Social Security | Barbara Frank Online

So the Duggars are having their 20^th baby, and there is great consternation in the land.

My goodness, with all the sad and scary things happening in the world these days, why on earth are people getting upset about this family? Unlike many much-smaller families these days, they don’t require taxpayer aid. Nor do they farm out their kids to grandparents, as taxpayer-supported parents often do; apparently they not only raise their own kids but they homeschool them. What’s wrong with that?

There’s a poll alongside this article about the Duggars’ baby news that shows 66% of respondents believe that even four kids are too many. To those people I would like to say that three of my four kids work and pay taxes and pay into Social Security, and you should be glad about that. Just think, if the 50 million babies that have been aborted since 1973 would have been allowed to live, they too would be working and paying taxes and supporting you in your old age (and as a bonus, maybe one of them might have even found a cure for cancer or AIDS). Many of our governmental programs, flawed as they may be, were designed for a growing population that supports its elders. Some call that a pyramid scheme, and I agree, but it’s what our society has used for decades, and the loss of so many young people over the past 40 years has damaged the framework of these programs.

I don’t understand why people have such hostility toward large families. Our former neighbors have six kids, and the husband didn’t even tell his coworkers about the last two because he’d already taken so much heat from them for having four kids. How sad is that? Their oldest four kids, by the way, now include a music teacher and an optometrist so I think you could say they contribute to society even beyond financial contributions.

Their mom and I were once at a neighborhood party where I was introduced to the new neighbor across the street, a child psychologist working for the public schools. She and her husband had no children (though they did have a dog they occasionally dressed up and photographed in the front yard, to our amusement). She quickly made it clear that she didn’t especially like children and made a few cracks about “breeders” (large families), so I felt the need to introduce her to my neighbor and then said, “By the way, we both live right across the street from you and between us we have ten children. So you might not want to drink the water around here.” I still chuckle thinking about the look of dismay on her face.

Today dd17 and I worked together on the Tax Project found in Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers.

It’s a weird feeling, teaching my child out of a book that I wrote. But I wrote it eight years ago, and that’s long enough that I sometimes forget the author’s identity for a second 🙂

We sometimes get questions from people asking how old a teen should be to do Life Prep. We respond that it depends on the teen, their goals and which project in the book is being considered.

For instance, a 14-year-old boy will find the Car Project (link goes to free download of this project) a lot more interesting than the Credit Card project, just because most boys of that age are eagerly looking forward to having their own cars.

In the case of the Tax Project, we tell people to wait until their teen has a job that generates a paycheck. There’s nothing like receiving a check for less than you earned (because of taxes, Medicare, and Social Security) to get your attention. It’s amazing how that event can arouse a teen’s curiosity about taxes (primarily why they’re so high!)

Since dd17 has been earning paychecks since last summer, this was a great time to do the Tax Project. Add the fact that it’s time to determine if she needs to file a tax return for 2008, and she was more than eager to do the project. There’s nothing like a receptive student, is there?

It all went well, and only took a few hours. However, I learned that one part of the Tax Project has changed since I wrote it. In the book, I referred to a little pie chart inside the IRS’ 1040 booklet that showed exactly where our tax dollars go. That pie chart is gone, and I could not find it on the IRS web site.

However, I did find a simplified version of it in an IRS Power Point pdf (see page 5). It may be simplified, but it’s as depressing as ever. Dd and I had a good discussion about that, too. We homeschoolers are so fortunate to have the time to teach our teens about these things before they leave home.