More American kids went hungry last year

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27771447/


Abner

 

Perhaps I'm a heartless bastard, but it really bothers me when people who can't afford kids, keep having kids. If you can't afford 7 BMW's, you don't buy them. Similarly, if you can't afford to feed or raise 7 kids, you shouldn't have them. I work with a guy who has four kids. His "religion" does not allow his wife to work, so he's pretty much the only provider. His religion also does not allow birth control, and he just had his fourth kid. All he does is complain that they are on free and reduced lunch at school. Again, I might be a jerk, but if he allowed the kids to be born (and I'm not talking abortion), he shouldn't complain.

I know there are situations, especially now, when parents get laid off from their jobs and thus can't afford groceries and such. That's unfortunate, and I don't think I could blame the parents for that if they are really trying. It just bothers me, especially as a teacher, when I see families with 7-8 kids with both parents working minimum wage jobs at McDonalds or something. The kids don't get what they need, and it's not right for parents to bring children into this world when they are not ready or able to provide for them. They can't afford food, but yet the kids can have $100 cell phones. I don't get it.

Fortunately, we do have things like the school breakfast and lunch programs, so at least these kids get some meals.

-Matt

 

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Matt..Matt...Matt. Food security is such a complex issue. Since 55% of the world's population lives on less than $800 per year (google UNICEF) you might be surprised to know that hunger extends into families that don't have 7 kids and $100 cell phones. I'd also ask you to consider the "luck" of the child being born into a family with limited means. Your baby didn't choose you as a parent, or the resources you provide. The question is how do we feed children that are hungry today?

(A different question could be how to introduce your socialized reproductive laws and standardized religious doctrine ideas. Maybe you could run for office.)

 

Don't get me wrong, I don't want children to starve. I just want people to be more responsible. It just bothers me when parents who can't afford to feed a child have numerous children. That's irresponsible. Honestly, I do appreciate your bringing up UNICEF and worldwide hunger, but I was specifically talking about the US. Sorry, I should have clarified. People just need to get their priorities straight. While not related to hunger, I used to hate working as a file clerk in an OB/GYN office because I would see teenage mothers coming into the office with their hair done up, nails done, and they'd whip out their cell phone in the waiting room. (And mind you, this was in the late 90's when cell phones weren't as common or as cheap as they are now.) They'd have all of this, but be on medicaid. I'm sorry, but if you can afford a cell phone and new fingernails, you shouldn't be on medicaid. Again, it's just priorities.

Since Reagan was born, my wife and I have had to drastically change our routines. We used to go out to dinner about once a week, and we saw movies in the theater all the time. We know we can't do that anymore if we want to provide her with the things she needs. I'm sorry, but the Baby Formula/Food vs. Movie Tickets debate seems pretty simple to me. I don't understand why some parents can't make those decisions.

-Matt

 

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I hear ya, I really do. I don't think people use good judgment in budgeting. I don't have a lot of patience for the kind of abuse you describe, but it's an impossible situation. We give money for food through the food stamps program, or money for medical care- but what they do with their other few dollars is none of our (collective) business really.

For example, my husband and our 4 children have lived below the "US poverty level" since our first child was born in 1994 and I quit working full time BUT we have never gone without, and I don't consider us poor (though we are technically classified as being so). I think the income line is set way too low.

We just bought a new house last year (our 3rd upgrade, it's over 200K), we vacation often, we pay for private in-home music lessons for all the kids, the kids have stylish clothes, and all the other stuff that goes with kids: karate, ipods, newer ipods!, swim lessons, sport gear, cell phones, PS2s, and 2 of our 4 have their own laptops- all this in addition to paying for homeschooling (around 2K) and the rest of life and heat and water and food and cars! We do this on our "below poverty-level" income. We have never taken a dime of public aid in any capacity, but we qualify for all of it. Why? Also, we don't have any debt beyond our mortgage (save our new shiny student loans). Our credit is stellar.

I should bite my tongue, but we could live on a lot less. It's what you do with what you have, not how to get more.

Teaching someone how to cook food, growing a small edible garden, and breastfeeding are all ways of providing superior nutrition to children for hardly any money. Of course, if your only buying packaged/convenience foods and formula, it can be very expensive to feed your 0-5 year old.

When I have more free time, I'd like to volunteer in some capacity that supports these types of good choices....but until then...

 

Hi Matt - I don't think you're a heartless bastard. I don't think you're any kind of bastard (we all know that there's many types). I think that you're mixing two different but related issues. It would be silly if I tried to say that I knew the answers. Lots of smart people have been trying to solve this problem (and all the related problems) for a long time.

