Octomom’s Male Rival
Not long ago, "Octomom" Nadya Suleman was much in the news. She had six children and then, for reasons I have yet to figure out, got herself artificially inseminated and gave birth to octuplets. So she's now the single mother of 14 children under the age of six.
Needless to say, everyone within shouting distance of a microphone opined on Suleman. Most seemed to understand that, while she violated no law, her behavior was outrageous and highly irresponsible first to the children and second to the taxpayers who will surely end up paying at least part of the bill.
Not everyone thought Suleman's decision was wrong, though. Feminist Patricia Williams, writing in The Nation, called criticism of Suleman a "perfect storm of eugenics." My first thought on reading that was to send Williams an easy-to-read dictionary, but then I thought better of it. Anyone who thinks that exhortations to act responsibly with regard to procreation constitute eugenics probably wouldn't read it anyway.
And lest you think I'm being harsh towards Williams, she went on to strongly suggest that one's ability to support children should have nothing to do with one's decision to have children. Fortunately, most women are smarter about that than Williams. Even a cursory look at the Guttmacher Institute's surveys of why women have abortions makes it clear that lack of ability to support the child is one of the main ones.
All of which leads up to this story (WVLT, 5/22/09). In it, Desmond Hatchett of Knoxville, Tennessee is revealed to have fathered either 20 or 21 children. He is 29 years old and a minimum wage worker.
Let me say clearly that Hatchett's behavior is transparently irresponsible. As a poorly-paid blue-collar worker, he cannot possibly support all those children. He cannot possibly contribute his fair share of support to them, and he knows it. His behavior is outrageous.
But it is less outrageous than Suleman's for at least two reasons. Suleman is a single woman and she and she alone will have to care for and support her 14 children, at least until the state steps in which we assume will be soon. Hatchett fathered his squad with at least 11 women. That means there are 12 people to support the childen, to change their diapers, feed them, bathe them, put them to bed, read to them, etc. Twelve people can do that with 21 children. One person can't do that with 14.
The second reason is that Hatchett's partners all had a wide array of contraceptive options available to them. So while it was irresponsible for Hatchett to not use condoms as he apparently didn't, he was not the only one who could have prevented pregnancy. So the fault for all those children is not his alone. In Suleman's case, the decision to carry eight children to term to be added to her existing six was her choice. No man said 'yes' to that. Of course someone deposited his sperm in a bank, but that's a far cry from agreeing to what Suleman did.
Now of course we should be hearing from Patricia Williams and the other defenders of Nadya Suleman about how Hatchett's prodigious procreation is his business and no one else's even though he cannot support the children he's fathered. For them to be intellectually honest, Hatchett's decisions about fathering children cannot be second-guessed by anyone. After all, to do so would be to champion eugenics.
That's arrant nonsense, but it's what they should say.
I won't hold my breath.
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