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Originally Posted by PrennaMama
I have no confusion about the position you hold on whether the women you have spoken of should be ashamed of themselves... It is clear that you (and you are not alone, many share this viewpoint) delineate between those deserving of the gov't assistance programs we all pay into at some point and those not deserving of these programs, based on a some kind of moral score-board. Are you aware of how you sound? I respect the open-forum sharing of opinions, I do. Your opinions (as bolded and highlighted above) are formed by your paradigm. That paradigm is fixed by your perception of a select group of women who seem to be really under your skin because their moral compass is not the same as yours. The fact that you then justify your descriptions by admitting that you don't say these things to their faces, just here, to others who don't know them, makes it all the more unpleasant to witness... If you can see that it wouldn't be good to say things like this to their faces, then maybe your paradigm needs a second look. My family has a few members who'd start a Welfare Queen Lynch Mob if they could, standing on that moral high-ground, handing out judgements, saying, "Look at those losers... look at their children! What monsters." and it makes me sad, because there is just NOT this black/white line between deserving and not deserving. I have even been guilty of looking down at low-income families with whom I've little in common, philosophically, but after being on assistance, and interacting on a different level with many of these same kinds of families... I don't see them the same way anymore.
As for winners versus losers, this is exactly the kind of dogma I was referring to... as if life is a game and the people who play it right will be big ol' winners, and the folks that make the baaad choices are losers...
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A) I wasn't justifying that it is OK to say bad things about people behind their backs. I was saying that I have ranted ONCE in my life. I realize I should never have done so because I could spend all eternity paying for it in this thread.
B) I don't say anything to their faces because it would do no good. They know their options. This is the one they choose. This is the one they WANT. Maybe I am a little jealous of people who can take selfishly without shame. It would be nice to have their lifestyle of fun and parties with no worries. But I just don't have it in me to take bread from someone else's mouth when I could bake my own, and some to share.
C) I don't care what someone's income is, or their philosophy, or what they have in common with me. If I judged based on those things, it would be everyone against me, since I have never met a person with exactly my view. I was not talking about a different philosophy. Is there ANY philosophy that says it is OK to neglect children? If I can't, on a forum about mothering, identify a group of individuals who neglect to mother their children and state my concern about it, then where can I?
D) Re: winners
My definition is very inclusive. It contains just about everybody. Just not those who choose to neglect their children out of selfishness. If that is not good enough for you, then oh well.
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Again, what is it about the bad luck or hard-times thing? Is that really a qualifier? Is there some morality paperwork I missed out on that states that in order to avoid the eye-rolls and downward looks a family has to be humbly meek and truly without to draw on these benefits? |
Clear and easy distinction:
Person A makes an effort and fails. Person B realizes from a young age that she doesn't have to make any effort, because the government will give her money for sitting around doing just about nothing, so she doesn't bother. Both claim benefits. Person A could have had more benefits for her family if there weren't so many people like Person B consuming the funding.
As for being "truly without," technically both Person A and Person B are truly without. Person A tried to avoid being in that situation, and it just didn't work out. Person B aimed for that situation as a career path. This is the gist of what I am getting at: they AIMED for this result. I thought public assistance was supposed to be a safety net. Why are so many young women of my generation, the people I grew up with, choosing to climb into the safety net and stay there, without ever having tried to do the trapeeze? As more and more people climb into it, doesn't it become less effective for those who truly fall off the trapeeze? Doesn't it become a heavier and heavier burden for those who support that safety net, until one day it could break and then drop all of those helpless people to their deaths?
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What would happen if you opened a dialogue with one of these women? What would happen to your perception if, in that dialogue, you saw just a woman, just a mother?... and she told you as a woman and as a mother, she is miserable, she feels like a loser, that she hates feeling weak... like the system and her community failed her... If she were to open herself to you, like that, and show her vulnerability, describe herself using the same verbage you have used here... would she then be deserving of the help she receives... again, from a gov't assistance program that we all have had to pay into at some point? |
I would tell her she made choices all throughout the 15 years I have known her (that applies to several of these women) in order to get into this position she thought she wanted to be in. If she wants to be in a different position, she needs to start making different choices. She still has options. There is a lot of help available to those who want to make use of it.
