I agree with what you've sad I post, but how would you start to reform them?
As a first step ? (cos otherwise I'm going to break the mumsnet character limit again)
Set up and unleash "The No Parental Opting Out" Task Force. Whatever it costs. Let them loose like Rottweilers who have been denied food for 2 days. Equip them legally, resource wise and with as much positive PR as humanly possible. Allow them to treat sudden drops in income, self employment, disappearing acts, chosen non earning dependence (on new SOs or family) as Big Red Flags. Investigate, interview, peruse account books in minute detail, set up "cash in hand" stings. Make deals where possible with other countries, "we'll chase, harass, collaborate with prosecution and deny visa for your absent, non contributing parents if you'll chase, harass, collaborate with prosecution and deny visas for ours" Create the wide spread sensation that the risks of non contribution are so high that any potential savings just aren't worth it. Slash your non-contributors from the large "cos I can" generally rather risk-averse group to just the much smaller, hardcore "no, won't, shan't - whatever the price" group.
Rigorously use the word "parent" in all comms to avoid the discussion going off at a tangent about which sex is Badder than the other one, cos ... if we want a resolution, who the main offenders are sex-wise matters less than a unified response and expectation that this behavoir stops. And to be honest people don't do this in a vacuum. There is often a supporting cast (family, new partners, friends, bosses, community at large) who actively collaborate in hiding/minimising declared funds and provide non-pariah "oh you are sooo justified" status for offenders. The collaborators don't all have a Y chromosome.
As I understand it, in "don't be judgmental" Britain calling things immoral is not the most popular tool. But peer pressure/social sanctions (AFAIU the research) have proven to be one of the most effective ways to get people to change how they act/react. So personally am well cool with both the act of opting out of parenthood AND the act of collaborating with said opt-ing out ..being the focus of a gov.funded campaign as hard hitting and effective as clunk click (sans a JS figure this time) and anti drink driving. This has to be presented to the public for what it is. An absolute crisis. Not merely of the economic kind, but also one that has the potential to badly fray the fabric of society as ever growing numbers of children grow up bearing the brunt of parents who have wholesale failed to place their wants behind their children's needs.
It will be expensive. It will also be worth it. IMO.
Additionally I am rather taken with Malice's idea. Both for the potential it has to curb the enthusiasm for opting out of parental responsibilities, and also for the "softening" effect it could have on the gen. pub. You'd need them onside (and not feeling like things are unfair and unjust) longterm in order to avoid an upset of the apple cart via the ballot box as a transition was taking place. I would put that forward as something to mull over for both intended and unintended consequence, and detailed workability.
Then I'd look at how the tax system could be altered to provide low earners with a more livable wage. So it is worth taking on more hours AND you are classed as a worker not a benefit claimant PLUS your lifestyle choices no longer factor into your income in any significant way so there's no mileage in slapping you on the front of a tabloid.
I would introduce the voucher system we have over here to allow for casual work to replace zero hours contracts * will explain details if anybody is interested, but don't have time cos am supposed to be getting ready to go to work.
I do realise all the above looks more like semantics and PR than saving money. But there is a method in my madness. Placing working people in a category that has become synonymous with potential undeserving "feckless dependence" and carries stigma is not kind. The box you are clumped into can and does breed a certain kind of hopelessness and helplessness. Especially if you are bombarded with messages that you are persona non grata. For every person who rises to it like a perfect challenge and beats their way out of the box to become Ms MadeOfSelfMadeMoney, there are many many more who are left with full blown MH issues (depression) and sub clinical emotional issues (loss of self confidence and "get up and go") that can have longer term implications. Dignity matters. IMO.
