I know you're not big on that Michael Phelps thought experiment --- but here's another one for consideration: How much more abuse would that single mom out in California who the octuplets on top of her other six kids be subjected to if she were black?The reaction could be summarized in three words--Get A Rope. But a much more interesting question isn't what she would be subjected to, but what all the rest of us would be subjected to. In other words, the key difference isn't in the treatment this woman has been getting, (all jokes aside, it's tough to imagine it getting much worse than death threats) but in the fact that if she were black, there would almost certainly be a debate about black people our out of control kids. In other words, Nadya Suleman has the privilege of standing as an individual, of not having the burden--or honor, really--of having to represent. Indeed, we will know we're in the Promised Land when a black woman can have 8 kids, apply for food stamps, start up a website asking for help, and not be used as a cudgel to bash the rest of us.
Video of Suleman below...
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Uhm...does this mean I should feel bad for thinking she represents people to whacko too have kids?
black, hispanic, arab or white...this woman needs medical attention...
I come here for solace from cable news and you give me a video clip of Suleman. Of course, being an Atlantic guy, you "contextualized" it, but I'm kind of hating you this morning, Mr. Coates.
The woman is crazy! If it had been a black woman instead of Ms. Suleman--we would see Gloria Allred all over the tv talking about how she is filing a complaint with CPS.
Maybe this doesn't matter, but has this woman had work done on her nose and mouth?
I think I love here. I want to be the father to her children.
Brucds, you can not escape.
Lolz Stacy.
Of course, if she were a white, married conservative Christian, all those children would be precious little gifts from Bebby Jesus, and all the diaper companies would be lining up to award her free stuff. Everyone who criticized her or said "no way in hell would I ever..." would be demon spawn baby eaters.
Enough with these hypotheticals. It's not as if she's getting off without criticism. Everyone I've heard speaking about this, regardless of their race, has condemned her for her irresponsibility. I think the only reason she get's any sympathy is that she kind of looks like Angelina Jolie's retarded sister.
As to whether there would be a debate about blacks and their out of control kids (If Suleymom the mangnificent were black that is), maybe there would be. But I think that's because she would be seen as an extreme example of a real issue, which is the large number of black single mothers on public assistance. This may not be fair since her example is not truly representative of anyone, but I don't know if its necessarily racist.
Is Jay Z really the black Brad Pitt?
"You can't escape"
Just to shame you, I'll note that clicked over to Andrew's blog and found a link to this article on "A Worthwhile Canadian Initiative."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/183670
Now I'm off to Walgreens where they're having a sale on vitamin supplements.
(Actually, the Newsweek article is worth a read and should shame us all.)
Too true. My first thought when I saw those babies, even before there was any controversy was: "thank god that woman is not black." I can just imagine the national conversation around that one. You think the 'will the Obama family change the black family pathology' line is big now? That shit would have taken over the airwaves. Glad to have dodged that bullet.
I haven't been following this story so closely, but every time I open up the MSNBC web site, there is a new story absolutely savaging this idiot. Same with pretty much every other web site I've seen (to be honest, I haven't really checked that many others= have been the same.
First Resident Evil 5, now this. I hate to say it but: This blog is starting to become starting to become a source of contrived outrage. It's a shame too.
So you think someone named Nadya Suleman, with her coloring, is seen by the white community as white?
Or what's the point here? i'm confused.
Wow, you really like to reach for racism. "If she was black..." blah blah blah RACIST!
"This blog is starting to become starting to become a source of contrived outrage."
I don't think anyone is acting outraged. People gave him shit yesterday for NOT giving in to the "what if Michael Phelps had cornrows" comparison.
"I think the only reason she get's any sympathy is that she kind of looks like Angelina Jolie's retarded sister."
This made me laugh. She really does.
i think she looks like she's preparin' for the next aliens vs predator film in this pic.
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tmz.com/media/2009/02/0212_octomom_pregnant_pictures_ex5.jpg
Good god, bfnh. You should have put a "not safe for work. Or home" after that link. Yikes.
my bad. it was one of those things so horrific i felt the need to share w/as many people as possible.
anyone that hasn't clicked - the link above is nsfvha "not safe for viewing by human or animal"
Wait, wait, wait.
