Octomom

This first week back to school I handed out a news article for my students to read and discuss in class.

This was partly to provide an example for a news summary they will all present to the class.

The news article that they read was about Nadine Suleman and her Octuplets. I choose an article off the New York Times online, and then re-wrote a summary so my students would have an easier time understanding the content.

This story has captivated me and made me angry, astonished, and questioned whether or not, down the road, the US will enforce some sort of reproductive control. I was eager to hear what Chinese students would take of this story.

After they read the article, they got into groups and discussed 3 questions:

• what should the US government do about her situation?
• what kind of life will these children have?
• how do you feel about this?

Their answers ranged from compassionate as in the government should give her a new house, money to raise them, and money to educate her children. Others were more pragmatic and said the government should take this opportunity to enforce reproductive control. Others received scorn from their peers by saying, "the government should take away at least 10 of the babies and give them to other families."

I saw one girl had scribbled down in her notebook, "America very freedom."

All of them agreed that nobody in today's world should be allowed to have 14 children. Their answers all had to do with the rising global population and scarcity of resources. Nobody mentioned anything about a woman's right to bear, or not bear children. I suppose because no women in China are allowed to have more than 1 sometimes 2 children.

My students were also astonished that the mother has no husband or boyfriend. One boy said, "the boys will grow up unhappy because boys need a father. Maybe the girls will be fine, but the boys will suffer." Some suggested that Suleman try to find a husband. "Won't that be hard?" I said. Most of them laughed and agreed, but one boy said, "there are kindhearted men everywhere. It is not so hard."

well, I wish her good luck.

In the US, we criticize China for not being environment friendly, and for emiting so much pollution into the atmosphere. I read that the efforts the US makes to make smaller our carbon footprint, will produce minimal results, when China with it's population of 1.3 billion is doing little to reduce it's carbon footprint.

China sees saving the planet in a different way. The Chinese enforce population control, so over time there will be less people in China and less carbon usage. My students cannot comprehend how America is saving the planet by allowing people to have 4,5,6,7,8 or more babies. Won't this make more people who need to drive cars, eat meat, fly on airplanes, poop?

I don't think state control over women's reproductive rights will go over well in America, but maybe couples when deciding to create a family, can look at the whole environmental spectrum, and decide that smaller families are just a happy as big ones.