Benefits that flex according to outgoings have to go. The gen. pub in significant numbers is always going to have the hump with that. It is too much of a contrast with wages/salary, where you plan your outgoings based on what is coming in, not raise your outgoings in the knowledge that this will generate an automatic hike in income. Benefits need to be a fixed income. Set a fixed family rate with any variations based solely on regional cost of living realities (London weighting for example) . If Malice's idea can be worked into that equation once it's been fleshed out and de-bugged for unintended consequence, so much the better. BUT I don't think it would be sensible to just pull the rug from under the feet of people who planned their family/housing on the basis of "more outgoings, more income". Because if there are large numbers of them there is a risk of social destabilisation as people scramble (and fail) to plug the gap between what they have, and what they need. It also places existing children at the sharp end. It would best serve everybody to do a phased in transition from one system to the next so pre existing children "aged out" of the existing system rather than got chopped out of it. Do a 43 week cut off warning of "no rise for additional children" for people waiting for their existing kids to age out of the old system. With a count down. So nobody with a pair of eyes, or ears could miss it. Word it in the simplest, least obscuring terms possible. That should minimise the risks of a sudden birth rate bubble in response as some people try to squeeze one more wanted baby in under the old system.
ABOVE ALL set out to challenge the wide spread belief that children are these uniquely resiliant, flexible little creatures that adapt to being denied what they need and want, can roll with all and any "non abusive" curveballs they have no say in, in a way that adults cannot be expected to.
Because it makes no fucking sense.
I've been an immigrant since 89, so my outlook has obviously been coloured by the cultures I have been immersed in. Probably as a result of that (and the grim march of "progressive" time) I sometimes find British attitudes towards children to be too heavily weighted towards making adults feel better about themselves when they have fucked up, or made a priority of what they want over their children's needs. I do not understand the reticence to embrace the concept of sacrifice, even when it's painful, for the sake of one's children. I do not understand the disinclination to require people to acknowledge their fuck ups/self prioritising, or look in a less blinkered fashion at how it has cost their children short and potentially long term. Because I do not think the alternative is fair, or kind.
You might not be able to change what one person has done, but by glossing over it and reframing it as "parental personal happiness is always the key to child happiness" (like the kid is some kind of parasite whose emotions are always perfect reflections of the host, rather than an individual, but short, person in their own right), a mind set has been encouraged. A mind set that IMO fed the rise of social and family issues to the point that a gov. saw stepping in as provider as the only realistic solution for vast numbers of children. A stepping in that promptly became a factor in the on-going rise in the very issues it sought to allieviate.
My non-properly-British-anymore lens probably makes me the last person who should have a hand in redesigning the British system. I think I have probably lost too many chunks of a "culturally sympathetic" status I once had. If a solution isn't in tune with domestic prevalent attitudes (even if it has a view to changing them) it'll hit road blocks of "what is this contemptible, offensive plan" before it even gets off the ground.
I'm not some child-centric, adult hating bastard. I promise. I just don't believe the current adult feelings first/the priority is making anybody happy.
There will always be unfeeling people who leave havoc in their wake and give it not a moment of thought. But I don't believe the majority of people currently failing to be as good a parent as they could be belong in that group. IMO the cruelty of lowered social expectations has left many opt out parents left in a life long struggle of having to justify and minimise their actions to themselves, while a somewhat buried Jimeny Cricket pricks at them in ongoing dissent.
We (my sister and I) belatedly discovered our father's death via the online chatter of Internet randoms. I called the manager of the entity of one of the sites where the information was being shared. She had known my father for 20 years. And nearly fell off her chair to discover he had children.
Once she stopped being slack jawed with shock, she thought out loud. And said one of the saddest things I have ever heard.
"he also did have this constant air of sadness around him".
With the best of intensions social expectations were lowered and non judgmentalism became the order of the day. In the name of a happier, kinder world. People who could have, should have, risen to the challenge of parental responsibility were seduced into flopping into self-prioritising. The unintended consequences have revealed the "progress" to be all too often an accidental act of cruelty that has left a tottering mountain of deeply hurt, sometimes permanently damaged humans in its wake..
To change anything at all, first there needs to be acknowledgment of that. And a willingness to make sure any redesigned systems don't come with their own unintended consequences. Cos that would be more salt on an already liberally salted wound. The benefits system is in large part a sysmtom of a far more concerning malaise. Tackling the latter has to be part and parcel of resolving the former.