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

Lonnika

I have no sympathy

Yes, I see that.

And FYI, like Owlez explains, the families who have had 3+ children knowing they can support them and making sensible plans like a years salary in the bank (which he had) have usually going through a domino-effect of several life-changing problems one after an other.

DH's cancer meant he couldn't work but also meant I could only work part time (hands up to previously having been totally naive about how time consuming the caring is for the other spouse). And then he died and I had the additional expense of a funeral and one of my DC was having such bad panic attacks that their GP and HT decided between them that they should only do half days, again, affecting me returning to FT work.

But couples not having kids because of statistically unlikely eventualities doesn't make any sense. If we're risk averse enough we won't even cross roads... Not everything can be planned for so the benefits system is a necessary backstop.

She's talking about people who accidentally conceive and would have continued with the pregnancy because the finances could be supported. Those people won't have those dc now

And thats tough for them but its not unfair. If you can't afford to have an unplanned baby, you can't.

Immigrants are a fantastic pool of talent. There's a reason why so many businesses in my area (particularly in catering and supermarkets) are mainly staffed by Eastern Europeans and Asian immigrants, rather than white English people, and that's because they offer employers better value for money.

Yes, better value for money because they will work 12 hour days and 6 hour weeks and be too scared to ask for overtime. Won't take their legal entitlement for breaks or worry about expensive inconveniences like safety equipment. Or demand that their wages are improved to reflect their hard work. And they'll take jobs with limited rights, zero hour contracts or dubious 'self employment' and work on baseis which allow their employers to avoid inconveniences like maternity pay. They don't ask for anything like flexibility or regular hours or a guaranteed wage.

British workers with their awful expectations of rights, proper wages and basic respect are terrible value.

And waiting tables and stacking shelves is not a 'talent', they're basic skills we don't need to import.

long term unemployed in the UK are often beset by problems which make them unattractive to employers. They are often poorly educated, have poor physical or mental health, or family lives so complicated (and unsupported) that they simply can't hold down a job.

Oh heaven forbid that employers should support and keep on employees with health problems or families.

It would be awful for employers and for the economy if that talent pool was to dry up because of severe restrictions on immigration.

But great for employees whose labour would become valuable again.

I'm not sure if your left wing or not, but these are pretty familiar left wing arguments these days and it's tragic that the left wing has come to a point where it will argue that everything it once stood for is unnecessary and undesirable just to defend the sacred cow of migration.

Because of course poor people and the unskilled don't matter unless they come with some sort of exotic back story to get excited about. Just chuck 'me on benefits for a subsistence life because they're 'bad value'. Work should pay enough to raise families without recourse to benefits apart from the very bottom strata. But it's not even possible on fairly decent or even average wages these days.

Benefits are there to support those who have short-term, unexpected hardship. It's not there to pick up the slack that you foresaw but chose to ignore.
And in the majority of cases the former are who the benefits under discussion are being paid to, not the latter. Well, and also those with long-term unexpected hardship.

I totally and wholeheartedly disagree with you on other people's children not mattering, though - my children are no more deserving of being fed and shod than anyone else's, and to think otherwise is the epitome of selfishness.

(And aside from anything else it makes no sense economically to leave parents so skint that they can't feed and clothe their DC. That's neglect, so then they're taken off them and raised by foster carers, at considerably more expense to society, on both short and long term.)

Agree withowl and six

Some people can be upset by having an abortion. I would be depending on the circumstances

Root canals are a piece of piss....i had mine without anasthetic

Funny how we are all different

Everyone's different and of course some people are deeply upset by their terminations. I was just trying to show the other side of the coin.

And medically, abortion is vastly less risky than having a baby.

Benefits are there to support those who have short-term, unexpected hardship. It's not there to pick up the slack that you foresaw but chose to ignore.
Sorry, I didn't foresee having children with disabilities. I didn't foresee having an abusive relationship. I didn't foresee my own disabilities. When I develop these abilities though, I'll be sure to make an absolute fortune, won't I.

Benefits are there to support those who have short-term, unexpected hardship. It's not there to pick up the slack that you foresaw but chose to ignore.

Ok so how does this (reasonable sounding) principle work in pratice? I have one two year old and at the moment receive no benefits. Say I did decide to quit my job, gamble my savings away in a weekend and have a couple more kids. Does my two year old just go hungry?

Sorry, I didn't foresee having children with disabilities. I didn't foresee having an abusive relationship. I didn't foresee my own disabilities. When I develop these abilities though, I'll be sure to make an absolute fortune, won't I.

Did you go on to have more than two children knowing these things? That's what this thread is about, after all.

Say I did decide to quit my job, gamble my savings away in a weekend and have a couple more kids. Does my two year old just go hungry?

I would say that you should receive no benefits, yes. Why should it be the taxpayer's responsibility? Your child would ultimately come out the worst from your poor decision, but it's not one that should be condoned (implicitly) by the state or the taxpayer.

SuperBeagle so basically your stance is that if we see child beggars on the street, that's OK? Because it was their parents poor choices that put them there and therefore not the problem of anyone doing well?

Your child would ultimately come out the worst from your poor decision, but it's not one that should be condoned (implicitly) by the state or the taxpayer

Yes, and those little poverty stricken buggers can do something useful to earn their crust, my chimney needs a good clean, for instance.

