Am I in the wrong ?
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Public housing, food stamps and WIC will help the LW get a roof over her head and food on the table. She needs to look into education. She will be eligible for Pell Grants and tuition assistance. With government assistance she could get an associate’s degree and, with that, get a better than minimum wage job.
She should go ahead and share some of her tax return with her mother. Mom helped her out and it sounds like mom needs to get out of a bad situation also. They could share a home together – that way mom can help with the babies while she works and goes to school.
I have worked in public housing – i know this LW – life is going to be hard for her and her children. Recommending she not have any more babies is not being cruel, it is being realistic. She is starting a lifetime of poverty for these kids. It takes 3 generations to break the cycle of poverty – this statistic has been, unfortunately, valid for decades.
Her whole story is sad.
Recommending she not have babies/use bc is different than internet screaming at her to get sterilized. You are right, she’s led a sad, hard life. Being intentionally rude or cruel is going to help her or her children in no way. Realism is different than cruelty.
I’m really scratching my head that a few people don’t see a difference between internet screaming in all caps or with multiple exclamation marks (I deleted the first one of these, btw) with an order to get sterilized or get an abortion or get a gastric bypass or get gender surgery or get a vasectomy… and making a recommendation to not have more babies or use birth control, within a post that offers further advice. Especially when it’s from a person who’s not marginalized in important ways, to a person who is.
I guess that aside from the obvious historic connotations regarding sterilization, telling someone to get sterilized carries with it a strong implication that they are fundamentally flawed and unfit to ever be a parents again. It’s saying “you are such a shitty person that you should be prevented from ever reproducing further.”
Whereas telling someone to use birth control says that it’s a bad idea for them to have kids right now.
I would imagine the reason people are telling this girl to get her tubes tied is because she has three children, another on the way, with no stability, precious little income, and no active fathers involved, apparently—and yet her question is about how to get money out of her mother’s girlfriend. Not a lick of concern about her children’s situation.
This girl makes me angry, too. Her kids are going to have the same shitty life she has because of her choices, and she’s popping out yet another one. Why the hell this idiot hasn’t gotten an IUD already OR made a plan for adoption for unwanted baby #4 is beyond me.
And she might be a white girl for all you know. I see no mention of race.
She’s clearly not a middle-aged privileged white woman with a partner and incomes and a safe place to live, and I believe the folks screaming at her to get sterilized do have such privilege. The disparity there, and the connotations as Fyodor articulated them, are what’s bothering me. And maybe “this idiot” would consider some of those options if they were laid out for her by compassionate strangers who are lucky enough to have options and know what they are.
Also, is this really all about “her choices?” She was raised in unstable abusive homes and has been in an abusive relationship since she was 16.
Having unprotected sex with losers is a choice. She’s done it four times now. This girl’s family failed her in so many ways, and since she is following the same path, so will her children.
Hooray, I guess.
I think everyone needs to keep in mind that the average 21-year-old in this country isn’t independent. My age group has kids becoming independent and none of my friends had kids independent at the age of 21. Our kids were lucky enough to grow up in safe, stable homes and to go to good schools and to have parents who sent them to college.
This LW has come from two unstable, abusive homes. Neither parent has provided what she needed. Girls who come from that situation often escape the abuse by moving in with a boyfriend. Part of living with your boyfriend is having sex. When you are scraping by every day trying to feed yourself you don’t have the extra money for birth control. Then you end up pregnant and there is a baby that you can’t afford and the financial and living situation gets even worse. You need the boyfriend for food and shelter for you and the child even if the boyfriend is abusive. Meeting the most basic needs on any given day prevents you from meeting long term needs like birth control and education.
The best way to help the LW and her kids is to help her find out how to get help. She hasn’t ever had a safe home so it is hard for her to recognize an abusive boyfriend. She hasn’t had a safe home so she doesn’t know what it is like to have a safe home or to provide one. Giving advice on how to obtain the basics in life to survive day to day then allows her to make long range plans like birth control and education. Providing a safe home and enough food and enough money to provide basics like diapers and clothing will help considerably.