If a kid hasn't eaten a decent meal in three days, should I feed her? Maybe I should quietly tell her that I'm not going to feed her because I don't want to enable her parents.

There is a big problem when the richest (for now) country on the planet can't feed it's citizens. We need to find a way to stop kids from dropping out of school so they can find good enough jobs so they can support their families. We need to help kids to learn about money (and sex education) so they don't create families that they can't support. We need to take every irresponsible bastard (that's one of the other types) who has created a kid but has refused to support that kid, and hang him up by his ....toes until he pays to support that kid so that the kid doesn't have to go hungry and the state doesn't have to do it for him. If you do that one thing and do it hard and do it well then I'll bet that you cut the cost of tending to these kids to single digits.

 

Hey, Matt. I agree with your depiction of irresponsible parents 100%. It is irritating. If someone cannot afford to have children, they should not have them. Most of the people in my family only have one or two children, but they get the best of everything. As a Dem, my views are pretty moderate, although some have constantly tried to paint me as a flaming Birkenstock (Birkenstocks suck!) wearing liberal. I was glad when Clinton worked with the Republicans on Welfare reform. Of course like you said, many people who are responsible can lose everything in the span of a paycheck. I see this in my line of work. I really hope the new President can help create new jobs. We are outsourcing our American lifestyle away.

As to the question on children going hungry, this is quite sad and depressing. My God help them.

Abner

 

Matt: I do not think you are a heartless bastard. I do consider myself fairly liberal, but I have to wonder why it is not just intuitively obvious to everyone that, if you're going to make a kid, you should ask yourself, "Can I really afford this kid?" And, if the answer is "Maybe not," then wait till you can afford it. However, why should the children suffer? It is said that the sins of the parents should not be visited upon the children. In my religion, the deity feeds the poor, heals the sick, etc. and those who share my religious beliefs should do the same (either individually or collectively).

 

Well said brother Ted! I do believe we have a moral obligation to feed the hungry. The other day my ultra conservative friend made fun of me for giving some guy on the street five bucks for food. After I gave the guy a five spot, my friend Mark immediately started in on the "Oh, he is going to blow it on beer" line. However, the guy I gave the money to immediately went into a Del Taco and started voraciously wolfing down food as if he had not eaten in days! Even my friend Mark felt bad for the guy. These are tough times. If you are doing well, be grateful as hell.

Take care Ted! Hope you are doing well.

Abner

 

I work for a social services agency and I can most definitely answer that most of the people I deal with on a regular basis give no thought to whether they can "afford" a child before having children. Heck, I can't "afford" the three that I have! I mean I regularly see minors having children with no means of support whatsoever. They rely entirely on food stamps, TANF, welfare to survive and it's just barely survival if that. What kind of future is there for children in that environment?

I don't mind helping people out. And I think we in the USA do help out not only here, but around the world. My question is how do we go from simply helping out to truly turning someone's situation around? Sure we can give a guy $5 to eat today, but what about tomorrow? How do we help people today without creating the culture of dependency that we see today? I personally don't think "more money" is the answer. I don't know what is.

 

I'm lost as to how the above is accomplished. According to the site that I read, the poverty line for a family of 5 is $24,800.

 

I think the answer is going to be that some politician is going to need to take a stand in the middle of the road (the most likely place where one can get run over by both sides) and say that both the Democrats and the Republicans have some merit in their approaches, but the more holistic approach is to combine the best of both. The Democratic approach to welfare is, "Alright everybody! Line up and get your checks!" This keeps the recipient of public assistance from starving to death in the streets but runs the risk of creating dependency. The Republican approach to welfare is, "Throw all the bums off welfare! Make 'em get jobs!" Well, if they knew how to get jobs - family wage jobs - and were actually able to work, this would be good, but how many public assistance recipients are i9n a position to go out and get family wage jobs right now? Somehow, one needs to combine financial assistance now with job re-training so that they can at some time in the forseeable future get decent-paying jobs and get off welfare. Another thing that could be included could be personal finance classes (covering even such basic concepts as how to tell whether you can really afford one more kid). In addition, one could add assistance with such things as figuring out how to get off public assistance without bankrupting onesself when loses one's government-sponsored medical coverage. In short, we need to quit the partisan bickering and figure out how to help the poor both in the present and for the future.

