Why We Care About Nadya Suleman

OK, I’ve been trying my darndest NOT to give this lady (the octuplets mom) the time of day in my blog, but I failed yesterday and slyly mentioned kidnapping the babies.  Reminder:  I was totally kidding.

This story has me crazed in a way I can’t quite recall before.  I mean, I have TRIED to stay away from reading every single stinking article and every interview, and yet, I’m compelled to media stalk this woman who I don’t even know, will never know, and don’t even remotely live near. 

I DVR’d the Dateline special she was on with Anny Curry and watched that yesterday during the day.  Last night, when I couldn’t go back to sleep at 3 am, I found myself watching Dr. Phil (I DVR’d that too, but I always do, so I actually didn’t know the topic was about her.  And if you think I’m a loser for watching Dr. Phil, well, you’d probably be right) last night and watching her deer-in-headlights publicist trying to make sense of out actions from a woman that clearly make NO sense.

Now I’m not naive enough to think that EVERY story I read about her is true.  There are many, many assumptions people are making about how she takes care of her children that could be false.  Unfortunately, she is her own worst enemy when it comes to doing live interviews and saying seriously whacked out things like that she’s going to support her family on her salary as a counselor?  (I’m ROTFL right now…by the way, I’m a counselor, I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned that on here.)  Today I hear that Nadya has been receiving death threats, which is as completely if not MORE stupid than choices SHE has made.  Glass houses anyone?  But back to my point…

Why in the heck do we care so much?  Why in the heck do I care so much?  I surely have better things to do with my time and energy.  So I’m off to try to break this down for myself.  I think that Nadya has broken an entire set of written and unwritten rules of parenthood and good citizenship, and it has incited the rage of a viewing public.

REASON #1:  Parents are supposed to meet the needs of their children over the needs of themselves.  That means self-sacrificing to provide adequate food, shelter and care for their kids. 

REASON #2:  People aren’t  supposed  to be able to qualify for food stamps while being able to afford IVF procedures.  It feels like she’s cheating.

REASON #3:  Although single parenting by choice is gaining acceptance in our society, choosing to be a single parent of such a large family with very limited resources seems OUTLANDISH.

REASON #4:  Couples who have infertility are expected to do things the right way…get jobs, pay for their treatments, and seek to be responsible and productive members of society.

REASON #5:  It just doesn’t seem fair (especially to women with infertility) to watch a mother so clearly unstable with so many children ‘to spare’.  It’s a hard pill to swallow when all you want is one and you don’t have that one.

REASON #6:  Children deserve parents who can give them the love, time, attention and resources they need.  And we expect for parents to ’self generate’ these resources, not expect others to do it for them. 

REASON #7:  People have generous hearts to some extent, but when they feel they’ve been ‘played’, they get mighty stingy.

REASON #8:  People see plastic surgery as a luxury and not necessity, and often judge those who’ve chosen to have procedures as being self-involved and vain. 

REASON #9:  Unfortunately the reality is that becoming a mother is not a fair process.  Horrible women are rewarded motherhood equally to saintly women.   This fact can be infuriating.

REASON #10:  It doesn’t seem right to get to have your cake and eat it too. 

Now let’s be fair ourselves here, this woman has not murdered her children, beat them, or abandoned them on the side of the road.  There are many, many, many other more fitting candidates for ‘worst mother of the year’.  But, she certainly has seemed to put her own need for love and attention over that of her kids. 

I don’t envy her.  I don’t WANT to have octuplets or 14 children.  I have had to remind myself, in all my fury, that Nadya Suleman is not personally responsible for my own infertility and financial trials on this journey.  I suppose we could all take a page out of her playbook:  enroll ourselves in school and get large amounts of loans, live with relatives so we don’t pay rent, apply for food stamps claiming no income, and pump out kids to our hearts’ content.  But somehow I think that the moral bankruptcy of these actions might color the kind of parent I want to be and the kind of kids I want to raise.  So for me, I’ll  continue to play by the rules and do my best with the resources I have. 

Sometimes doing the thing that’s right means not always getting the thing you want, and I guess that philosphy makes our society ‘civilized’.   Civil people do not cheat and loot their way to a brood of children.  Civil people do not threaten to kill those who do.

Maybe we’re not as civilized as we think we are.

(I would love to hear your feelings and thoughts about this topic, but please, let’s be among the ‘civilized’ and avoid threats of harm to her, name-calling, and other non-productive forms of communication)