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

There's a huge difference between going back to work after 4 months and going back after 2 weeks - for a start I reckon most health professionals wouldn't advocate it as most women need some time to heal and recouperate after the birth.

USual. 1: how many of the young people come for workless households? Low social mobility means many are likely to come from workless households. So the OP will help history avoid repeat itself. 2. Why are there so many job vacancies?? My guess wrong skills, unrealistic salary expectation, benefit similar to wage. So drop benefits, more people go for less attractive jobs. Spend to money saved on training. Get more vacancies filled.now you have more people working, lower benefit bill, greater tax receipts. Now the country can afford to start incentivise companies to recruit. Reduce the number of unemployed further.

What's wrong at the moment. I need to make 2 hires both for about 35k. Not a kings ransom, but you would expect someone to be fairly bright.... Who applies? Not people who I believe can even earn their salary so sorry no job for them.

Child benefits, Sure start, etc are not there to give the parent freebies. It's to ensure that a child does not grow up in abject poverty. I've always thought that maybe vouchers were better, and would prevent some individuals from running out to spend it on beer and cigarettes the moment the bank clears the GIRO payment, but there are problems with that too; you're never going to have a perfect system. Besides, not all things can be "vouchered" - the payment might be needed for shoes, Calpol, books for exams, or a thermometer to monitor sick child....or even just choir membership - you can't put everything on a voucher.

Eradicating child poverty was one of the Millenium Development Goals (straddling both extreme poverty and child hunger) alongside the recognition that even in many first world countries there were children living below the poverty line.

So - the money is for the child, not for the parent. Although technically it has to be paid to the parent so that the child can have what he/she needs purchased for them.

It just struck me that when people moan about and begrudge child benefit, it's just like being mean and tight, but on a grander scale

Really TheRealTillyMinto ..not in my world

There are no vacancies ,not even in supermarkets

So what about all those public and private sector workers who have lost their jobs? Once they are passed 6 months they no longer get job seekers and have to survive on income support. Does that make them scroungers? Should they 'get on their bikes' and uproot their families in the vain hope of work else where?

The government have perpetuated this recession - the double dip we are now in is as a result of there not being enough people in work (and therefore paying taxes) to help the economy to grow.

Those families who have generations of people not working are very much in the minority so why should decent people who would work if they could be penalised?

Bogeymanface, don't worry, only very exceptional circumstances would ever take us back to the UK. I checked that in fact in East Kent, £780 per month is the limit for a 4 bed, so that would be paid actually. But in reality, thankfully we still own our house in East Kent, we wouldn't have to rent, we would still get our interest only mortgage payments covered though (that depends on when the mortgage was taken out). We are currently renting the house to a family who I believe get partial housing benefit, and before anyone accuses me of being a scurrilous landlord taking advantage of housing benefit, I didn't know that housing benefit was being claimed until afterwards, it makes no difference to whether I choose a tenant or not, the market rent for a similar house in the area would indeed be £800 per month, we charge £600 as we want to provide a nice home to a family at a small profit to ourselves and at an affordable rate for the family - both sides gain and so far that has led to excellent tenants and I can't face selling the house or I would make the family homeless, even though I would like to.

I must disagree though, I DO think 24.5k is very very generous in benefits and enough to live on, in the circumstances described, it's scandalous that a family should benefit so much when they contribute nothing in direct taxation.

I'm sure someone has already mentioned this somewhere along the 730 messages that I haven't read from start to finish, but I'll add my two pence worth......

The point is that we need people to have children - or should I say, we need the settled, resident population to have children. If you send out the message that the taxpayer/state will not help you out with a single penny when you have children, then most people will not have kids at all until they saved up a small fortune....and for many, that means never. (Or they will migrate to countries where raising one or two children doesn't mean going virtually bankrupt, so you end up having a brain drain or workforce drain, where your skilled young workforce leave and bring their skills and wealth to another country.)

This is what happened in countries like Italy (and to a smaller extent newly industrialised countries like Japan some time ago) where the population growth rate ended up being 0% or even in negative figures. With no children and youth, that means no (or insufficient) workforce in future to work and pay taxes, support infrastructure like hospitals and pensions, and hence a population that is greying. So they then rely on young migrants. But when the migrants settle down, they too will need their pensions and hospitals paid for. And on and on this vicious circle goes. So you see where it all comes from.

Quite reasonable for the government to then start clawing back money by withdrawing benefits and tax credits bit by bit where they can.......as Britain now has a population boom. A boom which is not stopping, for now.

gammy so you are allowed your opinion and Xenia is allowed hers but I'm not allowed mine?

I suggest if you and other posters don't want people sticking their judgy sticky beaks or whatever into their business then don't post it on an Internet forum

Actually why are you even here as Internet forums tend to be places where people voice their opinions, and not everyone has to agree with yours

PS. Lots of countries offered child benefit or a sure start- style lump sum for every child born when they wanted their birth rate to increase. Australia has done it, Singapore too, etc etc.

You are renting a 4 bed house for £600! My mortgage on 2 up 2 down was more than that 5 years ago! When we moved to Belgium we had long discussions about whether to rent the house out or not, and decided it was undoable without us subbing it. I do agree that having nice (grateful) tenants must make you more relaxed about it all.

TheRealTilyMinto - I know it was 20-25 years ago. THat's exactly my point. That despite the time lapse, nothing has changed. I am not partisan in my opinion about this. I agree with you that the current system DOES NOT WORK.
Where I differ from you is that I don't believe cutting benefits to make lik
fe doubly shit for those reliant on them is going to help. It won't force the small minority of piss-takers to step up to the mark.Yes they will suffer, but so will the families who find themselves on hard times through no fault of their own, or the children who have never had a chance because their own parents have never had a job and they know no other way. It will punish people without providing a solution. What is needed is a overhaul of our education system and support of young families to help people help themselves to get out of this trap.

