To think the abortion rate will increase after April this year?

[RocketQueenP]

When the new rules on tax credits / universal credit come in ie when no one can claim benefit be it top up or otherwise for any more than 2 children

Sadly I am helping a good friend cope who has just had an early abortion, she did not plan the pregnancy and one of the main reasons is she and her DH are low earners/ They already have 2 at school, and won't be able to afford to have this baby. She is devastated and has admitted they could have squeezed another DC in if it wasn't for the new rules. I think this will happen a lot. :(

In times gone by people would adopt out children that were unplanned that they couldn't afford and I really feel that this is what we are headed back to. Not adoption but, you get my drift

I also think the government fully know this and its one of the reasons they have brought it in. Simple population control

Loved it.😭😭😭

I have been told by a frenemy that the reason I could bare to only have 2 kids is because I m not a maternal person (?!?!?!). It isn't, it is because I couldn't afford to give three kids the opportunities (not eating Tesco value beans every meal, going swimming once a week and having there own rooms... god my standards are low) that I am able to give the two I have.

To make shore we don't have any surprises I had a coil fitted when my youngest was 3 months and my dh has just had a vasectomy. If we still manage to get pregnant, I will be very surprised and skint as abortion is not for me.

I don't think it is fair to say the government is going to force people into abortions. Most people haven't gone to the lengths me and dh have to avoid pregnancy. Why not?

My child at a very oversubscribed and highly regarded independent school must be a one off then green seeing as he has more than one sibling. Or maybe he isn't seeing as a quite a few of his classmates also come from larger than average families (and 1 in six of them are pooer too because they are in receipt of bursaries - most of those being full bursaries)!
But you know, poor lamb has nowhere to do his homework, no peace and quiet and not enough cash for the latest iPhone so he is clearly doomed.

Apologies for previous post thought I was posting elsewhere.

He is at a private school with prep facilities and tiny classes to pick up the pieces. Sooooo not comparable to a family of 6 on benefits squashed into a 2 bed flat.

No, BillSykesDog - I am not a left winger who thinks low paid jobs are good. I think the whole system is buggered and that you are living in cloud cuckoo land if you think that in a capitalist system with limited controls, like the one Labour presided over for years, crowing at the Tories because it was out-Torying them in its intense relaxedness about uncontrolled capitalism, we will get rid of low paid jobs (to the rest of the world, 'cos sod 'em, we don't care about foreigners in foreign countries being exploited if it means everything is cheaper for us) and create a utopia of highly paid and interesting jobs which every citizen of this country will be able to access if they want to.

He isn't at a prep school with tiny classes - he is at an academically selective senior school and the classes are not tiny. He didn't get into the school by magic, he had to sit an exam alongside other boys who might have had the benefit of prep school Since nursery and lots of tutoring. But you know, we might not be well off and we might get some tax credits (due to one of our children being disabled) but I can still dedicate enough time and effort to make sure he has a decent start in life (same as I will do for my mother children). Being poor does not make you a shit parent. Plenty of poorer people do well by their children, even if they have more than two.
Bein cramped in a tiny flat can't be good for any children regardless of income level but up North most families don't live like that whether on benefits or not. My brother rents a 4 bed house for less than £600 per month. A family earning £120k in parts of the south east might struggle to rent a 4 bed house anywhere due to cost. Like I said, living costs are a major issue.

What is lost on most people, as can be seen on this thread is that not everyone plans for their situations. They don't sit down and work out how many children they can afford, the consequences for existing children etc. And the removal of tax credits won't make them change into different people. The children will just suffer.

If you think that's ok, and that it's ok for the Tories to carry on giving massive tax breaks to the fat cats and to allow the gap between rich and poor to get wider and wider then you haven't thought it through properly imo.

I'm sure that being in that circumstance it must be tough.

However I do agree with the majority here.

Our generation are extremely entitled these days. (I'm 33 by the way, so I count in that generation. Did I claim my 80 quid a month when I had my first DC? Of course. Would I have thrown my toys out the pram if it was no longer available? NO. It's great that the government help us out to the extent that they do. Some people in other countries aren't so lucky!

As someone else said up thread, contraception is free on the NHS. The ability to prevent an unplanned pregnancy is there.

I'm sorry for how your friend must be feeling but in hindsight she had the ability to prevent her situation and didn't take it.

So why the need for pp payments then? Stats show that kids from the poorest families tend to do less well at school. I'd rather scant resources went on children already here and there was an end to the open cheque book culture. Other sections of society have to take responsibility. I see no reason why those on benefits can't too.

What is lost on most people, as can be seen on this thread is that not everyone plans for their situations. They don't sit down and work out how many children they can afford, the consequences for existing children etc. And the removal of tax credits won't make them change into different people. The children will just suffer.

