Tax Credits = benefit-dependent society?

'Oh and yes, not working at all is worse, of course'.

FE but I do take my role as work, I have 2 children in school and a 3 year old and 20 mth old not in school. Dh earns enough for us to get by, we have a comfortable life and don't need the tax credits for me not to work, but they do come in handy (but my dh pays taxes and I have paid quite a lot of tax in the past, so I don't feel guilty about that).

Some people choose to work full time even if they don't have to, I am not going to start feeling guilty that they are paying more taxes, it is their choice.

I don't get annoyed that my dh is working full time and paying taxes to enable some mums to stay at home with their children, I actually think that it's a good thing.

I also disagree that it is wrong to want work around school hours, again not all jobs pay well enough to cover childcare costs for out of school hours/school holidays. So a family would be better off (not just financially) to work part time and have less childcare expenses and have more time with their children, what is wrong with that?.

Part time work is really hard to come by Riven, its so frustrating when youre in a situation where you need to work part-time like yourself.

Where do you live if you dont mind me asking?

isnt essential if you can't afford it.

Cordonbleugh, we were together for about 3 months when i got pregnant and he left a few months after she was born. He paid for a little while, not a lot. Contributes now but unreliably and has told me as of August he wont be paying anything because he has a debt he wants to pay off. Whatever, Im not going to beg for it! Your daughters dad sounds like a prize d!ckhead. Eurghhh.

Mumtd - You've missed my point. 'Live and Let Live' yes, if you can fund it yourself. If your partner is paying or youve got rich parents or you earn enough even doing part time, fine work part time and look after your kids.

My point is that if you are relying on tax credits to top up your wages so that you are able to work part time that is not fair on those of us who dont get to spend time with our kids because we work full time so that we dont have to rely on tax credits. My point is nothing to do with whether its better for the kids to have mums at home or not.

I have met an awful lot of women who choose to work part time so that they can spend time at home with their children and because of tax credits they are no worse off for the fact that they work less than full time.

How is it fair that they spend 2 days of the working week having coffee mornings and taking their kids to the park while Im at work funding it?

I conceed my arguement is weaker when the kids are babies, even weaker if mum is working part time to study for a vocational degree - and obviously arguement is non existant if mum has a disabled child that needs care.

But if kids are at school then tax credits are basically supporting a choice to have time in the day to do housework that the rest of us have to fit around work, and to pick kids up from school which lets face it - isnt essential if you can afford it.

Oh and yes, not working at all is worse, of course.

'How is working part time lazy? surely not working when you could do (disability and caring responsibilities aside) is lazy'

Oh FGS, I've heard it all now. So because I chose to give up my career to look after my young children (instead of paying an astronomical amount on childcare so someone else could do it for me)that makes me lazy .

When did it become so frowned upon for mums to stay at home in their childrens early years.

I was on a fairly decent salary but saw most of it fly out of the window on childcare costs and leaving my 2 young boys in nursery for 10 hours a day and only really seeing them for an hour before it was their bedtime was not my idea of how I wanted my children raising.

This isn't a dig at full time working mums, my eldest was in full time nursery from 6 mths until he started school.

I have made a choice purely on how I want to raise my children, once my youngest is in school then I will hit the job market again.

Live and let live

yep! there is a good chance that in the future, a by she 'likes' could be a half brother

I think it will be quite easy to tell though. There's not much ethnic diversity in this town, a very small percentage of afro-Caribbean/africans living here, and it's likely that the majority of the mixed race population has been fathered by him!!

cordon - ugh, just had a terrible thought - like one of those TV shows with corrupt fertility doctors and the link - are you going to have to leave the area/vet all her boyfriends when the time comes?

Viagra!

good genes, not god! lol Although I suspect he thinks he is god sometimes the way he behaves

Well it changed a lot since it was created Oojma- when they started off they were a different ebast entirely to what they are now and as they now include delivering former benefits the aims can't be the same either. We get disabilty premium for the bouys for example, and a person on IS IS gets their chidlren's portion paid via the system.

