"Oh I'm lucky that I don't need to work, financially"

[TerraNovice]

I'm going back to work next month and while chatting with other mums about it I've come across the above phrase a few times. Perhaps IBU but it sounds insufferably smug to be - so they married guys with money, so what? There's nothing wrong with saying you're a SAHM so why add the caveat that you've got a rich husband?

Word, you can have freedom and choice on a low income. I was raised by my Mum when my Dad died and we had little but we had freedom and we had choice. I didn't feel as though I was held back or disadvantaged. I wished my Mum could afford to run a car, but I soon got to grips with public transport. Not all people on low incomes and/or blue collar workers are sad, confined and treated like shit, or whichever Dickensian image you might want to muster.

and I say that as someone with a degree, graduate profession; with one daughter aiming to do Physics at Cambridge, the other to do Law.

".I can give up work today,go on benefits,get myself trained up to do something else"
how do you imagine that would work, kittymum?
who would pay for you to be 'trained up'?
There are certainly no funded courses through the jobcentre any more if that is what y

...sorry.
.....if that is what you imagine

I'm sure some people do enjoy checkout work. I loved working in a shop as a student, I like shopping, I like talking to people and combining the two was fun. I still wouldn't choose it as a long term job, because the extra money and flexibility from having a different job outweigh the fun of working in a shop with limited responsibility. You can be happy in the job itself, but the limited income places so many other restrictions on your life that for most people it is unlikely to be the happiest choice overall.

I see. yes some people are born carers, others are not.
round here it is the main type of work available, just not sure I could do it!

I think the idea that the poor should be and are happy with their lot is patronising and just another way to keep them in their place.

I think real meaningful choice in modern day UK is very dependent on money.

My issue with some of the comments on this thread is that they are contradictory, claims of supporting women and their choices are made whilst taking a somewhat sneery attitude when women do make choices, just not the same ones as them.

Kitty the work that carers do is fantastic, I know from first hand experience as I was a social worker and then a learning and development manager for social work, I know that the job isn't easy and you do require knowledge and experience to do the job well. However it is also natural that people want "better" for their children and when I say better I mean that we want our children to have opportunities that are available to then when having a profession and earning a good salary

Having a good qualification and earning a decent salary allowed me to go job share, it allowed me to take a couple of years off and then choose to go back into employment and start my own business

My husbands job has allowed us to travel the world, live abroad, pay for private education.

We are from a working class background and both my husband and I were the first in our families to attend university, our families supported us to do this so that we could have more choices in life....we want exactly the same for our ds and if I had a daughter I would do the same

word

I agree, where to live, schools, activities, lifestyle are all dictated by money

It doesn't mean that you cant be happy but yes choices are more limited

Well personally Word, I think it's far more patronising to make assumptions about poor people as if they were one homogenous mass of underachievement and missed opportunity. To assume that poorer people or people on lower incomes should not be happy with their lot is very presumptuous. And often quite wrong.
My Uncle was poor working class, lived in a small house, never went abroad. Had wealthy daughter living in New Zealand who constantly begged him to come and love with her and she'd buy him a house nearby and take care of him. But he was happy in that small house. He was content where he was. He didn't want more. He wasn't ever very ambitious or driven, but always hard working. It's not a crime to have simple desires and no huge ambitions. It's not patronising to acknowledge that.

mrsthor indeed.

University education is an obvious example.

Loans are often not enough to cover even accommodation let alone living expenses.

Young people whose parents cannot or will not help financially have their choices curtailed.

Of course money doesn't make you a better person I only need to look at some of the twats at my ds school to see that. As a student I hadn't a bean and I am not a better person now for being more financially secure.

I bang on to my ds about getting an education , not for the purpose of earning lots of money but because I genuinely feel that with a good education he can go anywhere and do anything

Not always Word. I did my degree later and paid for it myself. I also paid for my own driving lessons, my own house etc from my early twenties. And know many others who did the same. We're not all crippled by circumstance like defenceless sheep.

1. On universities if you are very poor you get everything paid for in the UK. If you aren't but your parents don't pay a penny you cannot get a student loan to cover all your fees and rent. So actually the poor find it easier than the middle classes to get to university under the current scheme and you never pay a penny back unless you earn over the threshold which only half of people will.

1. On choices - as someone who has spent a good bit of time in survival mode on a pacific island I don't actually think you need a lot of money to choose certain things in life particularly if your own needs like mine are fairly simple - shelter, water, some food, (and warmth if you're not in the tropics). However I certainly agree with Word and others that if we or our children earn more we tend to have more choices.

1. It remains good advice that our children do the best they can in school and university and that life is easier if you pick high paid work as a woman as you can always move down but it's fairly hard, although not impossible, to move up later in life.

Young people whose parents cannot or will not help financially have their choices curtailed.

Young people whose parents cannot help financially will be just fine.

Young people whose parents will not help financially are the ones who are stuffed.

Parents may not be able to help because they can't afford to, even if they do not have a low enough income for the young person to qualify for extra help. Working people just above the benefits thresh hold can really struggle & have no spare cash.

dont not at all!

The maintainable grants are based of parental income and do not take into account outgoings, number of children etc!

Many parents ( the vast majority) will not fall within the income levels yet done if those will have no spare cash to top up loans or will find a small amount leaving the student very stretched.

This is a world away from those students whose parents pay for accommodation etc.

Yes I know whatthe and I agree with you. But when I said those who 'refuse' to help, I think the actual refusers are in the minority but as far as the student funding system goes, if your parents are above the threshold for help then they are expected to plug the gap between your costs and your loan. If they do not or cannot for whatever reason, they are seen as refusers and the student is penalised for the parents' lack of willingness or ability without any allowances being made for the individual circumstances.

The whole system is flawed and massively unfair. for example, it favours single mothers on a supposedly low household income without making any allowances for the fact that the student's father who they see regularly might be on 200k a year. And it makes no allowances for the fact that one set of middle income parents might be putting twins or multiple (close in age) children through uni at once, which is crippling.

I have never been able to understand the logic in the argument that raised tuition fees mean students from poor backgrounds will be excluded from accessing higher education. that's complete nonsense. They don't get given less money than everyone else, they get more.

Okay so maybe they won't be well off compared to the students from extremely affluent backgrounds whose parents are buying them a flat and a car and taking them skiing, but who is? They'll still be better off than the vast majority of students whose parents are part of the squeezed middle.

sorry word crossed posts

It's an ionteresting point though - that the very poor now find it easier to get to university than any other group financially because the other groups cannot force their parents to pay a penny in law (unless divorced) and yet are not allowed to borrow as much as the poor nor to get any non refundable grant even though their personal financial position could be much worse than that child from the badly off family.