raising children, if anything, the opposite is true.

Child free is totally valid too. I mean, no one should feel obligated to have children.