Britain in part has a population boom partly because of its benefits system

1. it is a major reason why the UK attracted a fair amount of asylum seekers, a disproportionate number compared to 26 other EU countries (well maybe Germany might have just take a few more, they certainly did in one year in the early 1990s), the UK is pathetic at returning failed asylum seekers (more than 90% of claimants) and has quietly had several amnesties and also managed to "lose" track of hundreds of 1000s in the last 20 year of asylum immigration and the "asylum" population have added a few million in total to the population since the 1990s

2. it has allowed benefit claimants to increase their families and be "paid" for their further children, whereas those not on benefits are not "paid" by employers to have further children and they have not been able to increase the size of their families without consequences of having to think of how to provide for their further children.

If the UK had a system of tax breaks for WORKING FAMILIES for each additional child, then this means instead of the state rewarding the non working population for their additional children, only those in work would receive financial incentives with tax breaks.

The problems started in fact by changing the very basis of the Beveridge master plan for a welfare state for those in need, to a life time of entitlement to welfare benefits thanks I believe to the labour government in the mid 1960s, then made worse by Thatcher when she started the IB fiasco which is now at 2.5 million "unable to work adults" which few people will defend as really 2.5 million incapacitated adults.

I'm not a Tory, in fact I cannot stand the Tories. David Cameron has ordered the sackings of 25% of hubby's part of the civil service, hubby's job is under threat thanks to Cameron. But if he manages to push through reforms of the welfare state to get a substantial proportion of those 2.5million IB recipients back into the mindset that the CAN do some form of work and MUST contribute in some way, and if he manages to make a substantial of claimants of IS also into the same mindset, and if he can put in place more subsidised child care in order to encourage parents back into work, then maybe pigs may some day fly and I may some day end up supporting the Tories.

And there's the fact that, with more people out of work, they will be paying out more in benefits over all anyway.

And also yes, so much lost to benefits but many billions more lost to tax evaders. I know who I'd be chasing up for the cash.

But where are the jobs?

Tell me because I can't see where they are?

Its so easy to blame the benefit scroungers

So so much more is lost by tax evasion, I hate this blame the poor bollocks that the media portray

thatcher and the tories took away all our manufacturing industries, thus turning this country into a service industry

can't make anything to see

can just tell the rest of the world what to do

pretty shite really

anything to SELL

(arse can we get this edit!)

Manicbmc, it doesn't matter what end of the spectrum you are talking about, benefit cheats to me are cheats, high earning tax evaders are cheats, they are scum, they should all be chased. Billions of money is spent on people claming IB who shouldn't be claiming it for example, billions is lost in income from high earners avoiding tax.

Last night I watched Panorama, astounded that guy able to ride a bike, able to have 2 properties in France and 2 yachts he was capable of sailing to the Azores, able to get away with having a council flat in London, absolutely astounded he has been declared "unfit for work" and able to still claim IB. Funny, he showed on camera he would be capable of doing sales work (tried to sell his yacht to Panorama journalist). So how on earth can a doctor declare him unfit for work and able to continue to receive IB? He is stealing from every UK resident, his assets should be seized and sold to recoup his IB, housing benefit, council tax benefit payments.

I also wanted to contribute to the main gist of the thread - I've only scanned the first few pages so far, but has anyone highlighted the fact that benefits are pegged to inflation rates?

I don't know any friend or colleague who has admitted getting a guaranteed 5%+ payraise this year.

I'm certainly feeling the pinch, with a DH who works in the public sector, who's had a pay freeze since about two years ago if I recall correctly (and I'm self-employed, so far unable to offset the erosion of inflation against our ever-dwindling disposable income).

I think the poster who mentioned the crazy logic of "people on benefits = gain financially for ever increasing children" whilst "working folk = less money to go around" has hit the nail on the head, really.

If only DH and I could obtain a raise for having more children - but it just doesn't work like that in the real world. We have a finite earning capacity. Whether we have 1 DC or 5 DCs to support, his employer (and my clients) aren't interested, are they?

I agree that this is the fundamental flaw in the benefits system; I say this as someone who stopped at 2, which I still regret, due to financial constraints. I honestly don't know how we could have afforded another. The childcare fees for 2 just about killed us (and essentially led to me going freelance, because I wasn't even breaking even at my last employer when I costed in commuting costs, the childminder's fees, and other costs for work). I don't regret going freelance as it's turned out much better than I'd hoped, but I won't pretend I don't feel frustrated when I see that a non-working family has no such literal limit on how many offspring they can support.

It doesn't surprise me that the mood of the country is changing - it's been a long time coming.

No its been a short time in the media coming

I'm not talking about benefit cheats. Those that cheat the system are the minority and I don't see why others should be penalised because of them when there are expense fiddlers and tax evaders out there who are worth an awful lot more.

Gammy I went back to work when my dd was 4 months, out of neccesity. I am not judging you at all. But I do question why anyone would have a child and then go back to work before the stiches have healed! If your (not your) career is so important that you will hand over a newborn baby to carers then why have a child at all, why not just concentrate on your career (again , not your career!).

I am sorry if you thought I was having a pop at anyone who goes to work when they have a baby, I wasnt. As I said, my dd was 4 months when I went back so that wasnt what I meant. It was the "2 weeks old" thing that got to me.

That said, I went back because my ex was a twat and refused to pay anything to our upkeep, he would even refuse to buy nappies for her. I got PND and was single and on benefits (and anti d's) by the time she was 7 months. So maybe not the best example!