Should welfare recipients be required not to have children while on welfare? Agree or disagree? Why

[Anonymous]

Regarding the question about actual benefits. My understanding is this:
Cash Assistance/ TANF - capped @ lifetime of 5 years (aggregate or in a row) there are exceptions for those in school, with a newborn, training for a job, etc. But not indefinite.
Food Stamps/EBT/SNAP/WIC
Subsidized Housing/Section 8
Medicaid

Bingo

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think OP has a great idea, and we should extend it to remove children from situations that are likely to cause them to be burdens to society -

Statistics show that children from abusive households are likely to repeat the cycle of abuse, so if parents commit abuse they should lose their children, and, of course, if a woman marries a man who is an abuser, clearly she makes bad choices that have adverse impacts on her children so her children should be raised by people who can teach them to make better choices and she should be precluded from having more children.

Similarly, alcoholism has been shown to be both genetic and environmental, so if one parent is an alcoholic (or suffers any kind of addiction, actually), then the children should be taken away and the parents prohibited from having more. After all, the non-addicted spouse made the bad choice to marry someone with an addiction problem.

And, of course, statistics show that children of two parent homes do better than children of single parents, so after a divorce the children should be taken away and given to a stable, two parent home, and the single mother should be prohibited from having children unless she can demonstrate that they will be raised in a stable, two-parent home.

Once you start focusing on how things adversely impact society, there's no end to what you can achieve with your good intentions.

And where will all these children go? And how will that be funded? Good intentions mean nothing if you don't put your money where you mouth is.

I think your satire detector is broken. Perhaps you need to read some Swift. I recommend "A Modest Proposal."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Regarding the question about actual benefits. My understanding is this:
Cash Assistance/ TANF - capped @ lifetime of 5 years (aggregate or in a row) there are exceptions for those in school, with a newborn, training for a job, etc. But not indefinite.
Food Stamps/EBT/SNAP/WIC
Subsidized Housing/Section 8
Medicaid

I think that's the standard delivery package a family can receive.

However, I did see a report on the number of people receiving disability benefits (mental and physical) which can be lifelong benefits, since disabilities don't necessarily ever resolve.

Not taking a side, just providing the information I have.

How dare you bring facts to an argument based on a conservative stereotype!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:While I agree that the government should stay out of reproductive issues, I still feel that we are in our rights to not provide government assistance (tax dollars) to those that continue to have kids when they can't afford their own basic needs (food, shelter, etc.). If youalready have kids and are down on your luck, absolutely you should get some help, but the second you pop out another mouth for us to feed, then your support ends.

Yeah, yeah "why punish the innocent child". I totally get that, but if the parents are that stupid to make the right decisions, then lets throw them on birth control and we'll make the decisions for them.

Laws do exist to prevent the dumb from killing themselves, such as seatbelts, so why not restrictions to prevent a burden, however slight, on our tax dollars. Not to mention that the odds are high that the vicious cycle will continue.

I bring this up when I found out that a co-worker of mine's daughter, who is 17, is having another baby by another boyfriend. The coworker is 34. Imagine being a grandma at 33. The daughter is on welfare and at the same time was getting tattoso, piercings, nails, hair dyes and cell phones since she kept losing them. She lives in subsidized housing and has a roomate that she collects from, the roomate paying more than what the daughter is paying for rent.
The co-worker thinks it is great how smart her daughter is. Stupid breeds stupid.

You're going to throw the innocent children on birth control? No? Then what are you going to throw the innocent children on? What exactly is your plan to make sure that the children of the welfare recipients don't go hungry and have shelter and adequate clothing? Because you haven't offered a single idea on what you will do about those kids if you're going to take away support from a parent (really, it seems you are only punishing the mothers).

[Anonymous]

Op, you didn't answer the PP's question:

What about parents who have children, then they lose their job and can no longer afford them. Then what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Regarding the question about actual benefits. My understanding is this:
Cash Assistance/ TANF - capped @ lifetime of 5 years (aggregate or in a row) there are exceptions for those in school, with a newborn, training for a job, etc. But not indefinite.
Food Stamps/EBT/SNAP/WIC
Subsidized Housing/Section 8
Medicaid

I think that's the standard delivery package a family can receive.

However, I did see a report on the number of people receiving disability benefits (mental and physical) which can be lifelong benefits, since disabilities don't necessarily ever resolve.

Not taking a side, just providing the information I have.

I am PP who asked for this information. Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's my story.My kid has medicaid since his father who is required by divorce decree to provide health insurance, hasn't done so, and I can't afford to buy it.I did have a second child, but his father pays 100% of his expenses-wants to, insist on it-it's his kid.Well, DC medicaid put my newborn also on DC medicaid.I called them and said that we don't need him to be on DC medicaid.I was told that they "don't separate siblings". I called twice, got the same lady, got cursed out and she also hung up on me.She said that if I don't want the medicaid for my newborn, they will also take it from my older son-"they don't separate sibling".
so come out that they will take it from somebody who needs it and give it to somebody who doesn't.
Wrote them a letter-mailed it and faxed it- making my younger son not part of "my household", but part of his "father's household".Hope it works.

