On Saturday, I read with interest the letter by Kelly Fairholm, headlined Letter proves that demonizing the poor is real, in reply to a letter I wrote previously.
During the past week, I also had opportunity to read the responses to my letter that were published on the Red Deer Advocate’s website.
Many people felt that I had no right to criticize Priscilla Ristau because “I did not know what the circumstances were that led to her being in subsidized housing.”
In response to that criticism, let me point out that it is irrelevant to my point what it was that led her to live in this situation. Rather, my issue is with the flagrant lack of gratitude that she is exhibiting and the fact that even when she is being assisted by the system, she is accusing the system of “stigmatizing” her.
If she truly believes that she is being stigmatized, then she should feel this way even if there were no signs up.
I wonder, does she feel stigmatized when she makes use of her status as single mother on her tax return, when she receives an extra benefit in her child tax credit because she is a single mother, or when she gets her GST cheque?
If she truly felt that society was stigmatizing her unfairly, then she would feel this way whether or not her status was being publicly or privately acknowledged.
When I read the original Advocate news article, I did not skip over the part where it mentioned that Ristau is in college studying to be a social worker. I would like to point out, though, that her being in college is a privilege that is being afforded to her and not a societal obligation.
If she wanted to go to college, she should have done so before she had a child. When a person has a child, his or her first responsibility is to tend to the needs of that child and that means doing so in the most immediate and direct way possible.
In other words, her first and only obligation is that she should get a job or two jobs, if need be.
Just because she has a child does not mean that other people must assist her to fulfil her sudden desire to get an education so that she can possibly get a better job somewhere down the road. Therefore, her obligation to take any job in the present is not nullified.
Also, she should be able to say “thank you” to her fellow taxpaying citizens who are gracious enough to allow her to delay her entry into the work force so that she can pursue her dream.
My father abandoned his family two years after I was born, leaving my mother to raise two children to adulthood as a single mother.
In those years, though, my mother sent both of her children to get a private education, K-12, in the Christian school system.
In all of those years, we never missed a meal or bought used clothes. We both took piano lessons and my brother even got to take guitar lessons for awhile. My mother also bought and paid for her own house and had her own car.
All of this was accomplished without any economic input from the government; my mother actually paid taxes to the government.
She also did all of this at a time of gender discrimination and when racial discrimination against blacks was rampant in America.
I almost forgot to mention that she did this all without a college degree. However, to accomplish all of this, she often had to work more than one job and before Christmas time she would often take a third job in order to be able to afford Christmas presents.
In the end, there cannot be two sets of rules, one for the supposedly privileged, who have a defacto obligation to pay, and one for single parents, who are permitted to take without so much as a thank you.
Just because one is a single mother doesn’t mean that you get to play the victim and wield your parental status like a cudgel over the heads of your presumably richer neighbour.
After all, what is the point of making good decisions and living by absolute principles of moral behaviour so that you and your children can have a better future, if the government dictates that your outcome can never be any better than the outcome of the person who makes poor choices?
A society where the economic system is built on the principle of avoiding economic differences among individuals is a society that is doomed to both economic and social ruin.
And I believe that I can be very confident in saying that Ristau’s plight is the result of her own choices. This is because in our society the choice of a mate is not forced upon us but is instead freely decided upon by the individual.
In our society, childbirth is the choice of the man and the woman who are involved with each other.
We cannot forget that means for avoiding pregnancy are widely and cheaply available in the marketplace.
Of course, someone will respond that birth control isn’t always perfect, and with this I agree. Where I disagree, though, is in the conclusion that failure of a birth control method means that you are deserving of sympathy from society and exoneration from all undesirable consequences of the sexual act.
It is an insult and personal affront to both mothers and fathers who take care of their own children to tell them that they must take money that would otherwise go to care for their own children and have the government use it to care of someone else’s child.
If Ristau is really concerned about completing her studies, she should concentrate on doing that and taking care of her child instead of attempting to impress her teachers with specious arguments, which are defined as being: Apparently right; superficially fair, just, or correct, but not so in reality; as, “specious reasoning; a specious argument.”
Julian Hudson
Ponoka