Remember, I am talking about people who CHOSE this life. Decisions I watched them make from early adolescence, that it appears most of them would be willing to make again if they had it to do over again. If they want a change, I am happy to help them. But why would they want a change if they have everything they value and don't care where it comes from?
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See, and this just tears it. Not only are you parceling out character judgements and morality labels, you assume that what I shared with you (in an effort to illustrate that we are an example of the types who use assistance and are not on hard-times, are not unlucky, and do not feel guilty) was done out of some misguided need for validation. |
I was just giving you back a bit of the patronizing assumption I was feeling from you.
I am not very good at it, having no experience.
I apologise for the failed attempt -- both the attempt and the failure.
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Yes, I may know why we made our choices, and yes I do feel secure about what we do... but YOU don't know what my moral compass is. I could be sitting here with a bong for all you know, while dd runs naked into the driveway.... she's been known to! Lol. |
Isn't that exactly what I said? I don't need to know. You are the one who needs to know.
I am sure you view me, due to your own assumptions, as a person who feels a need to measure and weigh others and conclude with a judgment. That is what I get for a single time in my life expressing my frustration at those who choose a parasitical life. But, a single rant experience in my life doesn't mean I am that person you imagine that goes around all day judging. I couldn't care less what choices people make, past choosing to neglect their children.
Based on my political philosophy, I don't believe a person's choices should be limited to a list of options that any individual or group has determined to be acceptable. The exception is neglect/abuse of dependent children. The people I refer to have made a choice from among legitimate options.
My concern, from a political/societal view, is always alerted when I notice a situation where the central authority might be swaying people's choices in an unnatural way. So, I am concerned that our system's mechanisms might be PRODUCING people in poverty conditions.
Someone mentioned pages ago that ideally our system would support all the poor. I would like to amend that to say: Ideally, our system would have no poor in the first place. Ideally it would be configured in such a way that it didn't funnel people into poverty.
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Prenna: To address your concerns: I don't feel picked on or offended.
What I feel is that I am not a very effective communicator. I have given mistaken impressions every step of the way, and find myself going way off my original point to try to make them clearer, without success. I guess I am not good at predicting the standard set of cultural assumptions and terminology. I consider this practice.
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Originally Posted by thismama
Nobody is judging you for how you live. What is being judged is your harsh judgment of those of us who rely on welfare to get by.
That is it. So no, the judgment is not going both ways.
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Ahhhh, but I didn't judge you, or any group of people referred to by "those of us." I simply made a statement that I know of many of my peers who chose a lifestyle of dependence on public assistance out of selfishness, and didn't make use of their opportunity of staying home to give care to their children. I was entirely referring to people I know personally.
Everything else came later in a failed attempt to clarify. But even then, I never judged you. I don't know you or the mysterious "those of us." I don't know anything about any of you.
The entire purpose of my statement was to answer the OP question about why being a SAHM on welfare has a bad name. I was supplying some examples of people who use welfare in a way that rubs many people's values the wrong way, and therefore turns off many people to the idea that a woman can SAH without being a parasite.
Clearly it doesn't rub PrennaMama the wrong way, but it rubs enough people the wrong way to contribute to a negative impression of SAHMing, and using public assistance.
It was never my goal to go down all the side streets, like defending my right to think of a person who either chooses parasitism as a career or neglects their children as a "loser." I know I have that right to think of them by that term, as everyone has a right to think of anyone by any term they like. It really was an irrelevent tangent. It was also irrelevent to spend time proving that I do know people who neglect their children, or making the case that they are content with that lifestyle.
I would very much prefer to get back to the original idea, and explore the cultural mechanisms involved in views of wealth and poverty. My DH has recently been reading something (sorry, in another language) about the evolution of views of wealth and poverty over time based on the influence of predominant religious views of the time. For example, the book mentions that Calvinism included in it a concept that God had predetermined who will go to heaven and who will not, and the earthly manifestation of that is through wealth -- so those with wealth are those who are predetermined to go to heaven. Therefore, anyone without wealth must be one that God doesn't think highly of, and that makes them less of a person. This view seems to have invaded much of our culture.
