Over the Coals

She's baaaack.

In this interview, Ann Curry rakes Nadya Suleman over the coals about irresponsibility and selfishness. It is fascinating to listen to Suleman's rationale in explaining how she is not irresponsible and selfish.

Suleman states she currently has no income coming in (except for her children's disability payments and food stamps). She was using student loans to support her family, but at this point that source of money has dried up (incidentally, aren't there any rules regulating the use of student loans for purposes other than school?). At the same time, she explains that she is responsible because she will be able to support her children once she is finished school in a year or so.

Question #1: how does she expect to pay for her final year of graduate school when she's used up her student loans to support her family?

Question #2: If she has no source of income right now, how will she support her family while she is finishing up her graduate degree and then trying to find a job?

I guess that's where the media comes in - the book deals, the magazine deals, the interview deals, the reality show, the Lifetime Movie of the Week. Face it, you know they are coming. In fact, just this week it was reported that she's been offered a cool million to star in (of all things) a porn film. Let's also not forget her Beg-a-Thon website with PayPal functionality as well. Oh, and her poor friends, family and church members who have to step up to the plate to support her egregious lifestyle.

And this, above all, is what enfuriates me - that obscene selfishness and irresponsibility gets rewarded in our culture; that when all is said and done, it's all about MONEY (and ratings); that people who live responsibly and within their means have to work their asses off for every dollar they get, while narcissistic, self-absorbed nutcases like Nadya Suleman get everything handed to them on a silver platter.

This Says it All

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R.I.P Socks

Socks
1989 - 2009

Landing Here...

I logged onto Sitemeter today and here are the most recent Google searches that landed people here:

childfree in life regrets?
blog regret having kids
childfree celebrities
regret having kids
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dear Abby and "would you have kids again?"

Interesting...

Childfree Celebrity Spotlight - Helen Mirren

As a new feature of this blog, I would like to take a moment to shine a spotlight on those rare celebrities who are vocally childfree. I hope to feature a new celebrity about once a month.

Our first Celebrity Spotlight is on Helen Mirren whose is not only an outstanding actress (did you see "The Queen"?), but at the age of 63 can still rock a bikini like nobody's business (I am inclined to believe that a life of childfreedom has something to do with her youthful physique).

The British actress told the UK's Radio Times: "I didn't have that desire to be a mother, and don't think an awful lot of women do...I'm very proud of being childless. It's my contribution to world ecology."

In a 60 Minutes interview, when asked if she regretted not having children, Mirren replied "No. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I am so happy that I didn’t have children. Well, you know because I’ve had freedom. And I’ve so loved my freedom."

""... I never wanted children. I don't know why, I've never been shrunk so I've never gone into it. I was never drawn to babies. The only dolls I played with as a child were grown up dolls. I would have loved a Barbie if they'd been around when I was a little girl. And my skin still crawls when I see a little girl hauling around a big baby doll. You see this little five-year-olds with huge, great, monstrous, disgusting baby dolls. I want to go up and rip them out of their hands...."

In this clip from an interview Mirren did with Andrew Denton, she explains that she has always found the process of childbirth disgusting and relays an experience in school concerning sex education on childbirth which she says traumatized her for life. Her discussion on this starts at the 5:50 mark.



More about Helen Mirren

Want to see what other celebrities are childfree by choice? Check out my list and be sure to let me know if you learn of others so I can be sure to add them!

Too Good not to Share

Capitalizing on the spirit of generosity that has moved so many people to donate their hard-earned money in support prolific breeding, my new hero Big Red has created a web site for his own self-cloning and is accepting donations.

Way to go Big Red! ! !

Train Keeps a Rollin'

In the ongoing train wreck saga that is Nadya Suleman, there is certainly no shortage of material to write about. Where do I start?

In this interview with Ann Curry of the Today Show, Suleman defends herself against her many critics. Apparently (and not surprisingly), the primary thrust of anger directed at Suleman concerns the fact that despite having no job and 6 children already to support, she deliberately set out to have an entire brood of additional children with no means to support them, leaving the expense to the taxpayers. Interestingly, in her first interview with Ann Curry, Suleman had stated she and her children do not receive welfare, however it has since come to light that she receives food stamps as well as a total of $1,800 per month in SSI payments for her autistic son and 2 other children with disabilities (said disabilities, by the way, are more likely in multiple births - another reason it is selfish to be implanted with multiple embryos).

