Eight is nowhere near enough
Dear zany madcap Nadya Suleman was on tv again last night, in a nice extensive interview that she gave away for free. Like so many of my fellow Murkans, I find her morbidly fascinating. Her peculiar air of warm, even patronizing confidence is especially intriguing. I get the distinct impression that she thinks of herself as deeply wise, even wiser than Angelina Jolie. She was asked, right out in the open, if she had had a lip job, and she said no. I don’t believe her, and neither does anyone else. Of course she bloody did; she wasn’t born with those things! The mystery is why she thinks they’re attractive.
There were some funny parts. I just wanted to mention one or two. Frivolous of me, I know, but I like to let my hair down now and then. One was when the reporter asked if she had any income, and she said no except for student loans. She thinks loans are income! There speaks the American financial sense right there: loans are income. No no no no no, sweetheart, loans are minus income, on account of how you have to pay them back – that’s what ‘loan’ means. They’re really really not income in the sense you need income to be when you have 14 small children 8 of whom are in the ICU. Another was when she said proudly that she never used welfare, then when asked, cheerfully agreed that she was on food stamps to the tune of $490 a month. (This is my Reagan moment; this is where I start talking about welfare queens in Cadillacs driving up to their solid gold mansions in Beverly Hills.) Another was when the reporter asked if she didn’t feel at all concerned about depriving her children of a father and she said perkily ‘They have a father – he’s just not around.’ I suspect that being ‘around’ was what the reporter meant by having one. Another was when she said she believed the octuplets were God’s way of telling her to stop having children. Couldn’t he think of a less drastic way of telling her?! Like just messing up the IVF?
Frivolity over.
Personally rather than insulting her I would like to see the world ignore her. No $2M stimulus from magazine story fees, for instance.
My wife and I had our second daughter last week (well, she had the baby and I got shouted at), so this was strangely fascinating for us. She must be drowning in nappies, and no way is she going to be able to breast feed ’em to get the relevant immunity bits into ’em.
She is obviously barking mad, however I feel sorry for the kids and cross at the doctors that did the IVF, talk about unethical. 8 embryos implanted, the standard is meant to be 2. Are they not under any obligation to consider the want to be mother’s mental state and circumstances before they go through with the procedure?
However, bad cases make bad law as they say. To form any general opinion about welfare, IVF, motherhood, babies or nappies based on this case would be silly. (Specifics are another issue).
Sure. This is very specific.
Mind you – if nothing else it serves as a good illustration of why ethical guidelines (or rules, or laws) are so important in this field. One key item I’ve seen discussed is the importance of discussing selective abortion ahead of time: if the potential mother says that’s out of the question, then multiple embryos should also be out of the question.
(I feel extremely sorry for the children, and that’s part of the point. The 8 are at high risk for cerebral palsy, and the 6 of course get overcrowding, a stressed mother, 8 crying babies, etc etc etc.)
Oh and felicitations!
I feel so much better now. I did have kind of a thing about the lips, and that made me feel like…why am I thinking about this? Damn, I missed the interview. I have a morbid fascination too. The woman’s just strange.
I usually avoid amateur psychology, but it’s pretty clear the woman has a mental health problem. Her poor parents seem to be at wit’s ends and she seems oblivious to the fact that 14 kids might be more than she can manage.
I agree with bjn, the practitioners who enabled this are surely culpable. Maybe they should pick up the tab. It was originally sugested that she had gone ‘under the radar’ (i.e. used a cowboy practitioner) but more recent reports suggest it was a licensed US facility. If that is so, there must surely be a case to answer.
On reflection, I feel sorry for the woman. She isn’t deliberately trying to do harm, she just wants to love lots of babies. So do I and my wife, but we’ve made a decision to stop at two for a variety of sensible reasons. This actually makes us quite sad at times, knowing that we will never have another baby after the one we’ve just had. It is a future cut off from us, However, she obviously doesn’t have the mental and emotional skills to deal with the reality of what having all those babies really means for the quality of life of herself and those children.
How a society goes about dealing with such people is fraught with all sorts of ethical dilemmas, we are all flawed after all. However, at the very least, one should not help them along when the harm their delusions will cause is so bloody obvious. Spank the doctors involved, alot.
Back to cooking dinner.
“She isn’t deliberately trying to do harm, she just wants to love lots of babies.”
Yeah, as she says herself, because she was an only sibling she wanted to have lots of children. I do not think love comes into the equation at all. Love is just a by word.
Perhaps she is angry with her mother for not giving her a brother or a sister – so she decides to go out and create the siblings she never had to get back at her mother. We all know from reading in the media that the mother is utterly distraught.
My mother got pregnant out of wedlock and I swore that the same thing would never happen to me. It never did.
She did the opposite thing to her mother. So, too, did I.
She’ll receive her comeuppance when she has 14 foulmouthed teenagers in the house.
“What the fuck were you thinking, you stupid cow, having kids you can’t support? And Jeremiah Angel? I sooo haaate you!”
Seriously, I hope the kids get well taken of -by Suleman or by the state – and none of 8 new babies have severe disabilities. Seeing the autistic toddler wandering around in that chaotic household was quite heartbreaking.
My mum had six of us for similar reasons to Suleman – she’d come from a small family, and initially found it difficult to have kids – and then she was suddenly widowed with six very young kids. All her energies were thereafter focussed on earning a living, surviving without welfare or extended family support and we looked after ourselves most of the time.There was inevitable neglect and resentment on our side and the stress and worry of being solely responsible for all of us did take its toll on my mum who often wished she could run away. My mum was a superwoman, super responsible, hardworking and loving and we were in the main, well-behaved kids who did very well in school but we nearly didnt make it.
Suleman is headed for hell.
If this woman lived in a world with guaranteed health care, council housing, mental health care, would you be quite so snide in your comments?
If she were a Mormon, an Orthodox Jew, rich, would you be quite so smirking and denigrating?
Instead, you are using her to push your blog, putting you in the same money-grubbing, reprehensible, pathological class as rupert. Just stagnate there!
Heh – Don already answered – but I might as well add my flatfooted bit. Yes of course I would: I don’t think people should burden state systems of health care and housing by having many times a reasonable share of children, and especially by having 8 of them in one go, which is colossaly expensive.
As for pushing my blog – wha? How does this push my blog? And money-grubbing?! Nobody gives me any money for sharing my profound thoughts!
Maybe that was Nadya herself, lightly disguised.