Is it just me or has the press come down unusually hard on Nadya Suleman, this mother with octuplets? Now don’t get me wrong. I personally believe that these women should be adopting all the children out there with no homes instead of implanting embryos. But that’s my personal opinion. In the spirit of the pro-choice argument I would never inflict my personal opinion on someone who’s entitled to decide for themselves. But I mean when you think about how many men consciously make children that they can’t afford and have no intention of supporting, I wonder: Is the press being a bit hard on this woman who seems really committed to raising her children?
It’s weird how discussion topics really overlapped for me today. I was just talking with my sister earlier today about our culture’s obsession with what other people think, keeping up with the Jones’, and all-round living our lives to please others or gain approval from some greater societal expectation or “norm.” We began the conversation discussing what this all means in the context of the economy with everyone looking for a job from other companies instead of shifting their expectations to creating a method to provide a service to their immediate community in exchange for some form of support (You know . . . starting a business providing something people really need but can’t afford in these hard times using some form of the barter system.)
The conversation for me quickly moved to society’s expectation that people should only have the number of children they can “afford.” But I wonder exactly what that means to people who really have supportive families. I mean I work with immigrant communities here in New York that have THE most amazing kids I’ve seen in a while. These big families have a way of supporting each other, providing for each other, and maintaining some constructive responsibilities assigned for every member of the family. But culturally, many would argue that people with big families are often not just odd occurrences, but are creating all these kids irresponsibly because they won’t be able to provide the best material things for the children. I just wonder why there is so much judgment of people, and particularly people of color, having a large family.
And then the criticism doesn’t fall on the men donating the sperm, nor have I seen as much of an uproar about the fathers of illegitimate children. Somehow, they are swept under the rug in a way that this woman isn’t. I mean think about it really. There is rarely a face to the irresponsible men conversation. It’s a general public complaint and phenomena but with no prospects of society calling these men and putting them under the microscope of judgment. At worse, you’ll see individuals on some daytime court show or some famous politician or entertainer who is allowed to pay off the mother to fix the whole situation. Now can you imagine that? A woman being let off the hook or not even having to go public because she threw money at someone to raise the children she irresponsibly created? I think there is a greater guilt or more judgment for women who go the money route.
Now I’m sure some would say that the issue is that the state will have to foot the bill for her raising all these kids. But how many children is the state providing services for because there is only one income in the home with no father paying their child support. How many children is the state paying for as a result of their fathers not being in their lives? Help me out here folks.
I found it particularly interesting that they chalked it up to psychological shortcomings. But I’ve normally don’t hear much about men who irresponsibly don’t support their children being depressed and having a hard childhood as cause for their behavior. Maybe we SHOULD start considering this for men as well and stop judging women who have all these kids. Maybe we should demand the same psychological analysis for the psyche of the men who irresponsibly create children even before we know whether they are actually going to step up to the plate or not. Maybe that would get more of these men into the therapy they really need and keep the focus off a woman who wants to have and raise an insane amount of kids.
And just in case you haven’t heard enough about how messed up these double standards are for women, here comes Kristin Davis (no relation
) the madam who ran an escort service with all these Wall Street, business exec., and politician scum charging it to their business accounts. And yet, she’s the only person who went to jail. When she sat down with the District Attorney, she was ready to make a deal. She spilled the beans with a detailed list of what each and every client spent. But the DA said he wasn’t interested in pursuing them . . . only putting her in jail. She still has the list and gladly showed it to 20/20. And yet, no one seems to want to prosecute any of these men. Hell I was left really pissed off at 20/20 too. Only the last 15 min. of the show were dedicated to the story. They didn’t even expose any of the men from the list they looked over. Why no exposé like they do on the pedophiles where they just role up on these folks with the camera rolling? Hhhm maybe that’s because high-level CEO’s from NBC (and probably other channels) are on the list. Forget all of this articulate explanation protocol. I’ll keep my response to this one short and sweet: Now that’s just fucked up!!!!! Maybe we should trade Kristin's list for the Al-Qaeda list and call it even. 
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