If you can't afford children you shouldn't have them.

[MrsArchieTheInventor]

"If you can't afford children you shouldn't have them" [and] "child benefit and tax credits should be abolished" with the mantra that if she choses to be childless she should not be forced to pay for the 'breeding' choices of others.

A Facebook friend of mine. I didn't retaliate.

whatmeworry rather than rolling out some tired statistic why not ask someone from a very poor background like myself? My parents had me very young and lived just below the breadline. My dad pretty much avoided working a full week and we were frequently went without heating. However mum did a BA on the Open university and became a teacher. She raised me to be the tax payer that I am today.

Good on your mum, that's an amazing story.

But it's also demonstrably not the norm.

The stats are not so much tired, as weary of pointing out the same sad tale over and over again.

Where I grew up people still had an awful lot of pride in their council houses, gardens were beautiful, cars gleaming (if they had one), windows shiny and so on. But nowadays I see that people are demonised, they've given up. What's the point of trying to be something if noone expects you to achieve anything? Better to not try than to fail, we need to inspire people to get into work. I can't imagine growing up in a house where noone worked and thinking that I could be any different, you have to be a pretty special individual to do so.

Posie, surely that's all the more reason why we shouldn't be encouraging more children in workless households by providing more money for every child?

I might be out of work tomorrow. I might be in work the next month, or year. My husband fucked off and left us to it. I'm afraid I can't contract and expand the number of my chidren to suit someone else's political agenda. What my children need is a start in life.

No, but you can stop yourself from concieving more children if you are relying on state support for the children you already have.

Actually I think I'll encourage them to breed like rabbits.

I think rather than punishing children for their parents lack of work ethic we should inspire those children to believe they can do better.

Absolutely Posie, of course we should. But I don't think it encourages young people to want better for themselves if they grow up seeing that every new baby brings more money. From doing that,they learn that having babies is the easiest way to get yourself some money.

And we who
Nader why we have such a high teenage pregnancy rate in this country.

What about SAHM middle class mums? They don't work. They don't pay taxes. They are in very grave danger of breeding more middle class daughters who will also be SAHMs, that don't work and don't pay taxes. Feckless, lazy bastards. Where's their work ethic?

What about them? If they are supported by their husbands then they aren't claiming benefits, so they won't be asking for more money if they get pregnant again. And their husbands pay tax.

There is a big difference between not paying income tax while you have children, and not paying income tax ever but still taking a lot of it in benefits.

What about SAHM middle class mums? They don't work. They don't pay taxes. They are in very grave danger of breeding more middle class daughters who will also be SAHMs, that don't work and don't pay taxes. Feckless, lazy bastards. Where's their work ethic?

Well, the big difference is that their partners' salaries don't go up because they have more children, so they as a demographic tend to plan ahead and have far smaller families on average then the poor and the rich at the moment.

The other side of letting them see that every baby brings mroe money is allowing them to slip through teh net; teaching kids from 'undesirable' backgrounds that theya re nto worth as much as other children. Disenfranchsing children from birth. You want to see a REALLY broken society? that would be an excellent way to start......

Besides it is largely a non argument due to the cap. Not that I am a fan of the cap as it is (needs to reflect geographical variance, though my family is exempt anyway even if we were not working).

Posie I like your posts on here very much.

Outraged you think that's why teen pregnancy rates are high? It is SO much more complex than that! Undervalued children desperate for someone to love, teenagers and young people who KNOW damn well they have absolutely zero long term future in work, the impossibility of leaving home (a home that could well be awful) for many that means a baby is the ONLY way to manage such a basic step...... kids who have never been taught theya re capable of anything other than motherhood (very much the norm at my sink school), children who have never achieved in any way whatsoever due to a lack of praise and a dearth of opportunity....... kids just emulating their own parents and everyone else they know...... as a fairly academic, prudish (which equated to nto wanting to get kncoked up at 16 and miss out on college) kid on the estates I was a HUGE misfit, an oddity. For me books were the solution, along with a handful of uniformed youth groups and a mother who beleived: I was priveledged, most were not.

