IDS latest women-bashing plans

What would happen if you are in a relationship where you earn enough to have a 3rd or fourth child and then one partner decides its not working anymore and fucks off, deciding they dont really want to pay maintainance etc.
The resident parent would then be punished for the 3rd and fourth child. Even though the decision was made when it was affordable in that relationship.

Agree with you Bumpstart. Totally.

I do see it is unjust that working families have to agonise for ages over spreadsheets when deciding whether they can afford children, when non-working ones, who are not faced with complex childcare v. job decisions, can have large families funded by the taxpayer.

However - the more ridiculous excesses of housing benefit have now been curtailed (and indeed benefits generally are being slashed with unpleasant ruthlessness), and as other people say there is no way of implementing this policy fairly. People on benefits do not live the lives of Riley and as ever the people who would suffer most from this policy would be the vulnerable and chaotic, as Lucy Mangan argues here:

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/oct/12/lucy-mangan-family-planning-tories?INTCMP=SRCH

Err no working PARENTS are having their choices curtailed because if childcare costs. Isnt that what you meant to post.
As paying towards childcare should come from the fathers wages too.

I know that was abolished. But the tax free allowance was raised by quite a bit. And that is probably just as beneficial and simpler. I am simply not understanding this low waged families having their choices curtailed. Most people have to consider money when planning their families. A lot of people put off a second child because of nursery fees. So working mothers are having their choices absolutely curtailed because of childcare costs.

So, men cannot claim child benefit? I know they are always reluctant to deal with me on the phone. When we changed bank accounts, my wife had to call and inform them.

Nobody knows but I'll eat my hat if a Tory government are introducing a policy whereby mothers can claim double benefit if they have children fathered by different men. 3 children with at least one parent in common I think would lose out if they lived under the same roof unless the non resident parent didn't have any more dcs and could claim for the eldest two.

I don't think so. She is resident.

Re WG's scenario. If my wife leaves me, takes our two children and sets up home with a childless man, what happens if they have a baby together? Can he claim, even though she can't?

It is resident vs non resident parent based but also woman vs man from the pov that a woman will always be identifiable as a child's mother and will be registered as such. If a perfectly nice man has 2 dcs and his relationship breaks down and he goes on to father 2 dcs with a new partner, so long as those younger dcs are the first children of the mother then she will be able to claim, as will the mother of the older 2. If men can only claim for 2 dcs then the younger dcs will get registered as father unknown. If either of the mothers have another child they can hardly register it as 'mother unknown' can they?

Lots of very normal step families have this set up. Its not just for the feckless contraception rouletters.

agree.redistribution is to needy should be priority
bemused at mc on 50K appealing they need their cb.No you like it,you dont need it
yes why should someone eke on existence on minimum wage whilst mc family gets cb

I think it is reflecting the mood. I am agreeing more and more with these decisions. Even the child benefit one. Why should a person earning £11,000 a year pay tax to subsidise somebody earning £50,000 a year getting child benefit. The welfare state needs to be trimmed down. Nobody considers the single low paid person who is paying tax on an absolute pittance.

And just to reiterate - I don't like seeing these families in London living in St John's Wood at the taxpayer's expense because they've got 8 kids and there's no council flat big enough for the. Of course I don't. It's rubbish.

But I agree with Larry. It's actually very difficult to do something about it without punishing either a) the children who are blameless or b) the women who may have contributed to the number of the children they have (!) but at least are hanging around for them. The people unaffected are the (usually) fathers who have multiple children and move on to the next woman, and the next woman, and the next woman.

Give it some more time because i dont think it will be for much longer

Very unlikely. The cost to the NHS of a hugely inflated birth rate would vastly outstrip the cost of providing free contraception.

What does concern me here is that this policy is plugging into the public perception that there are hundreds of thousands of feckless, workshy, 'Shameless'-type families who squirt out kids in exchange for benefits that the good old middle-English are paying for. IDS has done plenty of work in this area. He knows the truth about families on the poverty line. Hopefully this is only part of an overall family-positive set of policies.

I wish they would put as much focus on the Philip Green's of this world who offshore their brazillions of pounds and dodge tax perfectly legally. It's far easier to vilify poor families though.

Scottish,

It is not easily enforced, sadly. Not without making people with multiple children end up at soup kitchens or unable to nourish their children properly.

The reality is the state, in extremity, will have to interfere in people's lives (mostly women's) far more than most would be comfortable with. That is why this is a very difficult issue and one most politicians prefer not to touch, regardless of how popular it is in principle (and it is VERY popular). You can either enforce contraception or sterilisation in return for money, you can restrict how people spend their existing money (all benefits paid in vouchers which can only be exchanged for family essentials) or you can actually force adoptions on people. Surprisingly enough, none of the above are popular!

So, you are caught between a rock and a hard place. The idea that someone can have 6 or 7 children and be given a large family house in an area where most people cannot afford a house at all and effectively put them on a net salary which few could possible aspire to however hard they worked. Or, enforce it in one of the above ways.

Personally, I suspect the government will waffle, fiddle around with the system a bit but basically leave things unchanged in the end (except for existing subsidies being rebranded).

I doubt it could be enforced, that's the point.

If my exh went on to father two more children by another woman, how would I necessarily know? If he wasn't the resident father in either situation, the state wouldn't necessarily know who the father was of these two new children. And it couldn't prove it anyway unless they demanded paternity tests for any new babies coming onto the benefits "payroll" and kept a running tally of babies relating to this particular man!

This can only work if it relates to the resident parent and the resident parent is usually the mother. Which means women cannot have more than two children without sanction and men can have millions!

absolutely my family size is based upon ability to pay,career and lifestyle i want
no woman has right to expect state to pay for her larger family
with parenthood is responsibility,primarily individual responsibility to provide for family without expecting state pays

Contraception in this country is free; if you can't afford to have any more children it's not difficult to prevent it

Give it some more time because i dont think it will be for much longer.

We pay quite a lot of tax. If we didn't pay lots of tax maybe we could afford to have the second child that we might like to have. Unfortunately as we have to keep paying lots of tax to support other people's choices to expand their families at no cost to themselves it would appear that we will never be in a position to afford a second child. I strongly disagree with the viewpoint that people should be allowed to exercise their "reproductive rights" without any consideration as to how that child will be paid for.

Contraception in this country is free; if you can't afford to have any more children it's not difficult to prevent it.

easily enforced by state as it will be via benefits system.
individually unenforceable as cannot curtail individual getting pg numerous times
state clearly trying to limit by financial sanction