Who Failed the Octo-Mom?

No need to comment that the Mom who gave birth to octuplets is a very troubled lady. The story has sparked plenty of debate. Most agree, “This never should have happened”. So lets think about this for a moment. Who should decide how many children a woman should have? I certainly don’t like the idea of the government telling us how many children we should have.

I am a big “personal responsibility” advocate, in that we all have free will to do good or bad things. That said, there usually exists checks and balances in our world, which, along with personal responsibility, prevent us all from doing stupid things. In the case of Nadya Suleman, it seems that all the checks and balances failed her and therefore the 8 babies. For most us, our first line of defense is the family. When we are considering doing something really stupid, our family members usually sound off LOUDLY. They yell and scream, they try to talk us out of it, and they DON’T ENABLE THE BEHAVIOR! Apparently, Ms. Suleman has been living with her mother as she continues to have these babies out of wedlock. Something is wrong right there, before even getting to the octuplets. If her mother would have said, "You are not living in my house and having these babies", what would have happened? We can't know that, but it would have made it harder for her to go and have more babies.

Next we get to the doctor. Here represented a chance for someone in the second layer of checks and balances to act. He had the chance to say,” You want to do what? That’s crazy!” Besides missing an opportunity to really prevent someone from making a big mistake, he even went beyond customary practices of implanting no more than three embryos and implanted six. Was that her idea? If it was his, what’s up with that?

Now we get to Medicaid. It’s a little unclear whether the great state of California paid for the IVF or will just pay the estimated $10 million hospital bill. Lets say for arguments sake, that Medicaid will pay for IVF (yes I know we could debate that one all on its own). Are there no limits? No qualifications? No anything? That is nuts!

So all in all, Ms. Suleman clearly was not capable of making good choices. But many could have intervened and did not.

So where is the lesson for us MOMs out there? I think it is to realize that we are our children's first line of defense and it is a very important role! Good parenting can't prevent all our children's mistakes, but it goes a long way to making them fewer, and less tragic.

Welcome to Lori's Blog

After having my first child more than 13 years ago, I noticed that the way I viewed myself, others and the world changed drastically. This coupled with a decade of meeting and teaching thousands of parents and children at Thinkertots have cultivated a point of view that is really based on "what's good for the children". I often think that if leaders/politicians etc make decisions and legislation based on what is best for our nation's children, our world would be a much better place for all! Hence, the title of my blog!

Mothering, or should I say "good mothering" is just about the most selfless endeavour out there and because we get so used to thinking about others needs all the time, it gives mothers an advantage when we try to make sense of this crazy world!

This blog is about applying my "MOM's" point of view to just about everything: from education, kids products, media, movies, current events etc. I welcome your comments. Some of my opinions are pretty strong so by all means, argue with me!!!!