Here’s yet another news article about the “struggles” of a “low income,” “single mom,” where the article makes exactly zero mention of the father of the children
Insider just published this article about the “struggles” of a “low income” “single mom.” The article makes exactly zero mention of the father of the children.
The mainstream media has been doing everything it can to try to normalize the idea that children don’t need a father. I’ve previously written about this kind of thing here, here, here, here, here, and here.
In this particular case, the mother wants the government to give her $187,000 in taxpayers’ money. That’s the amount of money that the mother borrowed under her own name to pay for her children to go to college so they could become “successful.”
So here’s my question: If these children are “successful,” why aren’t they willing to use their own money to pay back the loans?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/single-mom-took-187-000-101500206.html
A single mom who took on $187,000 in student debt for her kids wishes Biden would consider parents in his loan-forgiveness plans: ‘I just don’t feel like it’s fair that we’re overlooked’
By Ayelet Sheffey
June 18, 2022
* Biden’s reported debt-forgiveness plan likely won’t include parents who took out loans for their kids.
* Adria Mansfield, 43, has $187,000 in parent PLUS student loans she took out for her kids’ college.
* It was the only way she could give her kids a higher education, and she can’t afford to pay it off.
Adria Mansfield will do whatever it takes to give her children the best futures — even if it involves a six-figure student-debt load.
The problem for her lies in President Joe Biden’s broad student-loan-forgiveness plans, and the fact that parents haven’t been included in that conversation.
“Half of our children would not be able to go to school and become successful if it weren’t for the parents,” said Mansfield, 43. “And I just don’t feel like it’s fair that we’re overlooked.”
Mansfield’s $187,300 student-debt load comes from parent PLUS loans that she took out for two of her kids, which allowed her to borrow the full cost of attendance minus any financial aid the child already received. About 3.7 million families hold parent PLUS loans that total $104 billion. Those types of federal loans have the highest interest rate at 6.28%, and they’re set to increase to 7.54% in July.
Working in a school as a behavior facilitator and being the sole provider for her kids, Mansfield didn’t make enough to pay out-of-pocket tuition at one public and one private university for her kids. She took out the maximum amount of PLUS loans for two of her children and plans to do the same for her daughter who is graduating high school this year. She says it was the only way she could ensure her kids would get a higher education.
While Biden is considering $10,000 in student-loan forgiveness for undergraduate borrowers making under $150,000, parents and graduate students haven’t been included in those plans, and Mansfield said she’s looking at payments for the foreseeable future without options for relief.
“Society pressures our kids so much into needing college because you have to get a degree to have a better job, so I felt it was important because that’s what my kids wanted to do,” Mansfield said. “But now we’re being punished for taking out loans so our children will be successful.”
‘Feeding my children and taking care of our necessities is my first choice’
After her children graduated college in 2017 and 2019, Mansfield was placed on an income-driven repayment plan that allowed her to temporarily make $0 monthly payments because of her low income. While she said not having to make those payments was helpful, the interest continued to build, making it almost impossible for her to get ahead of her debt — and she said that element has affected her “tremendously.”
“I had this debt on my credit, and it was restricting me from getting a house because my student-loan amount was so high that the lenders didn’t even want to lend me money to buy a house,” Mansfield said. “And I certainly don’t make enough money to pay off the loan, and feeding my children and taking care of our necessities is my first choice.”
Mansfield isn’t alone in her struggles — many other parents have taken out student loans under their own names to provide for their kids, and they’re left paying off debt that gets higher and higher because of surging interest. A recent report from The Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank, said the average PLUS-loan borrower still has 55% of the initial balance remaining after 10 years of repayment — and 38% after 20 years, which means most parents spend more time paying off student loans than they did raising their kids.
Kristin Blagg, a researcher at the Urban Institute, previously told Insider that the idea of giving loans to a student is so they’ll earn enough money with a degree to pay the debt back, but that’s not the case for parents.
“The math for parents, particularly if they’re really unable to pay the college tuition and other costs at the moment their child is going to school, that math doesn’t quite work out because the parents aren’t necessarily receiving that benefit of a college education,” Blagg said.
‘We need to be considered in the loan forgiveness’
Biden hasn’t yet confirmed an amount of student-loan relief he’s considering, and the only definitive statement he’s made so far on the topic is that $50,000 in relief — an amount progressives were pushing for — is off the table. But it’s likely the relief will focus on undergraduates, which would leave those with PLUS loans in the dark.