We always worked, we needed no habits making, but they have amde it possible for Dh to turn a nightmarish situation (redundancy with chidlren and a carer wide) into a possible future which has to be a good thing. They enabled my sisyter to keep working when her DH was really ill as she could afford childcare on one salary (no way he could have done it- bedridden). A well known poster on here who is disabled herself and has a severely disabled child copes with bills becuase her carer DH works part time and gets TCs.

These may not be the exact things they were set up for but they are the things the constituents benefits (eg Family Credit) were and they make a real difference to real people in horrid circumstances.

thanks sancti. I often look at her in amazement that I managed to produce such a gorgeous specimen! her sperm donor father was obviously good for something - god genes! lol

I did fio, had all the tests when I was pregnant.

Sancti - good on your DH for not following in his grandads footsteps!

Anyway, he's the one that's missing out.

Tax Credits were created for a specific reason - 'to make work pay'. This took in several ideas, amongst them allowing people to get back in to work even if part time with enough money to make it worth their while to at least get them back into the habit of working. I'm sure this has worked for some people but it hasn't worked out over all.

And yes Coerdon she is really gorgeous (though am a sucker for little girls as the mum of four boys LOL)

no, you're right, and getting pregnant with DD was 50% my responsibility, and I'm doing my bit now.

There's nothing I can do, but hopefully these girls are more sensible than I was.

God, sounds like something off Jeremy Kyle doesn't it! We're much better off without him so I'm generally not bothered by it. Only when I see him, which thankfully isn't too often.

Oh and I heard recently that he has to take viagra to get it up

Cordon dh's Grandad was like that; 2 legit kids he acknowledged and we know of at least 8 that he never would

Tosser had the gall to criticise Dh at our wedding for not being a chip off the old block (by which he meant Dh is faithful and stands by us)

A prime bastard for sure

cordon You could always give the girls a condom... Not much you can do to stop tipsy, impressionable girls sleeping with a man who seems exotic - but they don't all need to get knocked up.

Fio, they're not all really young no, some in their 20's and 30's even. He works as a bouncer/doorman at a bar/club in town (small town, only 3 and 1 nightclub) So on the rare occasions that I go out, I have to walk past him to get in. He can't even look me in the eye, never even asks how is daughter is, most of the time claims she isn't even his.

Everyone thinks he's the dogs bollocks. Cos he's jamaican and built like a brick shithouse, he's 'cool' for some reason. It really winds me up to see girls swapping numbers with him on nights out. I just want to shout "he's a wanker, he'll get you pregnant and leave you in the shit, don't go there!" But no one would believe me.

Believe me, my dad has to try very hard not to batter him when he sees him. But like I said, ex is built like a brick shithouse and dad has cancer so he's probably just get battered himself!

Thanks skihorse, she's the best, most beautiful thing that ever happened to me

Bloody hell cordon - as naughty as it might be to say this - I'm very surprised that a girl's brother hasn't "dealt with" him yet. Your daughter by the way is absolutely gorgeous.

FioFio, he has an indeterminable amount of children and as far as I am aware, he doesn't pay for any of them

He is a 53 year old man (yes huge age gap I was a very vulnerable 18 year old and fell for his 'charms' ) He cheated on me after only a few weeks and got her pregnant as well. We were both due on the same date. OW had her DD early and my DD was late. So not DD has a half sister 2 weeks older than her.

He then got various other local women pregnant and I've now lost count of how many half brothers and sisters DD has.

One of DD's half sisters is a year younger than me and according to her, he has fathered at least 20 children (that she knows of)

It's completely fucked up and he should be castrated.

'Why has cordons ex not paid a penny for his daughter fgs? This is a terrible situation and one that seems very apparent why arent these men paying for their kids? there seems to be loads of them '

It is very telling, Fio, how, over the years, how many threads there have been from women who need to leave or have been left by their partners or spouses, and the first question they ask is what benefits they can get. NOT how much he will or needs to pay.

It's not their fault, again. It's the fault of the system that men can father two families and not pay a penny towards any of them.