30 Kids and Counting: Race, class, and the scapegoating of the Other

This is yet another issue I was planning on avoiding, but it's gone viral on my Facebook news feed, so here we are.

The story goes that Desmond Hatchett, a Tennessee resident, is the biological father of thirty children.  Thirty children born to eleven different women.  The other part... he has a minimum-wage job and therefore some of his children's mothers receive as little as $1.49 per month. He is pleading with the state for help with his support payments.

I know better than to read the comments below the stories.  I'm not even going to go there.  But the commentary provided by people on Facebook - people I'm actually friends with and tend to respect as intelligent human beings - provided its own source of disappointment.

But first, let's break down a few of the issues in the news article itself.

The headline, TN Man 'Fathers' 30 Kids But Can't Support Any, is in and of itself problematic.  The last line of the article tells us he has a minimum-wage job, so obviously he can support some, especially when they report that his previous partners do in fact receive support payments, however small they may be.  The use of the word "fathers" in quotations, paired with the obviously inaccurate claim that he "can't afford any," reinforces the deadbeat Black dad stereotype.  While Hatchett may not come across as the most sexually responsible person in the world, that he is even showing up in court and willingly getting half his paycheck taken by the state means that he is making more of an effort than, say, a man who dodges the system completely and goes "off the grid" to avoid child support payments (or, say, a man who is physically and financially present in a child's life but is any shade of abusive).

Much of the language in the article itself is racist and demeaning.  The author could have easily reported that Hatchett had children with 11 different partners, but instead chose to use the term "baby mamas" in quotations, clearly an attempt to write off all people involved as irresponsible stereotypes.

The article also lacks any discussion of why this sort of thing happens in the first place, especially in a racial and socioeconomic context.  And no, I'm not talking about the apparently "high number" of sexual partners Hatchett has had (okay, I did end up reading some of the reader comments... d'oh!).  I'm talking about the fact that Tennessee is a state with a long history of abstinence-only sex education (or in some cases, no sex education at all). In fact, the state's legislature is currently pushing a bill that would restrict this curriculum even more.  Additionally, while condom use rates have improved amongst the young African American population, cultural barriers present in lower-income communities persist.  Non-barrier, female-controlled contraceptives remain difficult to access in any community without consistent financial stability, and the state of Tennessee strictly prohibits social safety nets from funding abortion services.  And the results are apparent: Tennessee has one of the highest rates of unintended pregnancy in the country, particularly among young African American women. 

And now for the comments I read on my Facebook feed.

I'll say first that simply posting the article without any discussion of the above points is irresponsible, period.  Desmond Hatchett does not exist in a vacuum, and while his situation is a bit more extreme, his story is not unique.  Countless men regardless of race or socioeconomic status have "accidental children" with previous sexual partners.  We're only hearing about Hatchett because he doesn't have the economic privilege to make his child support payments outside of the public view. 

I have a number of feminist-identified friends who decided instead to take the "men are scum" approach.  But again, ignorance of the race/class factors involved here make their commentary troubling in the feminist lens because really, they're not calling out all men... they're calling out this particular kind of man.  A truly feminist account of Hatchett's situation would not ignore the intersectionality at play here.  Rather, it would push it to the forefront of the conversation.

Another person pointed the finger not only at the irresponsibility of Hatchett, but the "stupidity" of his female partners as well.  The poster even went so far as to muse that several of the women involved might have become pregnant intentionally in order to receive payment (because child support payments are just a phenomenally effective get-rich-quick scheme).

Even more troubling was the friend who simply stated that Hatchett should be "permanently sterilized." To make matters worse, he went on to express complete ignorance of why this is problematic when confronted about it.  Using terms like "personal responsibility" and "individual case," he remained unwilling to even learn about our nation's history of forced and coerced sterilization in lower-income communities of color, but assured me his previous comment "had nothing to do with race."  Right.

The Desmond Hatchett story made headlines first because it serves as an extreme example of a very common issue: the United States has one of the most abysmal records of unintended pregnancy in the industrialized world.  But the perpetuation of shock and "oh my god can you believe this guy" serves a deeper social purpose in that it puts a stereotypical face on the issue.  Thus, we allow ourselves to point the finger at one person or one kind of person (read: not us), blaming a group of irresponsible individuals rather than asking how we as a society may be complicit in another person's actions.  I thought the people I associate myself with were better than that, however, this time it appears I may have been mistaken.