Ok, I am annoyed that the media is totally taking the bait in regares to this "octuplet woman". People are already talking about book deals, and TV appearances. No doubt if she goes on Oprah, she'll be set. I think her story of being a real-life Old Woman In A Shoe (although she's only 33 I believe) is a curiosity...but other than that, I fail to see what the big deal is.
In the frum community, families tend be huge -- on average; especially when you compare it with the American or European standards of "acceptable family size". It seems though, as if this was not always the case. Orthodox Jewish families of generations past seemed to be around half the size ( 4 or 5 children as opposed to the 8 or 10 you see in religious families today). I can't prove that...but it this is what I perceive. I have actually heard some frum people state that they feel a need to boost the Jewish population after the loss of 6 million Jews in the holocaust. Or maybe it's all part of the "shift to the right" where the main expectation of a young frum woman is to be a mother. Jews kvell at the thought of this; is it not permitted for non-religious of non-Jewish people to feel the same?
But I am not singling out the Jewish community; not in the least. This is more about recognizing a severe twist in values in regard to family size among the American citizenry. There is an interesting article on MSN.com, that touches on the stark contrast between the public reation to Nadya Suleman - single mother, low income (?) vs. the Duggar family - White Christians who are financially well-off. Of course having 14 children under the age on 7 is a big difference from having 18 children ranging from ages 20 to a few months. However there are plenty of parents where 1 child (of any age) is too many for them.
It is interesting that all of my grandparents come from large families (11, 8, 9 and 16 children respectively) and they were all quite poor (not "low-income" but poor). Yet no one in my more imediate family has a significant number of children. I have a second cousin who is 7 years older than me who has 5, and some of my family members feel she has lost her mind or something. I imagine that if I myself were to ever get married and start reproducing, my family's pleasure would start to wane at around child #3. I would probably be deemed insane at around child #6. Yet I have never been the type to let the standards of other dictate my choices in life. I also cannot bring myself to make statements such as, "I want a large family"...because if I am a single woman or married to an alcoholic or something (chas v'shalom) I don't want a brood of children running underfoot. However I am not going to stand in the way of my husband's responsibility of pru urvu simply because I don't want to get fat and suffer from backaches. Also people fail to understand just how much Hashem is involved in something as tricky as conception. I certainly feel that it's tricky enough to not want to introduce things like hormonal birth control into the mix.
I say it all the time, but maybe I am in fact "strange" since seeing exceptionally large families brings no feelings of resentment or great happiness for me. It just is what it is. Yes, those parents are sleep deprived, spending 80% of their income on child-related expenses. However they also receive immeasurable joy from seeing their offspring grow and thrive multiple times. Although I do not know from first hand experience, I could imagine that the experience of bringing a new human being into this world can be addicting. So besides the fact that Hashem has commanded men to procreate, it is not one of those commandments that is an unpleasant experience. So who is it that came up with this idea that children are some sort of curse?
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I don't think the public is against large families or views children as a curse. The public revulsion to this story has everything to do with money.
She's single by choice, apparently the biological father wanted to marry her but she refused.
She has no financial resources: she lives with her parents, has no job, receives food stamps and recently filed for bankruptcy. Yet she went through with the invitro fertilization that led to this multiple birth anyway.
She has no medical insurance and has therefore saddled the public with the extraordinary cost of this multiple birth.
I also learned today that three of her original six children have special needs which require additional public support.
This is somewhere on the spectrum between monumental chutzpah and mental illness.
There's also an element that verges on child abuse, when you deliberately bring 14 children into the world, many of them potentially with special needs, that you do not have the means to support.
Hi Esther,
Yeah, I found out today about the special needs children. I do think that this woman is a pathological liar and delusional. The taxpayers in CA have reason to be upset. I was referring more to the double-standard present in regards to praising some groups of people to have many children and demonizing others.
I'm super liberal and permissive and I understand and respect the fact that there are poor single women out there who get pregnant and need government support. I also don't think there need be a wealth litmus test for large families but this woman's antics make my blood boil.
She has no money, no job, no health insurance and no husband, and she had had 14 kids in vitro! And she says that the lord will see to it that everything works out. It's madness!
i agree with most of what you said, but jsyk, the reason many families in the past were smaller has to do with children dying in childhood. when my grandfather would talk about his family in later years, he only talked about the three brothers he knew. in reality, there were at least four more between him and the youngest of his older brothers, who all didn't live to age five.
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