Owl, how do you propose that giving a parent like that money will help their kids? It won't.

By that I mean that if, for example, a parent chooses to piss all of their money away on gambling, any benefits received by the government are hardly going to find their way to the child, are they? No. They'll be frittered away like everything else.

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

six my kids are still being raised my me and dh, even though we both work full time. I'm not convinced there are overall benefits to children from having a stay at home parent.

Where did I say that kids of 2 working parents are not being raised by the parents whenshewas? And where did I say that have a sahp was more beneficial than having 2 working parents?
I simply pointed out the fact that sometimes it is less cost efficient to the state to pay for childcare costs than it would be to pay the level of support hat would apply if one of the parents stayed at home. Talking about the financial costs isn't a judgement of which option is best from a parenting point of view. We have been a household with two full time working parents and children in childcare and we have been a household with one working parent and one not working.

It was implied in the paragraph I copied from your post six

There's a push towards two parents working - we don't value child rearing in this country.

I for one would like to see more of a focus on family life. But by making work more family friendly for both parents.

We don't value child rearing in this country whether people are working or not working. If we valued child rearing then childcare across the board would be of a better quality. Schools would provide a better education. We would support all parents adequately from a financial point of view whether they chose to be a dual earning family or otherwise.
The fact is the govt don't care about family life. Maternity pay isn't great and child rearing starts off there. The govt are only interested in getting people working. Child rearing is not valued.
If you want to assume that I think 2 working parents = not rearing your children then go ahead. But child rearing IMO is about more than just how many parents work we can't, however, deny that the govt have an agenda when it comes to childcare / working parents and the agenda is not on what is best for individual families or even what is most cost effective to the state.

The government is not dictating to you how many children you can have or can afford, Newme . What part don't you understand? You can have as many as you can afford, you can't have more than two and expect someone else to pick up the bill.
I'm getting all this abortion angst either; as if it was actually going to be state ordered??
If you are really living so close to the bone that aborting your third child rather than covering the costs yourself is the only viable option (how could it be, unless you're actually living on the streets?) you really need to get your affairs in order to prevent it happening in the first place.
Your responsibility, your choice, one else's.

I think it's incredibly flippant to label abortion as either on the other. Truth is, it's a roll of the dice as to whether or not it is procedurally straightforward, and- regardless of whether it is or not- whether you are psychologically damaged by it either way.

I spent 20 years with ptsd after a medical termination went badly wrong. it's the main reason I waited until 40 to have a kid- I was so messed up, and it has taken so much therapy to get me able to even think about it never mind articulate what I'm saying in this post. On the other hand, I have friends who have been literally unaffected by it in any way and haven't given it a second thought. And in the middle, other friends and family who have been very sad about their termination, but on the whole got over it pretty well.

I always think it's a bit of a pointless stramash when people get into a squabble over whether abortion is easy or damaging. It is what it is, but there are no guarantees as to how it will go or how you will be affected.

I think a lot of the reason that child rearing isn't valued is that a large proportion of the voting base are older people who had little or no financial help with their children from the state. "I paid out of my pocket to raise my own children, why should I have to pay for anyone elses?"

The reality is that, now that it as is considered normal for both parents to work (coupled with large scale immigration), there is more supply of workers and wages have become less good as a result of this. We didn't have a minimum wage until 1999.

Gone are the days where an average/good salary could support a spouse and 2.4 children (without state support). The downside of democracy is that policies are made based on who will vote for them not necessarily what is sensible for the country (Trump anyone?), and money for kids is not popular amongst older voters or even childless younger voters.

With 1 in 3 babies born to foreign mothers in the UK, it would not be too much of a stretch to assume that even within working families, there are large groups of people who are not able to vote for any child friendly policies, because they are simply not eligible to vote...

Something strange happened to my first line of text, which should have said-

I think it's incredibly flippant to label abortion as being automatically either very damaging on the one hand or a walk in the park on the other.

Green, Lonnika and MuseumofCurry - forgive me if I'm wrong, but you all seem to be othering those on benefits.

No. If I could be accused of anything, let it be othering people who choose to have 3+ children. It's a high-risk path, and my view is further entrenched by my strong sense of impending doom re: climate change, overpopulation etc.

If it makes my position any more palatable, I don't feel much differently about wealthy people having big families (I might even worry more about that).

If it were 1950 I probably wouldn't have a strong view on this. Being that it's 2017, I believe that children born into poverty face greater obstacles than ever because of global seismic issues that are completely intractable, bar some major revolution.

And if anyone talks about pensions or workers without at least acknowledging job automation I will scream

Truth is, it's a roll of the dice as to whether or not it is procedurally straightforward, and- regardless of whether it is or not- whether you are psychologically damaged by it either way

It's really not at all. Like any medical procedure, things can go wrong but that is fairly rare. And we know from research that the vast majority of women are not psychologically damaged at all. That is just how interest groups like to potray it.

I'm sorry for your personal experience but its not a common one, its not the norm.

Say I did decide to quit my job, gamble my savings away in a weekend and have a couple more kids. Does my two year old just go hungry?

Can you not see that perhaps more people would be inclined to do that knowing someone else (the state) will step into the breach, than if the responsibility for their starving two year old was placed squarely on them; where it belongs?
A safety net is for the truly needy, not the feckless idiots who choose not to give a shit.