AIBU to think people shouldnt be getting money for having children?

[normality]

i know it is is controversal but i dont understand why some people feel the entitlement to get money for having children and aibu to think it should stop?

I think that if people want children then they should have them but they should not feel they are entitled for some kind of monetary hand out for having them

I especially feel like getting money for being pregnant like the sure start grant, maternity grant, healthy start vouchers ect should not happen because if you cant afford to have a child why should the goverment pay you to do this? what about the people who do not have any children and choose not to or can not why should they miss out on multiple grants and vouchers when they are paying more and more taxes to support the people who choose to have children and then choose not to work?

• i have a dd and although i wanted a large family i could not afford to have more than one child so stopped but never claimed any grants ect because i did not want to be paid for being pregnant as it was my choice

The country is massively overpopulated as it is. House prices? general congestion everywhere. Too many people looking for too few jobs. Never mind reliance on benefits, I would need to be on a great wage before thinking about bringing a child into this world, to give them the easiest life possible.

You HAVE to apply for CB in the first place though. It doesnt just come. You have to send birth certificate etc.

So the OP had to go out of her way to claim CB. Even though she didnt need it and is ethically opposed to people being paid to have children.

LittleMiss what you've calculated tallies with other comments about how fucked up the system currently is. Quoting from another thread:

"When I was earning 17K per year out of interest I looked into what I would be entitled to by way of benefits if I were a single parent on that income (on the entitledto website). I would have got a smidge off a thousand pounds a month in WTC, CTC, CB and HB. My net income would have been pretty what it is now, on 32K gross."

"If you have 1, or possibly 2, children in childcare and work 16 hours a week in a low paid job, you will actually take home the equivilent of a 24k salary. "

Also lesley33, most working families are on WTC, it's true. Isn't it something like £15k/yr which is the qualification threshold? Which is essentially most families on NMW, even if you have more than one person working fulltime. Clearly, often you don't get duel fulltime NMW workers because of the setup of the magical 16hrs a week and the horrificly high cost of childcare wiping out people's entire wages.

Thus, you have a situation wherein the majority (yes, majority) of the working population is being supported by benefits, whether we call them tax credits or benefits. We tax everyone the same, pay someone to admin it all, and then give back in a way that doesn't appear to even benefit the targets of this project (child poverty, and the fact that the UK is nowhere near amongst the best in the world at tackling it).

I say again - this situation is not efficient or sustainable.

The problem isn't that people feel entitled to money (I believe we should help out families who have already had children and who are hard up, since a good start will help create better human beings)

The problem is that people feel entitled to CHILDREN. People who have not saved money for them or are not financially stable at point of deliberate conception.

I have several friends who have just made the lifestyle choice to have children (And you can't say it's anything more than a lifestyle choice, we're 7 billion strong now, no pressure to repopulate the planet!) with NO financial preparation at all because they know they will get the monetary support they need. They also know their choice won't be questioned by many, because parenthood is seen as an unchallenged 'right' to the sentimentally inclined.

In conclusion, I certainly do not think child benefit should be scrapped, since we can never be sure of people's intentions and circumstances, and we have a duty to give every new baby the best start possible. However, to combat the problems I've mentioned, there should be a change in our cultural attitude towards parenthood.

I had this conversation with someone at work a few years ago. She was disgusted that taxes paid by people like her, who had chosen not to have children, subsidised people like me, ie parents. We were both on the same salary but my taxes were lower, plus of course I got child benefit and working tax credit. I was therefore better off, in terms of income, due to my lifestyle choice.

My argument was (and still is) that society needs new people to be born and educated and made into productive members. My colleague could be self-supporting all her life and retire fairly rich, but what good would that do her unless younger people - my children, their contemporaries and their children - provide her medical care, push her bath chair, and for that matter grow and distribute the food she expects to eat? I will have spent 20-odd years of sleepless nights, physical and emotional effort, dealing with falls and illnesses and tantrums and homework and heartbreak, having to work harder on "holiday" than I did in the office, can't choose where or when or even whether to pop off for a weekend, precious little peace or "me time", etc etc. I'm not saying it isn't worth it to me, love and company vs freedom and disposable income, that is a choice I made all right and I'm (mostly) happy with it. However, I am shouldering the vast bulk of the vital job of raising the next generation. All the childless members of society are expected to contribute is a barely noticeable fraction of their taxes. They're actually getting a bloody good deal for it IMO.