Peter Granville, a senior policy associate at The Century Foundation, recently told Politico the reason parents haven’t been included in the loan-forgiveness conversation might be because when it comes to parent PLUS loans “there’s very little data on these parents themselves,” and there’s “much less known about actual parents and their outcomes when it comes to taking on these loans.”
Either way, Mansfield hopes whatever decision Biden makes won’t exclude the borrowers who did what they needed to do to help their children succeed.
“I just want us parents that have put our name on the dotted line so that our children can be successful to be considered in the fact that we, too, have struggles,” Mansfield said. “We took the loans out for our children to be successful. We need to be considered in the loan forgiveness as well.”
Media bias: once again, a news article about a financially struggling single mother trying to raise her children makes absolutely no mention of their father
The Guardian recently published this article about a single mother who is having financial troubles as she tries to raise her two children on the salary that she gets from working at a fast food restaurant.
As is always the case with articles like this, the article makes absolutely no mention of the children’s father. (I have written about this media irresponsibility before – see here and here.)
In this particular case, the article refers to the woman as “a single mother of two.”
It doesn’t say that she is “divorced,” or that she is “widowed.”
The article makes absolutely zero mention of the children’s father.
The article does quote the woman as saying:
“At the top of America, when it comes to Trump and them, their goal is to keep us down. Between these billion-dollar companies and Trump, it’s a power trip.”
So now it’s Trump’s fault that this woman is a single mother of two.
I’d like to see the results of the DNA test for that.
If Trump is in fact the father of her children, then yes, it is Trump’s fault that she is having so much financial trouble.
Otherwise, Trump has no fault whatsoever in her situation.
The article also talks about how the woman is part of the movement to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
But in the real world, even liberals themselves do not want to pay fast food workers $15 an hour.
In December 2013, I made this blog post, which is titled “I dare liberals to buy a McDonald’s franchise, and pay the workers $15 an hour.”
More than three years later, I followed it up with this blog post, which is titled, “Hypocrite liberals have rejected my challenge for them to buy a McDonald’s franchise and pay the workers $15 an hour.”
I also made this other blog post, which is titled, “In the real world, no liberal has ever bought a McDonald’s franchise and paid the workers $15 an hour.”
So even liberals themselves are not willing to pay McDonald’s workers $15 an hour.
Here is some information that liberals never talk about:
Let’s consider two groups of people in the U.S. The first group has a poverty rate of 2%. The second group has a poverty rate of 76%.
The first group consists of people who followed all three of these steps:
1) Finish high school.
2) Get a full-time job.
3) Wait until age 21 and get married before having children.
The second group consists of people who followed zero of those three steps.
Among people who follow all three of these steps, the poverty rate is 2%.
Among people who follow zero of these steps, the poverty rate is 76%.
(My source for that information is this article, which refers to this PDF, and the relevant data is on page 15 of the PDF. The study uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau.)
Finally, here is a seven minute video with information that liberals never talk about. In my opinion, every middle school and high school in the U.S. should show this to all of their students, repeatedly, every year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru4SVUlNfMY
Attention CNN! It’s not McDonald’s fault that Safiyyah Cotton chose to have a baby out of wedlock. Plus, here’s a rare news article that actually mentions the concept of personal responsibility.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
April 28, 2016
In this seven minute video, CNN talks about a single mother who is struggling to raise her child on the small salary that she earns at McDonald’s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SCB1t28nDU
As is always the case with news articles from the mainstream media about struggling single mothers trying to raise their children, the article says absolutely nothing about the baby’s father.
The article doesn’t say that the father has a responsibility to provide for the baby that he chose to create.
The article doesn’t say that the mother has a responsibility to choose a responsible mate to make her baby with.
The article doesn’t say that if they got married, they would only have to pay rent for one apartment instead of two, and so things would be a lot easier.
The article doesn’t say anything about the mother ever having made any attempt to acquire better education and job skills as a way to get a bigger salary.
By comparison, this news article by Inside Edition fully understands the concept of personal responsibility. The article is called “Mom Cries On Dock As Cruise Ship Leaves With Her Kids Still On Board,” and includes the following brilliant quote, the kind of quote that is completely missing in the CNN article about the McDonald’s worker:
Travel expert Mark Murphy told IE: “It is the woman’s fault for not getting back on time. It is not the cruise ship’s fault. It is not the captain’s fault. It is not the cruise line’s fault. Everybody knows the posted time to get back and that ship is on a schedule, it is going to go.”
