Is it child abuse to have children knowing you can’t afford it?

[OddBeMe]

I’ve asked this similar, but I keep thinking about it.

Not talking how to enforce it, per se. Just the general idea.

Yes it is child abuse

No, it’s not

A total of 47 votes were cast: 17 girls and 30 guys. See detailed results

[Aerissa_Jade]

I don't think it is child abuse to have children knowing you can't afford them.

If they are planning on abusing the tax payer to pay for their kids, that is abuse of the tax payer, which currently discriminates against people who make too much money.

So much for government programs being available for everyone and equality.

Which is why those government programs should go away and all that funding go into the foster care system.

This way, it still allows freedom to choose to have a child, but when child abuse happens because they can't keep the house/apartment warm in the winter, the water turned on, food on the plate or cloths on their back then there will be plenty of funding to properly take care of the children in a better environment.

So no, having a child you can't afford is not child abuse, because many people can't afford children when they first have them but step up, grow up and do better and then can start to afford them and take care of them.

Sometimes it is a motivating factor to get a better job.

[BigWhiteWolf87]

Of course it is. It's abuse & cruelty.

Not only is a "parent" abusing the child in their care - by not having the money to provide adequte food or shelter or heating / lighting if they can't easily pay the bills.

But they are also setting the child up to be abused, harassed, bullied, etc at school because they can't afford $10 clothes at K-Mart or they can't afford school supplies.

I don't understand people really.

Society as a whole says that if you can't keep a dog or cat with adequate food, shelter, water & even toys that you are abusing the animal and guilty of animal cruelty.

But when it comes to children in similar situations society as a whole doesn't care. That's obvious by how 60% of the people on GAG right now don't realize it's abuse.

[BigWhiteWolf87]

Furthermore, average household that can barely afford the adults themselves - and is stretched to or past limits with children - is usually prone to higher degrees of:
Alcoholism.
Criminal Activities - Theft, Prostitution, etc.
Domestic abuse.
Drug abuse.

WHY do you think police more OFTEN respond to familial issues in the LOWER end of cities, in WELFARE area, on the WRONG side of the tracks. Plenty of terms of low income households.

It's not because they're bored. It's because STATISTICALLY problems in SUCH households are HIGHER than when you do not include the stress, anxiety, etc. of barely living hand to mouth.

[BigWhiteWolf87]

I work with low income households via volunteering and as a career in addiction & mental health and have done so for a decade.

My father worked for the federal government for 30 years as a social worker - and a damn good one who busted open cases of orphanage abuse, etc. - specifically in youth protection.

All that I recounted is REALITY

[Drumlin2001]

Not sure it's always that straight forward. Over 19years (pregnancy plus raising to adulthood) a person's individual circumstances are likely to change. Changes of job, loss of family /friends, end of relationship. Whatever financial position you maybe in when you fall pregnant can be vastly different further down the line.
Raising a child dosen't have to cost the earth if you're prepared to compromise. I have 2 kids, we take hand me downs from any family or friends for clothes, toys, books. We use facebook groups and market place for items being given away by others. We'll buy items new when they are heavily discounted (50% or more). Its not that we cut afford to buy new, but it's a waste of money at my kids age (under 3).
I do think families with more than 2 kids who are always on the breadline who continue to have more are probably not going to give their kids the same opportunities than if they stopped multiplying

[OddBeMe]

I get you. But those in poverty tend to stay there. I’m all for programs getting them out, but perhaps if you’re in moratorium on babies and here’s free condoms.

[Aerissa_Jade]

That is very true, I hear stories of kids costing like 17k or 20k a year and that was never the case with anyone I knew. Then again we all did hand me downs, and I have relatives that have 10+ kids who never used any type of government assistance and maybe made a 100k a year, so in theory they didn't make nearly enough money to afford all those kids, but they did just fine and still had money to buy toys like ATV's.

When you have that many kids, back to back... seems like they would outgrow their cloths so fast, it just goes down the line until it wears out.

There is also a lot of second hand stores in these parts, where people donate old stuff and you can buy it for next to nothing, along with those free groups you refer to.

[OddBeMe]

@Aerissa_Jade again, not talking sterilizing the poor. Just sex ed and free condoms perhaps :)

[Aerissa_Jade]

@OddBeMe I'm all for free (non tax payer funded) condoms and birth control, I think those that support it should start a non-profit and ask for donations, I would donate now and then but I don't think it is the tax payers job to do it.

[Stoner710]

No it’s not, at this point i our economy anyone who isn’t making half a million can’t really afford kids. What kids need is a loving house hold and a mother and father. It should probably be illegal to be a single parent.

[BigWhiteWolf87]

@Stoner710 - if you can't afford to routinely feed or buy clothing for that child and keep them in a household that may at times lack heating or lighting because you can't pay bills. You're abusing them.

Hell people would say if you kept a dog in similar conditions - without adequate food, toys or shelter - you're abusing the dog. So do you think a child in the same situation isn't being abused?

