Surprise! I'm a single parent

Yup only in America does a woman give birth to Octuplets and she’s already a single parent to 6 children.  Shock horror!  I don’t know why she didn’t just go work in early childhood.

The debate here is around intentional single parenting and intentional access to state support and, just how many is enough children – both at one time and altogether. The Octuplets Mum appears to be  greedy with fertility treatments, grasping for state support  and blatantly doing without a Dad.

She’s an extreme example that lets us see our prejudices, values and morality more clearly.

While it wasn’t my gig, I do have a couple of girlfriends who have become a parent with various forms of donor ingenuity.  I also have a few more friends who have made incredibly unwise choices to have children with very unsuitable men. I fear far more for the offspring of the second group because like almost nothing short of incarceration is going to stop their no-good Dads having some negative impact on their lives. If I were choosing between Mr Almost right, Mr Suspect and Mr Test-tube I know who would cause the least grief in the long run.