This story has been making its way around the blogosphere. This one from Donald Douglas:
Jeez, this dude needs to put on a raincoat — either that, or keep it holstered permanently.
See the Los Angeles Times, “Man who had 30 kids with 11 women wants child-support break” (via Memeorandum)
As Darleen Click put it, “Dependency is the new freedom . . . .”
Your Editor has seen this story floating around, and while the irresponsibility of Desmond Hatchett is obvious, what I haven’t seen is anyone asking:
- Don’t the women involved have any responsibility for contraception; and
- Just what kind of self-respect do the ladies in question have if they are copulating with a guy who has been fornicating with that many other women?
The feminists who normally comment on just about anything relating to sex and families have been notably quiet: Amanda Marcotte has, at least thus far, said nothing, Feministing has been completely silent, despite having an article up about maternal health still being a feminist issue, and is concerned about the possible sexism on a picture of a woman riding two dolphins, Melissa McEwan was very busy condemning those who are concerned about the recent demographic news that more non-white babies were born in the US than white ones, including a condemnation of anybody who is in any way critical of contraception, yet hadn’t a word about the Hatchett case, and Think Progress and the Lost Kos and the Delaware Liberal were all silent.
Why? Well, if any of our friends on the left even questioned this case, it would raise questions about the women’s responsibility as well as the man’s. Thirty children by eleven different women means that most of these women had to have multiple children by the same man to whom they were not married and could not support. Were our friends on the left to raise this topic, it would call into question their abandonment of the apparently quaint and surely anti-feminist notion that sex has natural consequences, that women bear the greater burden of these consequences, and the old-fashioned norms that women shouldn’t screw around were for their own protection and well-being.
Contraception? It’s inexpensive and widely available. Abortion? Yes, your Editor would like to outlaw it, but it is still perfectly legal, and a large city like Knoxville, Tennessee (which is the home of the University of Tennessee) has two abortion clinics, with inexpensive fees, along with a link to an organization which can help poor women with those fees.
Dr Douglas concluded:
And it is. The report indicates that some of the mothers of Hatchett’s children get as little as $1.50 a month. Somewhere along the way, probably as early as the first child, Hatchett and his hookups were relying on government to pay for their children, the hospital costs, for example (and pre-natal care), and unless the mothers are living with family members and self-sufficient, there’s no doubt that the kids are being supported through public assistance. Indeed, that’s why the county is all over this dude to get with the program. And I can guarantee you that if you say one word about the breakdown of individual responsibility in this case you’ll be attacked as racist. It’s almost unbelievable to think about what’s happened to this country. That’s almost unbelievable. As long as marriage is ridiculed by the enlightened progressive, and as these same left-wing idiots insist on perverting the institution through gay marriage radicalism, things will only get worse before they get better.
The county “is all over this dude to get with the program?” How? He makes minimum wage which, if the reports are accurate, means he is making $7.25 an hour, or $15,080 a year. Supposedly half of his income is being taken for child support, but, divided among thirty children, doesn’t go very far. If some of the children’s mothers get $1.50 a month, the administrative costs alone are higher than what the recipients get.
The war on women? It was waged with not by Republican policies, but with Desmond Hatchett’s dick, and the people who are suffering the casualties are the eleven women who have children for whom they receive virtually no child support (they were willing casualties), for the thirty children growing up without their scumbag father, and the taxpayers who are going to have to pay for the irresponsibility of Mr Hatchett and his eleven sluts.
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Cross-posted on Truth Before Dishonor.
This cretin needs an extreme circumsion. Very extreme.
Wonder what he does on baby daddy’s day?
Fathers who didn’t pay child support used to be thrown into jail. If we threw him in jail, at least he couldn’t knock up anybody else while he was in there.
But all of societal wisdom in the past — meaning: more than forty years ago, I suppose — put the onus for out-of-wedlock births on the mother. It was wholly unfair, but it worked: illegitimacy was much lower. And if it was unfair, well, life is unfair, and it will always be women who bear the greater burden from illegitimate children. If our friends on the left don’t like that simple truth, they can blame God or evolution or Mother Nature, whomever they wish, but it won’t change anything: women will always bear the greater burden for illegitimate children.
Our ancestors knew this, and that’s why they had societal morés which greatly circumscribed such things. Perhaps those mrés were handed down by God, or perhaps societies developed them on their own, but it doesn’t matter: they were developed and put in place, in every society known to man, because they were necessary, and they worked. It is only in the last forty years that we have decided that we are somehow wiser than all of the generations which have gone before us.
I can’t help but think that if Mr. Hatchett and his eleven women had to pay the price for their actions, they wouldn’t be nearly so ready to repeat their actions. That is part of what is wrong with our country and our society. In so many cases, no consequences are suffered because of bad behavior. That wouldn’t be fair, don’t you see.
It is not a question of fairness, Mr Jackson, rather it is a question of looking after innocent children, which, if all else fails, the responsibility falls to the state.
Regarding a penalty on the perps for this behavior, probably only the man himself is aware of the total outcome of his behavior, therefore it is on him, via a child support requirement. Since he obviously cannot meet this requirement, he belongs in jail for non-payment. Regarding the women, it would be pretty hard to justify punishment for their having unprotected sex.
We could debate the idea of forced sterilization, but that is a very tricky area involving considerations of the morality and ethics involved with doing such a thing. Interestingly, the United States was a pioneer of forced sterilization; moreover, the most notorious, Nazi Germany, claims to have followed on with it based on the practice in the United States. Wiki has an interesting discussion on this topic.
My conclusion regarding this anecdotal thread topic is that it is going to be rather difficult to do anything more than requiring the perp to pay child support, then jailing him if he cannot meet said requirement. At the very least, this takes him out of circulation, as stated by our Editor.
Do the women involved receive more in welfare for additional children? If they do, they have no incentive not to have additional illegitimate children. No one can say whether any of these women were thinking about more government benes or not, or were just plain stupid — or perhaps both — but in some places such an incentive exists.
The problem is that if you take away welfare, the children suffer; if you continue welfare, you have a financial incentive to keep spitting out illegitimate children. There’s no way to make it both just and fair.
The actual answer is what it was fifty and sixty years ago: an overwhelming sense of shame, imposed by the community, on women who bore illegitimate children. It might not have been fair, but it did work.