Like everything else taxes are for, it's sharing the burden. Because working parents do pay taxes too, you know. We're paying towards our own benefits, and those of non-working parents, and those of non-parents in need. We ain't parasites. We're doing a job like anyone else. Is it totally fair to have us do a full-time job of earning and a full-time job of child rearing, whilst others benefit from our labours and save their pennies? Only partly... And that, good friends, is why family benefits should continue, not just for the poorest members of society who may or may not be feckless (I'd argue that many if not most are far from it).

Let's not even get onto why rich people are assumed to make better parents than poor ones. If we lived in a meritocracy the argument might have some force, but we clearly don't. You will meet many capable, intelligent and decent people at the bottom of the ladder and some horrible oiks at the top. Being a parent and being a high earner are two quite separate skills so why should one depend on the other? I'd rather have a nice, sensible single mother who can't get a job at all bringing up the next generation of street sweepers (ie something useful) than one of those City financiers who teaches the kid how to spend other people's money like water and trample over the weak to get it. You wouldn't? Well, each to their own. I'm afraid that nice Mr Cameron probably agrees with you.

Anniegetyourgun - I understand where you're coming from, but it isn't just people who give birth who are contributing to a productive, successful new generation. I'd say the credit goes more to the teachers and doctors, many of whom are CF, to create successful people.

National average wage in this country is about £26,000, although the national median is a more accurate reflection (not artificially inflated by City salaries, etc), which is about £20,000 and certainly qualifies you for tax credits. 75% of people in the UK earn less than £31,000, which again qualifies for tax credits (although this is, of course, being changed).

'Reliant' may be stretching it, since quite a lot of these households will qualify for only the minimum of £545 per year (although they will still receive CB of course), but there are a lot of households reliant on larger amounts than the minimum.

Can't remember the report (Xenia linked to it in another post on another thread a while back) but 75% of the population are net recipients of the tax/benefit system and only 25% are contributors. In other words, more people rely on help than don't.

You can have a lot of discussion about whether that reliance is genuine or due to entitlement, but it is a fact that the overwhelming amount of families in the UK are supporting themselves through state help to a greater or lesser degree.

In the past this wasn't available, but in the past we had shockingly high rates of death through infant mortality, disease, exposure and starvation.

You are always going to have piss-takers and the small minority that do this certainly make their presence felt and are shouted about from the rooftops in the sensationalist press. I'd rather keep them than make it so hard to get help that others slip through the net. Having had my mentally disabled relative fall foul of ATOS rules and be left without benefits for 9 months before the decision was overturned, I've seen the ugly side of the 'deserving/undeserving poor' approach.

The whole amount of the savings being made by welfare reform could be wiped out by making Vodafone pay the tax bill that George Osborne decided to waive...

are only £35 a week better off after paying possibly £30 a week each for travel expenses.

Littlemiss, they'll own a property at some point in the future. The families who rent won't be in that position. Depending on what the mortgage & council tax cost, the working family could still have more disposable income than the unemployed.

I know someone who got pregnant at 16, and now at 20 outright told me that she is 'trying' as when her son goes to school her benefits will be cut and she'll have to work.
She left school and immediately fell pregnant, she did have to live with her mothers (housing association) house, until she was 18, but at the point, she was given a beautiful 2 bedroom flat in a nice part of surrey. Something I could never afford. And apparently if you come from parents that are already housing association/council house tennants, you get to the front of the queue.
This girl will never have a job and never contribute towards society or taxes. It is not the same as saying 'old people donn't deserve pensions'. Because they are people that have paid there way.

I'm sure I read somewhere though that statistically speaking, children brought up in a workless household are far more likely not to work themselves and to continue the cycle, so how does that fit in with the argument that these children will grow up to pay taxes and support the country??
Isn't it far more likely that the children brought up either in workless families or families living in abject poverty will in turn be much more likely to rely on the welfare state in their adulthood, whether that be by becoming a part of the working poor and relying on state top ups or by not working at all.

The argument that these children who have grown up in workless families will become high enough earners not to have to rely on state support is frankly a ridiculous idea for the majority since they are statistically much more likely to follow in their parents footsteps.

Totempole I'm afraid that is not much consolation for many people tied to a mortgage.
Yes, they may own their own property one day...and be released from the mortgage payments, but it's 25 years of hard slog to get to that point, and of course that doesn't include the couples who cannot secure council housing, and have to rent privately.
Those couples do not even have the consolation of knowing they will ever be able to own their own property many years from now, yet they are still not much better off than an unemployed couple with 3DC.

