Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

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> But zooming out, I'd be inclined to say the "society that forced a mother to work 3 jobs to get by" failed

But how did the mother get into position where a) she's single and b) she needs to work 3 jobs to get by?

One situation is teen pregnancy. Say a girl gets pregnant as a teenager and the father flees (common for single moms). Now she has to raise a kid by herself and drop out of school, limiting her career options.

Is this an individual responsibility fail or a societal fail? I guess you could argue "society failed by not providing her with free contraceptives and/or abortive services and/or social services" but it's just a bad, sad situation no matter how you slice it, and clearly there was some personal agency involved. Even worse, it's a self-perpetuating cycle (i.e. the pregnant teen's offspring is more likely to also be a pregnant teen)

In Baltimore? Don’t know this specific story obviously, but could have something to do with their insanely high incarceration rate. Not to suggest necessarily that those incarcerations are even unwarranted, but rather to point out that this is a feedback loop and not a straight chain of causality with a beginning and end. It doesn’t start anywhere in particular - looking for that “root cause” is a fools errand (aside from centuries of racism, which is what almost certainly spawned these toxic feedback loops, now without “beginnings”).

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/maryland/maryland-l...

I think your teenage pregnancy example is probably reasonable, I could see that being a big turning point in a mother's life, where things began getting tougher/worse.

I guess my point is that even if it's clearly an individual-failure, how long should that condemn her to a life of struggle and hardship, let alone her children? If one step off the straight-and-narrow in society means that you need to beat incredible odds to make it back onto the happy-path, we need to work to make that easier to do. Regardless of whether you fell off that path by your own actions today, last week, or decades ago when you were a child.

I'd want to live a society where those struggling get repeated lifelines and assistance to help find some stability. I guess I don't see what the other option is; I don't think we can just give up and let them (and their children, and their children's children...) struggle and fail forever. Even if that means that they need more support/attention than the average citizen for however long it takes.

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