People thought she was latina because she was previously married to a man with the last name of Gutierrez. Her father is Iraqi and her mother is Ukrainian. She's not being treated like a fully white woman. She is being criticized quite a bit.
Here, just read this: http://www.racialicious.com/2009/02/10/unmarried-nonwhite-woman%E2%80%99s-crapload-of-babies-not-considered-%E2%80%9Clittle-gifts-from-god%E2%80%9D/
No comment on the racism angle. BUT for the very first (and hopefully only) time in my life I agree with the folks who hold the media complicit in this. Think about it -- Angelina Jolie, those whacko Duggars and John & Kate are on TV all the time. A normal person sees them and thinks "Oh, hell no!" But a person who is clearly mentally ill might think it's cute to procreate their own baseball team. Then start a website where they too can get free stuff donated from companies like all of the other over sized broods on television.
She doesn't have the mental capabilities to think that things would be any different for her than for Jon and Kate. She just stepped in it though because the country is fed up with irresponsible folks and we can't give her a nickel because people in our own communities are going broke.
Tyler writes:
First Resident Evil 5, now this. I hate to say it but: This blog is starting to become starting to become a source of contrived outrage. It's a shame too.
Scrolling down the front of this blog, I count the following:
This post about race and individuality.
A post about archaic slang, Michael Steele and The Shins.
A debate about whether Joaquin Phoenix is pulling a hoax or not.
A debate me and Ross are having about the nature of family.
A post arguing AGAINST the idea that Michael Phelps would have it worse if he were black.
A post about Barack Obama and torture.
A list of appearances in the B-more\Washington area and a link to a Mos Def video.
A debate about the quality of Big Love.
A video of an acapella version of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song "Maps."
The original post arguing AGAINST the idea Michael Phelps would have it worst if he were black.
An explanation of my use of slang derived from Battlestar Galatica.
A post about prison reform in California.
A link to an Atlantic article about BSG.
Some thoughts on Pete Rock and CL Smooth.
More discussion of Big Love and debate with Ross around the ideal family.
And finally a post arguing that Resident Evil 5 is racist.
I count 16 posts in between the two you cited. Four of them dealing with racism. Two of the four argue against the idea of racism. Two of them argue for it. You can scroll further back and the number won't get much better.
I mean no disrespect, because I really enjoy reading your comments and hope you won't stop reading. But if you're going to charge that the blog is becoming a source of "contrived outrage" your going to have to come up with more than two out of 16.
In light of the numbers I'd ask you to consider something else: Maybe we just disagree. It does happen. But if we're going to disagree, let's be sure what we're disagreeing about. The post doesn't argue that she would have had it worse if she were black. It argues that black people would have it worse if she were black.
@Stacy
"The reaction could be summarized in three words--Get A Rope."
"...if she were black, there would almost certainly be a debate about black people our out of control kids."
Perhaps I'm in a panties-bunched mode, but this strikes me as outrage, or something bordering on it.
I still think this is a fantastic blog. Just offering up a little criticism.
One question I have: is there some provision in California Medicaid that IVF is covered? It still boggles my mind that she was even able to get into a fertility clinic without a whole mess of cash up front.
One question I have: is there some provision in California Medicaid that IVF is covered?
I'm pretty sure that it isn't. People have asked where the money came from before, and she would just say "it's been taken care of"
Tyler is indulging in contrived outrage...
I know because I posted mine before he posted his.
Ta-Nehisi:
Didn't see your previous comment before I posted my last one.
Fair point, and no, I didn't sense any disrespect – you're just making your point. No disrespect intended from me either.
She has had plastique injected into her face and her nose trimmed a bit. Prolly some botox too. The woman is obviously certifiable, and I will give her the same treatment that Chris Rock talked about with dysfunctional families: "If a kid grows up calling his grandma 'momma' and his mom 'Pam'... that kid's going to jail!" Might as well just round up Nadya's kids now and spare us the legal troubles.
I still think a better example of the phenomenon you are describing here is teh PALIN family. You think a black Sarah Palin with a Down's kid could have waved it around like a vote creating talisman and been embraced by the GOP?
Didn't think so.
