Motherhood is a privilege

There has been a recent media frenzy over the "Octo-Mom" Nadya Suleman. It intensifies the not-so-recent development of children wanting to obtain "Mothership." Mothership, as opposed to Motherhood, applies to people who desire children to fulfill their own emotional needs, rather than the other way around. This is entirely selfish. Motherhood applies to the development of their children for their rest of their lives which includes looking after their children's emotional, educational, and economical needs. I can understand the Mothership point of view though, having someone (or two someone's) being completely dependent on you for everything empowers you to rise above the pain and meet the basic human needs for survival. Once their basic needs or food, sleep, and diaperchanging is done though, a Mothership Mother is unsuitable for filling their child's needs.

Once Mothership is obtained what is next for the "mothers"? In Nadya's case, 6 babies didn't fill her need so she had to have at least one more. Who's to say that having 14 babies is enough? For those other Mothership mothers, what happens when their baby is no longer a baby? Will he/she have the skills to become a productive member of society? Where will he/she have learned these skills? Or will they only have the skills as their mother did and procreate?

I'm not sure where it started, but the taboo of being a single mother bearing children is weakening. Celebrities, young and mature, are having children (Ashley Simpson, Britney, ...) There are also seem to be alot of celebrities in the news having multiple children (Dennis Quaid, Marcia Cross, Jennifer Lopez, Molly Ringwald..). This may be liking upping the ante, but nonetheless bearing children is seen as instant celebrity status and happiness.