16 Kids and Counting

[Shinyfly]

So I've just watched this (recorded last night). AIBU to think that both of these couples just have stopped at one or two?

These were (just a couple) of the red flags for me.

1. The first family had 11 kids (number 12 made an appearance at the end of the programme). All of their children were home schooled and the only time they were permitted to mix with other children was once a week at boys/girls brigade. Mum Tania has a three year plan to have them living in the country and even more isolated from society very soon.

1. The second family were completely devoid of any rules/routines/boundaries, the house was complete chaos with children sleeping in their clothes and the older children being made to supervise the younger ones homework. Dad's clothes were always filthy.

Bth families seemed intent on having more children.

Maybe it is because I live in a small city and work in a rural area. If I lived in a larger place the number of HE people would obviously be larger too! Anyway, thanks for replying needsa, it's good to hear a different veiwpoint. I am not about to HE but I am quite subversive by nature so I do find alot of the conventions of school annoying even though I work in a lovely one!

Self employed people often pay less tax, and often there are other benefits that aren't included in earnings, like the business paying towards his car or mobile phone for example. And the threshold for earnings doesn't go up for a different amount of kids. The show clearly stated they only receive child benefit.

How can a parent properly home school 13 children all of different ages?
I doubt that even a skilled teacher could do that successfully. They are unlikely to get any qualifications or be employable.
I went to a very small rural school for a few years, there were 11-13 students between 5 and 12, and one teacher.
We got a lot more individual attention than children in a conventional classroom setting and our lessons were a lot more likely to be tailored to meet our own best learning style. Which can only be for the good, in my opinion. It's true that the teacher was a fully trained and qualified teacher, but so are a lot of parents.
One of my classmates (several years younger than myself) went to Yale, so our education can't have been that terribly lacking.

I think the Radfords also said that they use a lot of the left over food from their business to feed the family.

Did you know a full time education is study of 20 hours per week.

A few of the advantages of HE over school are you get to tailor those hours compleatly to the child taking account of age ability and any special needs without having to account for the ability and needs of 30 other children (obviously you do need to account for any HE siblings) when you do not know those other children in a in depth way,you don't have to spend months building up trust respect and a teaching relationship because if you are already parenting those children adequately then you already have that.

You can be more relaxed less formal, I may not be wording this in the right way but its often takes much longer to explain something to 30 kids and check they understand than it does with much smaller groups.

naty is it only mothers with 1/2/3 children who don't deserve snide comments for not breast feeding? Fwiw I have what many people would consider to be a large family (not prepared to say how many children I have but it's more than 6 but less than 11) and every single one was ebf until 6 months then normal food plus breast milk until they decided to self wean I'm currently tandem feeding a 2y 2 month old and a 6 month old.

billlaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllll

Sorry if this has been already said but i'm using the app which sometimes misses posts from the thread, but this isn't a repeat - it's kind of like an update as the family with dad as the baker have had another kid and the eldest has also had a baby. They were both pregnant at the end of the last series.

I didn't see this but I have seen earlier episodes. One scene that upset me was a mum crying to her teenage daughter because she hasn't got pregnant that month. Iuunderstand that infertility is a desperate experience for so many people, but this was a woman with more than ten kids already, who had missed one month of further procreation.

Why should a schoolgirl have to support her mother through that, it just seemed so wrong. The message was basically I love babies but I'm not that arsed about children and teenagers.

If he is earning 40k a year then they DO get tax credits, per child.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/reclaim/2012/03/families-must-prepare-for-tax-credit-cuts

They may be entitled, but they chose not to claim it

Arnt the duggers ons 21-22 now?

nomorequotes

I have never claimed child benefit for any child and I have 3 children who I know for a fact meet the criteria for both higher rate care and mobility DLA and 2 who meet the criteria for higher rate care and lower rate mobility yet I have never claimed.

Some people don't out of principal

I have never seen them say they don't claim tax credits. They have said they don't claim benefits but everyone knows nobody seems to class tax credit as a benefit.

They have 23 living children, i can't even imagen having that many children

Needasock can I ask why?
No agenda just genuinely curious.

Needsa You can obviously comfortably support your children and fair play to you for not claiming.

There is no way those people support 17 children on 40k without tax credits.

No reason other than not wanting to.

Nobody knows if they have any rent/mortgage costs nor if they have financial help from extended family,all we know is they say they do not claim means tested benefits and they support themselves with the bakery and cb

The duggars have 19 children and 3 grandchildren.

CB of £160 a week, not a small amount of money by anyones standards! I still think they claim tax credits

So if she popped up on this thread and said "I do not claim tac credits" would you call her a liar?

No certainly not, but I can't find anywhere that it has been previously denied. They have said they don't claim benefits but as already pointed out, people don't consider tax credits to be benefits.

Might it involve a lot of paperwork?
Everytime they had another/ one got too old?
Is the 180 for 12kids as radford(?) would get more than that
And 180 a week is over 9k a yr.

Did someone say it costs 9k per child per year in state school well then for the radfords with was it say 17kids
Education
179000say 10years education
=1,530,000
CB
£165217kids*16years
225,304
Cost of maternity and labour did i see £5k per CS?
Costs of GP appointments
So i may have come to well over 2m cost
I wonder if dad is earning enough to pay that much tax in his lifetime?
Usually the education cost is repaid by the child from their taxes ... But so far the eldest has has 2 kids , though maybe she was also working in bakery?
I think people (unless really rich, private or home schooling etc are kidding themselves if they think they are self sufficient if they have such large families. But he is clearly making the effort when im sure he could do lots at home.

Huge amounts of people with less than 3 kids are not net contributors

But still far less of a drain on society and resources than those who have chosen to have upwards of five children needs

For a start, the continuous babies has meant the mother has never been able to go to work, so that is a lifetime of one non-tax payer, not your usual 3/4/5 years max

Then you have the cost of raising each of those children, not just CB but how much it costs to go through school and NHS care as the PP touched upon.

Then there is the reality that their children might do the same, creating another endless stream of children, there is no way that those people are going to support all of those children to go to university or until they have jobs and houses of their own.