I absolutely love that quote. I praise Mr. Murphy for saying it. And I praise Inside Edition for including it in the article.
CNN, and all the other mainstream news organizations that write about struggling single mothers without ever mentioning the children’s fathers, should learn a lesson from Inside Edition about how to write a proper news story.
Note from Daniel Alman: If you like this blog post that I wrote, you can buy my books from amazon, and/or donate to me via PayPal, using the links below:
Poll: If you had two daughters, and could only give money to one of them…
In this video, the speaker says the government should stop giving money to women for having babies out of wedlock. She says the government should force the biological father to pay for raising the child, instead of the taxpayers.
She also says that if she had two daughters, and one had a baby out of wedlock and needed money to take care of the baby, and the other one got good grades in high school and needed money to pay for college tuition, she would give money to the one who wanted to go to college, and not to the one who had the baby out of wedlock. Her rationale for this is that we should reward good behavior, not bad behavior.,
I agree with her. I believe that we should reward good behavior, not bad behavior. I would give the money to the daughter who wanted to go to college.
Which daughter would you give the money to?
(Video contains lots of profanity.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAre1g_eQhQ
Shaniqua Davis, it’s not McDonald’s fault that you chose to become an unmarried, teenage mother
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
August 29, 2013
Recently, McDonald’s employees have been going on strike to try to get paid $15 an hour. Associated Press reports:
Shaniqua Davis, 20, lives in the Bronx with her boyfriend, who is unemployed, and their 1-year-old daughter. Davis has worked at a McDonald’s a few blocks from her apartment for the past three months, earning $7.25 an hour. Her schedule varies, but she never gets close to 40 hours a week. “Forty? Never. They refuse to let you get to that (many) hours.”
Her weekly paycheck is $150 or much lower. “One of my paychecks, I only got $71 on there. So I wasn’t able to do much with that. My daughter needs stuff, I need to get stuff for my apartment,” said Davis, who plans to take part in the strike Thursday.
She pays the rent with public assistance but struggles to afford food, diapers, subway and taxi fares, cable TV and other expenses with her paycheck.
“It’s really hard,” she said. “If I didn’t have public assistance to help me out, I think I would have been out on the street already with the money I make at McDonald’s.”
So, Shaniqua Davis says that it’s “really hard” to take care of a baby on what McDonald’s pays.
She’s right.
So why did she try to do such a thing in the first place?
Why did she choose to become an unmarried teenage mother?
Whatever her reasons were, it’s not McDonald’s fault.
Of course you can’t raise a family on what McDonald’s pays its cashiers. But that kind of job was never intended to be for people who are trying to raise a family. Instead, that kind of job is supposed to be for a teenager trying to get money to pay for the prom, or for a student who is working their way through college.
And what is this nonsense of having a baby out of wedlock, and then being surprised as how hard it is? Of course it’s hard. That’s why the institution of marriage has existed, in every society, all over the world, for thousands of years.
The article also says that Ms. Davis “struggles” to pay for her cable TV. This just shows how much things have changed in this country. In the past, being poor meant that you couldn’t get 2,000 calories per day, or that you didn’t have indoor plumbing, or that your roof leaked. But now, being poor means that you have difficulty paying for cable TV. My, how things have changed.
Ms. Davis and the other strikers want to get paid $15 an hour, but they don’t want to acquire the education and job skills that would justify such a salary. McDonald’s already pays some of its employees more than $15 an hour, such as its accountants, lawyers, and computer programmers. Those employees didn’t get those higher wages by going on strike. Instead, they got those higher wages by putting in the time and effort to acquire the education and job skills that justify those higher wages. Ms. Davis and the other strikers want higher wages, but they don’t want to provide anything in exchange for the extra pay.
What would happen if the government did require McDonald’s to pay all of its employees $15 an hour? One possibility is that McDonald’s would only hire people who had a college degree. If that were to be the case, Ms. Davis would end up getting paid nothing. Another possibility is that McDonald’s would replace its human workers with robots and self-serve checkouts. And again, if that were to be the case, Ms. Davis would end up getting paid nothing.
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