"To get along with God, consider the consequences of your behavior."

This was the Earthseed quote that started chapter 8, which began by Lauren explaining about Bianca Montoya- a 17-year-old girl who became pregnant by a 23-year-old named Jorge Iturbe. Also in this chapter, her brother Keith, while trying to prove himself to be mature, goes beyond the gate with their family's key- and it gets stolen.

I wanted to use this blog post to talk about Lauren's feelings on Bianca's pregnancy, and how it mirrors a lot of discussion in our country about who is able to correctly have and provide for children. 

"I like Curtis Talcott a lot... But if all I had to look forward to was marriage to him and babies and poverty that just gets worse, I think I'd kill myself."

Firstly, Lauren discusses the age difference between Jorge and Bianca, and I can't help but feel uncomfortable with it. In my experience, there is always some sort of manipulation that goes along with those types of relationships, because the power imbalance is so great. Bianca is just a kid, and as Lauren points out: "Jorge is 23, and he, at least, outta have some sense." 

However, the greater criticism that Lauren brings up has to do with the situation they currently are in, and how she feels about people in bad situations having kids. 

And while from Lauren's personal perspective, I understand why she does not want to have kids under these circumstances- I do not totally agree with her judgment call of the situation. 

In this book, Lauren is supposed to be a sort of prophet. She makes a lot of moral judgments on situations that have little to do with her directly but tend to impact her indirectly. In this case, she questions whether or not that would be a good life choice for her. But she goes further and says essentially that it is a terrible idea to have kids in their circumstance, and that she doesn't understand why people would do it.

This, unfortunately, mirrors a lot of arguments against lower-income people, and arguments like this have been used to justify the sterilization of thousands of poor women- who are overwhelmingly people of color.

However, there is also the ingroup outgroup difference here as well. I do not feel comfortable with her argument because I am an upper-middle-class person- so it is not my community being spoken about. But on the other hand, Lauren is in this community and is making judgment calls about her own community that she knows better than I do. 

I have seen lots of debates on Twitter recently, coming from low-income black women, talking about how you should be more financially secure before having a kid. These conversations are very different from people outside of that community trying to decide things for other people.

Anyways, at the end of the day, I totally understand what Lauren is saying- it makes sense. However, I also see the broader implications of this argument and disagree with how it is weaponized and used against poor women of color.