To wonder why UC claimants don’t have to work until their babies are three, when virtually everyone else has to?

I went back to work when my DS was 6 months old, I was breastfeeding, he didn't sleep through the night, no partner.

It wasn't ideal, it would have been great to stay off work till he was 1 year, but single parents have to get on with things, like other parents. No need to drag us out to be pitied.

that's only for working parents

Its nuts Its that kind of ridiculous ideology thats bankrupting the country Childcare for 4 kids will be ££££££££££££ vs a Morrisons wage.

You’re benefit capped if you’re not working with a baby of any age, and that means you’ll be homeless.

We’re close to handing them over to a state nursery at birth and only seeing them at weekends.

Brave New World’s Epsilons were prophetic.

Considering birth rates, it’s smart to encourage women to have children. Our government should actually be doing a lot more.

The government website says the cap is 485.98 a month or 2110.25 a month which is the take home salary of around 31,000 a year according to the salary calculator as net income.

I had to at about 4 months - I only got 6 weeks of maternity pay so I stretched out my holiday pay and had a month unpaid and then I was back at work. I took home a few hundred after childcare costs but it all contributed to the family funds and had the benefit of keeping my career going so in the long term I was able to earn more.

a £25k net salary is equivalent of about £31k gross so someone working world need to be on a salary of £31k to be in the same position as someone getting those benefits. It is quite eye opening tbh.

And it assumes parenting isn’t a job. Then mothers get bashed when they don’t attend parents’ ‘evenings’ (that start at 4pm) or have latch key kids who go off the rails.

All the evidence is clear: it’s women (mothers) who bear the brunt of welfare cuts.

Support welfare cuts if you wish, but don’t consider yourself a feminist. Don’t do sponsored sleep-outs for ‘the homeless’ as you’re part of the problem.

How do you know? Do you work for DWP? Or ONS?

Yes, this exactly!

Three months? What? Who wants to stick their three month old in childcare?

I’d have agreed with you overall but actually, most people I know well didn’t. My childhood friends mostly had children around 17 - none were working by 3, most got jobs when their children started school.

And now, I’ve got a toddler, but there’s 8 of us in my NCT group, and me and two of the other women work. The others do not. Three send their children to nursery two days a week anyway, the other two have them full time. Our toddlers are now a few months over 3, and nobody else has mentioned going back to work. They are definitely not breadline families but they’re not super well off, either.

Thank you for that last bit. I live in constant fear for the future due to being in a rock/hard place over DLA/Carers. I have one child who will need support/care for life, the other two are also autistic but may be able to lead independent lives with the right intervention. But I have a hugely empty cv and currently little opportunity to do anything about it. I have sleepless nights over how genuinely fucked I am in the future due to lack of support for myself. Yet all people see is someone living the ‘full benefit life’, not a person who went to university or worked for years before having children and never wanted to give up working for life.

Carers don’t qualify. I pay my 4 year olds 15-30 hours.

No it’s not.

For a family, the household benefit cap limit in London is £487 a week x 52 weeks = £25,324.

Average private rents for a two-bedroom place in London are between £2,254 and £3,915 per month. Even at the cheapest end of that range = £27,048 a year.

I’ll let you work out the rest.

People's situations change all the time if you see my PP. Actually if it wasn't for my parents I quite possibly would have gone from a 6 figure earner to losing everything and being on UC. It's called a safety net for a reason. Also to have that attitude you're specifically blaming the woman for finding themselves in that situation when relationships unpredictably break down all the time and it'd be the children who suffer if we made the situation yet more difficult. We're talking about mostly women with children under 3 - ultimately this is only a short amount of time in their working lives and most go back to work and contribute for many years afterwards.

Childcare for four kids would be more than what she would be getting from the supermarket plus wage top ups = more than the out of work benefits Crazy!

Agree with your post

But ‘back in the day’ isn’t comparable. Back in the day my mother had to flee domestic violence with a baby and toddler. Moved in with my grandparents for a couple of months before she was given a council house. That wasn’t adequate so was moved to another one a couple of streets up soon after. Worked a very basic paid* care job until she was re-registered as a nurse. Then worked up to a fairly senior level, in 8 years went from homeless/living with parents to getting a mortgage and having another child without the dad involved. Most children was taken on by my retired grandparents so little worry about childcare costs.

We’re not ‘back in the day though’. Fleeing DV means years in temporary accommodation. If you have a roof over your head, even if it means overcrowding your parents house, in 8 years you’ll be lucky to be given a home never mind build yourself up to full time work and get enough money for a deposit for a mortgage. Once you’re at ‘the bottom’ these days, you are literally in a pit without a ladder. You spend your entire life playing catch up with usually nothing to show for it regardless of if you get back into the workplace or not. What exactly is the incentive for women without support or high income potential to leave babies and return to work?

*Edit, missed a word which made it read poorly!

@JenniferBooth I think it's a bit of both. I know one person I went to school with, she didn't have much work history. Four kids under 10, single parent, no family support. UC were going to pay her childcare for all four kids, including school holidays. So she can work in Morrisons.
I didn't get it at all. Why not let her be a mother to those 4 kids?
I think part of the reason is ideology. They can't turn around and say 'you're none too bright and you have too many kids, don't worry about work' when they are giving a mother of one with a degree a hard time.
Another thing is future planning.
I'm no benefit basher but I do think more needs to be done to prepare women for when their children grow up. So many women struggle to adapt and are really really skint in their later years. I see it at work all the time, if you have worked 10 hours or less, with a kid or kids who gets DLA and you rent a three bedroom house, you get hit with the lack of DLA, the bedroom tax and then are suddenly expected to go back to full time work?! It's not going to happen. We need to do more to support them.

More benefits bashing...

I'm on UC. Went back to work from maternity leave when baby was one. Child has a disability (receives high rate care). So technically, if I wanted I don't 'have' to work at all. I do. Full time atm but I'm completely burnt out tbh. I'm determined to try and make something or leave something to my child so they aren't completely at the mercy of the government when I go (hopefully not for a long while)!
Hate all this benefit bashing!

It's just another example of where the benefits system creates poor incentives. We need to change it to incentivise people to have children they can afford. If the system was reversed and people got a bonus from the government for earning X whilst they had children we might see a change in behaviour. Obviously this wouldn't be popular as lots of the population seem to think benefit claimants have no agency of themselves.

So I'm a single mum with no support from ex. I lost my job while pregnant too. I was and am now a high earner so never had any UC. I'm so dependent on help from my parents to maintain working 5 days a week even though my child is at nursery 3 days a week. I would not have succeeded in getting back into work without significant help from them. It took me 6 months and 50 interviews to secure a new job - having been in my situation, I don't understand how an unemployed single mum without family support is supposed to secure a job. The amount of time and effort resources needed to interview and secure a job when you have no childcare just doesn't stack up.

Tbh I think it's probably not worth it for a lot of women in that situation with under 3s.

I get what you're saying but if you start off unemployed when you're pregnant it's a very difficult situation to get out of.

Well said 👏👏

I was a universal credit claimant and went back to work when my child was 8 months. I could have stayed off work, but I would have had fuck all beyond the very basics and I was fortunate to have a good childcare provider and a flexible understanding employer. You are unreasonable, and also probably a bit of a tosser.