I would probably agree, though, I wouldn't feel she should be forced to do it by you or me or the government.

I disagree.  That's why we have CPS.  For the best interests of the children, if they should be separated from their mother (and it appears here they probably should...because she's a stark raving lunatic), then they should be adopted out, hopefully to family members, if possible.

If the kids health is suffering, that's one thing.  The fact that you and I (and anyone else) disagree with her view, though, is another.  I'm sure you wouldn't want to give, say prop 8 opponents, the right to determine if you were a lunatic that couldn't raise his own kids.  There've been plenty of people in the past that managed to raise 14 kids.  In fact, it wouldn't have been consider all that bizarre 100 years ago (though, of course 8 at one time would be!).  Taking people's kids away is a very big deal, and shouldn't be done lightly.  Ideological differences shouldn't be what determines who gets to have kids and who doesn't.

You're trying to make a generalization.  I'm talking about this woman specifically.  CPS has already visited her with the intention of possibly taking away the children.  (There are other factors too, not the least of which is that she lost one of her kids before and threatened suicide and said she only had the children so she could get a girl.)

So you're point is that other people have raised 14 kids just fine?  Give me an example of one single mom (or dad) who raised that many children that close together in age.  I'm interested to see.

In reply to Heath (msg #44):

Personal experience says that the children would have to be on the brink of death to be taken away from their mother, regardless of her intentions about the girl.

If it was the father, on the other hand, those kids would be long gone.

That might be dependent on the state.

Unfortunately, I think you're right.  To the detriment of the children.

Being investigated by CPS isn't the same thing as a conviction of child abuse.  We still have "Innocent until proven guilty", you know.  Personally, I think any heavily-publicized case is going to attract CPS attention.

While I agree that there's plenty of reasons to question Octomom's motives, there isn't any hard evidence suggesting that she's a bad parent.

In reply to Grandmaster Cain (msg #49):

The CPS can, and has, removed a child from the custody of a parent without "proof" of wrong-doing on the part of the parent. It's part of their emergency powers.

These childrens' health has and will suffer. 8 children in one birth results in similar effects as a pre-term birth. The most common side effects are things like asthma, severe allergy problems, lung diseases, and other forms of ill-health. More severe problems can include heart problems and brain damage. If all 8 of the kids grow up without severe medical consequences, they can count themselves as lucky. These are all medical problems that will continue throughout their life. You can expect neonatal care to be extremely expensive in the first two years, but that will decrease in time.

And again, this is the #1 reason why the doctor should be carted off to jail - he knowingly out all 8 children and the mom at extreme medical risk, in violation of his oath. The mother similarly is responsible for putting her children at risk, although it's not an ongoing thing (they've already been born), and she didn't take an oath we can prosecute her on. Still, I imagine in the near future she'll prove to be unable to properly care for her children - even with an $800k/month "allowance" from Uncle Sam.

Interesting study; pressure to avoid premarital sex and to marry early increase the rate of divorce, however, regular church attendance reduced it:

http://thefederalist.com/2014/...be-bad-for-marriage/

That seems like a silly study.  A belief in God is sort of a big thing.  If one person absolutely believes in a particular type of God, while the other person actively believes in something else, it sort of seems like a no brainer that these conflicting beliefs will turn into a source of conflict.  If a marriage is rocky enough that there's already plenty of gist for conflict, then throwing that extra straw onto the camel's back may very well be what breaks the marriage.

You sort of need to look for someone with compatible religi-socio-economic values, or be prepared to work a heck of a lot harder than you otherwise might have to work to keep that marriage going.  Note: I didn't say the same background, just the same values.

I will say, one of the best things my background provided for us was pushing us to attend marriage counseling beforehand (and making it affordable!!) We went to Marriage Encounter, which is run by the RCC, but open to anyone (it obviously has a Christian bent, but we had a few Jewish people and a few agnostics, and if you're willing to change 'pray' to 'meditate', the lessons and background are still solid.)

The Church does also require that everyone go through a few meetings with your priest, but aside from spotting really obvious issues, that wasn't the biggest help. ME cost probably about $200 for a full weekend (it's almost totally donation-based though, so you can go for free), but it was worth ten times that, easily.

I don't know if other churches have this sort of thing; but as someone out in the world, I totally feel for people who want to work on their relationships, but don't have a few thousand lying around to get the help they need.

In reply to katisara (msg # 54):

I always found it a bit funny that the RCC requires that chat with a priest thing.  Seems odd to get advice on marriage, sex, and kids from someone who's vowed to never have any of them!