It might be outrage, but it's not contrived. The debate about black people and their allegedly out of control kid-having goes on every day. You read random blog X Y and Z, and the too-many-black-kids-around debate gets attached to things as random as Obama's plans for the government, the Vick case, and some couple in Britain who had one black and one white twin, let alone where it might be relevant. (And it was the inherent slur behind Obama Bucks, for that matter. "Welfare" has become synonymous with black people and too many kids even among recent immigrant populations from the other side of the planet who never saw black people before.)
So yeah, word to TN's post -- while I think this woman needs help and her doctor needs defrocking (or excommunication, or whatever the correct term is for disbarring a medical professional), and while I actually think the criticism of this woman has gotten WELL out of hand (I think she's wrong but I find the level of vitriol and contempt really disturbing), at the same time it is indeed a relief that her actions are not going to factor into some random stranger's assessment of me, personally. At least no one is going to look at her, and then turn around and use her tale tell me that I should, say, get off of public transport because "this isn't the welfare bus." (No, I am not making that up. This isn't an abstract for some of us.)
I want to point something out here. Yeah Nadya Suleman might be seen as some what different but she aint Shanequa from the block. And while she has recieved some criticism if she were dark skinned with weave down her back they would be crucifying her. I don't mean criticism, I am talking literally picketing outside the hospital and calling on people to take her kids and calling her all kinds of welfare queens. As it is now they just keep pointing out that she might have a hard time providing for her kids. But if it was Shanequa they would have totally written her off and said there was NO WAY she could take care of those kids. And here is the final difference. So many people now are saying she just has a mental problem and thats why she did it. But this woman purposely had 8 embryos put inside off her. If Shanequa would have done that then they would have said it was something she did on purpose to make money off of having her kids. There wouldn't be any benefit of the doubt about being mentally unstable. No she would be painted as a criminal mastermind.
Lets not be naive here, being light skinned to the point of almost being able to pass is shielding that chick from a lot of the hate and derision that she would be getting if she was dark skinned.
"You think a black Sarah Palin with a Down's kid could have waved it around like a vote creating talisman and been embraced by the GOP?"
Absolutely. They probably would have liked it more as long as she loved God enough. They love to show how much they're not racist, they swear! Have you seen the new RNC chair?
The issue here is one of class and to a lesser degree gender. Although it's true that Candace Bergen back in the day got some Dan Quayle frackification for being a fictional single mom of one kid by choice, the real issue here is the woman does not have the wherewithal to support these kids. Angelina Jolie can support her kids and she is in a relationship with Brad Pitt. Right now blame the poor, the non white, the gays, the women is an especially appealing meme (it was those poor people who wanted to own their own homes that started this, right?) for those who can't or don't want to believe that the Republican party and its wealthy supporters have just made off with the biggest transfer of wealth in an eight year period in human history.
This strange woman (I mean even someone who loves kids would find taking care of 8 babies at one time a superhuman task) taps right into one particular part of the American psyche about this--the Jerry Springer, tabloid freak element that is aimed at the white trash picnic set--the weird Fox News morality that on one hand has all kinds of problems with Planned Parenthood and on the other sadistically looks down its nose at eccentric (or nuts, take your pick) outliers in our society and this is combined with the weird sci-fi technology that allowed her to have so many kids at one time and the implications of non human, ie like an animal with a brood.
It's true that Ronald Reagan threw down the gauntlet with his Cadillac welfare queen, but this woman just has no black vibe about her whatsoever. This woman immediately calls to mind poor white know nothingism, doesn't she?
I think I actually agree with Stacy.
"You think a black Sarah Palin with a Down's kid could have waved it around like a vote creating talisman and been embraced by the GOP?
"Didn't think so."
Perhaps embraced by the GOP if she were outspokenly conservative enough, running against a black Dem and good on TV, but not by the Democrats. There are two sets of rules for Dems and GOPers, and if you want to find easily cherry-picked examples of affirmative action for half-baked black folks, check out the GOP (of course, that's arguably an unfair standard, when you consider how that it's also a proving grounds for moronic white people.) But if Obama said things as ridiculous as some of the crazy shit Michael Steele apparently believes, he'd have been laughed out of the room.
