Birth of octuplets met with public outrage

BELLFLOWER, Calif., Feb. 7 (UPI) -- The national recession is a primary reason the general public is speaking out against the birth of octuplets to a California mother of six, an expert says.

Crisis management specialist Allan Mayer said the public hostility prompted by the birth of eight children to Nadya Suleman of Whittier, Calif., is largely linked to tensions arising from the struggling U.S. economy, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

"If everyone was riding high and feeling flush … it would be more of a 'live and let live' attitude. Now everyone is counting pennies," Mayer said. "There's a lot less forgiveness these days than there would have been at the height of the boom ... . The public is almost primed to go very quickly from joy to suspicion and fury."

Suleman was a single, unemployed mother of six children prior to being impregnated through in vitro fertilization.

Suleman, 33, said during a TV interview Friday that she has already begun to feel the public pressure, though she hasn't been on government welfare in the past and intends to try to avoid it in the future.

"I feel as though I've been under the microscope because I chose this unconventional life," the mother-of-14 said.