Octomom outrage

It's been interesting to observe the backlash against octuplets mom Nadya Suleman. While the story is quietening down, we have a piece on the website today that puts the octomom outrage into a bit of context.

It makes the point that the vicious tenor of the reaction to Suleman is linked to the tough economic times and, in particular, her cavalier use of medical resources and seeming lack of plan for providing for the children. It also says that her emulation of celeb Angelina Jolie - and perhaps orchestrated publicity grab related to Brangelina - really rubbed people the wrong way.

But I'd like to throw one other thought into the mix, before I leave this subject behind for a while.

No matter what we think of the octomom's choice to implant all those embryos, and the intention with which she embarked on having more mouths than she could possibly feed, I think we also need to ask ourselves this:

How many dads out there have fathered 14 children?

Lots.

And few among these would be the rare dads who live in single-family dwellings of their own with the mother of all these children and pay for the roof over all of their little heads. No, these are the guys who have fathered many children with several different women and may not even have a good handle on how many children could (technically) call them "Dad."

Whether it's in birth control-challenged developing nation, or cities and town like our own, I don't think these dads - deadbeat or otherwise - are getting called out the way the octomom is for their choice to spawn so many children.

Yes, Nadya Suleman went with intention to a fertility clinic and had six embryos (two of which later split) implanted when she already had six kids at home. But I'd hazard a guess that the dads who've fathered a dozen or so kids were pretty much aware that the transactions they completed could result in kids, too. What do you think?

Read more about the octuplets case on our babies page.

Comments

[Dave]

Avoiding the gender issues for a moment, the tragedy, first and foremost, is that there were no checks to prevent Nadya Suleman from acting completely irresponsibly. The vaunted ethics of the medical community failed. The government assistance programs failed. There were no checks because they don't exist. And the last time I checked, espousal of personal responsibility isn't a hot button issue. So the occurrence of an event to highlight our collective societal denial that we have a problem shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Frankly irresponsible things writ large have been going on for the last few years now on an ever-increasing and head-scratching scale, and we still don't get it. This is the real problem.

Now to the gender comments which will make people angry. I'm not surprised that you've decided to spin some blame on men here. After all men are bad right? The problem with your comparison however is that women have full responsibility over child birth. Men don't have any rights in this matter, and as such they don't bear the same responsibility. Sorry that's the cost of these rules, and for all you flag wavers our there which support this, nya nya nya. A man who has 14 kids just isn't a compatible situation, because for each of those children a woman was the final arbiter of whether or not a child would be brought into this world. But nice try at the blame game.

And here's another unpopular opinion for the feminists. Maybe the reason there's been such a backlash against Nadya Suleman, irresponsible narcissism notwithstanding, was that she typifies the kind of I-can-do-no-wrong attitude that many women seem to have these days. When you coddle a gender under the auspices of equality (an irony I'm sure which is lost on many of you) this is what you get. Hey, maybe if we were collectively all a little bit more responsible you wouldn't hear the gender card much. But when you live in a society that, as an example, gives a free ride to divorced moms who punish their children and former partners by selfishly withholding access in custody situations, maybe that kind of sympathy is just running on empty. And that's just one obvious example from too many.

Gender debates aside, how about we put gender debates aside? Why don't we just focus on being a little more responsible and maybe deciding to act the next time we think it's more socially acceptable to stay quiet. A little honesty eh? You might be surprised to learn that the best cure for endless debate and finger pointing is just simple action.

[Darren]

You don't think irresponsible fathers are sufficiently abused in our culture? I disagree. After all, we actually have a common, highly pejorative noun ('deadbeat dad') to describe them. What's the analogous term that we use to criticize poor mothers?

It's also worth noting that the average deadbeat dad doesn't desperately seek the maximum media coverage for his story.

[yuki]

This is something I hadn't thought of. (I mean your blog entry, Brandie, not the bitter dude's comments.)

One of the concerns I have about the Octomom is... she's just such a bad example. There are moms on welfare or food stamps who clearly need to be on welfare or food stamps to get by til they can become indepedent. But at the same time, I think even liberals like myself have the nagging stereotye of the Welfare Queen at the back of our minds when we read of women like Octomom. Women who keep getting pregnant and raising kids on the public dime.

I think the real villain here is the fertility doctor. The Octomom is so obviously mentally ill that it's unconscionable that her fertility doc didn't get censured over this. I mean, who impregnates someone with mutliple fetuses without checking that 1/ they're mentally sound, 2/ they have sufficient resources to raise the maximum number of kids that could result? I think I read he recently impregnated an old lady. If anything, this is a real indictment of the for-profit healthcare system.

[Tammy MacKenzie]

I have to really disagree with this one:
- while it's true that there are men who will have fathered many children irresponsibly, I do not believe that they had any intention to father those children. It "just happened". This woman intentionally became pregnant to have more children when she already had 6.
- I don't think it's appropriate to bring in "birth control-challenged developing nation(s)" into the mix as other factors also play a role, and the issues around in vitro fertilization and resultant multiple births are not present.
- Men can not have one child, let alone 14, by themselves.

While I understand the point being made, I think bringing gender issues into this particular situation is only inflammatory and only serves to stir up unrelated ire - results of which have already been made apparent in the comments posted here.
In the end, when a man and a woman choose to have sex, they are BOTH equally responsible for ensuring there is no unwanted pregnancy, and for any children who may result.
This is not such a case - period.