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Originally Posted by 2BlueFish
DH and my 12 combined years of schooling that we got without any help from the gov't, that we worked hard for - to be at the top of our class - so we could have the degree of finacial stability that allows me to stay home cannot be simply dismissed as "priviledge". The person who makes that statement has judged *my life* - labeled me. The offense is equal.
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I know what you mean. It bothers me when people call my current financial situation "luck" when I know that I, and DH, have worked our butts off our whole lives to be in this position. (I have memories of being a small child inside doing my homework while I could hear all the other children in the neighborhood playing and laughing outside. <sigh>)
We made some financial mistakes (an $87,000 mistake), and put off having children until we had fully paid for them (living on just my $30,000 salary, in a high cost of living place like NYC). We lost 8 years doing that. 8 years of living on so tight of a budget, and in such poor conditions, that it makes the standard of living of my sister's friends on welfare look like luxury. I guess instead of waiting those 8 years to have children (our dream that we grieved for constantly during that time, still brings tears to my eyes to remember how much emotional pain DH was in due to his inability to achieve enough financially) we could probably have gone on public assistance and done it anyway. But, I didn't have it in me to saddle someone else with the consequences of MY life choices.
Anyway, what bothers me infinitely more than having my hard work dismissed as luck is the fact that it simply reinforces the attitude that there is no effort or choice involved in determining one's situation. Too many people feel they are powerless. They are unaware of their ability to make their own good fortune. I would like everyone to have the opportunity to feel empowered to climb out of their hole, or to protect themselves from falling into a hole in the first place.
I think of public assistance as a tool -- a means to an end, not the end itself. It is a means to avoid or get out of the hole. Otherwise, it just becomes another hole itself.
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Originally Posted by thismama
I think that fails to acknowledge your privilege, privilege that in this system happens on the backs of the underclass. We all have it, to varying degrees. Yours, combined with your hard work etc etc kept you off the dole.
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And that is why I confined myself to examples of girls I grew up with, who went to the same schools, and had the same opportunities I did.
Nobody could call them the underclass, or say that anything is happening on their backs.
I stuck with them as an example of someone who had sufficient privilege and chose not to avail themselves of it because they didn't fear, or have any shame about, the consequences of goofing off their whole lives.
Do any of you socialists realize that one of the main causes of poverty is caused by the government: inflation. Americans haven't really had any increase in "real" (adjusted for inflation) salary in roughly 3 decades. Our purchasing power has been eroded dramatically. Remember how our parents could have one parent working a blue collar job and the other at home and live decently with several children? Why can't we do that now? The government prints money and spends it like lightning. It is a self-enforcing feedback loop. More social programs for the needy --> more government spending --> less purchasing power --> more needy.
The government got us into this poverty loop, and it can't be trusted to get us out of it. It has taken on a life of its own, and as with any living thing, its priority is its own survival. Dependents don't bite the hand that feeds. More dependent poor means greater security for the system that it won't have to face a revolution.
The solution is to enable each individual to be powerful enough not to need public assistance. Then, the incentive to maintain the system as it is goes *poof*, and we can all start working on reforming it.
(Sorry for going all "economist" on you all. That is my field of expertise. I can site my degree in Economics, but I really feel like it was useless. All my useful info I got via self-study in my spare time.)
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I like bluefish's distinction between empowerment and privilege.
Privilege is something confined to a narrow group, and they usually use it to maintain their position of privilege.
Empowerment is something everyone can utilize (though clearly not all to the same end, because of different starting positions) and is usually used to empower others.
The reason my family, socialists, don't like my views, is that they want to give fish while I want to give fishing rods. They think I am uncompassionate for not wanting to give fish, and then can't comprehend the fishing rod part. They just look at the first part of the cliche saying, and then try and sentence me.
Anyone ever heard the saying "When I fed the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why there are poor, they called me a Communist." The reason that Communism was used in that saying was because at the time of the saying the anti-status-quo was communisms. Now that the status-quo philosophy is socialism, the anti-status-quo appears to be libertarianism.
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I don't feel like I have been wronged by anybody. I am too empowered to feel victimized. Victimhood is like a metal ball chained to your leg while swimming. I refuse to be a victim.
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OK, bed time. Thank you all for getting me through a horrible night of headache that kept me up. It appears to be gone now, so I can finally go to sleep.