One more thing following on the previous poster - why isn't the doctor who enabled this woman being tarred and feathered ? I kind of avoid the story, so others may know more about this, but the guy should at the very least lose his license and be publicly shamed, if he can't be prosecuted under existing law.
TNC,
Basic points are solid, but those would choose to Get a Rope are really attempting to Piss up that Rope. All who have tried have failed due to dehydration, madness or other maladies; yes, the spills create problems. Gravity is a demanding task master; leave these folks to their life's work!
If you must send them you old bootstraps OK, standing still that much wears the shoes thin real fast. Pissing up a rope is hard work, ask Bush & Cheney.
Like Phelps, this case is such an outlier that it's hard to say how she would have been treated were she black. The tide was already turning, I think, on the Duggars and Jon & Kate, so I don't think a woman with the last name Jones would've necessarily gotten a TV deal.
The Racialicious link also reminds me of the Chris Brown/Rhianna saga: there are some nasty stereotypes floating around on that one.
Is it something about me (i.e., racism maybe)--when I read the hypothetical my reaction was something to the effect that black women wouldn't do that--i.e. have fertility treatments and implanted embryos? Somehow my stereotype is that fertility problems=white women (and men). I guess it is racist. :-(
Bill, fall back. I thought about making "black people don't "do" fertility drugs" drugs, then thought better of it because it wasn't true, but moreso because I knew I'd get some po'ed commenters. Hmm, I probably should have made the joke.
My point is it isn't racist to think that. I, and probably a lot of other people, thought the same. It is prejudice. But that really doesn't say much. We're all prejudice. You can't legislate that out of people. Nor should we try.
After some long, hard thought I've come to the conclusion that Suleman was paid by the banking/finance industry to create an alternate channel of public outrage as a "pressure valve" against the revelations of their own malfeasance. They deliberately didn't choose a black woman because they wanted to inject just enough nuance to prolong the story. The Arab surname is a nice touch though. Wonder how they came up with that ? Ditto Michael Phelps who is being paid double by the banks for every endorsement he loses.
You're welcome.
One more thing on the VastOutrageConspiracy - keep you eyes open for a "black entertainer beats girlfriend" story. I have a hunch one's coming...
Racism, meh...
I think she would have been criticized more had she been black, but she is getting hammered now anyway.
To me, what matters the most is that:
(a)where the hell were her parents while she was pursuing this madness? Why didn't they try to stop her?
(b) How the hell did her doctors go along with this? Why did no M.D. person hold up their hand and say " This woman has six kids already, lives in her parent's basement, and is on government assistance and wants FERTILITY TREATMENTS? Fuhgeddabouddit!!!"
I mean, the situation was so frakked up that anybody in authority should have seen where this was going.
I will say one thing . If she were black, there is NO WAY that the fertility treatments would have been authorized. Believe that.
"Nadya Suleman has the privilege of standing as an individual, of not having the burden--or honor, really--of having to represent."
You're wrong about that. I've already heard the obligatory "That's what Muslims do, they breed!"
"and while I actually think the criticism of this woman has gotten WELL out of hand (I think she's wrong but I find the level of vitriol and contempt really disturbing), "
I get the sense that the vitriol is about the fatherlessness this woman chose for her children and that happens to be a hot-button emotional issue given the child custody stats in this society and the horror stories you hear about the antics of family courts. People are projecting their personal stories onto her.
"Her father is Iraqi and her mother is Ukrainian. She's not being treated like a fully white woman. She is being criticized quite a bit."
Has it ever occurred to you that an Arab woman, especially one with Ukrainina ancestry, might just be considered white in theis society? After all even Spike Lee thinks Sicilians are white.
"So you think someone named Nadya Suleman, with her coloring, is seen by the white community as white? "
See above. In California for instance rather darker northern Indians are considered white, by the "round eyes, straight hair = white" rule. Of course being stereotyped as Silicon Valley certainly doesn't hurt.
"But I think that's because she would be seen as an extreme example of a real issue, which is the large number of black single mothers on public assistance. "
Or maybe it's a reaction to another larger problem, which is the larger number of single white mothers on public assistance. One can hope.
"We're all prejudice[d]. You can't legislate that out of people. Nor should we try."
Human beings are tribal; here we just call it racism (and ignore all the other tribalisms in our society, which doesn't help.) It is a feature and not a bug - no point in crying about it. It just has to be managed in a civilized way or else you get genocides and caste systems.
