An acquaintance has just announced she is pregnant with her fifth child. Her 4 children are by 2 separate fathers, and #5 is by a different father again. Her partner has a job in which he is unlikely to earn much more than the minimum wage. She doesn't work, and says they are heavily reliant on tax credits and housing benefit. Yet they are having baby #5, so effectively expecting that the tax credits system will just pick up the tab, as she has made several comments about how the tax credits will go up when #5 arrives.
Someone else I know who also says they are heavily reliant on TCs has recently had baby#3 and would like baby#4 in the near future. Again she says they can afford it as their tax credits will go up. The only working income coming into their home is that from her husband's 16 hours a week job in a shop, everything else is benefits.
What I'm trying to say is, those of us that support ourselves with no reliance on benefits have a cut off point of children that we can afford and we stop at that point. We stuck at 3 as that's all we can afford even though I would have liked one more. I feel that those that keep having child after child, totally reliant on tax credits, are abusing the system.