To ask if you would compromise your morals to keep your children out of poverty?

[BakerBinky]

DH and I were discussing how judemental people can be of people living in poverty and it started me wondering.

How far you would go as a mother to provide for your children if you lost your partner/job/house/means of wokring. Would you steal, lie, break the law or cheat if it meant keeping a roof over your children's heads or provide them with opportunities?

I wouldn't kill any one but any thing in my power.

Almost anything I think.

I too, would do anything to protect and feed my children...sell my body if I had to (not that anyone would want it right now)

I think most would if they found themselves with their backs against the wall..

what do you mean, poverty? Not having new stuff or can't buy food?

I would do everything I possibly could, including asking for help.

If it came down to absolutes - as in survival - I would do all of those. I would kill for them.

To keep a roof over their heads and provide them with opportunities? hmmm, yes I'd have to be in that situation. I don't know. I hope I'd keep some semblance of morality. Interesting question.

I would hope to be more resourceful than breaking the law, especially in the UK where there are charties that give families food etc. Who knows if in a different country where no safety nets exsisted?

The problem is if you break the law and get caught what good is a mother in prison going to be? You will have also ruined your chances of getting a job to get out of the mess so long-term your causing far more issues

I think I would have literally have had to exhausted every avenue and creative thought to get to that point... but who no one can really answer until they have gotten that desperate

It's a bit of a non question, though.

In the UK there would be no need to do anything illegal or dodgy as the welfare state is so good.
No one starves, no one is barefoot and no one goes without medical care or a roof over their heads.

Government do NOT always 'bail people out'. At least not quickly enough. When Ex-P walked out on me (I was a SAHM, TC's went into his account etc), I had to wait 4 weeks for my first payment of Income Support. DWP refused me a crisis loan - because obviously having no savings at all, no Tax credits and no other income and no food or nappies in the house isn't a crisis. . I had 36p in my bank account, and no money due for 21 days, as Ex-H cancelled our joint Tax Credits claim as soon as he left. The next money due in was my 4-weekly Child Bneefit. I had none of the previous month's ChB left, as I didn't KNOW my Ex-P was going to leave.

I was lucky enough that some of my friends lent me (just about) enough money to feed the dc and put electric on the key meter. Without that I would have had no choice but to go and steal some food for my dc.

So yes, I WOULD do anything and everything that was necessary to keep my dc fed and sheltered. And NO the government DON'T always step in in time.

Concrete example. Would I work cash in hand for an extra twenty quid a week on top of benefits and not declare it, in order to let my DCs have the little extras that most children would take for granted (actually I'm not sure how much leeway you do get under the current rules).

Yes, probably, I think most people would.

But we all have to take responsibility for our own well being. If you don't have a bank account or access to a joint account or any financial power whether you earn or not, you have left yourself vulnerable and it's not the tax payers' job to do that for you.
Yes, the system is there but it isn't perfect an it takes time.

There are flaws in the welfare state though, I have known mothers who due to DWP cock ups have been left with nothing for 1-2 weeks, that may not seem long but its too long for children to go without food, light and heat.

Would you steal, lie, break the law or cheat if it meant keeping a roof over your children's heads or provide them with opportunities?

Don't think the op meant starving or naked?

We start each day breaking the law here by overcrowding. We've been served for it before, but shoot me that I want to keep us together and out of something worse?..

What?s below are all real examples of law breaking parents keeping the kids out of poverty as per question. (One of these, but not a UK national, was literally starving before ?liars and cheats? helped them get what was theirs of a lying stealing employer, two wrongs did make a right.)

Children sleeping illicitly on work premises at night?
It's breaking the law....better if mum didn?t work and taught her kids to stick their hands out? Left them while she worked? Or took on the first bloke to want to get his feet under the table? Bad mum there whatever she does?..

Photocopying text books so the kids can have unaffordable books that the library doesn't have?

Looking after someone else?s child on the sly for more than 28 days because it kept them out of ?care? ? and gave a family the chance they desperately needed?

Lying and conspiring to prevent someone being cheated out of three months wages?

Lying to succesfully prevent eviction?

Helping yourself to uncooked food for the kids from work when the employers withheld your wages for months but will give you a cooked meal for extra work?

Lying about children?s ages at the swimming pool so everyone can have a hot shower (strip wash or cold in home) ??does that make her a bad or a good mum?