This woman is getting hammered from all corners, and that has included anti-immigrant, anti-Latino and anti-Arab slams, as well as anti-single mother memes. Granted, I think some of the criticism is deserved (not the racist and sexist stuff, but certainly the poor judgment critiques), but it's hard to imagine someone else getting it worse.
BTW, black people DO get fertility treatments. The last set of octuplets born in the US are black (the seven who survived just turned 10), and there's the black family with sextuplets that had a house built from them by "Extreme Makeover."
It's a little disingenuous to omit the nature of much of the outrage at Octomom, and one that applies whenever there's a story like this. It's the question of public support, of government funding without oversight.
Though I lean left, I'm sympathetic to the idea that if you're being "paid" to raise a family by the state, you should be held accountable for your "job."
@ stonetools, I hear that her parents begged the doctors not to let her have fertility treatments, that they have already had to declare bankruptcy because of helping to take care of the other 6, and that their three bedroom house is chock full of bunkbeds, etc, in their attempt to deal with the situation.
BTW, this is all gossip from the lunchtable. Caveat Emptor.
Say what you will, when I first heard this story the first words out of my mouth were "Please don't let her be black - I KNOW this woman can not be black." You could hear my sigh of relief up and down Midtown when I saw a a clip of her interview.
@Daughter, I don't think anyone here is implying that black people do not receive fertility treatments. You may not mean to imply that with your comment. However, the black octuplets in Houston and the black sextuplets from Extreme Homemakeover were part of a two-parent household. No drama there.
This nutty chick decided that 6 kids weren't enough of a challenge to her single-motherhoodum. So she added 8 more to the mix. She and her doctor need to be put on psych meds.
(a)where the hell were her parents while she was pursuing this madness? Why didn't they try to stop her?
From media accounts, they did, but she's an adult, and is allowed to make choices about her own fertility.
(b) How the hell did her doctors go along with this? Why did no M.D. person hold up their hand and say " This woman has six kids already, lives in her parent's basement, and is on government assistance and wants FERTILITY TREATMENTS? Fuhgeddabouddit!!!"
This one, on the other hand, is boggling me. It's not so much about the 'six kids already, etc.' but that multiple embryos, in a woman whose fertility was clearly proven, was a recipe for just this kind of scenario-- a high-order multiple birth, which is hazardous to both the mother and the embryos/fetuses/babies. All those kids are still in the hospital. It's amazing that they were able to breathe on their own. Their long-term prospects for long-term health problems are really, really high. Someone made the decision to do harm here, IMO. If she ever lets slip who her provider was, they deserve to have hell brought on their heads.
Well, going forward, I think that SOME authority-her doctor, hospital, HMO, preferably all three - needs to be hauled in front of some board and reemed over good. New assholes for everyone in authority who went along with this scheme.
Next, the California legislators need to get their heads out of their behinds and pass some important legislation, for once. No more than three embryos should be implanted in any fertility treatment-no exceptions. If any woman asks for more than three embryos implanted, their request will be denied and they should be referred for psychiatric counseling.
If the women already have any kids, no more than two embryos allowed. Lets bring some sanity to this area.
Fantastic post. I think this is a perfect analysis. She certainly is getting a lot of grief, but her story doesn't play into a pre-existing meme.
She has a bit of that "valleyspeak" thang going.
She's also kinda hot in a "I'mfuckingcrazyandwantyoursperm" kinda way.
Lord willing, my "boys" and her eggs shall never meet.
Talk about baby's mama drama.........
SHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET..........
You guys have the wrong analogy oin the Palin family.
Dan Savage put it very well on Maher's show back in October. If Barack Obama had a 16 year old daughter who was pregnant by a high school drop out whose my space page was the urban equivilent of Bristol's boyfriend's redneck one the election would already have been over.
"Indeed, we will know we're in the Promised Land when a black woman can have 8 kids, apply for food stamps, start up a website asking for help, and not be used as a cudgel to bash the rest of us."
I second that. Another sign that we have reached that promissed land will be whaen a white individual can express his low opinion of a black individual without it being assumed that the opinion is race based.
