The Voice - Student Newspaper

Is the Octo-Mom totally out of control?

Single, unemployed mother of fourteen babies, seeks media attention for her new batch of octuplets. She is looking for endorsements while disregarding her offspring's wellbeing.

Nadya Suleman, 33, prior to giving birth to octuplets on Jan. 26 was already struggling to support six children: two girls and four boys. But lucky for Suleman they all live with her parents, Angela and Edward Suleman.

Suleman's own mother has expressed her objections to her daughter having so many children.

"She loves children, she is very good with children, but obviously she overdid herself."

The octuplets, now ranging in weight from one to three pounds, are in incubators and feeding on nutritional supplements and donated breast milk.

The average charge per day, per child, without receiving an operation is approximately $3,029.

In this case it's safe to estimate that the days-old octuplets have cost nearly $300,000 in charges, and they are expected to stay hospitalized for at least another eight weeks.

Suleman's mother has filed for bankruptcy and has claimed $1 million in liabilities.

Suleman, once a psychiatric technician at a hospital, stopped working at some point in her pregnancy. This woman is obviously acting upon selfish desires to have more children, by overlooking her failure to provide for her family.

In one interview, Howard Bragman, a Hollywood publicist, wondered if the family would start "using the kids as an A.T.M. machine."

He also stated "Exactly, what are they going do with them? The more money you get, the more privacy you give up. These kids are going to have a hard enough time without becoming media freaks."

And that seems to be the direction that these babies are heading. Suleman is already weighing book, television, newspaper and movie requests and deals from around the world to "tell her story."

In an interview with the Today show Suleman expressed, "I feel as though I've been under the microscope because I chose this unconventional life," she said. She was suggesting that there is bias and a double standard because she's a single mother.

Katrina Whitney, a mother raising her son alone while her husband is away in basic training, feels that, "Nobody is being biased. She can't support herself, let alone her millions of children; she needs to have her tubes tied."

Suleman is playing the discrimination card to bring attention away from the fact that she has made an uncalculated choice in having this many children.

Whitney also expressed concern and went on to ask, "Where is CPS (Child Protective Services)? There are families with much less children who have their children taken away with claims that they cannot provide for them and neglect."

These children need more than just love to survive and one jobless parent is not going to provide it, and neither would two parents, for that matter.

Please send comments to rmacias@gccvoice.com