To hate this attitude?

[toptramp]

We were talking about relationships yesterday and the lack of morals in today's society and my friend's boyfriend said ''the reason why couples don't stay together so frequently as in the old days is because of the benefits system.'' AAAAAGGGGGGRRRRRRR!

Ok benefits do make it easier to leave a failing relationship but surely that is a GOOD thing.

My friend is a single mum and I find her boyfriends attitude worrying. He is noyt the fatehr of her kids but some bloke who has been messing her around for months.

well, thing is you're both right: it is a good thing if it allows women experiencing domestic abuse to leave a violent or deadbeat partner with their kids. But lets be honest it does also allow a lot of women to use having children as an income stream, disincentivizing them from finishing their education or getting paid work and encouraging them to have lots of children by different parents. That's not to say that all single parents on benefits have deliberately set out to abuse the system. But its naive to think it doesn't happen.
I'm not sure how your mate's boyfriend has been stringing your mate along so can't comment on this. But his attitude to benefits and relationships doesn't of itself mean he's a bad boyfriend.

what he actually means is that women find it easier to walk away from te idiots now they are empowered to do so by the benefits system being there for them!

It's true.

And it's a good thing.

No couple who wanted to be together would split up to get more benefits. If yo would split to get more benefits you probably shouldn't be together.

But plenty of couples where the relationship was unhappy or even abusive might stay together because they couldn't afford to split, if there was no support.

Tillytulip has basically summed it up. I left DP a couple of years ago and will admit there is help out there when your relationship hits the skids and you have to get out. (We're now back together btw) My gran was in awe at how "easy" (that's how she saw it) to walk away. She'd had her own unhappy marriage and basically admitted to me that she wish she'd had the oppurtunity to leave her own bullying husband and keep her DC with her. She didn't though and was trapped there. People complain about "the benefits system" and yes it's deeply flawed, but what would we prefer? Generations of miserable people stuck in, at best dead relationships, at worst violent ones?

YANBU to be annoyed OP. surprised he didn't mention wide screen tellies and holidays in Magaluf while he was at it.

not entirely disagreeing with either side but my mum might have left my dad when we were small had the finances been different but they weren't so she didn't and now I think she is glad that they did stay together and worked through the problems they had - of course every situation is different and if you are going to make it possible for people to get out of really bad relationships then it is unavoidable to make it "easy" for people to leave when perhaps they could / should stick it out.

I would have got him to be more specific - when are these 'old days'? 1950s?
That would be before gender equality and when women were still heavily restricted by gender stereotyping and poor education to certain jobs in which they could barely support themselves. There was also the immense social pressure not to divorce regardless of how twatish your husband was.

What he said is clearly a reflection on your friend wether he intended it to be or not.

jeckadeck - can you explain how the current system incentivises women to have more children by different fathers? (Presumably because of child maintenance, but I don't really see that as part of the benefit system myself...)

With the removal of the baby element of CTC this month there is no more financial incentive to have very young children. I really doubt there are many girls in the country who decide to leave education at 14 or 15 and get pregnant to create themselves an 'income stream'. They are usually just not that bright. However many girls fall into the situation by accident and then do not have the support, understanding or education to get themselves out again, and in that case see a life on benefits as the only option. In most cases, they need help not blame. But funding has been cut to support them back into jobs/education. So you will have a whole new generation of teenage Mums with no future.

Its ignorance and a lack of historical knowledge that causes this attitude. There were more single parents at the start of the nineteenth century than there are now most either had to put their children in workhouses or they all died an early death.

Women were shamed into not wanting or indulging sex (before marriage). My nan used to have a saying 'that a slice wasn't missed of a cut loaf', also interestingly enough when DNA testing came in and the police had reason to test an area of the country (males over 35), they found that just under a third couldn't have had the fathers that they thought they did. It was just hidden better.

It's also a personal opinion on what constitues 'morals'. I think that as a society our morals in many areas, are increasing. I don't count sexual behaviour as the be all and end all of morals.