according to this journalist married mums should be encouraged to stay at home with baby whereas single mums should be made to go to work!

[toptramp]

In the Sunday times main newspaper. We should ALL get less help with childcare costs because a woman's place is in the home but as single mums are not proper women but welfare queens (as the article implies) they should be made to go to work.

AIBU to think this is a load of bollocks? I am a single mum and I work because i love my job and being a sahm would drive me mental plus of course I need the cash. However, childcare costs are expensive. AIBU that a woman should be encouraged to CHOOSE if she works or not until the child goes to school?

I do think if a women wants to stay at home with baby that is great too and should be valued as an honourable occupation but if a married women wants to go back to work after securing a long fought-for career, that should be encouraged too.

Ok we do live in difficult times but taking women out of the workforce because they can't afford the childcare is NOT going to help the economy or encourage growth.

I am though. I am LEECHING a great big pile of WTC and FTC, so help from the government to enable me to go to work - you know the thing you were complaining about in your first post on this thread?

Read my post above Shirley.

Whilst I agree that earning a high wage requires a lot of hard work it requires luck as well. It's not to say that high earners don't deserve the money they earn but more that it is offensive to automatically assume that those on low incomes are lazy and/or stupid as frequently that is not the case. I know many low earners who work extremely hard and are intelligent but are where they are due to circumstances more than anything else. They work hard for 48hrs a week look after a home family and sometimes other relatives. When they do have time they try and find more work.

The biggest problem I have with what the journalist says is the element of compulsion. We live in a society where often one wage is not enough for the basics and I really mean basics.

Parents should be able to chose to be SAHM parents when they can afford it but shouldn't be made to feel guilty if they go out to work.

So? What did you mean by "Do what the hell you want, but please don't expect other taxpayers to pay for your choices through free childcare or benefits" then?

Child rearing is a proper job. The only people who think it isn't have never done it.

lesley33 - certainly not - it fundamentally it switches the onus back onto parents to decide if having kids is something they want to do, without being penalised for working and without being penalised for not being in a highly paid job.

Right now, if you want to have kids and you earn peanuts, then you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Don't work and you get called a scrounger, do work and you can't pay your bills. Childcare costs extend the poverty trap, because it's an ongoing cost - sometimes as much as your mortgage each month per child! If the childcare was free then the only costs would be the stuff you choose to buy for the baby, which isn't wholly subsidised anyway at the moment.

If you work hard, and your childcare swallows most of your salary, then why should you subsidise someone else to stay at home with their kids when you never get to see yours? If you didn't have to pay for childcare, your hard work would be rewarded.

If you choose to have kids and expect someone else to pick up the tab - that's pretty irresponsible. We need the future generation to be tax paying net contributors in order to pay for all the debt we ran up in this generation.

I meant you shouldn't expect to SAH on full benefits or expect completely free childcare.

That doesn't mean any TC , they are a good thing.

I think I'm just going to say: "There but for the grace of God go I".

None of us knows where we'll be in even 5 years time. The global crash has certainly taught lots of people, who were once happily earning shitloads of money how suddenly circumstances can change.

A quick look on the Relationships board can show how suddenly a marriage can fail, and how quickly those men can piss off and leave their wives in a financial mess.

One day someone can be a well to do married SAHM, the next they might find themselves a single mother going cap in hand to the government for some paltry help.

And please, drop the lucky bullshit. People who earn well do it through sheer, ball breaking hard graft mostly

I know lots of people that have done/do 'sheer, ball breaking hard graft' majority of them didnt earn well though.

I think we must have very different views on what constitutes 'hard graft'

Luck is a huge factor.

Lucky people usually deny the above.

do you have a link to this article?

well I agree, I wasn't going to get into all that...as it wasn't the point I was making, but loads of people work their bollocks off and get minimum wage or crap wage.

People with a different job get way more.

It's not fair. and it doesn't mean they worked any harder. Not everyone can be a manager. Someone has to clean the loos. Not sure why they aren't earning twice as much as someone in a swanky office tbh

You can work bloody hard and not be a high earner. You can work 15 hr days, 7 days a week across 2 jobs in this country and still not make ends meet. I've never been in that position (luck more than judgement, a well-off family and successful DH) but still, anyone who spouts that kind of BS loses sympathy with me. If you have no appreciation that sometimes you can work not very hard and earn a lot (as I have done!), and you can work ceaselessly doing hideous jobs for a pittance then you need to think again.