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

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I agree that you never can anticipate the full cost of having a kid to raise, but that doesn't mean you can justify having kids when you are poor.

I basically take the position that if you need ANY public assistance to raise a kid, you couldn't afford to have one.

If you have barely enough to take care of yourself, you might manage with a kid, but you will live on bare bones to do so. The idea is to have enough income that you figure you can cover some essential things like a proper sized home, food, medicine, insurance, doctor visits, etc. that a child will need.

This is worse when you factor how many families NEED to be a two-income household, and that means they spend a lot more for services to watch the kids when the parents are working and they spend money on "convenience" products because the parents aren't home to do stuff the cheaper (but more time-consuming) way.

What if they could afford one when they had it and then one day they lost their jobs? Not everyone can save either and what if their savings run out before they could get another job?



My parents were medium income but they also got broke too at times but they still made enough to pay the bills but when they go broke, they used credit cards but they would pay it off. Then we were living paycheck to paycheck when we first moved to Montana despite the medium income because only my mom was working and my dad wasn't. So we didn't do as much stuff nor did we travel much anymore. I still wonder how they managed to give us allowance. Maybe they added that as their bill.

Well, I'm not trying to be silly about it. Obviously, you can't look down on someone who has a reversal of fortune, but you (as a potential parent) should look at how much "job security" you have when you talk about having kids. If your job situation is unstable, perhaps it's not a good time to have a kid. If things look quite stable, you have to make your judgment call at that time in your life. It's wrong to be on public assistance and think there should be no issue in having more kids when you can't support the ones you have.

My parents would be considered "middle class," but consider these factors....

1. IIRC, they had my mom's parents advance the money needed to put a downpayment for a house of their own. They bought a new 3 bedroom/2 bath. First "luxury" in that home was wall-to-wall carpeting because my older sister (first child) had a talent for doing high-dives off of any furniture she could find and the house came with terrazzo floors.

2. I remember having VERY LITTLE in the house for a long time. Dad did virtually ALL repair and maintenance work. The house came with a central air system that really didn't work. He installed a small wall unit in the master bedroom and took one he was going to use for his mom's home in the foyer to cool the whole house. When mom and dad did get stuff, they paid for quality because it would last longer. Cheap stuff was just for stuff to get by with until something better could be obtained.

3. Mom stayed at home and raised my sister and I while dad worked. She went to hygiene school so she could have a second income as my sister and I were old enough to be "latch key kids." She needed a job because my dad was low man on the totem pole and if there were layoffs, he was always in danger of being cut (which happened a few times).

4. Vacations were pretty much stay at home or go to the beach. Maybe rent a room at a hotel in the Florida Keys a few hours away. If we traveled farther, we used travel benefits my dad got. We traveled dirt cheap and slept in a few airports when we got bumped off of outgoing flights and no hotels were available for the night. My parents just grew up in a time when they had very little, so they learned to do the most with what little they had.

5. As my sister and I got to our teens, my dad had been around enough to watch emerging trends. Before his employer shut down and sent people home, he saw the signs. We lived off of mom's paycheck and he banked 100% of his checks. Many years ago, dad paid off the house. It was the #1 payment priority over any particular thing we needed. Once it was paid off, if he got laid off all that would matter is paying the utilities and taxes.

I remember my sister's first husband being critical of my parents for being "rich" because they had some nice things and when it came time to buy a new car, dad paid it in full on the day he bought it. This was not because my parents had money...it was how they operated. They paid off things like the house by doing without other things they wanted. Once it was paid off, they acquired things they really wanted by paying for quality rather than just accumulating lots of cheap junk. They knew to save as much as possible. Every nice thing we enjoyed was done on the cheap at every opportunity.

Look at people who are wealthy in your community. While they might enjoy some lavish things, you will notice that they are tight with how they spend money. They might plunk down serious coin to buy that Jaguar, but that's because they want to, and you can bet they likely squeezed blood from a turnip when negotiating the price with the salesman.

Maybe I'll be financially ready after I buy that shiny new sports car I always wanted.

I saw a sports car a couple years back. Very pricey. The license plate read "OUR 401K."

It made me

And so far, everyone here sounds like they were all in better financial shape than my folks and I were back in the day.

Your parents could afford to give you brothers and sisters? You could afford to live in a house?


My parents could barely afford me....hell they were barely making enough before I came along.


It also sounds like you folks had very resourceful parents. Mine...weren't.


So, not only were we basically broke, and not very resourceful, my mom( like myself) was Autistic, and my dad had lousy social skills.

Basically, we were the ultimate SOL situation.


Most of the folks I work with who say the phrase it turns out work 2 jobs at least; something tells me they really didn't think thru having kids before they had them. Well, that explains quite a bit.

The only people anyone needs to justify having kids to is themselves and the rest of their family.

Also, the whole "welfare mothers" thing is basically mythology.

Also, public assistance is there for people to access when they need it, children or no, and there is nothing wrong - absolutely nothing wrong - with accessing it to better support your family.



