I don’t know if it’s the general consensus or just my personal experience but I find it so frustrating the level of assumptions that are made about parents and especially single parents.
I am a single parent have one DS2 - I work full time and his ‘dad’ doesn’t see him at all, I go through CMS but he works cash in hand and claims benefits so I get £29 a month.
But whenever I get into an (mainly) online discussion on social media I seem to either get ‘you chose the wrong person to have a child with’ like his failings are somehow my responsibility?!
Or there’s an assumption that I’m ‘lazy’ and don’t work and stay home claiming everything I can.
Now the latest is that because I work full time and use childcare with funded hours and tax free childcare that taxpayers money shouldn’t be used to support working parents as it’s a lifestyle choice. The ‘don’t have kid if you can’t afford them’ brigade. But now the same people are basically telling me what a shit mum I must be cause I’m not a stay at home mum and I work full time, asking why I bothered having a child in the first place just to outsource his care to the state.
‘I’m a taxpayer and I don’t want my money funding your choice to have a child’ like I’m not a taxpayer myself 🙄
It feels like I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t!!
Is society really such a mean and selfish place these days?! Or is it just social media where it’s faceless pretty much and these are people who wouldn’t dare say it if they couldn’t hide behind a keyboard?
I genuinely can’t understand it - I have no issues with my tax contributions being used to make life a little easier for those who need it!
AIBU?! Am I just seeing the worst of people?! Or is this attitude normal? And I will say it generally seems to be people at least a generation older than me with this attitude. I’m 35 for context.