Too many kids

[OoerBlah]

So I've just watched Cathy Come Hone, the Ken Loach play from 1965. It's heartbreaking, no doubt about that. But it made me wonder if there is ever a situation where people might think that having kids if you can't afford them is just, well, don't do it?

I know accidents happen and not all kids are planned. I also know that life is complicated and consequences can't be foretold. But particularly in this day and age of so many finding it difficult to find homes and provide for themselves let alone children - is there ever a time when we should say if you can't afford kids, don't have them?

The issue I have is that the debate is distracted with talk about mothers (it's always the mother's fault ) who have "too many" kids.

We have a welfare state which enables businesses to pay low wages which require propping up. Most people who are in benefits already have jobs. Jobs which don't pay enough to live on

That is outrageous.

Surely that is one of those things that everybody has to decide for themselves? And, like, nobody else's business??

We have a safety net

And the fact there are many who have never worked or been on welfare for years demonstrates that

I would rather help families take owership of there choice

But while there is a corlation between the amount of children you have and the amount of welfare you get it's never going to end well

Given that the current rate of population in England averages 1.9 children per woman with an increasing trend to remain childfree/ childless or to limit families to one child, I think that anger invoked by the relatively small number of families with 5+ children is less of a logistical concern and more a rhetorical tool to bash the poor.

I've seen Cathy Come Home a few times and that's the point of view/ message you took from it?

I think as wardrobemalfunction pointed out you may have missed the point.

more a rhetorical tool to bash the poor.

Too right

We have a welfare state which enables businesses to pay low wages which require propping up. Most people who are in benefits already have jobs. Jobs which don't pay enough to live on
we can thank labour for that gem they said I know lets not make employers pay decent wages lets get the working poor addicted ri welfare as well

It falls to women because they ultimately have the choice how many children they have

My oh wants 4 children tbh even 3 is pushing my skill set and if he ever left left me that's the amount I could take care of on my own money wise so I don't have any more but if the sate was paying I wouldn't care

Having babies when you're poor or unable to cope is a mystery to me.

Even more difficult to understand is women having mulitple children with horrible/feckless men. You see it here on MN all the time. A poster with some long and sorry story of her partner gambling/drinking/cheating all thw while doing nothing to help with the children. Often a tale of 'three under five'. And I think hold on, you kept having babies with this idiot? WTAF!

That's rubbish about it being unethical to have more than two children. Many people have no children at all, so just to maintain the existing population some need to have more. Who do you think is going to pay for the actually aging population and be the Drs, teachers, police etc of the future? I have three and I might have another, we can afford it, and I deserve the child benefits for providing future valuable and productive members of society. You're welcome.

We have 4 children (13, 11, 8 and 5). DH would have gone for more if I'd been up for it ).

We currently have my sister's children (12, 9 and 7) from Spain staying with us for 2 weeks! My nephews and nieces are pretty similar in the looks department to our own DC and it's been really interesting seeing people's reactions to what they see as a family of 9 when we've been out and about in London over the school holidays.

In restaurants, people will stare at us as if we should be on a reality TV show. I overheard one elderly couple discussing us in the queue for the Natural History Museum - "Well many Spanish are strict Catholics and some of them are gypsies!" People have no qualms about asking questions like "What car must you have to transport all those children?" DH just tells them he drives a small coach.

We are in a fortunate position financially to not feel as if our 4 children are a burden on the state. We pay for their education, although we may need to use the NHS if one of them needs to go to A&E. DH pays 50% tax on all his earnings.

However, I couldn't say that we wouldn't have had 4 children in different financial circumstances and I would never want to judge anybody for their choices. Where I grew up, large families were the norm and people managed to get by in whatever way they could.

My DD was conceived while I was in a stable relationship and could afford a child. Relationship failed so I was forced to rely on benefits so I could back on my feet. I'm still low income but things are improving but for those reasons I'm choosing not to have more children. I dont want to take from the child I do have for children that arent even born. I feel it'd be a diservice to my DD.

My husband was the 5th of 6, born in a rapid-fire Irish Catholic manner. His parents married when his mother was 33 and father was 31 and had 6 (and two losses) in 10 years. They were always short of certain things growing up - he shared a room with three brothers growing up and it was almost a relief when the older ones moved away to uni, and the two oldest siblings ended up having to take on responsibility beyond their years.

We have one DS, there will be one more, and if it ends up that I need a CS they can lock it all up while they're in there. We'd rather give two the best life possible than have a bigger family and struggle.

The tories have been in power for six long years and they've naff all to sort out low wages.

And as someone has already said there aren't that many people who have huge families and are on benefits and don't work.

So check your facts and stop believing everything the daily mail says.

We don't have a proper safety net. If we did then why are people killing themselves when DWP gets it wrong.

What came first, the low paying jobs or the tax credits. That is the question.

I think limiting people to two children would be better for the country and the environment but who would be strong enough to make that decision?

To avoid the benefits cap those with large families on benefits either claim DLA or work 16 hours to get around it. The cap should never have had work arounds.