[Stoner710]

@BigWhiteWolf87 parents make all sorts of sacrifices for their children. One is going hungry you feed your kids before you feed your self. You don’t buy the name brand cloths. If you can make your own. There’s goodwill which sees cheap used cloths. Your kid doesn’t need Gucci got Jorden’s

Also think about the broader implications for society. We already have a over supply of college educated individuals your telling most workers in the United States they can’t have kids your also telling women they have to marry a guy 20 years there senior we all know women can’t have kids there entire life, we know the best time for women to have children is 18-25 after that you can have complications with the birth and defects

We know men tend to make more the older they get by the time they hit 40 they will be making over 40k a year ( unless you’re going to be engineering physics or computer, science or medicine or you get lucky and go into sports or become a child star like Daniel Radcliffe).

Also how are you going to enforce it? Are you going to be like the CCP prior to 2015 and force expecting mothers to murder their kids before they’re born? Or are you going to wait until the kid is born to to murder it? Or are you going to force them to give up their children to a foster home? The only way you could enforce this is taking on the policies of the Soviet Union or China which were and are incredibly authoritarian countries

[SpokenTruth]

If not being able to afford meant child abuse then all of America and most of the rest of the world would have abused millions of children over the years IE the great depression. As long as the parents or parent loves their children and trying to make ends meet for them sayings it's child abuse because someone can't afford children is a form of abuse all of its own.

[OddBeMe]

I hear you…I’m just talking stats. Poverty families tend to stay there. Perhaps we provide condoms as well as unemployment…

[SpokenTruth]

The people are poor it's all purposefully engineered none of it is by mistake.

[OddBeMe]

Ehh, in social psychology sure. It is def hereditary.

[Theearthisflat]

I mean it's not ideal. I don't understand why there are so many people with kids who can't even take care of themselves. Obviously not everyone is born privileged; I come from a working class childhood myself. However, if you have kids on purpose when your life isn't stable to begin with, there's going to be tooons of stress that gets passed to the kids.

[Pete671]

Yes it is having kids when you know you can't provide for them,,,

[OddBeMe]

Financials ain’t really taught in school, so it might be hard to hold some families to that.

[Pete671]

fair comment,,,

[OddBeMe]

But you bring up a good point that financials should be taught and maybe that’ll solve this problem.

Smarter people have fewer children. Thus why we are in population overload.

[Pete671]

Totally agree,

[Jamie05rhs]

It's a controversial opinion. But I actually agree with you.

[OddBeMe]

Yeah it gets tougher thinking about “enforcement”…but just as a thought experiment or thesis it seems to stand up to scrutiny.

And I’m not talking parents who lost their jobs for a year and then got back on their feet. I’m talking poverty families who can’t break loose. We should help them, but somehow dissuade from family planning :)

[Jamie05rhs]

@OddBeMe Right. I agree. But it needs to be a cultural change. You can't dictate that through government policies. The idea has to be spread and adopted as a community social value.

[OddBeMe]

Yeah. I mean like gay marriage seemed to be won in the hearts and minds before the ststehouses. It’s really just changing the narrative from have as many kids as you can.

[Jamie05rhs]

@OddBeMe Right! And that's a great example.

[Red-Blaze]

I dont think it is, its just reality, and you still care for them as much as you can

But it dose depends on how you say it, but if its just what it is, I dont think its abuse at all

[OddBeMe]

Sounds like you’re on the fence. Again, not talking about enforcement at this point. Just a thesis.

[Red-Blaze]

No, just putting a disclaimer :)

I mean if someone is like drunk shouting at there kids "You bags of fins I can't even afford you" over just having a quit time and saying "We are not scraping by, you can cost a lot but I love you" are very different ways to say it

[Apple1996]

Nah there is a lot more that goes into having kids besides just financially providing for them. Being able to love/care for them is the most important thing

[OddBeMe]

Is it though…? Financials are pretty importsnt. Can’t eat love.

[Apple1996]

You also can't eat money lol

[Exterminatore]

I believe so but that doesn’t stop the people who can afford to have children the lest from having the most. Many of them making us pay for it via social programs.


My right to not pay for your children outweighs your right to have them.

[OddBeMe]

Just an aside, what’s you’re position on abortion?

[Exterminatore]

I’m against it. I’m in favor of every other method of birth control. I’m in favor of using tax dollars to freely give away any and all methods of birth control except abortion. I also favor not only making every method free, I favor where possible making it extremely easy for anyone to get said methods of birth control. I favor having many locations throughout each town or city where (if no medical procedure is necessary) it can be easily obtained. Don’t like condoms, fine, come get a free vasectomy or hysterectomy. Don’t like those options you can have free Norplant, the pill or whatever currently exists. Better to pay for the birth control than have all these unwanted children who no one can afford. I think it’s inhumane to the child. People aren’t gonna stop having sex and getting knocked up, so better to help them in every and any way avoid pregnancy as I see it.

