to think that 20 grand on benefits a year is loads

[MrsBucketxx]

considering they dont pay any income tax.

just watching we pay your benefits program and worked out that this is over 30 grand if it was a normal tax paying salary.

why was this not mentioned.

We also don't give out benefits to people who have children over 5 who are fit for work (the parents not the children) unless they job seek.

If people are not job seeking its up to the assessor to work that out and sanction them.

I can't afford to work. Dh' salary only just covers our modest bills (one banger, no sky, camping hols). We'd have to fi d an additional £50 per day after I'd spent all my salary on childcare to top it up and then another £20 for travel. Where woukd that money come from?

I literally can't afford to work.

Sock, how coukd a woman get a salary that would cover childcare for 5?

Very rare are those jobs, they require substantial financial and time investment which are resources a family like that is extremely unlikely to have.

Art,

I quite agree, I think more men should be forced to do what is expected of women without question it should be just as normal for a man to be as an active parent as a woman is.

I also get quite eyebrow raisey over families where the child care costs are automatically coming out of the mothers salary and deamed to be just the mothers responsibility especially ( and I'm seeing this more and more) where couples don't have joint finances.

starlight I know this is the case for lots of people with 3+ kids, I was talking about people who would earn equal to or only very slightly less than the CC bills, prob with 1 or 2 kids or in a highly paid job.

I am a teacher and a female colleague has just left work because she worked out she would only "get" £300 take home per month after CC and tax deductions etc. Her husband earns a lot so she is going to be a SAHM. In this situation I personally would continue to work as for me, the benefits of paying into pension, staying on career ladder etc outweigh the negatives of being quite broke for 3 years until child is in school.

I am not saying she should work, it's a personal choice, but I would not feel comfortable not securing my own financial security in old age if there was any way possible that I could do so without being dependent on my DH for survival.

sock yes, exactly!

Starlight that is not my argument I quite agree that its expensive I also quite agree that unless you either qualify for the full 70% childcare element or have a very high paying job being a sahp is often the way to go.

I think your mixing me up with anti welfare benefit posters,I'm not nor have I ever been anti benefits nor am I anti sahp I also know that if your low paid and a lone parent you cost the state more money than if your not working.

One of my friends works 16 hours per week she works around her disabled teenager so is only able to do 16 hours her child requires round the clock care.

She earns a few pence less than £100 pw the child's DLA does not cover the additional cost the disability incurs neither does the addition of the various elements the disability entitles her to,nor the addition of CA. Her childcare so she can work those 16 hours costs £217 per week,she works because she always has but no matter as soon as UC comes in she's going to get treated like scum (not my word or her judgement) and be judged as being a lesser human being like lots of people treat unemployed people because whilst she won't be expected to work more than 16 hours due to carer status she will still have to utilise the job centre and comply with there requirements.

@nickymanchester, apologies for using slightly the wrong term. What I mean is the large number of vulnerable families whose rent is paid via housing benefit. They are often in private renters accommodation on, and those landlords make a mint out of it.

Perhaps we are going to see changes in how society views the planning of families.

I don't know really.

When I was a midwife and a HV I saw the odd family with lots of children. Generally the Mum was the only parent and had a string of failed relationships behind her. She often (but not always) had a horrendous childhood too.

What I DO know about these families is that children were not planned....they were just the byproduct of a relationship where the father might or might not stick around for any length of time. Certain,they were not the result of the Mum thinking "if I have another child I will get x in extra benefits". Her life was often far too chaotic for such level thinking.

It is all a bit sad tbh. Life is not a bed of roses for such families and definitely not always for the children.

Btw, I don't mean large families per se....I mean specific large families living in poor housing, where there are ongoing concerns and issues such as school attendance, low level neglect etc.

I did 7 years as a SAHM mother and then went back to work. A lot of my early working life was spent making no money out of it. With 3 DC, the youngest profoundly disabled, the salary, CB and disability living allowance only just covered the childcare, and I had to take a job with a crappy commute in order for the pay to be enough. Even now, in my 50 s, ds2 still needs 24/7 care so I pay for childcare after school for a 17 year old, and it takes half my take home pay. Has it been worth it?

I help my GP train medical students, and one thing they always ask, is how come I am what they call "resilient" which is polite medic-speak for not depressed. A lot of my fellow mums at ds2s school are very low, and they feel their lives are very hopeless and restricted. For me, earning and having a career has been important for me to feel that I have some control over my life. It took a long time for me to make any money at it, but it has kept me happy and sane to have that other side to my life. And I will have a workplace pension, which will be much appreciated.

I chose to be a SAHM when my older kids were preschool and I still think there is a great deal to be said for that, educationally as well as financially. Once they are at school, even the most disabled kid is out of the house for 6 hours a day, whoopee, and then I found it very helpful to build a life for myself. But in the shorterm you will make no money at it. Though I do think that childcare is attributable to dhs salary as well as mine, in practice that's just not quite how it feels.

