From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Subject: Re: Duck and Jive (was Re: Pre-Sex Contract)
Organization: mydog in exile
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 13:35:01 GMT

gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
| >You will also find that raising children is a lot of work.  

gazit@duke.cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit) writes:
| *IF* you do it right.
| 
| Like always, Gordon's implicit assumption (that the welfare mothers
| raise their kids in a good way) is the important one...

I've observed several dozen -- probably several hundred
welfare mothers, and I didn't notice any particular
dereliction of duty.  I'm sure there are those who fail,
but there are plenty at higher income levels who fail,
too.  Parental failure may actually be greater at the
higher income levels, because jobs, especially the low-
paid jobs, can be very stressful.  

In the story, though, I believe the assumption was that 
the welfare queen there was doing it right, wasn't it?

gf:
| >Women with access to
| >contraception and abortion almost never have large numbers of
| >children; those who do are almost always in a patriarchal
| >situation -- e.g. various fundamentalist religious types who
| >believe that it's the Godly thing to do.  

hg:
| So how comes that liberals states like New York or Massachusetts
| have a much more serious welfare problem than more fundamentalist
| and religious states like those in the South East or in Utah?

Liberal states pay the welfare, so naturally they collect
people who need it, or make a practice of pretending to
need it.  Many of them are from elsewhere.  As a matter of
fact, there is a lot of poverty in the South, and possibly 
a higher proportion of people on welfare, than in NYC.

hg:
| Can't you see that the facts contradict your theory?

Which facts?

gf:
| >In Ashmore's _dumb_ story, the fecund momma has none of this.
| >No support, no ideology.  

hg:
| 1) In Carole's story the woman who kept having children had 
|    some religious reasons.

No, I meant her co-communards didn't seem to support her
having lots of children.  If they did, they had no 
complaint.

hg:
| 2) It is true that quite a few women follow the patriarchal religions
|    that object to abortion, but there are also goddess based religions
|    that see child bearing/raising as a good thing...

So where are all these big Goddess-inspired families?  I
never ran into any.

gf:
| >It's _possible_ that a few such 
| >situations could arise, but they'd be socially insignificant,
| >not the gigantic problem Hillel makes them out to be.

hg:
| The problem is that y'all created a fool-proof environment for poor
| people, and in this environment a large number of people who take
| no responsibility are raised.
| 
| The welfare queen is just one example, the people who burned down
| every store around their neighborhoods are another.
| 
| Today 1/4 of the children in the U.S. are born to poverty; is this
| a gigantic problems by your criteria?  Is the problem of people who
| keep having children they can't support, and bill the government
| for them, has any significance?

If you want to discuss welfare in general, the discussion
probably belongs in one of the general political groups.
I've been through several of them.  You're making all the
classical opening moves, and it's sort of boring to run
through them; maybe someone else could do it.  For 
instance, the assertion that New York City provides a
"fool-proof environment" for poor people -- a truly
astonishing perception of things.  It's like you've been 
on Mars.  Do you know any poor people, any people on 
welfare, personally?

However, it's beside the point in regard to Ashmore's
story.  One of the essential points of the story is the
image of the fast-breeding welfare queen, and the
statistics and common sense don't support the fantasy.
-- 

 )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )
Newsgroups: soc.men,alt.abortion.inequity,alt.feminism