Abortion I cannot condone as it’s against my religion.

[OddBeMe]

Your ideas of freedom seem a bit contradictory. You don’t want your taxes to pay for someone else’s children, but you’d like your taxes to force your views onto women.

[Exterminatore]

I think the costs of free widely distributed birth control are far less than social programs to pay for them.

More importantly those kids didn’t ask to be here. Now they are. If we can prevent more misery it’s worth it.

I see it as the fetus is a life, so it’s not so much forcing my views on women but regulating what I see as murder.

It’s just as easy to get pregnancy prevented with an idea like mine than to have abortions.

We all know how babies are made, therefore there is virtually no chance of needing an abortion when birth control is properly used.

[OddBeMe]

Agreed on that.

[midnightmoon05]

What do you mean by abuse? what do you mean can’t afford to have kids?

We were below the poverty line for years. My parents had my little sister.

[exitseven]

Kids that have rich parents usually have a better life than their poor counterparts but I do not think that I was abused, at ;least not by my parents.

[OddBeMe]

That’s a bit different than poverty. That’s a whole different lifestyle according to stats.

Families rise and fall in America…but people poverty have a tendency to stay there.

[bamesjond0069]

In theory yes it is. However I don't think this is really what's going on. Like if they live under a bridge and starving yes, abuse. But just live in a dumpy apartment and share bedrooms and eat Ramen. No. That's not abuse.

[OddBeMe]

Im talking families in constant poverty whos kids starve every week. Parents who have to constantly rely on food programs (which I volunteer for) should be dissuaded from more kids…

[bamesjond0069]

Starve every week =/= rely on food programs

If they do programs then they have food.

This is the biggest problem with social programs. I'm not saying we shouldn't have them but they encourage expansion of need of said programs.

[OddBeMe]

Here’s the thing, they starve they die. So as a volunteer I can get passionate at events when asking for donations.

But no one wants to be on food stamps or WIC. That’s a common right wing myth of free shit. Those programs are a few rungs above Nazi death camp rations.

But if you give humans the taste of a good life, they’ll fight for it. Otherwise, we tend to tread water and just accept our lot in life. Which is weird but true.

[bamesjond0069]

I mean everyone I know on programs is just because they want to be. I never met someone who truly need needed it before.

[OddBeMe]

Interesting. Are they defrauding? Or are they really living in poverty and are fine with it?

[bamesjond0069]

They meet the requirements of the programs. I personally don't find it to be poverty though.

[Sour-rose]

I don't think it's child abuse, it's just unfortunate circumstances... for the parent and kids.

[LiamJHayden]

Somewhat. Also in many cases an abuse of productive taxpayers.

[OddBeMe]

Not gonna lie. But would rather my taxes pay for a kids meal or education than a corporate tax break.

[LiamJHayden]

Same here.

[scooogy]

Let me ask you back, where's the *use* in that abuse?

[OddBeMe]

You mean what verbs I’d use to describe the parents?

If you’re in poverty, and rely on food banks and free clothes, you tend to stay there your whole life. Bringing a child into that world seems like abuse to me.

All for destroying the cycle of poverty, but it is like a tractor beam. If it were drugs, it wouldn’t be controversial.

[msc545]

Not really. People that can plan that well generally have money and brains.

[BigWhiteWolf87]

If you can't afford to routinely feed or buy clothing for that child and keep them in a household that may at times lack heating or lighting because you can't pay bills. You're abusing them.

Hell people would say if you kept a dog in similar conditions - without adequate food, toys or shelter - you're abusing the dog. So do you think a child in the same situation isn't being abused?

[exitseven]

You always hear about some junkie that was found dead. Often she might have 2 or 3 kids.

[BigWhiteWolf87]

@exitseven That's the thing. Lower income households are more prone to alcoholism, criminal abuse, domestic abuse, & drug abuse. Police are not more often responding to calls in such neighborhoods because they're bored but because statistically such areas are more problematic.

Raising a child in a household where you can barely afford food, can barely pay the bills, may not be able to buy them new clothes (even cheap $10 K-Mart stuff) or school supplies is already abusive. And then you include the typical problems I just listed - drugs, etc. - and it's simple abuse.

[BigWhiteWolf87]

*criminal abuse - correction - criminal activities

[jimmy2]

No one can afford it when kids come along it all good

[jshm2]

That's not how kids work, sunny.

[BigWhiteWolf87]

If you can't afford to routinely feed or buy clothing for that child and keep them in a household that may at times lack heating or lighting because you can't pay bills. You're abusing them.

Hell people would say if you kept a dog in similar conditions - without adequate food, toys or shelter - you're abusing the dog. So do you think a child in the same situation isn't being abused?

[Dinosaursandanime65]

It’s abuse to yourself

[OddBeMe]

That’s a thing we’re keeping secret. How shitty parenthood is. I feel no one talks about it because they want grandkids and churches want future believers.

They cut the mothers asshole open during labor and her shit falls out into a fckin bucket.