 

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I'm happy to chat with you about being frugal in emails or pms if you like, and I am very open about our finances because -quite frankly- it is a point of pride for myself. I take very seriously my ability to turn a profit in the company (family) I have been given to manage (I'm the mom). LOL Mainly, we have been living on one income for 14 years- so I have had a lot of time to work out a good system.

Edit: I don't know what the poverty line is, I said "below poverty line"- but what I should have said is the state income guidelines for aid.

 

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Yeah, I agree Ted. If there was an easy answer, it would have already come up. I think the fact that we collectively can't seem to solve this problem for our country is a clue to the solution.

It's a tough call, but I will say that it all boils down to being a highly motivated person. A highly motivated person will always find a way to get what they want. Always. Highly motivated people dominate business and industry (without college degrees) and are skilled at finding solutions.

I have a very very dear friend who is unwilling to return to college, even though she could double her income in 2 years for doing so. <shrug> She has an associate degree for a field that pays minimum wage (oh....colleges pushing degrees for minimum wage jobs....that's for another time...but a HUGE problem in my opinion)

You can't make people want to better their situation. Honestly, I think there are not as many motivated people as our humanitarian/social workers would like us to believe. I do think there are people who simply "don't know" what to do, but, without motivation, they never will. Bucket loads of people don't like their situation-but accept it.

I'm also in the minority in that I don't think you need to do a P&L before you decide to have a child. Raising a child is not expensive, some people make it expensive, not the same thing.

I'm very "Horatio Alger Jr.-ish" in an old-fashioned way, I believe it's all about motivation.

 

I think one of the main problems here may be that people who once had life dreams and goals tend to become psychologically beaten into submission and then don't know how to change their lives for the better ... or, worse yet, come to believe that it is worthless to even try to make a life plan (presumably becaquse some as yet unforseen disaster/s would cause the second and subsequent life plans to come crashing down on them just like the first). But for those who can get to the point where they have some glimmer of hope that they could better themselves, access to information on what programs are available to help them improve their lives would be a good thing.

 

I happen to think that doing a P&L before having a child is a good idea. One should not, for example be making babies if one seems trapped in a cycle of barely above minimum wage jobs punctuated by unemployment benefits and then maybe even disability or other public assistance. There was a statistic floating around years ago that it would take a quarter million dollars to raise a child from cradle to college. I'm not sure what that number would be once adjusted for inflation nor do I know what assumptions were built into that number, but I figure that it is advice worth heeding. Another piece of advice on making babies: even if one's biology allows one to make a baby and potentially not even know about it, they shouldn't! Babies are a precious gift from God Himself (Psalms 127:3-5) and they deserve to have daddies!

 

Yep and how many kids will go hungry next year because of born to shit-head parents who, can't, don’t or simply won't take care of their kids?
Yet they will all hang out waiting on FDR part two and the great infrastructure work to begin.....in 2011.

When the free checks, cheese and enchiladas don’t arrive soon after the swearing in ceremony, Obama could quite possibly go from the greatest American president who was African-American, to a half-white uncle tom.

 

I'm not a fan of people that continue to have kids that they can't afford, but I'm also not a fan of people that sit idle while countless children starve. I'm generalizing of course, but Americans tend to wait for the government to take action in times of need rather than taking action ourselves. We have no problem buying bigger homes, flat screen TV's, laptop computers, or even silly video games, but how how about contributing a little here and there to make sure a child somewhere doesn't go hungry? There are 300,000,000 Americans. I am going to assume that roughly a third of them are adults. If each of those adults ate one less McDonald's Value Meal per month and instead donated that $5 to a worthy food bank or similar charity, we would have raised $6,000,000,000 in a year. At a cost of $800 per year per person, $6,000,000,000 keeps 7.5 million children alive and eating. I'm always amazed when I listen to people talk about how broke they are while they smoke their cigarettes, pound a few beers, or order a few pizzas because they don't feel like cooking whatever is in the refrigerator. I know times are tough right now, but while you're out Christmas shopping this year, how about sending $5 to your local food bank. It's a great habit to get into.


Pug

 

I agree with you in theory but in practice I have seen during my time in Dallas, Texas (1999-2001) where people drove up to food banks in Mercedes and Lexus sedans, popped open their trunk and had some volunteer from the food bank load groceries into their car. If they could afford a Mercedes surely they could afford food for their family, or their priorities were screwed up. I suspect the latter. Another time I rented a room in a house (cost $275,000.00 easily) during a 6 month contract away from home and every morning the children were sent to school without so much as a piece of toast or a bowl of cereal. Perhaps a spay and neuter clinic is needed for human beings; it would be a public service to society.

 

I agree 100%.