I'm with stone tools and I always have been- if you aren't willing to do selective abortion, you shouldn't be able to get fertility drugs or fertility treatments. I think it's wrong to have octuplets. No human being on earth can give eight children all the same age what they need, and no two-parent family, and no two-parent family with grandma and grandpa helping out. It's statutory neglect. Regardless of the other circumstances (the other 6 kids, no dad around, etc.) She says "I give them myself" ; bullshit. She can give them one fourteenth of herself. That's not enough
That said, criticizing anyone else's family decisions is pretty much always in bad taste. I just think it shouldn't be allowed to happen in the first place. Now that it has, I hope everyone does the best they can.
Nadya Suleman went to my high school (way before me) and her mom was my sister's french teacher. So this whole scandal just makes me feel good about myself. I clearly coulda turned out a whole lot worse.
Best definition of the Promised Land I've read in a while...
First of all, we need to get Extreme Home Makeovers to build this woman a house that looks like a shoe.
Secondly, what happened to all the outrage about socially stigmatizing family choices? All of a sudden everyone is casting aspersions on this woman's choices about marriage and family and demanding prosecution and new laws to protect society. I thought the idea was it works if it works. Maybe these kids will grow up to be authors and engineers and business people.
Ta-Nehisi, I think you're missing the opportunity to argue that any woman with multiple children from multiple fathers is merely practicing a form of matriarchal polygamy. How do the mother and children benefit? Multiple breadwinners? More govt assistance? Less likelihood of abuse? There is a logical sense to it from the point of view of the individual.
I will say one thing . If she were black, there is NO WAY that the fertility treatments would have been authorized. Believe that.
I believe one thing that's come out of this is that there is no oversight. You do not have to "prove" anything for ivf--not that you're above a certain age, that you have no children, that you have fertility problems, that you have a partner, that you are not living in your parent's basement. And as for the number implanted (6) the reasoning I've seen is that legally, a doctor can advise against it all day long but cannot refuse the patient what she wants--the embryos are hers to decide what to do with. And we agree with certain freedoms, such as a single woman or lesbian being implanted, or someone who has two kids, if they can care for the resulting one or two children easily. Can we legislate it like adoption, with the same qualifications needed? I think that's more than people want.
Most of this has thrown up the medical ethics half, regardless of race: You know doing this is incredibly dangerous for the children. That they are likely to be born with severe health problems. Just like we look down on a woman who smokes crack and spikes the 8-month fetus's blood pressure to where it was never meant to go, or on the woman who uses a birth-defect-causing skin treatment because she just can't face being spotty and pregnant.
The other half is largely class, and how a person can deliberately set out to have children she can't mentally or financially raise. The Jolie-Pitts are welcome to give birth to several more children, and adopt half a dozen. Nothing wrong with big families if you can afford it. (The record for children in one family is something like 60 from some Russians, pre-fertility treatment, who popped out twins and triplets regularly.)
You think someone named Nadya Suleman, with her coloring, is seen by the white community as white?
Her father is Iraqi and her mother is Ukrainian. She's not being treated like a fully white woman.
Now we're trying to shoehorn a legitimate race question that came up with Phelps ("if he was black, the shit woulda come down on him like a ton of bricks") into a situation where it doesn't apply. Phelps is white. Suleyman is white. You can't *make* her a woman of color to suit a worldview. (Look at the right-wing attempt to throw anti-Muslim and anti-Latino B.S. at her. It lasted all of .005 minutes because, for frack's sake, the chick is white, full stop, done.).
What happened when white folks said Obama wasn't black, he was biracial? (You think someone with a mom from Kansas, with his coloring, is really black?). The response was: white folks don't like to admit that black folks can be smart and successful and win the WH, so they gotta make Obama as "white" as possible. Ticked black folks off no end. Can't blame 'em.
In this case? Same thing. Seems like black folks don't like to admit that white folks can criticize one of their own with this amount of vitriol, so they gotta make Nadya as "black" as possible. Oh, she ain't white, she light-skinned. Batshit crazy Nadya is about as black as Obama is white -- you think SHE has a problem getting a cab? Being followed around in Nordstrom's? No freaking way. She's white, and white folks ARE raining the shit down on her -- for many reasons: economic class, marital status, and as one person mentioned, multiple-birth media coverage fatigue. But race isn't one of them.
