Nobody is suggesting "just don't have kids". People are saying plan and save appropriately. (Sure, accidents can happen.)

I know a couple who has had 3 kids by age 19 and both parents have dropped out of high school to support them. What's their endgame? They basically are going to live off the state for their rest of their lives and will always struggle with money and food. If they would have continued with their education and waited 5-10 years, their situation could have been drastically different...

> Nobody is suggesting "just don't have kids".

I disagree. I see people suggesting that on a regular basis.

I absolutely agree that it's much better to wait and plan more, and we need to encourage people to do that as much as possible. We still need to collectively realise that our society will always have poor people. That being the case, my opinion is that denying the poor the moral right to reproduce is unfair.

But 9 kids at 31?

She's recently come from Gambia, remember, where the cultural values around birth control and family size are very, very different from in your culture. There are cultures where women are shamed, punished, or outcast for "failure to conceive."

I have not heard anyone mention yet that federal aid programs do incentivize having kids, lots of kids. Any compassionate ideas for fixing that?

Yeah, in fairness I can see that's kinda insane. I guess I just get aggravated when I perceive people treating the issue as a simple decision, whereas the emotions around having/not having children are anything but.