Critics argued that poverty is rarely a permanent or simple condition. A person can have a stable job when a child is conceived and lose it months later. A family can be pushed into hardship by illness, inflation, separation, disability or the death of a partner. Others may begin with very little and gradually build a secure home through work, family support and public services.
From that perspective, income alone cannot serve as a fair measure of who deserves a family.
There is also a wider social question. If society tells struggling people not to have children without addressing low wages, expensive housing, limited childcare or unequal access to healthcare, it places the entire burden on individuals while ignoring the conditions that make family life so difficult.
Several viewers therefore saw the video as classist rather than responsible. They felt its language reduced people to their bank balances and treated hardship as a personal failure.
Not Every Pregnancy Is Fully Planned
The debate becomes even more complicated when access to contraception and reproductive healthcare is considered.