Suleman's explanation? "I am not living off of any taxpayer money. If I am - if it is food stamps - it's a temporary resource. We receive no cash and it's every month - about $190 - and it's going for food."

Excuse me? So in one sentence she states she is not living off taxpayer money, yet she states she receives food stamps. Who does she think pays for said food stamps?

She then goes on to defend herself against statements made by her own mother who claimed that Nadya is incapable of of caring for 14 children. Nadya's response? "What human in this planet is capable to take care of 14 independently without support from family, from friends, from church!?"

Precisely! This is exactly why a jobless, broke, single mother with 6 kids has no business having 8 more!

Let me ask you a question, Nadya. Did you consult with your family, friends and church members before you voluntarily got implanted with a multitude of embryos to ascertain whether they were willing or interested in "helping" you with a new litter of 8 children? Did it ever occur to you that perhaps people have their own lives to live, their own spouses and/or children to care for? Maybe they would like to focus on them. Maybe they would like to attend to their own families, instead of sacrificing their time, money and effort to accommodate your selfish desire for a boatload of kids that you have no means to support or care for.

Suleman says (with a chuckle) that we've all heard the saying "it takes a village to raise a child. Well, this will take a lot of villages!"

Thanks, Nadya, for volunteering us all to take care of the problems you've created.

Despite her desire for the villagers to rally together to tend to her family, she simultaneously holds the view that people should not "dissect" her life or make judgements about it. "It's really kind of sick because I think people really need to focus on their own lives...and stop trying to fixate on other people. I think that's unfortunate for them."

Good point, Nadya. Actually, we'd like to focus on our own lives, but since you recruited us villagers to raise your children, our focus has understandably shifted to you.

On a separate, but related issue, I pose a question to you today. How is it that someone who has no job, lives at home with her parents, has a boatload of children to support and is living off of food stamps, disability payments and student loans, can afford to have substantial plastic surgery costing (according to one plastic surgeon) in the area of $20,000? Don't know what I am talking about? Check out these 2 photos of Suleman - one from a few years ago and a recent photo - and tell me if anything looks suspicious to you:

Let's connect the dots here. Could it be that her obsession with having children has been fueled (or exacerbated) by the rampant pronatalist glorification and worship of breeding and motherhood in the media? Could it be that Suleman craves the adoration heaped upon the Queen-of-all-prolific-Mothers, Angelina Jolie?

I have written quite a bit about the danger of media pronatalism and this is the ultimate example of what can happen to people who get whisked away on the pronatalist train as it careens down the tracks.

(I don't blame Angelina, by the way. She is apparently just as creeped out by Suleman as the rest of us.)

Get out the Checkbook!

Hear ye, Hear ye!

Nadya Suleman is now soliciting donations. It's time for us all to pitch in and pay for her breeding obsession.

What are you waiting for!? Get out that checkbook!

P.S. Check out the biblical names for the babies. Is there some kind of law that breeding machines must also be religious nuts?

Happy and Healthy

I am sure you will be happy for this little break from the Nadya Suleman circus. I must confess, it's hard not to write about that fiasco when there are so many facets to it that just beg to be written about. Be warned - there is more to come. In the meantime, today I will write about something different - one of the many unspoken advantages of being childfree.

This morning I e-mailed my close friend, Sara, to confirm we are getting together on Thursday night. You may remember Sara is a mother of 2 young boys and the person who took me to dinner a couple weeks ago at the Thai restaurant where the waitress lost her marbles when I told her my husband and I don't want kids. Anyway, Sara e-mailed me back saying she hopes she will still be able to get together - she's presently fighting off a cold.

In thinking about this a little, I realized that Sara is ALWAYS sick. Actually, always is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but I would estimate that 75% of the time I see or speak with Sara, she has some kind of illness. This got me thinking about the other moms in my life. My sister-in-law (mother of 4) is also sick constantly. Same goes for the moms in the office. Sick. Sick. Sick.

Where does all this illness come from? Kids. And not only the germs spread by the kids, but the weakened immunity system one gets from being stressed out and exhausted caring for said kids.

And then there's me. Knock on wood - it's a rare day I am sick. If I get sick once or twice a year, that's about it. I know that this is mostly due to being childfree. I am not exposed to so many germs, but more importantly, I am not exhausted and stressed out all the time, so my immunity system is pretty strong and can fight off any germs I do come in contact with. Oh, and let's not forget the fact that I have the time and energy to exercise on a daily basis, eat healthily and take good care of myself - again, all because I am free of kids.

