Congratulations, you irresponsible person!

Here are two examples of good ideas and good will gone bad.

Thing One is about twenty years old and raising a year-old girl. She receives assistance from W.I.C., which helps her while she works part-time and takes classes at the community college part-time. These are all good things. The catch is that she isn't divorced or widowed, merely unwed. Since she and her boyfriend didn't take adequate precautions, she became pregnant. Now, she is receiving government benefits for irresponsible behavior.

We also employ a high school student through a local program to rehabilitate and train at-risk youth. The teenagers might be from poor families, might have a drinking problem, might have been caught with the wrong crowd, or might be juvenile criminals. Training them in a job is a good thing. However, our current student is another example of rewarding irresponsible behavior. He took off work one day for the birth of his son. The next day, all I heard was, "Congratulations!" Okay, call me cruel, but I wanted to say, "Yes. Congratulations for not wearing a condom and for deciding to bring a child into this world even though you don't have a high school diploma, don't have a job, and aren't even eighteen yet!"