It does puzzle me when somebody earning £20,000 a year has to pay income tax. But yet £20,000 a year on benefits is tax free. I don't think anybody earning less than the benefits cap should pay income tax. That would be a lot fairer for everyone.

stormy given the 'you're hitler' reaction to that suggestion I have had in the past I am glad you are not attacking me for it!

I would simply suggest that after the second child, in order to claim benefits, a doctors note backing up contraception for the claimant, I think preferably it would be long term contraception, which I think it would recommend anyway because if you had a 5 year coil you could claim without worry for 5 years, with the pill it might only be a month and so on.

The Law Society recommended minimum salary for a trainee solicitor is £16,000 in the first year and £19,000 in the second. That's after a minimum of 4 years or more at university and after incurring costs in paying for it. And from that, the trainee has to kit themselves in office clothes and get themselves to work, as well as pay for accommodation and pay income tax, council tax, etc.. Even after that, theres an awful lot of jobs in the 27 - 33k range where you will stick for a few years.

Maybe jobs in this country just don't pay enough? I've got a friend who is a first year police officer, and he has about £300 to live on each month after tax and paying rent.

Artemis sock yes, I know that. My point is that many, many middle class professional women with husbands don't do this as they blithely assume everything will be fine and that they will be supported by DH all their lives. It astounds me that so many women are so naive - almost 50% of marriages end in divorce and yet women are still the ones who, seemingly by default, give up work to do the child care. And even if they do do this, they still only end up with a basic state pension and no workplace pension. So if the DH leaves them, they could end up with no house, and only a state pension to live on. So they are still very financially dependent

An interesting point. We constantly get messages in the media and from the government about how schools should include lessons on all sorts of non-academic topics such as child care, running a household, cooing skills, the benefits of breastfeeding, etc. but there probably would be benefit in making schoolchildren aware of the divorce statistics and the harsh realities for many on divorce (and it is not just women who are adversely affected). But instead children are very much pedalled the getting married and living happily ever after dream.

That said, whatever you teach some people, there are still plenty of badly behaved men out there, and plenty of people who are just looking for a free ride.

Marriage protects you though! If you've given up a career to raise children you are entitled to half that mans pension.

You are entitled to half the house and the whole house until your youngest hits 18.

Marriage is a much safer bet than just staying together

Not if he divorces you and marries someone else!

You might get 50% of the house, but that's about it, and if you'd been out of work for 18 years then how would you afford a mortgage on a new house?

I do agree that marriage protects a person financially to a degree. I think being an SAHM without marriage is not a sound decision. But that is just my opinion. And it's all very well saying marriage lets you keep the house after divorce when you have younger children. But I know at least a couple of people that couldn't maintain the house so had to sell it anyway and move to a smaller house.

I wonder what happens to a man's pension if he has two or even more ex-wifes to support. He might have nothing left and have to go on benefit himself. It's a minefield.

Glad you mentioned Hitler first, filee, because I can see this plan going that way in order to actually work. No contraception is infallible. Even with a 99% success rate, for every hundred women that's an extra baby per year. If those extra babies will be paid for by the state, then there is still the potential for the system to be abused - all you have to do is sabotage your contraception. So I'm still not convinced forced contraception is better than education and support, especially given the other issues with the human rights.

I totally agree no contraception is infallible, that's the thought behind it rather than anything more sinister.

I thought some contraception was not tamperable with but I just read that horrendous news article on iud's which changed my mind on that somewhat.

I still can't help thinking there is a way to cut breeding whilst protecting children.

I am as pro welfare as they come. However I totally agree that doing nothing shoukd not be an option for people who are able bodied without caring responsibilities

At the very least in the absence of work there shoild be a way of recognising people's individual skills and life experiences.

Parents supporting other parents etc
Volunteering with food bsnks or something which benefits society. All valuable stuff and maintains people's self esteem.

How will capping rents put families on streets?

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/constructionandproperty/10113582/Rent-controls-are-madness-we-need-to-build-more-homes.html

Yet, while something drastic needs to be done to tackle Britain?s housing crisis, rent controls would be complete madness: they are one of the stupidest economic policies known to man.

They are based on a denial of a simple reality: if prices (such as rents) are going up, that means that there is a scarcity of available homes to let.

The only way to tackle the issue is either to reduce demand or to increase supply, or both. Yet rent controls would achieve the exact opposite: increase demand (by keeping rents low) and reduce supply (by making it less worthwhile for landlords to let out homes).

The policy has failed with horrifying consequences everywhere it has been tried, including in New York, and is the perfect embodiment of the adage that no problem exists that cannot be made worse through government intervention.

DH earns about 26k and we literally spend the last two weeks of every month counting change to buy bread so I don't think it covers everything. However, as non-earned money I think it can't be much higher since the money has to come from somewhere s