The Duggars and CollegePlus

[mrs.b]

That is an assumption that every family that is financially struggling is able to scrape together a few thousand dollars from somewhere. Many families don't even have savings and can barely pay the minimum on bills. Many families have lost their homes in recent years. Eating out wasn't even an option for them in the first place. Our local food banks are still struggling to keep up with demand and our unemployment rate is lower than the national average. This is not an assumption on my part. Not only did I come from a poor family, but I used to work in a homeless shelter. These kinds of circumstances are more common than many Americans might think. 14.9% of households in 2011 had low to very low food security.

USDA ERS - Food Security in the U.S.: Key Statistics & Graphics

About a quarter of Texas children don't even have health insurance.

Yes, poor families exist, if that hasn't already been acknowledged a few dozen times in this thread. That same resource indicates 79.4% of households with children are food secure, indicating an overwhelming majority of parents can, if pressed to do so, pull money from somewhere if circumstances require. My family has been there and done that (nothing more fun than my husband and I living off ramen noodles so we could afford diapers and medicine for our son), which is why, now that we're more secure, we will drop ridiculous sums of cash for reasons we can only barely explain to ensure our son has every advantage we can give when he's someday in our own shoes to hopefully spare him those ramen noodle-mandated meals. It's parent logic, and I never claimed it would make sense. It merely is.