News has been made yet again in the Octomom story. Otherwise known as Nadya Suleman, Octomom is in great danger of losing her home (again) and sources close to her have admitted that she is no longer able to care for her 14 children financially, and is likely to accept welfare. She maintains that she has only days left before having no money for food but is still saying no to welfare. In her last interview several days ago she said she borrowed money and has a week's worth to support her family.
This is hardly surprising when you consider that she finances her family alone and is also responsible for the payment of several nannies who still work for her. How she could survive without nannies is beyond the comprehension of many of us with three, four and more children. Having no identifiable income, it was only a matter of time before the services of the state were required.
Suleman has turned down offers of porn which any woman would rightly deem as insulting and degrading. Is that the struggling mother’s only option? Having sex with strangers on camera? But she has also turned down offers of a reality show, saying that option would exploit her children and expose them to publicity they never asked for. Fair enough – she has a point. It’s all very well to pop out five, six, or eight kids at one time but to make a living off that scientific feat does seem manipulative because the children have no say in the matter, no matter how a person convinces themselves that the kids love this kind of exciting , public life and would really miss it if it left.
Suleman did do the inevitable bikini pose for a magazine and was paid a substantial sum. She has lived to regret the photo shoot but admits it paid some hefty bills at the time.
(By the way, is anyone else sick of the "body after baby" bikini layouts in all magazines recently? Instead of recovering and bonding with baby, it's like the main goal of a post-partum celebrity mother is to show off a flat belly about nine seconds after giving birth. I'm amazed the placenta has been removed and the mother cleaned up before they rush to the set! Never mind the birth and the aftermath, the breastfeeding and exhaustion (the nannies can handle all that); it seems their first phone call after the birth is to a personal trainer instead of the grandparents - that was so 2002!)
So what is a single, 30-something mother of 14 to do? Is she entitled to a tax payer payout, when she had 14 children via a scientific method, knowing she couldn’t possibly afford them? If you are from California, would it bother you that you are paying to raise these children?
Whether we like it or not, someone has to feed and care for those 14 innocent children. Many of them have special needs, as is common with this level of multiple births. If the tax payer does not help, who will? Therefore tax payers in California will very likely foot the bill for these 14 children and Suleman will indeed be a welfare mom. If her only other options are porn or reality shows, then welfare will likely be her choice.
So we ask ourselves how all this happened. How a woman with no means of supporting herself or her six children was allowed to go ahead and allow impregnation of so many eggs that she ended up giving birth to eight children nine months later. Her doctors have been scrutinized but it appears that she had the right to do what she did.
Her detractors are horrified at her choices. More children than she can afford – a record setting multiple birth situation, with half a dozen previous children needing care. Over-population, irresponsibility and selfishness run amok, people said. But to those who support her (and there are supporters) believe that if we support the right of women to not have children and to terminate pregnancies, surely the same right goes to women who want to have dozens of children. All is fair in reproductive choice--right?
Make no mistake - anyone who falls on hard times (and there are many of us) need and deserve a hand up. That's what welfare is for. Most of us would never begrudge that. But it's likely that this will be an unfortunate long term lifestyle in the Suleman case.
Tell Us
Where do you stand in this case? What do you feel should happen? The children are innocent – that’s clear. But what do you think should happen in terms of their long term care, and the rights and responsibilities of their mother, Nayda Suleman?