My children's father hasn't worked since he left uni. He's nearly 50 now.
He's dabbled in a couple of street surveys but that's it.
What enabled him, was a car accident insurance payout in his teens which bought him a tiny house up north, so he's never had to work to pay rent or mortgage, and he doesn't have gas, fiddles his electric somehow, presumably gets full council tax benefit.
He insists though that the thousands he makes selling his electrical wares hobbies online is a real job,
despite never declaring it for tax,
and despite claiming every unemployment benefit under the sun.
He admitted to faking a medical so he could claim a medical benefit.
What's odd is that almost his entire friends circle are also all long term unemployed, yet they have several engineering, science, maths degrees between them and were all the high school top boffins.
The only marginally conventional one bought his own house young as an investment, worked in programming for years and now runs a successful online business. He's the only one who's parents were conventional, ie bungalowlanders, whilst the rest of them all had broken families, or other major family/growing up issues.
Some of them are mild druggies or long term alcoholics, all have 'alternative' lifestyles all that pseudo-hippy tribal rubbish, and nearly all of them are eachother's carers, for anxiety, or alcohol abuse reasons, or stress and so on.
Now, the ones that have children are now grown up young adults, and you'd think having grown up in alternative households where nobody they knew worked, and all the adults around them were mashed every night of the week and no work ethic existed, that they'd all follow suit.
But to some extent xthe opposite has happened. Admittedly they now work in careers like drug abuse rehabilitation, care homes or are just long term art students, but from what I've seen on their Facebook, they have rebelled against their lazy-ass parent's lifestyle and seem to be creating far more conventional lives for themselves.
I don't live with my children's father, I left him years ago. I do work so hopefully my children will gain a little work ethic. But I can't say it hasn't been a struggle. I have severe anxiety issues, I'm excruciatingly shy and socially awkward - I've walked out of jobs at lunchtime just to avoid sitting with co workers and making conversation - and whilst I do enjoy the routine of work and feeling of usefulness, in an ideal world, I'd prefer not to work, but that's only because of my anxiety issues.
If there was more help put there for people like me, I'd be making bigger and better contributions to the workforce I'm convinced.
As for him and all his friends, how have their lives panned out now they're all approaching 50 after a lifetime of unemployment? Well, very few have cars, they all live in the grottiest parts of town, they don't go on holiday - maybe a camping trip once a year every few years - they don't have new gadgets and appliances, their houses are a bloody disgusting mess of dirt and clutter, they're all unhealthy, overweight, depressed and unambitious, entitled, cynical, uninspired and waiting to die.
The peer pressure must be massive, because not one of the lazy gits will ever get a job now, he'd probably be ousted from their circle.
And whilst the children's dad has plenty of income from his hobby sales, he doesn't contribute a penny towards his kids, and re-invests sales buying back identical stuff he can re-sell again, ... He's now a confirmed hoarder and lives in his attic because he's run out of room to live, and was always a lonely, miserable, abusive bugger.