Feeling healthy and not being sick is one of those childfree benefits that rarely gets mentioned but it's a great one. We don't think about it because we take our health and wellbeing for granted, but when you realize how many people do not enjoy this kind of consistent healthiness, you realize - it sure is a wonderful thing to feel good most days!

Crazy on Parade

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Well, we knew it was only a matter of time before the octuplet mom began making her rounds in the media to defend her craziness. And crazy she is. When questioned how she will be able to financially support herself and 14 children, she says that she will be able to support them once she is finished school (she is pursuing a masters in counseling). Okay, so question number 1: how is she going to be able to attend classes, write papers, do all the reading, research and the rest of the grueling work that is required to obtain a graduate degree when she has 14 children to take care of?

And let's see here - a masters level therapist...how much money do you think she will earn per year once she gets a job? $50,000 maybe? Yes, I am sure that will be enough to support a family of 15, especially with the likelihood of developmental and learning disabilities in many of the children.

When questioned about how she will take care of all these children, she said she will be able to get by with the help of her family, friends and the church. Well, if I remember correctly, her dad spends much of his time working in the Middle East, and her mother, apparently so disgusted with the whole situation, reported early when this story broke that she told Nadya she would "not be there" when Nadya brought the babies home. So the parents are out as a source for help. So that leaves other family members, friends and the church. How nice to dump all this responsibility on others simply because she had a selfish desire to have way more babies than she can possibly care for.

And here's the best part of all. In the interview she confirms that the same doctor handled all of her IVF procedures! More on that to come...

Seeing Red

If you watched the video in my previous post, you heard Dr. Jamie Grifo state that "you cannot legislate the practice of medicine", i.e. you cannot force doctors to limit the number of embryos they implant in a woman. Although most doctors follow the guidelines recommended - limiting the embroys implanted to one or two - he states that there are no laws limiting them if they choose to implant more. In other words, these doctors who implant 8 embryos in one woman are free to run wild and do as they wish, because "we do not want to infringe on a woman's reproductive rights".

And yet at the same time, many women and men who do not wish to have children are turned away by doctors who refuse to sterilize them because they have not already had children. What about these individuals' reproductive rights? Why is nobody concerned about their reproductive wishes being granted? Why is it that when a person chooses not to have children, her wishes are ignored because it is assumed she must not know her mind, yet the wishes of a woman who is clearly an insane, selfish narcissist - who has 6 children already and wants to add 8 more to the brood when she is single and lives alone with her parents who are going bankrupt - are granted with no questions asked?!! Nobody is questioning her wishes or doubting whether she knows her mind. This is what truly burns me up and makes me see red!

As if this is not all enough, one of the doctors interviewed on the video stated that the health care for these 8 babies will run into the MILLIONS of dollars and guess who will have to pay for it? Us! These women and doctors can do whatever they please with impunity and we just have to deal with it and foot the bill! Nobody questions a woman who wants to be implanted with 8 embryos about the fact that she has 6 kids already. Nobody questions her about whether she has the financial means to pay for their medical care. Nobody questions the negative impact on the health of the woman or the children. Nobody questions her about how she will possibly be able to care for and financially support 14 children. None of this is a concern to anyone because "we cannot legislate medicine". Are you fucking kidding me?

This case illustrates more clearly than anything, the rampant pronatalism that is has our society in a death grip. It is disgraceful and beyond all reason and comprehension. Breeding is encouraged for everyone, under all circumstances and without question because babies are "miracles" and the more miracles we can create, the better off we all are, even if this flies in the face of reality, as in this situation. It is as though our entire society is a culture of catatonic, unthinking Stepford Wives.

The doctors who implanted those 8 embryos should be thrown in prison, as should the mom. In fact, put them all in the same jail cell together and make it a really small jail cell so they can experience the same overcrowding that those 14 children will feel when they are jammed into that tiny bungalow like a bunch of sardines. And turn the 14 children over to adoptive parents who are responsible and have the financial and psychological means to raise them properly.

The Plot Thickens

As if this all is not obcene enough already, the mother of the octuplets is SINGLE and lives with her PARENTS with all the kids!

Octuplets' Mom Obsessed with Having Kids