This is kind of a personal rant, vent, plea, whatever you want to call it. My sister in law is 26 years old and has 4 children. She is intelligent, she tries to be a good mother...but she's broke. So broke, in fact, that she and her children are on the verge of having nowhere to live. She dropped out of high school at 16 and got married to escape an abusive mother who pushed her into all sorts of horrible situations, including telling her to seduce the neighbor's son so that she could date his father or she'd have nowhere to live. (BTW, this situation resulted in her being raped and having an abortion.) Dear old mom signed the papers to allow her to marry before 18. She's worked hard and gotten her GED and is now in school for nursing, but the world is crashing down around her financially and everyone in our family's answer to helping her is...
"If you didn't have so many children, you wouldn't be in this situation." This coming from people who have children themselves and have never wanted for anything in their lives.
They think that she's stupid for trying to go to school, that she should just deal with her lot in life because she "made bad decisions". This is code for "Everyone knows you were a slut in high school." All of her kids are with her husband...
They don't care about the children, they don't care about her...so what do you do? How do you make people care? Why is it that her children are considered a punishment for being "slutty" as a teenager? Why is it acceptable for people to judge women on their sexual past? Why is it acceptable to see children as less important if they are born to women who have been labeled as easy?
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE!?
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Yeah, this seems to go with the idea that people want women to have their kids and not consider abortion and yet will do nothing to help a woman with kids but will instead blame her for having too many. I also think it is ridiculous for people who have honestly never wanted for anything to look down upon and criticize those who happen to not have enough. But it sounds like that family isn't the best family to get support from (considering her mother, at least).
Kinda sounds like the things people were saying about the Octomom (though I guess instead of her being slutty with men she was just slutty with fertility doctors). And to continue the pop culture/reality show references, also makes me think of John and Kate. If Kate happened to fall on hard times with her kids I can only imagine the criticism she would receive (she already got hell from a lot of people for not taking the Playboy photo shoot where people were just appalled that she would pass up that money to feed her children -_- ), where John can help make those 8 children but if he's out sleeping with random women and spending tons of cash for vacations and he hits rock bottom and can't provide for those kids I would imagine it would still end up being Kate's problem.
'Tis the nature of the sexism beast, I guess. Yay, right?
We like to be judgmental and we like to point fingers, though we live in terror of having someone point that finger at us someday.
What a crappy deal. This is why we need more affordable childcare in this country.
How do you make people care? Short answer: You can't. You can only educate them on the ways in which their privilege blinds them to the struggles of others and hope that they finally see a glimmer, if not the light.
I hope your SIL is not only successful for her and her kids' sake, but also because success seems to be the best in-your-face kind of snub to all those rooting for her to fail and be endlessly punished for her "bad decisions."
i even read a LttE that almost implied hurricane katrina happened because one woman in a picture had 10 kids - the man (no surprise there) said maybe she wouldnt have been stuck in the city or wouldnt need people's help if she had, and there it is again, "made better choices."
i have nothing but empathy for people in rough times with kids. hell, i can keep myself awake at night thinking about stupid stuff like "what if there was a nuclear blast? how would i get the kids out of town? what if we drove off the bridge (huge bridge over a lake i drive over several times every day). would i be able to get the kids out of the car? who would i choose?" kinda crap. like somehow people actually say "i cant wait to have kids so i can lose my job and be homeless." or "sweet, ive got three kids, bring on the natural disasters!"