I'm still just astounded at how much thought people DON'T put in before breeding. Child care costs ought to be one of those factors that make or break the decisions on if you can afford it, instead of just jumping in and then complaining when you're dropping $1500/month for one kid to be watched for eight hours a day for 4 years until they're old enough to start preschool. That right there is more than what my bachelor's degree cost.
Why don't people sit down, look at their current financial state (by that, I mean with spreadsheets and W-2s and sitting with an accountant) and create a budget with the kid-related finances added in. If that puts you in dire straits, YOU CANNOT AFFORD A FUCKING CHILD. DO NOT HAVE ONE; YOU DON'T ACTUALLY HAVE A RIGHT TO HAVE A CHILD YOU CANNOT AFFORD. It is not the responsibility of anybody else to ease the burden of your personal choices when you made said choices without fully thinking them through and now you're up shit creek.
And there's always at least one person in the comments who goes, "Well, what about the single mom who only makes $40K/year and unplanned baby and boo hoo hoo!" Well, what the fuck about them? First of all, that single mom in your hypothetical situation is making double what I make (more than if we consider after taxes). Second of all, whose fucking fault is that? Not mine, so why am I being put on the hook for it? Where's the kid's father? Go after him for child care money. If he's not working because he "can't find a job," then why the fuck are you paying for child care when he can watch the kid all day? Thirdly, if she's only making $40K a year, she had no business getting knocked up in the first place. Planned Parenthoods provide cheap birth control and condoms are far less expensive than a baby. Or aborted/adopted the child out (preferably aborted because if you don't have the insurance to get birth control, you don't have the insurance for prenatal care and childbirth).
The Hypothetical Impoverished Single Mom (a character archetype that is trotted out in these types of situations to elicit immediate empathy without questioning her choices that led to her current predicament) didn't end up that way by accident or through circumstances outside of her control. But we're to immediately feel sorry for her and want all the social programs to throw money at her so she never has to fully endure the consequences of her having children without thought and just figuring that other people will bail her out because it's all for the child.
Where's the empathy and free money for the Sad-Sack Almost 30-Something who makes less than $22K/year and is about triple that in medical, student, and consumer debt due to circumstances that wasn't being a fucktard and having a baby when she clearly had no business doing so? Oh, but she doesn't have a baby, so because she actually used her brain, she can fuck off, right?
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"Why children take so long to grow? They eat and drink like pig and give nothing back. Must find way to accelerate process..."
- Dr. Yi Suchong, Bioshock
"Society does not need more children; but it does need more loved children. Quite literally, we cannot afford unloved children - but we pay heavily for them every day. There should not be the slightest communal concern when a woman elects to destroy the life of her thousandth-of-an-ounce embryo. But all society should rise up in alarm when it hears that a baby that is not wanted is about to be born."
- Garrett Hardin
"I feel like there's a message involved here somehow, but then I couldn't stop laughing at all the plotholes, like the part when North Korea has food."
- Youtube commentor referring to a North Korean cartoon.
"Reality is a bitch when it slowly crawls out of your vagina and shits in your lap."
- Reddit comment
"Bitch wants a baby, so we're gonna fuck now. #bareback"
- Cambion
Oh whatever. Abortion doctors are crimestoppers."
- Miss Hannigan