COMMENTARY | Desmond Hatchett of Knoxville, Tenn., has a problem. He has 30 children and owes child support to 11 different women. He's only 33 and works a minimum wage job. Some child support payments are as little as $1.49 a month and half of Hatchett's wages go to pay for his super-sized brood.
The Octomom and the Duggar family have nothing on this guy. I'm trying to figure out how many kids it took for Hatchett to finally realize getting women pregnant was a bad thing. The oldest child is 14. That means the first pregnancy happened when the father was 18 going on 19.
Hatchett has spent nearly half of his life being a dad after he barely became an adult himself.
There are some simple solutions. Most men who take responsibility for themselves will have more than one job. Since he's unmarried, finding 16 hours of time to work shouldn't be hard.
The man had four kids in one year on two occasions. Since 2009 he's had nine children in three years. Instead of realizing 21 kids was too many, Hatchett simply kept going. Even the math is staggering. With 30 children in 14 years that's over two per year. Among 11 different women that means an average of three per mother. Perhaps the women's self-images are just as fragile.
Price comparisons are also appropriate. Condoms cost less than a dollar each. Some birth control options cost as little as $9 per month. Raising a child from birth to age 18 is more than $225,000, according to CNN. Multiply the child rearing cost times 30.
Hatchet is responsible for $6.75 million of incurred expenses. For him to make that kind of money at minimum wage, Hatchett would have to work more than 930,000 hours. At 16 hours per day the father needs to put in nearly 58,200 such days. At 365 days per year, Hatchett needs to work 159 years to earn enough to raise 30 children to age 18.
There is nothing illegal against having children. Yet common sense seems to dictate Hatchett needs some kind of counseling or even surgery to control his parenting urges.