It falls down to education but what more can schools realistically do. They can't teach common sense, instil morals etc. Whilst poverty in the UK is not relative like third world, there are still millions that chose the life and don't make any effort to change or improve it. They don't seem to have any clue as to how it will affect the children as there own desires and wants come first.

How many posts do we see asking should we have another child when we can't afford it, women having multiple children with awful men and then replacing with another awful man, quitting work the instance the test turns positive etc.

Contraception is very effective if used correctly, use multiple methods and pregnancy is very easily avoided. Most unplanned pregnancies are from contraception not being used right.

OP you have hugely missed the point of Cathy Come Home. Sadly, I think the problems highlighted have got worse.

I work in a school in a fairly deprived school. The children in families of 6+ kids are nearly all living in poverty. Coming to school in broken shoes, dirty uniform, underweight (and often very small), smelling of urine, sleeping on sofas in the lounge because they aren't enough beds, parents not engaging at all with school... This is no exaggeration. Im not saying that they're not loved (although I'm not convinced all are..) but they're certainly not provided for. I genuinely look at them and wonder why they had so many. Most don't have a father on the scene either. With many there are drug and mental health concerns. It is a really sad state of affairs.

I've no doubt that there are plenty of larger families who can afford to raise a bigger family or who budget and scrimp to make it work, but sadly I don't personally don't come in to contact with them..

It falls down to education but what more can schools realistically do. They can't teach common sense, instil morals etc. Whilst poverty in the UK is not relative like third world, there are still millions that chose the life and don't make any effort to change or improve it. They don't seem to have any clue as to how it will affect the children as there own desires and wants come first.

This is what schools like mine in deprived areas are desperately trying to do! Raising aspirations and showing children what they can be and how they can live a different life to their parents.

DH was self eployed and we were comfortably off when we had DC. Housing benefit forced him to give up work and sign on when things got tough. Now he's working part time and we're on working tax credits, because if he earnt any more we'd lose housing benefit and couldn't afford to live.

Ok, let's say we limit children to two children per woman, what are we going to do when some women, for whatever reason, don't fill the quota and we see a drop in numbers that follows.

Would we ship in immigrants, as suggested above? How much would you have to pay an immigrant to come to a country where they are forced to limit their family size? How would we limit family size? Forced adoption/ forced abortion/ forced sterilisation - yeah, I think immigrants might give England a miss under that regime.

Who will be looking after all these elderly people and all their caring needs when the tipping point hits?

Huge families - no.

Families with three or four children - yep.

It's partly a class thing but it's also that there is an incentive to increase your family size.

The only way that I can see how that might work is if we have forced euthenasia, let's say 75. It really is the southerners letting the side down when it comes to population growth, if only they'd do the decent thing and die early like the northeners. It would have the knock on effect of easing the burden on the pension pot. Win-win.

The current pyramid scheme where we need more and more youngsters to support the old, is obviously ridiculous. Unsustainable.

I am biased, one of my best friends is the last child of a very large family (think six children, I tend to forget the exact number) and while they were all fed and clothed, money was tight. I am of the opinion that her parents were right to have so many children.

Anyway, I don't think it is fair to want to tell the "working poor" how many children to have. They are working. It is not their fault that they don't earn the same money other working people do.

And for unemployed people, likely one or two children are "too many" to afford, yet women are told to have children before 35, and biology doesn't exactly wait until you managed to get a job, either.

Since I live in a country (and I think the UK is such a country, too) where the elderly are paid out their pensions out of the money the younger generation pays into the insurances, everyone profits when children are born, so it is only fair that everyone pays for it.

There is of course people who bring up their children to be useless little shits, but it's not fair to punish all poor people for those few bad eggs.

It falls to women because they ultimately have the choice how many children they have

Um, no?

True, men (in a healthy, equal relationship, that is, there's enough men who commit reproductive coercion) don't have a choice when it comes to having more children, but if we are going to criticise people for having too many children, then men are just as responsible for that. Men can choose to stop fathering children at any point in time.

MrsTerry, what on earth do you mean: So many are finding it hard to provide because the rich are hoarding assets and treating human rights like housing and food as commodities to profit from??

The proportion of truly rich people in this country is tiny. Most people fall into the middle somewhere. And what difference does a rich person 'hoarding an asset' make to a poorer person's decision to start a family?!

Not all families of more than 4 are poor - I am eldest of 6 - all with degrees, most with post degree qualifications including a masters and 2 teachers. Both my parents were from working class families originally but had middle class professions themselves, engineer and nurse. Although my mother didn't work in the workplace after child No 2, she did however do alot at school and also voluntary work supporting Mums and Babies who were still in mid to later teens and had been thrown out by their families.

So we survived on one salary and not a great salary at that, Mum was short sometimes but we never actually ran out completely that I know of, we never even charity shopped until now when she works there and realises the quality of some items being recycled. We found ways round what we couldn't afford - I used to make clothes for me and others, another sister was v creative and all of us still find ways to stretch money its a lifetime habit and lesson which frankly some of the self centred kids could do with today!!