will you have another baby if the two child limit is scrapped?

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I’m just curious what the results of this would be, if you could have another baby financially due to this being scrapped, will you?
before it becomes a benefit bashing thread, remember the majority of people claiming do work. Keep it civil and polite please 🙏
Im done having kids and I can see why they want it to be scrapped with the cost of living issues.

I disagree with removing the cap, precisely because if you can't afford to have 2 children on U C then you really need to be concentrating your resources on the children you have. Not making their lives more shit by dividing it by more siblings, but if they really feel they have to do it I don't understand why you would get the same money for a 3rd child. Surely you have clothes, prams etc already? I'd rather money was spent directly on children, through start centres, clubs, better quality school meals, holiday clubs etc rather than handed to parents to spend on what they like.

It's wealthier and better educated women who aren't having children, not people who might benefit from the removal of the cap. It's no longer seen as the "normal" life plan for women with options.

I wouldn't remove the cap, but I do wish there was away to make fathers support their children properly.

What sort of wrong’un scruff decides whether to have a child based on whether they will get benefits for it or not.

And that is me being kind.

I hope they don't change it, we need to deter people from having kids for benefits.

If someone's on an average wage and privately renting they'll likely be getting UC, so I'd assume it'd factor into some people's calculations of whether they can afford another, the same as someone with a mortgage will look at their finances and work out if they can afford it.

I don’t think it’s so much about having a baby for benefits as it’s not enough to live comfortably, but some people couldn’t have another without those extra funds. UC isn’t life long, you aren’t allowed to be unemployed like the old income support for example.
I also came from a family who had children for the money so I like to naively think that most people don’t do that these days as UC isn’t a lot to spend out on luxuries.

It's £3000 pa per child. So £9k at least. That's more than enough for luxuries!

But you will have to take into account what it means for the other two having a third. Unless there is one sahp I think it's selfish because no way the children will get the love and attention they need with two full time working parents if there are many of them. We had two and I was a sahm and I still felt that I wasn't enough at times. Granted, one is autistic so probably count as 5😅 but who knows if the third will be born with a disability. The other two are then pretty much screwed.

The principal is no different through. They are both payments made by the state to help people with the cost of children.

Quite a few i imagine
To some people having another child is preferable to working in a dead end minimum wage job .

Child benefit has never been removed
It's the child element of universl credit that was removed which is significantly more than child benefit.

They dont because it' wasn't the child benefit that was removed!

The money allowed her to have a child she otherwise couldn't have afforded, that's not the same as having a child for extra money.

We were low income when we had our 2 prior to the 2 kid cap coming in and I remember sitting there doing the sums when I was wavering over 3 (we had them young when still in the earlier stages of our career).

I would have been £700 better off to have a 3rd child and not return to work, utterly mental. Obviously financially in the long term it’s more expensive, but many people don’t think like that. As it happened I was more career orientated so I went back to work and it wasn’t long before my wages far surpassed anything the state gave (and I remember that short lived frustrating stage when I was earning less by working more that catches so many out).

I know plenty around me who chose the first route. I don’t know what the answer is because it’s not children’s fault and no one should live in poverty, but a system whereby you can earn more to do less is utterly unsustainable and for that reason I support the 2 kid cap.

What happens when that third child wants to go to university, how are the family going to afford that. Even maximum loan isn’t always enough

Oh come on don’t feign naivety, you know the kinds of families basing their family sizes (if they’re indeed being planned at all) on the basis of what the state can give are not planning as far ahead as university.

Maybe none of them will go to university
But that's a long way off from being a baby circumstances could have improved immeasurably in the intervening years
And they will have to get a job like thousands of other students.

No.

That money is nowhere near enough to provide for a child in this day and age. Many are also needing help as young adults.

I wouldn't encourage any of my children to go to university. Not worth the money.

If you can't afford it without the extra two hundred ish a month then I think it would be a daft decision as you couldn't afford to support a big family well enough.

I think one of the issues might be fewer people having children in the first place rather than the number of children per family.

I don’t know what universal credit is like, but back when I was having children prior to the cap tax credits could be much more than a couple of hundred. It was enough to actively choose to have a child (not ‘for the money’ as has been stated, but enough to justify proceeding with another and I think the type of people that make that kind of short term decision aren’t the kind of people who are logically weighing up long term costs, career wages, university costs etc).

Labour will be out in the next election and the conservatives have already vowed to scrap it, so anyone thinking they can rely on that as a benefit long term would be extremely hopeful.

Thing is there’s usually a a timeframe, people who already had 3+ kids weren’t penalised when the cap came in, it was for parents who had a third or more after introduction. So if the cap was lifted now and reintroduced it’s likely those who had children during the cap would have their entitlement preserved.