Shouting at someone to get sterilized ignores the reality of the cost of a surgery and the fact that someone who is struggling to feed their children and keep them off the street doesn’t have the money for that surgery. It is so easy to take medical care for granted when you have medical insurance and an education and an income. Reality is that she probably doesn’t have health insurance. Pointing her toward agencies that can provide health care for both herself and her children will go so much further than just shouting at her to get sterilized. Getting her food and shelter will begin to put her in a situation where she can meet those other needs and enable her to get birth control so that she is able to have a pregnancy if and when she wants it rather than because she is having sex with the boyfriend who is providing the roof over her head. Sometimes day to day survival requires making decisions that harm you over the long run but in the day to day there seems to be little choice but to make that decision. Screaming at her to get sterilized does nothing to help her current kids and does nothing to prevent future pregnancies. It really does nothing useful.
She wrote that her ex was abusive to her, so for all we know, it wasn’t always a choice. With an abusive partner, probably some coercion, and growing up in a disenfranchised home might mean she never learned that she even has a choice.
This is an advice site, not a let’s all lay down more abuse on someone who’s less privileged or clearly looking for help or in an abusive situation or made bad choices in the past. If you like abusing random strangers on the internet, there are plenty of sites that fit the bill.
Telling or listing options for someone is different than all caps screaming at them.
Another thing, reproductive coercion is a common form of abuse in relationships. In addition to everything Skyblossom brought up, it’s possible the abusive boyfriend was pressuring her to become pregnant, or more than pressuring. Every time I go to Planned Parenthood, they ask me about it and give me literature.
@Kate- I doubt some commenters would struggle to tell someone to go have gastric bypass surgery in all caps or exclamations. I’m not saying it shouldn’t bother them or that they ought to do such a thing, just that I think your extreme example probably isn’t that extreme to a lot of commenters.
I’m certainly not pushing for sterilizing at risk-teens, but I think for some people, sterilization may be right for them. I think it is still more taboo for women than men, though. Especially if they are only in their early twenties. Honestly, I had trouble following this letter.
“I was with my boyfriend of 5 years we have two children and recently broke up about a year ago I’m only 21 we have 3kids and 1 on the way”
This would suggest to me that she has had a child every couple of years since since she was 15 or 16, right?
“I left him because of constant verbal and physical abuse. Then I was having to work to take care of our family and got pretty tired of it.
So when I left I left for good, we became homeless so after about six months I decided I could do bad by myself not knowing at the time I was pregnant with my third child.”So does this mean she when she was around 18 or 19 before she realized she was pregnant with her third? Does that mean her mom and her mom’s ex/roommate have been taking care of the older kids for the last two years?
So then after she had her third baby she tried living with her father, but it was unsafe, so she moved in with her aunt. It was at this time she asked her mom’s ex to file her taxes for her? And then ex-girlfriend kept the money, right? Then the aunt kicked her and the third child out. It isn’t clear how long she was there. With no other alternatives she moved back in with her mom and older kids. Then she went through the live-in ex girlfriend’s computer and found out her tax returns were labeled fraudulent?
So now the ex-girlfriend wants the letter writer to pay her mom $3000 for helping to care for the two or three kids?
“She claims it’s from my children living with her, but my mom was paying her rent the whole time and helping with utilities. She buys food for my children diapers and everything.”
Does this mean the mom is on disability and renting space from her ex who has paid for food, diapers, and extras for the last two or three years? Or does it mean her mom has paid for everything? The letter writer found out she is pregnant with her fourth kid and has an STD. She must have already gone to a clinic to get diagnosed. Presumably, she wants to continue her pregnancy and plans to raise her fourth. Her mom wants $1500 and for the letter writer to have $4500? And to stiff the landlord/ex because she takes advantage of grandma’s disability?
I think letter writer should pay her mom back $1500 and then start thinking how she will pay for herself and her kids in the long run. She may be able to continue to make some money stripping for the next few years, but that won’t last forever. Letter writer, sky blossom’s suggestions of contacting the local county, and perhaps local women shelters if you haven’t already, may be may be useful places to start.
Letter writer, I don’t know what is best for you. That is something you will need to decide for yourself. I agree with everyone else that you should go talk to some experts to figure out what the next steps should be for the long-term picture. If you truly feel in over your head, perhaps adoption might be a good option for you. I don’t know how you feel about things.
Personally, I might also consider tubal ligation. Here is a link about the procedure on planned parenthood.It can cost anywhere between $0-$6000 and obviously it is permanent. Some of the price may be partially covered by insurance, Medicaid, and other state programs and some doctors and hospitals are willing to work with their patients on a sliding scale.
Obviously, I don’t know you or whether this the right option for you. But it can be cheaper in the long-run than birth control.
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