Study: Lack of diapers linked to depression

[laundry_queen]

83. Nice.

How about people in my situation? You think people pop out babies they can afford for no reason? How easy is access to birth control? Do you have any idea how much birth control costs (hint, mine's $50/month and a visit to the doctor every 3-6 months for prescription refills)

My situation is I was married. My husband made 6 figures. We had savings. We had new vehicles, and a lot of equity in our home. We could afford children. We had 4. He bankrupted us (I had no idea, he was the one who 'took care of the money') and cheated on me then left me. I'm stuck now, a single (full-time, no 50-50 here) parent of 4, in school full time (and an occasional p/t cleaning job) and living off alimony and child support. I'm lucky that my ex has money to pay me or I'd be destitute. Seriously. I had no education, and student loans and grants, even here in Canada, wouldn't have covered the cost of f/t school while raising children. Even with decent monthly support, things are tight. Luckily the field I went into has a high starting wage and a low unemployment rate (2% or less). I suppose I should've 'not had children' in your world.

I don't think lecturing people on the children they shouldn't have had is a solution. It's a right-wing talking point (blame the woman, tell her to keep her legs closed 'welfare queen having babies to get more money' blahblahblah). Also, my grandparents were poor. Really poor. Like haul water, do the washing in a bucket with a washboard, grow your own vegetables, cry about having to give your daughter hole-y shoes from her older brother, kids go barefoot in the summer, no plumbing or electricity kind of poor. In some ways they had it better than the poor of today. They weren't educated, but they knew how to do things - my grandmother knew how to knit winter wear out of old sweaters donated to the church. She could take donated clothing and alter it to fit the kids. My grandfather knew how to make leather boots from the leather from his cows. My grandmother grew, canned and preserved everything. They picked berries all summer. My grandfather knew how to build things and they had a 'family' sawmill in town, and he was able to build their furniture from the woods surrounding their farm. Poor people today don't have the knowledge, the land or the raw materials to take care of themselves. Where is someone in the downtown of a major city going to get land for a garden for free? Wood for furniture-making for free? The knowledge on how to preserve food, or how to make/alter clothing?

The poor of our grandparents is not the same thing as the poor of today. It's not fair for you to make that comparison, because it's not comparable. Also, while I understand the sentiment of not having more kids than you can support, people's circumstances change, besides...are you saying poor people don't have the right to a family? Is having a family a right or simply a privilege of wealth? Lots of questions for discussion, but I don't agree with "if you have kids when you're poor, you deserve what you get". What can we do about it? How about we figure out a way to reduce the gap between rich and poor? How about we work on ending or lessening poverty?