I'm of mixed thoughts on it.  While I can see a benefit in going through pre-marriage counseling, I think it's kind of mercenary to require a couple to pay for it.  I know some churches require that you go through their counseling in order to be married in their church, but for all the ones I've seen, it's either free or covered under the costs of the wedding ceremony.  $200 seems excessive in relation.

Marriage Encounter isn't required. My parents covered it for us though, just because it's a *really* solid program. Chat with the priest is free.

Yeah, I agree that meeting with the priest was sort of... well, not the hugest help. But at the same time, we probably spent 40 minutes there, so there's not a lot that the most experienced counselor can do with that time. It was really focused on the very basic things though; we didn't meet in Vegas the night before, it wasn't a shotgun wedding, our beliefs were not totally incompatible. The idea being that the priest can speak out against the sort of situations that anyone with any sense would recognize as being issues.

I have friends that live in relationships with multiple partners or fully open. Once in a great while someone will leave and take children with, causing all manner of consternation without much legal recourse, but they seem genuinely happy and it doesn't strike me as a horrible way in which to live as long as all involved are informed.

The children don't seem to have problems either, saving that it's a nontraditional way of living that typically gets flak from the larger and less understanding public.

The fully open relationship doesn't really involve the kids in any way and is largely a way for the adults to reach sexual satisfaction.

Sorry for being so quiet. My sister is getting married this week, and next week is GenCon.

But more on topic ... my sister is getting married this week! (And it is a good thing ;) )

"Strongly suggested" is basically the same as "required" in many churches.  Like I said, I don't see any harm with pre-marriage counseling, and I accept that some churches even require it to be married there.  I still think it's mercenary to make them pay for it, though.

One church I went to required 3 sessions before they'd bless the union and allow the ceremony to be performed there.  A one-on-one with the church counselor for each spouse, and then a group session together.  It was a bit cumbersome, but it was technically free-- the cost was covered under the ceremony fees.  That was less mercenary.

I don't know who said "strongly suggested". Marriage/Engaged Encounter was strongly suggested by my parents to me because it's a really good program. Our priest never mentioned it, nor did any other member of the Church (aside from other family friends).

However, the priest counseling is in fact required. They won't conduct the ceremony without it. There is a cost associated with it; I don't recall how much. Something on the order of $50 for them to do the little questionnaire, plus some other miniscule amount for the church space for the day of. (Our whole wedding + reception was under $3,000 and the majority of that was dinner.) The whole thing is extremely cheap if you're a member of the Church, and they'll waive it if you're in any sort of financial need (we weren't, so paying $200 for four hours was fine).

My church is a little different.  You must have a chat with the Bishop for him to perform the ceremony.  The chat is free, and the building itself is also free to use.  You can decorate however you want, as long as you can put the building back the way it was afterward.

I would argue that marriage is indeed good for individuals. Consider that married individuals are more likely to volunteer than single individuals, and that volunteerism both benefits individuals and communities. Of course, there are some differences between men and women, but childbearing also can increase volunteerism.

Consider "A Time to Join, A Time to Quit: The Influence of Life Cycle Transitions on Voluntary Association Membership" by Rotolo and "Volunteer Work and Well-Being" by Thoits and Hewitt for more information on that.

In another interesting article, specifically on general surgery residents, married residents were both happier about actually going to work, enjoyed their jobs more, and felt like they belonged in their respective programs more than non-married residents. However, there were issues with family strain and financial security if children were involved, but the positive benefits were still there.

See: "Effect of Marriage and Children on the Experience of 4402 US General
Surgery Residents" by Sullivan et al.

I understand that the conclusions of these articles are extremely limited, but I believe marriage tends to be an overall beneficial thing for both individuals and society as a whole.

As for the question of the effect of marriage on parents and their children, the effect is largely a beneficial one. Just take a look at any single-mother statistics, and you'll find your answer. Of course, early teen marriage is another story, but there's still a difference between the success of unmarried, teenage mothers and that of married ones. There's also research that I've seen on the effects of marriage on poverty; transitioning from a single-mother household to a married household can be efficacious.

I think it almost goes without saying that, just like two heads are better than one, two parents are better than one for raising children. Two parents can mean more familial income and more time spent with children (which has a huge impact on future success). Human beings are social animals, and marriage is a social contract, so there's that aspect of things too; it's no wonder than marriage can increase happiness, or encourage people to volunteer and the like.

That's not so bad.  It sounds like the counseling cost is just a token.  However, I do know of some churches that require more costly marriage counseling before allowing you to be married.  That, I think is mercenary.

