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by TangoTrotFox 2945 days ago
Your point makes perfect sense for a teen with an unexpected pregnancy. This lady is 44 with 6 kids. 5 of the children are aged 2-11 years. In other words she just started pumping out babies like it was her job at age 33. She made some poor choices is the optimistic interpretation of this. It's also possible that some point she began to believe that having more kids resulted in proportionally more money from the state and charities. After all when it comes to children we have a habit of waving away this with 'oh, she made some mistakes.. but her kids shouldn't have to pay for that!'
2 comments
dang 2945 days ago
Please don't post ideological trope rants to HN. They're repetitive and come from a galaxy far away from the intellectual curiosity this site exists for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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TangoTrotFox 2944 days ago
Can you elaborate here? Because fundamentally I think there is a highly complex issue here. Social systems are in place for those of need. Yet simultaneously these systems suffer the problem that they can create incentive systems for people to engage in undesirable behavior, and they are also open to exploitation by those who normally would not need their aid. One wants to empathize with the person from the article, yet doing so without considering the how and why of them being where they are is akin to trying to solve a variable of two equations while considering only one.

I also think calling the comment a 'trope' is unreasonable. This looks to be an incredible lucid example of possible, if not probable, abuse. Yet that's masked in the appeals to pathos. How is mentioning this anything like a trope? If there is viable reason to believe that empathy/sympathy is being abused, it certainly seems valid to consider it and point it out!

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pas 2945 days ago
The problem is, that the kids are truly blameless. So you can try to punish her for her recklessness, but that punishes the kids too.

Or you could simply put the kids into foster care. Which has a very bad track record compared to being with mom.

So the data leads to prevention. (Education, or forced sterilization/abortion.)

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