Well, if you don’t know who this upstanding citizen is, let me introduce you.  This is 33-year old Desmond Hatchett, who has the distinction in the state of Tennessee of fathering 30 children with eleven different women.

In my day, there was an expression that it was easy to be a father, but hard to be a daddy.   In today’s vernacular, this guy is nothing more than a “babydaddy” or, in other words, according to the Urban Dictionary, a sperm donor.

In 2009, he had 21 children which means he had nine more children since then.  He had no problem revealing that at some point he “had four kids in the same year, twice.”  He’s got a “very long and serious criminal history” that includes “multiple assaults, multiple thefts, aggravated assault, multiple evading arrests, and several driving assaults,” according to a probation violation report. He has also been collared on narcotics charges and has shown “contempt for the rules of probation and of the court.” In fact, his rap sheet runs 14 pages.

This recent headline story is so wrong on so many different levels.

Let me start by addressing the women who voluntarily agreed to “couple” with this guy.  What kind of a woman would allow someone like this to be the father of her child?  They were not married to this guy.  With all the multiple births in one year, they had to have known he was bedding other women.  They had to have known about his criminal history.  They had to have known that he works a minimum wage job and wasn’t likely to be around to support their child(ren).  Whichever women had more than one child with him should be doubly ashamed of herself because she had already known that he wasn’t providing for the first child.

In a recent Gallup Values & Beliefs Survey, only 40% polled thought having a baby outside of marriage was morally wrong.  Fifty-four percent believed it was morally acceptable.  I’m in the 40% minority and I’d really like to hear from anyone in the 54% who thinks it’s morally acceptable for this one unmarried man to populate an entire classroom by himself.

He now has the gall to ask the state of Tennessee to give him a hand with his child support payments.  He works at one job, receives minimum wage, and his baby mamas receive about $1.49 a month after the split of his child support which wouldn’t feed a goldfish.

This kind of despicable behavior, lacking in all personal responsibility, dignity, self-respect or common sense, is allowed to flourish in our society because, generally, it is no longer shameful to have children born out of wedlock (as it once was) and is even more accepted in the black community where 72% of black babies are born to unwed mothers.

Statistics have shown that “children of unmarried mothers of any race are more likely to perform poorly in school, go to prison, use drugs, be poor as adults, and have their own children out of wedlock.”

I can’t even imagine the mindset of someone like Desmond Hatchett who not once, not twice, but thirty times has impregnated a woman with no sense of personal responsibility.  I don’t ever want to understand this type of behavior but I would venture a guess that he’s living his own reality tv show.  I pray that these 30 innocent children, created by their parents’ thoughtless behavior, will skip a generation and become productive, dependable and capable members of society.

I don’t get it, but if you do, God bless you.