The number of things within that article that blow my mind are beyond count.
Even at 40, to be out of work for 17 years would put it happening at 23, and even assuming she dropped out her SENIOR year of high school, that meant she did NOTHING for 5 years. I doubt she waited that long to drop out too, if she even made it INTO high school. And damn, how do you grow up in a middle-class house and still not make it to or through public schooling? Unless your middle-class neighborhood has the performance level of, say, one of the worst schools in the nation, or you have some sort of SERIOUS learning disability, it takes a serious will to outright fail public school.
And how, in a household of SIX children, are ALL of them, AND THEIR SPOUSES, on welfare? Counting the mother, that would be a minimum of 9 different people assuming that "spouses" referred to the minimum possible amount to be more than one person, and up to 13 if all of them had spouses. How do you have a cluster of people that close and EVERY SINGLE ONE can't do anything? Not even the "teenage boy" that apparently requires money to go to school?
And I'm sorry, I know it's an ******* thing to say, but assuming you don't have some sort of glandular problem, you don't get as large as they are by eating light and missing meals....
The only saving grace of what I read in there is they actually reject the idea of having a child to garner more money from society. Probably the first time I've read someone's story where that is what they felt.
I can't even fully wrap my head around that fail of that story...
.