TotemPole

1. in central london that same familiy could not afford to rent a 1 bed let alone buy a 3 bedroom

1. the family above will have to work fulltime for the next 20 years to be able to pay the mortgage. that is 84000 hours (across the life a 25 yr mortgage, assuming they have owned for 5 yrs already.)

so it is not really surprsing the get something for all their work. the others have been paid for for 25 yr years for doing diddly.

1. the workless family will still get cared for the state in 20 yrs time so does it matter they dont own their own house?

1. the workless family will still get cared for the state in 20 yrs time so does it matter they dont own their own house?

That's exactly my point TheRealTillyMinto.

Just quickly - the Healthy start voucher scheme does NOT encourage formula feeding - it can be used, and I quote directly from the front of my voucher - VOUCHER ONLY VALID FOR liquid cow's milk, plain, fresh and frozen fruit and vegetables and infant formula milk. It helps people on benefits to buy liquid cow's milk - as they are advised to drink a pint of full-fat milk a day if they are BF'ing (and liquid cow's milk is stated first on the voucher in the assumption that BF'ing is important), and can also be exchanged for fruit and vegetables, helping those on a very limited income to afford enough fruit and vegetables. Infant formula milk is stated last on the voucher. You get the equivalent of £6.20 a week vouchers for babies under one - which DOESN'T cover the cost of a tin of formula milk fully. You get £3.10 a week for children aged between 1yo and 4yo. It helps everybody that I know on benefits get into a good habit of buying a reasonable amount of fruit and veg each week.

Also - ALL the people I know on benefits that has had a baby in the last year has decided to BF because the voucher doesn't cover the cost of a tin of formula - so it has had the side effect of driving up BF rates in a section of society that has traditionally had very low BF rates. IMO that can only be a good thing.

I didn't 'have dc to get money' - I had dc while I was in a relationship with someone who was working FT, who then decided to walk out on me when DS3 was only 4mo. DS3 is only 9mo now. OH - and I bf still too.

I was pointing out that there are longer term advantages to working, it isn't just about being better off on a week to week basis. Those who work have a chance to increase their income if they move up in their career.

It isn't a simple as looking at the total income.

On lower incomes, if they were renting they would be entitled to some HB and possibly council tax.

If a family are renting, getting HB and WTC etc, they will have a higher income than a comparable family who aren't working. But obviously have higher outgoings due to work related expenses and loss of various concessions/freebies.

Ok, I don't believe OP.

"normality Tue 01-Nov-11 22:33:38
I was educated in public school in England"

If the OP actually went to public school, the phrase used would have been:

"I was educated at public school in England".

I think the OP confuses public schools with state schools...

I worked in Social Services in London. It is true that people with large families get housed in large private properties which few people could afford and that the taxpayer picks up the bill. This happens because there are very few 4/5 properties and immigration has placed a massive pressure on housing. Also, when some people are in council housing and they decide to have more children (3+) they then expect a bigger property whereas people who own their property tend to think they will stop at 3 or move somewhere cheaper with more space or decide that they will have bunkbeds etc... As one example, I have had a family say that two girls, aged 6 and 8 cannot share a bedroom.

I know lots of people want to stick their heads in the sand and ignore the above but the reality of the housing situation is dire as is the spend on benefits. Lots of people don't choose to live on benefits but sometimes the state bends over backwards to accomodate the choices they make once in the system.

Whichever school she went to, she really should gave cone out of it with the basics!

Typos *have come

So what, do you want people to be paid for NOT having children? Good idea. .

ohanotherone, what will happen to these larger families with these new HB changes. The cap is £400 for a four bed, that won't pay for a 4 bed in most areas of London.

Well, this is an issue isn't? What will happen to them? The situation does need to change however as councils are spending money on enabling people to live in properties that most people can't afford whilst cutting services for the elderly and disabled.

totempole That is what I meant when I said people shouldn't assume handouts are always going to be there. They chose to have a big family. No-one else. They'd better get used to living in a smaller house or get a few jobs to support their litter.

totempole is the cap a weekly or monthly amount?

Yes, I agree it has to change.

As I understand it the councils were following central instructions to place in private rentals, because of the size of the waiting lists and lack of council properties. I just wonder what are they going to do, put these families back in temporary housing or let them stay where they are continue to fund the rent. But these are exactly the target families for the HB changes so

I think they should pay for them to move out of London. Spend a few hundred to save in the longer term.