So your ex-husband pays for one of his children's needs, but not the other's?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op, you didn't answer the PP's question:

What about parents who have children, then they lose their job and can no longer afford them. Then what?

I think there is a difference between having a child when you are 100% sure you do not have the money to support that child, and having children when you have every reason to expect that you will be able to support them, but then losing your job. For one, in the second case, it is easy to imagine that the money you are giving to the parent will only be temporary. If they had a job in the past that could support the childern, there is a reasonable (although of course not certain) chance they will have this kind of job again. There is every reason to expect that you will only need to give them money for a short time, and that they will soon be working, paying taxes, and be able to contribute to others who unexpectedly find themselves suddenly without money. In the first case, if they expect to have a job soon, they should wait until they have one. If they do not expect to have one soon, then they are asking for money over a very long period of time with no expectation that they will soon be working. I'm amazed they are not ashamed to ask this from other people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Disagree. Fundamental right.

There is no such thing as a fundamental right. There are only rights that we, as a culture and society, decide to grant.

Well, the Supreme Court disagrees with you.

The supreme court says that our constitution gives them rights. That agrees with my definition of rights. But we could invoke a constitutional convention and change this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Disagree. Fundamental right.

There is no such thing as a fundamental right. There are only rights that we, as a culture and society, decide to grant.

Well, the Supreme Court disagrees with you.

The supreme court says that our constitution gives them rights. That agrees with my definition of rights. But we could invoke a constitutional convention and change this.

You think we are going to amend the constitution to say that people on welfare can't have children? Okey dokey.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Disagree. Fundamental right.

There is no such thing as a fundamental right. There are only rights that we, as a culture and society, decide to grant.

Well, the Supreme Court disagrees with you.

The supreme court says that our constitution gives them rights. That agrees with my definition of rights. But we could invoke a constitutional convention and change this.

You think we are going to amend the constitution to say that people on welfare can't have children? Okey dokey.

I doubt anybody, including myself, would be stupid enough to amend the constitution to say that people on welfare can't have children. However, one could amend it to say that rights are contingent on a person contributing responsibly to society. Since, right now, "right" seems to mean anything people or the supreme court want it to mean, I don't see that it would be any worse to add the word "responsibility" to the constitution and let a series of court cases define the word, the way it has defined the word "right".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Disagree. Fundamental right.

There is no such thing as a fundamental right. There are only rights that we, as a culture and society, decide to grant.

Well, the Supreme Court disagrees with you.

The supreme court says that our constitution gives them rights. That agrees with my definition of rights. But we could invoke a constitutional convention and change this.

You think we are going to amend the constitution to say that people on welfare can't have children? Okey dokey.

I doubt anybody, including myself, would be stupid enough to amend the constitution to say that people on welfare can't have children. However, one could amend it to say that rights are contingent on a person contributing responsibly to society. Since, right now, "right" seems to mean anything people or the supreme court want it to mean, I don't see that it would be any worse to add the word "responsibility" to the constitution and let a series of court cases define the word, the way it has defined the word "right".

Yeah, I am sure we'll get right on that. The ideas of the general public scare me.

[Anonymous]

One only has to wander over to the Health & Medicine forum to see that birth control methods fail. What will you do when 5% of the people on welfare who you have forced on birth control end up pregnant anyway?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One only has to wander over to the Health & Medicine forum to see that birth control methods fail. What will you do when 5% of the people on welfare who you have forced on birth control end up pregnant anyway?

Well, that's due, in part, to a lack of education on how to properly use birth control - oh, wait, conservatives are against teaching sex ed other than to say "Abstinence!"

And, of course, we wouldn't want those poor people just running around having wanton sex because they have free birth control - so we should make them pay for their birth control with the knowledge that if they have a baby they won't get any help from the government. That'll motivate them properly!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op, you didn't answer the PP's question:

What about parents who have children, then they lose their job and can no longer afford them. Then what?

I think there is a difference between having a child when you are 100% sure you do not have the money to support that child, and having children when you have every reason to expect that you will be able to support them, but then losing your job. For one, in the second case, it is easy to imagine that the money you are giving to the parent will only be temporary. If they had a job in the past that could support the childern, there is a reasonable (although of course not certain) chance they will have this kind of job again. There is every reason to expect that you will only need to give them money for a short time, and that they will soon be working, paying taxes, and be able to contribute to others who unexpectedly find themselves suddenly without money. In the first case, if they expect to have a job soon, they should wait until they have one. If they do not expect to have one soon, then they are asking for money over a very long period of time with no expectation that they will soon be working. I'm amazed they are not ashamed to ask this from other people.

Okay fine, let's agree that people who have children while on welfare should be ashamed of themselves because they made a terrible choice (or didn't use protection, or whatnot).

Now that we've gotten that over with, what do you do about the children once they are here? If you are arguing that the parent who made that poor decision (i.e. mother, let's be clear we're talking about women here - the men don't seem to come up in this discussion) should no longer receive governmental financial support even if they have no job or have a job that doesn't pay enough to provide for a family (as many jobs do not--try living off $8 and hour), then what do you do about the children who need to be fed and through no fault of their own don't have any food on the table?