In reply to PeaceLoveScience (msg # 63):

Some good points there.  One thing I would think is important to consider when discussing marriage in the US is the different ways it is view/treated by different socio-economic groups.

There's been a trend in the relatively recent past (last few decades) where the college-educated tend to treat marriage as a "capstone" event: something that you do once you've completed your education, started your career, and become financially stable.  Such folks tend to get married in their early 30s or so, and have kids a bit afterwards.  From what I've read, this out well for them, in terms of happiness, financial stability, stability of the marriages, success of children, etc.

In contrast, the trend for lower-income folks in the states has been more towards getting married and having kids early (late teens to mid-twenties, say), before they are financially stable, have established a career, etc.  Such marriages more frequently end in divorce, produce less well-adjusted kids (compared to the first group), and have more financially instability.

This difference in habits complicates the discussion of "is marriage a good thing" somewhat, and means we have to be a bit careful when looking at figures.  In the first group, we have people who are, in some sense "doing okay" before they get married, and end up "still doing okay" once they're married.  In the second group we have people that are struggling a bit before they get married (or perhaps aren't struggling yet, but are close), who end up struggling after they get married.  There's a temptation to compare the folks in one group to the other, and say "why does their marriage work, but not yours?" but to a degree, that's just showing that being financially stable tends to lead to desirable outcomes.

Somewhat more interesting is the question of whether the two different models are both useful/beneficial?  The former model is a "stability first, marriage as a reward afterwards" view the latter is a "marriage early, to be used as a tool to get through the instability" view.  For those who have the option of sorting out their own situation before getting married, waiting until you're older seems to work out well.  But most of those who are getting married young are in more difficult positions, and "sorting out their own situation" may be very difficult.  The question of whether an early marriage is a net benefit to them is an interesting one, and one importantly, not one that's actually answered by just looking at the people who waited (and also happened to be in better financial straights to begin with).

There's also an issue of pressure to conform, and whether doing a good thing for the wrong reasons is beneficial or not.  If one group of people get married for their own reasons, and have success, that can create social pressure to get married.  If you're getting married because of social pressure, it's an open question (in my view, at least) as to whether you should expect to get the same benefits as people who got married without that pressure.  (If that's a bit unclear, imagine it this way:  An older brother goes into law school because he thinks he'd be good at it, and makes a lot of money, and is viewed as successful by his family.  They then turn around at tell the younger brother "Look, you should be look your older brother! Go to law school!"  But the younger brother has different skills, and doesn't think he'd be a good lawyer.  But because of the family pressure, he goes into law as well.  Is he likely to see the same success as his brother?  What's good for one, may not be good for all.  Pressuring everyone to do X just because some group had success with X may not actually work out as hoped).

Another issue to consider is that comparing "single mothers" to "married households" and seeing that "married households" do better (by some metric), and then concluding that "thus marriage is good" is to overlook the fact that more than 1 variable has been changed in that experiment.  I think most people would agree that two-parent households offer many advantages over one-parent households (though not in all cases--two parents that are constantly fighting can well be worse than just having one), not all two-parent households are married households.  You can have a two-parent household without the parents being married.  By comparing single mothers to married households, its easy to mis-attribute the benefits to the marriage, rather than to the fact that there are two parents present.  This is relevant for people who plan to stick together and raise their kids, and are wondering if marriage will be beneficial for them.  They're going to be a two-parent household in either case.  The question of "married households vs. single mothers" doesn't really apply to their situation, and thus arguably shouldn't be used to inform their decision.

I would agree. The same applies to most other forms of counseling. Those who need it the most can usually afford it the least! A Church's job shouldn't be to profit off of those people, but to do everything they can to provide for them regardless of whether they can afford to pay.

That said, the RCC does have a number of other requirements, for instance the style of ceremony, the location, etc. That sort of thing pushed my sister to not get married in the Church and our father couldn't perform it, because she didn't want to meet the Church requirements.

In reply to Tycho (msg # 65):

I agree with all of your above points. I think the biggest thing to come out of that is the notion that "one size doesn't always fit all," even when it comes to marriage. I suppose it's more accurate to speak towards statistics than probabilities (i.e., just because more married people tend to be "X," doesn't mean that one will certainly be "X" if they become married; causation v. correlation). The variables will always be wide and render comparisons invalid when comparing across financial situations and the like, but that's what I loved about the Sullivan et al. article, since it compared married to non-married individuals within a population of the same profession (and, as surgery residents, similar income status as well, I might think). So, while I can't speak towards individual probabilities, I think that the statistical benefits are fairly valid (despite the individual variability and the like, or the model used) even if speaking strictly from a financial perspective.