These folks often have multiple jobs already, and have much of their day tied up as it is, and up comes along some busybody like you starts with the presumption that these folks have no conception of how to provide for their families-even though they are doing just that (just not being compensated enough to completely do so). It's a lecture without many grounds to stand on.
To me it comes off as lecturing because you seem to just spout this stuff off without really thinking about the big picture of what this would end up doing to individual families, schools, or entire school districts. When a large portion of the school population is reliant upon free and reduced lunch programs, and those folks are essentially forced to work for the state, you're only seeing the poor families, the poor schools, and the poor school districts having these labor conditions. Meanwhile in white middle class suburbia, the leisure class has no such obligations.
Lets just take a guess who is doing the lecturing here. YOU.
The idea is if you cannot afford kids, maybe you should rethink, regroup, retool until you can. The idea of government supplying everything in place of that of the parent is rather a scary prospect. Parents SHOULD BE WILLING to do whatever is necessary to feed and house the kids they have. Mycroft is absolutely right, its not the fault of the children but totally the responsibility of the parent to assure that their children are fed... and if a school provides for this opportunity, they should be more than willing. If not, someone from the state should probably be looking into what other problems that may be occurring in this household where intervention might be necessary. Its ridiculous to burden your neighbors just because you want to have kids and cannot be bothered with the responsibility of their actual care. And...this whole idea of anybody not being "compensated enough to completely do so" is silliness. What you are paid is based upon what value your services are actually worth, not upon how much pay folks have obligated themselves to having... that is not the fault of the employer, nor your neighbor, nor the state.
There is no way that, as you put it "a large portion of the school population is reliant upon free and reduced lunch", this should ever be the case in a country as free and prosperous as this one most certainly is. Sorry. And the whole distractor of the
whiteness aspect you bring up, middle-class or not, comes close if not actually being, well, to put it politely, an interjection of race that is simply unnecessary, being not at all germane, demeans minorities and the issue itself.
If you feel so passionate about this issue, as you seem to, establish a fund where you can voluntarily give to assist these programs that you think don't affect the overall atmosphere of too many Americans relying upon expected hand outs. Remember, don't you, the "big picture"? Pulling the victim "Oh, woe is me!" thing is not an argument. Yours is the argument without
any grounds to stand on... or
any legs to stand on...take your pick.
