Big families

[ActionA]

Before I begin, I want to make it clear that I DON'T think only rich people should be allowed to have big families. In my ideal world, benefits would be more generous, there would be a massive SH building programme, rents would be capped etc. etc. I think the austerity rhetoric is bollocks and believe this ideal world is actually possible.

However. We sadly don't live in this ideal world at the moment and I'm surprised at the amount of threads by people complaining that they can't afford to get by and yet are still planning on having a 3rd, 4th, 5th DC. Again, I understand that sometimes the unforseen happens and a family that was previously doing well hits hard times. But that isn't the case in a lot of scenarios: the family has been struggling for a long time and continues to do so. I'm wondering what makes those families carry on having DCs. They know there isn't much help out there, and know that they are going to have trouble supporting those DCs. So why do it?

I'll repeat again before the people who don't like reading what's actually been said chip in: in my opinion there should be MORE help that makes it possible for the less well off to have big families if they choose. But that help just ISN'T there, so why insist on having a big family when you can't support them? Seems a rather selfish way of making the point that everybody should be able to have a big family...

I disagree that there should be more help for people to have big families. There is already more than enough help for people to have children they can't afford through child tax credits.

Big families are a luxury just like sports cars and foreign holidays. They are not something that grown adults are entitled to have. If people want big families, then great, but they should pay for that themselves and benefits should be capped to two children except where second pregnancies result in a multiple birth.

People do it because they can, because they are lucky enough to live in a state that won't see children starve.

benefits would be more generous

And who will be funding this?

Nobody should be having more than 1 or 2 DC - the world is heading for environmental catastrophe!

You should have the number of children you can afford without relying on the state. Plenty of people can't afford to have children so they don't. There are many things in life I would like but can't afford so just have to accept it.

yy to the environmental aspect.

Just so I'm clear is this to be a benefit bash thread?

If people only had children when they could afford it without help from the state, th

Well, on a very simplisitic level, Bohemian, I would tax the very rich a fuck of a lot more. And I agree that if you are concerned about the environment etc. you wouldn't choose to have a massive family. But I also don't think that the state should legislate on the acceptable size of families, and if it is possible for people to have as large a family as they like, there should be support for that as children shouldn't have a bad start in life because of parental selfishness. My point is just that I don't understand why families who really struggle, given that there isn't that generous support for less well off big families, choose to have a larger than average number of kids.

YABU and judgey.

Stupid phone!

If people only had children when they could afford it without help from the state, that would mean barely anybody on NMW could have children angelos. Those damn poor people and their reproducing.

No not dim or obtuse

Thanks though

I think people who have more children than they can provide for are idiots.

That doesn't mean they shouldn't be provided for. Also, anyone can suffer redundancy and illness.

Quite simply we can't prevent people having children - all we can do is educate people enough so that they choose not to.

Education is the key.

But there is generous support for people to have children they can't afford. If there wasn't, people wouldn't do it. The ones that do choose to have big families and rely on the state probably do so because they have very little ambition and drive in other areas of life, or they don't feel they are capable of achieving anything other than multiple pregnancies.

'The rich' already pay plenty of tax, but even if they didn't, why should one person pay more tax so that someone else can have lots of children? Just why?

Surely if you were going to raise taxes, you'd want the money to be spent on stuff that is essential to everyone, like decent healthcare and education, rather than on individuals having luxuries on someone else's earnings.

Is that 2 per person, or per family?

Second/step/blended families are hardly unusual these days.

It seems mean to say some people can never have biological children of their own if they start a relationship with someone who already has kids.

Fred about a Fred
Op learn to live and let live. Hide the threads you don't like and don't go and start a new, shiny judgy thread about it.

I'm all for people having as many children as they can (properly) support themselves. That's why we stopped at three.
If we could have decently educated more, plus bought in help in the toddler years; I'd have gone for more. But financially it would have been a stretch, so we didn't.

Yanbu at all. We are having the number of children that we can afford to feed, clothe and house.

Why on earth do you feel benefits should be more generous?
To enable people to have huge families without feeling the need to provide for them themselves? Don't be such an idiot.

Not everyone agrees with contraception though (religion as one example). The fact is that naturally some women CAN have multiple babies in their fertile years. Isn't it up to them whether they subscribe to the view that they need to artificially alter their fertility to suit modern life?

This isn't my personal view as I have always used contraception in between DC! But it makes the point that not everyone subscribes to the views of the majority or the norms of society at the time.

Oh is it a thread about a thread? Ugh, I hate replying to one and not realising.

I would assume the thinking is if you have 1 child and you are struggling without an end in sight then why deny yourself 3,4,5 more if things are still going to be tight.

I'm from a big family. My parents were very religious (as Jellybean points out not everyone has the same value system). They wouldn't have dreamt of using contraception.
And, because my father became ill, we were dependent on benefits to a certain extent and we lived in SH.
However, we were brought up with a strong work ethic. We all went on to further or higher education, and have all contributed back into society. None of us live on benefits. Arguably I'd say our family has contributed more into the system than we've taken from it.

China had a ruthless one child policy which they are only begining to relax. China has problems with one adult being expected to financially support 4 granparents 2 parents. I would hate to live in a country where there is murder complusory late term abortions of healthy babies.

I think there is a need world wide to control the number of babies being born as the planet only has the resources to support so many mouths. However this is better achieved through education and access to good medical care. Access to contraception is not enough to prevent people having huge families.

It is important that parents in the third world can be confident that their children are going to survive otherwise they will choose to have six kids. We also need to ensure that people with no kids are looked after in their old age.