But it's okay to look down on people who were poor all along?

hey folks, can we keep this on topic?


If you want to argue about federal programs and things like that....there's a political forum for that.

I don't read PPR, and that's unlikely to change.

As far as it goes, topic drift does happen, and it's a bit much to expect controversial statements to go unanswered.

And why didn't you make this request when zer0netgain said poor people can't justify having kids or that anyone who needs public assistance shouldn't have kids?

Anyway, it's also relevant to the topic - a lot of people do need public assistance to take care of their children. That's the reality we live in.

It's true, Verdandi. The reality is, we are all interdependent on one another. It's the nature of the human species. We need to help each other out.

My position is that if YOU can't afford to raise a kid on what YOU bring in from working, you should not be having them. Depending on a government program or the charity of others is problematic at best, irresponsible at worst.

Growing up, there were not the programs around then as we have now, and my parents considered the economic issue seriously when having kids. My dad refused to marry my mom until he had a good job. My mom spent weeks hunting for job opportunities for him. My dad's father died when he was 15 and he had to support his household because his mom had limited skills and barely spoke English. For him, he knew if he couldn't afford to provide for his household, he couldn't afford to take a wife and have kids. It's also why my parents stopped at 2 kids and never had more. Two was enough for them.

EVEN THEN, my dad made mistakes. My dad put the focus on earning as much money as he could get. He made good money, provided a basic home, food, clothing, etc., but at the cost of having to work odd shifts and odd days for the longest time. By the time he got a day shift, Monday-Friday job, my sister and I were in our teens and too old to hang out with dad anymore. All the father/son bonding things supposedly normal families enjoy...we never had that. My dad, to this day, regrets it. I can honestly say that I would have rather struggled more financially that we actually did to have more "quality time" with my dad than what I wound up getting.

So, no formula is perfect, but my dad understood his responsibility as the breadwinner of the household, and he took it seriously. The few times he needed help, nobody would help us, so he knew he could not count on others to provide for his family. Perhaps that's why I have a jaded view of those who think it's wise to rely on public assistance programs.

My mum even told me that you're never emotionally ready for kids, either. I said, 'I'll never be mature enough.' She said, 'neither will I'.

The possibility of material hardship from procreating is nowhere near as big an issue to me as the fact that I simply do not want children. However, if I did want them, I wouldn't let my low/average income put me off. I wouldn't have kids if I was broke, however.

These programs exist to support lower income families with children. Why is it problematic to access resources set aside for people in their position? Your argument makes no logical sense.



I do not know how old you are. I'm 42, and my family received food from food banks, food stamps, support for paying utilities, and state-organized and funded health care. These programs have been around since at least the 70s, and I am certain most have been around longer.

Checking, WIC was available in 1972. The Food Stamp Act passed in 1964. Medicaid became available in 1965. SSI was created in 1974. Welfare in the 1930s. These programs are decades old.



You haven't explained why it's unwise, you simply have asserted it is so. That your parents didn't rely on such support is great, and I wish more people could get by without needing to rely on such support. But in the real world, it's difficult for a lot of people to manage this, especially as the cost of living is increasing at a faster rate than income, especially for people who generally make less anyway. This is one of the real reasons (as opposed to irresponsible spending) that people in the US increasingly relied upon credit to make up the difference, and why the recession was an inevitable outcome of failing to pay people a living wage.

Here's a formerly popular political/social movement that suggested that poor people (also black people, Hispanic people, disabled people, etc) shouldn't be allowed to have children:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_i ... ted_States

I am not saying you are a eugenicist. I am trying to point out how oppressive "you are not fit to have children" is.

Actually Social Security started in the 1930's by President Roosevelt.


GA programs are controversial issues because lot of people believe those programs are there for people in need so they can get back on their feet. Not stay on for life. Plus people actually expect people to go back to school to get a better education so they can have better paying jobs and not need GA. Plus people actually expect people to work full time and go to school to stay off GA because they think that is not what it's there for. Also they expect people to go into deep debt with health bills they can't even afford. I think people have issues with it is because they don't like to pay taxes so they will b***h about other people on it and how they live their lives. I will just assume that doesn't apply to people with disabilities so I am safe from the judgments.

Last edited by League_Girl on 08 Sep 2011, 3:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

So if companies illegally refuse to hire me because of my disability and not wanting to give me accommodations then I should never be allowed to have a family?

Thanks, I didn't think to put down when Social Security itself started.



I think you nailed it pretty well here.

I've read so many people pitching tantrums over seeing someone using a state EBT card to buy what they consider to be unhealthy food or whatever that I transfer my monthly payments onto a debit card and pay with that instead. No one gives me trouble about "wasting" their tax dollars on Dr. Pepper if I use Visa instead of the state EBT card.

It's almost like they think that since they're paying taxes that fund these programs, they individually get to tell people on those programs how to live and what they're allowed to buy.