I do not understand why people have kids when they can not afford them.

[sea74]

I know this topic will create lots of critics but i want to share my thoughts and see if anyone agrees or i am the odd one out.
I come from a european country where the fertility rate is 1.4 that is each woman/family has 1.4 child. Grandparents very often are the to help, but women (and men) are responsible enough not to have children if they can not afford them or look after them.
I grew up thinking that i want children not because i want them for me but because i have to donate life and their life must be a good life. Children are not mine but they are individuals.

Having said that, when i moved to the UK, i realised how things are different.
I feel that many people think children will not change their lives, they get pregnant easily, they do not really worry too much (and take contraception) in order to avoid pregnancies.
Then, when they have the child, you see that often these children live in broken families, or the single mothers do not have 50 pounds to buy them a decent meal, or they are left in front of the tv all summer because they had not planned childcare is expensive and grandparents live far.

Children should be planned carefully, i think and it is very selfish to have them without thinking of (and being ready for) the consequences.

Most single parents (mainly women, let's be honest) are that way because their partners have left them - I don't think that the OP was necessarily referring to that, to be honest.

We do have a great deal of money chucked at parents though, don't we? An astonishing amount of paid maternity leave (which I think does working women no credit), child benefit for ever and a day, WTC, etc etc. And still people put their desire to reproduce above common sense, in my opinion. Hmm...maybe we can pay people benefits for not having children (and therefore using far fewer government-funded resources?)

icecold, there were more than one poster saying something like that.

icecold Sorry but after 20 years I couldnt give you an exact number of families!!!

Child benefit is there for a reason, if they cut it to 2 children-the children will suffer at the end of the day!
No matter what the circumstances inwhich a person falls pregnant why should the child suffer??

Its all very well saying, cut this, cut that but like i said earlier, one day the shoe could end up on your foot couldn't it.
Circumstances change and people that judge should really think before assuming every mother in the uk delibrately becomes pregnant to scrounge £60 in income support and £48 in tax creds and £15 a week. I cannot see why anyone would CHOOSE that life, the money is a pittance and believe me its not a lot other than to get by, but off course we all have flatscreens don't we (jokes)

icecold, I think quite a few more were implying this message, even though they may not have articulated it in those precise words.

Just scrap any kind of benefit for having children, including priority on housing lists, and let things take their course.

Should also say that my post doesn't apply to those who have kids and then partner leaves them. Mine's more about 'forseeable' financial difficulty and still choosing to have lots of kids or not actively preventing it.

So what happens to someone whose partner fucks off when they are 7 months pregnant. What should they do with the baby? They know they are going to have to rely on benefits for a period of time. What would you expect them to do?

People are on benefits for all sorts of reasons. What if they get made redundant/are disabled/the husbands gone off with the secretary/their jobs pay shit wages.

Its not all clear cut. Yes some people do take the piss and I don't think people should pop out babies to get more benefits. But these cases are not as common as the Daily Mail etc want everyone to believe.

We seem to have a blame culture in this country at the moment which I think the government seems to be encouraging. Divide and Conquer!

The reason people have got pissed off with the OP is that poor people and single parents are being treated like scapegoats (pardon the pun)

No lapisblue there is not a lot spent on it. It's a tiny tiny proportion. Again EVIDENCE?
In what way does maternity leave not benefit women. It is completely necessary. We just need to up paternity leave too!

Ahh Lapis- but if we don't have kids, who will pay for your pension - or do you have a job you can work in as a 95 year old, who will wipe your butt when you are old and incontinent and in a home because there is no family to help - the younger generation support the older at the end of life financially through taxation and in care homes or their homes......

oohh...a "bingo"!

Maternity leave does benefit women, it allows them to come back to their job after bonding with their baby!!!
So we are picking on working women now too!!,
I think its time the MEN scarpering got spoken about, afterall they need to also put summin on the end of it !

I think the benefits system allows a lot of women to have children with men that they would not have children with were the benefits system not there and they knew they had to rely on the man to support them at least through the childs earliest years. And also allows men that would not abandon the mother of their children the justification in their own minds to do so as they know they are not going to be left destitute because the state will support them.

icecold I think that tax credits say far more about the state of this country (with commerce having more power than our politicians), than it does about the people who claim them.

In many ways, tax credits actually stimulate the economy and keep businesses afloat. I've noticed that wages have generally gone down over the last few years. I live in rural area and there are few jobs tbh, the ones that are available all seem to be minimum wage. If it wasn't for tax credits, many jobs simply wouldn't exist, as employers would have to pay their staff more. Let's not forget that people on tax credits are also buying more, and so they are paying back into the system still because of VAT and there are other taxes (stealth ones and more visible ones).

I don't think the Daily Fail 'I'm a tax payer' bleating brigade understand the way our economy really works. They need to educate themselves.

This country is FUBAR'd and I wish I could leave this sinking ship.

Seriously Lapis I thought it was ok to voice opinions...

If it wasn't for tax credits, a lot of hard working people would suffer as the wages most of us have to live of are a pittance.
If some of you were in charge you would have us all living on the streets eating bread and water

In my opinion (and in the view of other business owners I know), our extremely generous system of maternity leave makes bosses *less likely" to employ women of child-bearing age, due to the likelihood of them buggering off to have babies, with extremely strong rights to their job on their return.

This dramatically affects small businesses - their profits, logistics, everything.

It's not fair, it's not right but we are where we are.

going back to the OP though, I bet she comes from some crumbling central european country where the economy is so bad that everyone under the age of 40 has cleared out, now she is here in the UK claiming everything she can, tax credits, child benefit, council house, the lot. Now she is comfortable enough to sit back and start moaning about it all......
you seriously couldn't make it up.

I havent seen them lapis are you sure?

If it wasn't for tax credits, people would have to get off their arses and demand decent wages. They are nothing more than a sop by government, instead of addressing the real issues that make the cost of living so high and wages so low.

OP, I have four children, 2 different fathers. Can you tell me what I did wrong?

1. I did not realise that my first husband would get terminal cancer and die leaving me with three children.
2. I did not realise my second husband would have an affair, resulting in him marrying the other woman.

How could I have prevented either of these? I would be really interested to know

In this life, you can only be responsible for your actions. You cannot predict how somebody else is going to be, just because you married them or had a child by them. I am sick to fucking death of single mothers being slated. It is not an easy job being a single parent. It can be lonely and never ending. Even though I work, I struggle financially but I will never regret the decisions I made and the children I brought into this world. Peace :)

Sorry, icecold, not with you?

Lapisblue: exactly, which is why so many women work in the public sector, and why women are inordinately affected by public sector cuts. Women in the private sector are far more likely to be employed by large businesses than small businesses.

Denise34 I think you are spot on, but tax credits make for an easier life for those in charge.

Hear, Hear musicismylife-This slating of single mothers has to STOP.