Do you think that low-income people in the UK follow roughly the same decision-making process with respect to childbearing as low-income people in countries have essentially no welfare state?

Six correlation does not equal causation. No one has suggested otherwise.

I expect they do, I guess it can be worked out if we look at birth stats in countries with no welfare - are they lower?

Because lottitieand Mia that is unfortunately life. Children suffer all the time for the decisions there parents make.

round, a poorly paid job here is a well paid job in Poland or India or most of Africa. And no, we won't automatically have the skills to do all jobs, which is why we need skilled migration not unskilled. And I'm all in favour of higher prices to pay better wages, but we're never going to convince producers to pay that unless labour becomes a more valuable resource.

But yes, what I will take away from that is that you are a left winger who supports low paid jobs because unfettered migration is more important to you than poor people in this country having any quality of life.

What is lost on you lottieandmia is that some people don't make plans because we have a welfare state that will support them whatever the outcome. MAYBE if that wasn't so supportive some people would make different life choices

The focus on income tax is a bit of a distraction. There are other ways to tax that need careful consideration. Really we need an international approach to taxing international corporations with no-one offering them lower rates, and sharing information. But with Brexit and Trump, two of the biggest economies in the world will put self-interest first, so that's not going to happen anytime soon. When the next generation is in charge I hope they learn their game theory, and move on from a purely capitalistic, nationalistic approach. It has to happen for climate change, as well.

In the meantime, I would support a proper re-linking of national insurance and various services. And I think it will have to rise to cover care for the elderly - a massive ticking time bomb.

I don't know how much of a difference pp payments make green. Nine of my children have ever come under the bracket which entitles them to pp funding. Most families on tax credits don't meet the criteria for pp funding as most families on tax credits are in some form of employment. I don't know if people are confusing benefits with unemployment but many people getting some kind of benefit are in employment. It would be interesting to see how Much of tax credits is paid solely as the childcare element. Some families certainly get more tax credits for having 2 working parents than they would if one stayed at home due to the prohibitive cost of childcare (and they are often poorer for working as they still have to top up the childcare tax credits themselves). There is defienetly a push toward having 2 working parents even if that costs the state more than having one parent working full time and one parent stay at home. We just don't value child rearing in this country and that is one of the reasons that I campaigned to keep child benefit universal.

I have works with troubled families and I have seen first hand the fact that some children from poorer households do badly and have poor life chances but there were middle income families that I worked with whose children were also doing badly (particularly in the senior years). Some children from
Poorer families will always do badly in life because certain things are more prevalent in poorer families - parental learning difficulty, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, low parental aspiration but taking money away isn't going to change those things. Those people will still have children - hence why some of the families I worked with had repeated children removed at birth by social services. This tax credit policy won't change shit parenting, it will haunt make life even shitter for those children. And if parents are not providing for their children and are spending the money on drugs / alchohol the children should be removed.

^^none of my children, not NINE. I don't have that many

Lottie, they will have to start thinking then won't they just like everyone else who limits their family due to resources.

Millions don't at the moment as it's well known that the state will provide more money for every extra chid plus the option to not work. If we don't change that mindset future generations suffer.

If parents are having children they can't afford now or in the future then that's the parents fault, nobody else's. Not the government, tax payers etc. They need to man up and take responsibility, giving them more money solves nothing.

If parents are having children they can't afford now or in the future then that's the parents fault, nobody else's.

I agree with that, but it is still the children who are not at fault that will suffer.

Giving them money solves nothing? That's obviously wrong. Children do much better brought up not in poverty.

But you can't go on forever six. Funding parents is not always funding kids. As I believe you have already suggested. People make choices, I would suggest those who want the best for their children will not have more than they can afford.

Splendid I would happily give money to support those in poverty. But why anyone would want more than two children in those circumstances is beyond me.

Other sections of society have to take responsibility. I see no reason why those on benefits can't too.

Green, Lonnika and MuseumofCurry - forgive me if I'm wrong, but you all seem to be othering those on benefits. They (we - since I claimed them myself for a while) are not a sub-species. I did and do take responsibility for my family - I work longer hours then many other posters on this thread, for example, who have the luxury of turning work down and only being part-time.

But sometimes shit happens. A critical or chronic illness. Mental illness. A bereavement. Sudden unemployment. And then most of us (anyone except those with such high earnings or private means that they have a very large buffer) become those who need benefits to help pay for food and new school shoes and to cover the gas bill, in the short term.
In a few years time there will be people who had a third child at a time they could afford to, who go through the trauma of a big life change, resulting in a change from two parents working full time to one who can barely work part time. They then go off to a benefits office, (probably blushing and half hating themself, like I was) and find out that the money they will be awarded will only take into account that they need to feed and clothe the first two of their children. Quite what they'll do to afford to look after the third/fourth I don't know. I imagine that they'll eat very little themselves, and that rates of prostitution will rise.