There's so many shades of grey once you get to certain points....

I would compromise many things for the sake of my children to whom I have a great moral responsibility.

I would not willingly hurt anyone else or deprive someone else of what they needed in order to survive. However, apart from that, if it was absolutely necessary, then probably yes.

That said, I would have to have exhausted every other potential avenue and there would have to be absolutely no jobs available. In addition, it would have to be a question of survival rather than maintaining a certain standard of living.

I often wonder what I would do if someone offered me £1m to advertise something I really disagree with. (For example I haven't set foot in a McDonalds for over 20 years - but if they offered me a million to say they were great on TV, would I? Sadly, the answer is probably yes.)

I would lose my pride to provide for my children e.g. ask others for food and a loan to help with bills.

After I'd lost all my friends that way, then I could still sleep at night if I stole from a major business to feed my starving children.

I don't think that would ever happen in this country though and even in the poorest of places people manage to get food in a legal way - IF there is food that is

"Would you steal, lie, break the law or cheat if it meant keeping a roof over your children's heads or provide them with opportunities?"

If I had no other reasonable option, yes.

If the need was genuine then I'd do pretty much anything short of murder. As long as it was unavoidable and not just an easy way out IYSWIM.

The demand for food banks (ie Sally army food parcels etc) is rising every week at present.

Few people realise just how big some of the holes in the welfare state really are until it happens to them, (or someone close enough to them that the usual daily mail excuses no longer wash). 6 weeks - 3 months for a newly abandoned woman's benefits claim to be processed is not unusual. Computer errors can also leave families with nothing for weeks, especially at busy times of the year - at one point the tax credits system was notorious for this.

Many cannot get mortgage interest relief for the first 39 weeks and I used to work for both mortage and insurance companies. It's suprising (considering most are now tax payer owned) how unsympathetic the first can be and how many loopholes to avoid paying out the second can and will use when you really need it. The first trip to the jobcentre for those who have always worked is often an unpleasant suprise.

The health care system, as many of us SEN Mums will tell you, is not always all we are led to believe it is - again until it happens to us.

Part of raising kids is passing on your own moral and ethical standards, so to break my normal standards (pretty standard fare, no stealing etc) I'd have to be able to demonstrate the lack of ANY alternative to my child. The situation would have to be really desperate e.g you can sleep rough in summer, when it's snowing a young child or baby could die. Porridge can sustain you for a few days, it can't for months. I honestly believe a little hardship in the developing years can make the adult that emerges stronger and more resilient to life's knocks, + more compassionate. Prolonged suffering however, just destroys.

I'd also have to balance the risk of going to prison and the loss to my child of his Mum for that period of time. Sounds very cold and clinical but the risk would have to balance the perceived reward & for me the situation would have to be really dire before I'd risk prison.

A local Mum has just gone to the US with £7k funds raised by friends & neighours for cancer treatment her toddler needs to save his life as the NHS didn't have the skill set to do any more for her child. If she hadn't been able to get the money for this life saving treatment, she'd have risked jail as a prison term would have been a fair exchange for her child to have a chance at life. In her shoes I'd feel the same way.

Lastly occasionally - the law is an ass!

Like HecateGoddessOfTheNight,
I to would do whatever I had to do to keep my children alive, safe, fed and clothed.
I have no limits when it comes to protecting my children.
But, we live in the U.K. and unless David Cameron fucks up our country, it shouldn't come to that.

not hard for me, easy to think about your morals when you have money.

i have lied to get my children better opportunities and to get a roof over their heads

oh and i would deprive others to give my children, if it came to it, i'd do anything. a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g

I think it is proportional. So, for example, of course I would do pretty much anything to save my children's lives in a black and white situation. I would give a white lie to a big corparation to get a secure home for the children. I wouldn't steal from a pensioner to get them better school grades. Everything else is somewhere inbetween.

This is an argument my mum and dad have essentially. My Dad walked out of a job because the boss was mistreating another worker. Not a strike or anything, he just walked out, and then struggled to get more work. My mum, understandably, with two kids and another on the way in the early 90s, so with very little safty net, was livid, but dad said he couldn't morally carry on working there, and it was more important that we had a good example. I used to side with dad, till I had kids, and now I side with mum.