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Comment by Veelox | Hacker News Reader

> Are you suggesting we make their parents "pay" somehow? Or a program to prevent the parents from having 5+ kids when they don't have the resources?

Due to the way government assistance is structured it encourages parents to 1) not get married, 2) have more kids, 3) not begin working if they don't already work.

If we changed government assistance to encourage parents getting married that would help reduce fatherlessness and all of the negatives that come with that.

If we changed government assistance to encourage parents to have less children they would be better able to take care of the ones they have.

If we changed government assistance to encourage parents to work it would reduce the number of people who grow up on government assistance and live on it their whole lives. This would have long term positive consequences.

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"If we changed government assistance to encourage parents getting married that would help reduce fatherlessness and all of the negatives that come with that."

That's not really a good idea. I know my godson's parents, and if they getting assistance was reliant on getting married, they would end up killing each other.

"If we changed government assistance to encourage parents to have less children they would be better able to take care of the ones they have."

How, exactly would you do this? And do it without punishing the kids by leaving their parents with even fewer resources?

Currently as a single mother, you can qualify for more things than you can as a married mother. This puts a financial incentive to stay unmarried. This incentive should be removed.

I don't have as good of an answer for reducing children. It would probably be best to work on reducing the number of children by providing easier access to birth control.

"Currently as a single mother, you can qualify for more things than you can as a married mother. This puts a financial incentive to stay unmarried. This incentive should be removed."

You're completely and utterly ignoring the fact that raising children, especially multiple ones, is an extremely difficult task, even for two people. I know of very few people who would opt to do it themselves, even if the financial incentives to do so were worth it (they aren't even close).

I just want to point out there are a lot of poor women raising significant numbers of children. The woman next to my mom has 5-7 (it's hard to tell, and she just had a new one). They father (of some of them) is around a little, but mostly not around. And it looks like there are several fathers. Yes, raising children well is hard, but I would not describe what this woman does as difficult. Older kids are raising the younger ones, etc, etc.

So, I would definitely disagree with your assertion.

Raising children is very hard. I simply saying any benefits a person qualifies for while a single parent should not go away once married.

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