@Deborah
It's not even class that fuels the outrage. Working-class families that manage to have a lot of kids without going on the dole are still A-OK.
The truth is that there's a sense of economic crisis. More than ever before, the idea that people are economically parasitical, when state and federal budgets to support education and health benefits, to keep up infrastructure, etc. are running dry, is going to create a lot of outrage. The Suleyman incident happened in California, where state workers are being forced to take unpaid furloughs, and may be getting paid in IOUs. The idea that someone with 6 kids might have gotten government support to have 8 more - or, indeed, to raise her first 6 - is going to raise a lot of ire, even from those on the left.
(To me, this highlights the contradiction at the root of the mainstream left: the desire to have a nurturing, caring state but a disinclination to give it executive and policing powers: i.e., Mommy State without Daddy State. The mainstream right has the opposite problem.)
Seconding an above commentator -- if she was Angelina Jolie I might call her crazy but at least I would know she had the money to manage that household. And she has a husband.
In this situation a woman's 14 kids are bankrupting her parents and putting an extreme burden on her state government.
I think the nastiest comments (outside this blog, of course) come from people who never wanted kids until they started feeling old.
The fact of the matter is that people were outraged at Suleman before they knew what she looked like or what her name was. The red flag was when it was first revealed that she had six kids already, and THEN had IVF. Add on to that the lack of a husband or source of income, and yeah, people would have been outraged even if her name were Buffy Wellington.
Coates makes a point, however a stretch it might be. Here's MY problem with Suleman (aside from her NEVER supporting HERSELF, let alone all these children and looking at people as if she's ENTITLED to be supported!)
Years ago when I sought a tubal ligation (prior to marriage and family at age 28), Kaiser had a months long vetting process prior to surgery. This included a mental as well as physical profile, psychological interview. My doctor REFUSED on the grounds that I was unmarried and never had children.
Well...DUH.
The point what I NEVER wanted to have kids1
How does a doctor decide you're unfit to NOT PARENT?
Even though marriage is one of those objectives that some might attempt, but not enough accomplish.
And the oft repeated rationale for denying gay couples marriage equality is 'gay people don't procreate'. As IF procreation is a PROBLEM in our society?!
Suleman, as well as her fertility doctor are like the conflation of someone who sought out a cut rate, rogue doctor who would do WHATEVER their patient wants, and patient that MUST have their way, regardless.
Doctor shopping, so to speak. To be THAT desperate to be stuffed with embryos can also translate into being NUTS!
Suleman herself admitted that she was depressed over not having a baby.
Well, I know from personal experience from NOT wanting to be a mother...a woman can be devalued and invalidated for not coming up with a baby.
If she was on the receiving end of such stigma...then it's STILL wrong and that's why we're seeing so much irresponsible conception of children, with or without IVF.
Stigmatizing the non procreative and non procreative sex is impossibly stupid. Especially when resources, whether individual or global, are not available to sustain so much procreation.
Suleman should have been vetted, physically, mentally and materially for fitness to have so many children. Post partum depression or psychosis is another risk factor, and possible disabilities in her premature and too tiny babies is as well.
Her doctor deserves board review and loss of license for packing women like this, and Suleman should be examined for mental fitness and no other woman encouraged to follow her example.
If the handwriting on the wall isn't apparent, permit me to share what I see. The government will interfere more and more. The minute we look to government to arbitrate our disputes, to make-up for our losses, to PARENT us, we abdicate our rights to self-determination.
Hell no, I don't want irresponsible parents (like Suleman) using my money to live her dream--I have dreams of my own. However, since we are not willing to let children starve in our midst (a whole other post), the best we can do pay, then utilize oversight (read Big Brother).
Universal healthcare? Don't think for a second we all won't be at each other's throats about smoking, saturated fats, et cetera.
It may be fascist, but Nadya Suleman should have been sterilized after number two. (And I'm black, been an unwed mom, been married for over 20 years, had a tubal ligation, been through in-vitro, have three kids (one adopted from Haiti), and have always been gainfully-employed).
Damn irresponsible people. They always have to ruin everything!
I thought she was black... or at least like Obama with biracial heritage.