Until the husband of the MC mum walks out leaving them with an empty CV and a relaince on state benefits.

Anyone who thinks MC = employed, WC = unemployed or most crucially benefits = unemployed is on a very different planet to mine, and needs to start looking at what is going on in our world ATM. Graduate unemployment, redundancies across the state sector..... MC / WC / UC stopped being about income ages ago.

Peachy, I always like yours!! (You are pure goodness)

When I watched that programme about teen parents they wanted to love someone, to prove that they could do something good with their lives. If you grow up in poverty most of the world is closed to you, you wouldn't even know what a barrister did unless one defended you, so you certainly couldn't become one.

I do actually work for a living, FreddoPerson.

I wish I was Posie but thank you.

So true about not knowing what a Barrister was even; I wanted to go to university but was told it was beyond me and not for the likes of me. I assumed they were right; that it needed spare cash or the sort of classics education that the private kids got.

Then I met some kids from the private who had degrees and learned that they were nothing special, went to Uni, and am doing my MA now. Helped by a lady and her husband I worked for who left me a few grand in their will for the purposes of getting a decent education, they were both Doctors (of Chemistry, worked for ICI) and the first other than Mum to think I had potential.

I will always be grateful. I hope they are proud.

Umm, did I say you didn't LineRunner?

Did you not?

Of course not. It would seem a bit daft seeing as I don't actually know you.

You said this to me before

No, but you can stop yourself from concieving more children if you are relying on state support for the children you already have.

So what if their husbands pay tax?? So what if their husbands wages don't give up every time they have kids? They are part part of their husbands. They are individuals WHI DON'T PAY TAXES. And what this country needs is people whit pay taxes for gods sake. Not another generation of SAHMs. Their a deficit to pay.

And that will be, their privileged white collar husbands would it? The ones who are educated and ABLE ti earn a decent wage? The husbands they met at uni or on a gap year travelling round Australia. The average kind if working class women that you are talking about, is hardly likely to bag herself one of those at the pub on the corner is she? (although she probably is lucky to have escaped a life of listening to witterings on about investments and feta cheese)

Yes, and how does that imply you don't work? Especially when it was posted in response to 'I might be out of work tomorrow.

Either way, I'm sorry if you thought I implied you were out of work. I can assure you that it wouldn't matter to me either way and your work status was not on my mind when I posted that you could stop yourself from concieving if you were relying on state support for the children you already have.

As I don't want to be misunderstood again, I should make it clear that I don't have a problem with people having children when they rely on top up benefits, as obviously there is a clear need for those when wages are so low. The point I have tried to make throughout this thread is only that I don't think people should be given money for more than two children if they conceive while they are able bodied and on full out of work benefits.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2127072/Millionaire-Tory-donor-slept-private-jet-flying-outside-UK-airspace-avoid-paying-tax.html

try telling me its not one rule for the middle class and another for the working clsses

While you couldn't stop anyone having more children- if we reduced benefits down to a bare, bare, minimum no-one would do it.

It doesn't harm children anyway, my mum has 10 siblings and her parents didn't have much money, sometimes meals were just bread, no presents or luxuries, 12 people in a 3 bed house- yet it never did any of them any harm!

Except they knew not to make the same mistakes!

Remember, if the government gives money to stupid, lazy, irresponsible and selfish people, they can't make them spend it on the children anyway!

Many spend it on cigarrettes etc!

Besides, we don't need any more people in this country and if we did we could just invite more immigrants.

MrsArchietheInventor

Dont be so ungrateful.

In most countries you get nothing.

And you CHOSE to continue unplanned pregnancies.

You get free, safe abortion in this country. It should be about whether its better for the child to have never been born with parents who can't cope or not.