Does anyone else see a little green monster peeking through this thread?
I think the reason Bobbi McCaughey gets donations when other big families do not is two-fold:
(1) Most dominantly, the novelty of a septuplet birth, and
(2) Less dominantly, the sense that she really could not have expected to have that many kids when she took the drugs. Larger families decide with each and every kid whether to have one more. They can look at their financial situation through time. Bobbi McCaughey has made lemonade out of lemons. Can anyone really blame her for the religious beliefs that prevented a selective abortion? I'm pro-choice personally, but I understand where others are not.
In short, people feel that if you have so many kids that you cannot balance your household budget, you are to blame for what you have done to your family. It is so easy to prevent pregnancy now that if you can't afford one more, don't have one more, or bear the consequences of your decision.
On the other hand, people do not feel that Bobbi McCaughey made a decision like that. She went on the drugs to have another baby, or maybe two, or most distantly three. Who could have predicted 7? Because life threw her something unexpected, something we have not seen before or since in the US, she gets the benefit of the doubt and donations.
Besides, would you pick up LHJ to read about some boring plain vanilla "big family?" Did you read for the septuplets? They have a marketing value well beyond that of most families.
Quints are not a big story anymore. There's nothing novel about them, we've seen it before. That's why the quints do not get as many donations.
I'd take every donation I could get, if I were her. She doesn't owe anything to other families of multiples, she's barely scraping by even with these donations (let's face it, no one would mistake Mr. McCaughey for Mr. Ambition) and no one gets a medal in heaven for turning down donations that are freely and generously given and don't hurt anybody else. If we were giving free clothes to babies in Cambodia or some other totally impoverished place, we wouldn't be hearing about "I am absorbing the cost of these donations as a consumer." That argument really doesn't have much merit. If you're vehemently concerned about absorbing costs of others as a consumer, I fully expect you to be wearing a walkie-talkie at the entrance to Sears tomorrow to stop the shoplifters. That's where consumers really get nailed on the cost of "donations." The McCaughey family donations couldn't even be computed to some fractional penny of yours in terms of effect.
So her kids got a scholarship to one local college at birth? So what. What if her kids want to go somewhere else? And need I remind anyone that if your kids get the job done in high school, they'll get a free ride to college too. Even white kids from the suburbs get the $ with a certain SAT or activity.
Time to put the little green monster to bed on this thread.
. It made me feel a lot better about their decision.
