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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

to expect to reproduce without all the financial burdens humans have to suffer!

72 replies

springbean · 12/04/2007 14:55

Animals don't have to check their finances are in order before they plan a family - why should we have to? Something's wrong with the world we live in...rant rant

Sometimes I'd much rather we all still lived in caves/ primitive dwellings and only had to worry about hunting animals or gathering choice juicy berries. All this worry about paying the mortgage, covering all the bills is getting a bit too much....

Surely society should pay SAHMs more so people can actually afford to have kids before they reach the grand age of two humpty and humpty four...

Thoughts please..

OP posts:

zippitippitoes · 12/04/2007 15:02

individual responsibility versus collective responsiblity you mean?

littleolwinedrinkerme · 12/04/2007 15:37

What an odd thread - are you a troll?

Judy1234 · 12/04/2007 15:42

A lot of people live differently in the UK. Many do live in communes, harvest food from the land etc Why not do that if you prefer it?

lulumama · 12/04/2007 15:43

why not move to a kibbutz or commune?

custy · 12/04/2007 15:44

PMSL!

aww poor you got a mortgage?

opt out then, sell it.

lulumama · 12/04/2007 15:44

"Surely society should pay SAHMs more"

more?? is there some SAHM income i don;t know about ?

littleolwinedrinkerme · 12/04/2007 15:54

and once again....'What an odd thread - are you a troll?'

zippitippitoes · 12/04/2007 15:56

I do love the drama of the thread title though..it is a pity it was rather let down by the quality of the op

lulumama · 12/04/2007 16:28

yes, was looking forward to another SAHM / WOHM spat, cos we haven't had one, for, ooooooh , minutes !!

custy · 12/04/2007 16:30

arn't sahms lazy arses can be arsed get a job " i work for a livin really becuase i grow herbs, rely on their husband to do a real job for their indulgance...type people?

Manictigger · 12/04/2007 17:11

Oh Custy you are a stirrer.

I was expecting the op to be pretending to be non -human (eg. a cat) because I read it as 'how dare I, an "eg cat" be expected to suffer to have offspring like a human has to' but then I am in desperate need of a coffee.

And no (being serious) I'd rather not still live in a cave because if I did, my low birthweight baby might not have survived and having no mortgage etc could ever make up for that.

Judy1234 · 12/04/2007 17:12

Actually the UK is one of the few countries where you can have children without a thought to money because the state will pick up the tab for you never to work ever and tax payers support that lifestyle choice (not saying it's easy to live on benefits but you won't die as you would in many places abroad if you choose not to work as a stay at home single father or single mother)

Nightynight · 12/04/2007 17:48

xenia have you ever BEEN on benefits?

I am never going back to the UK by choice, because its such a bad place to be on benefits, and if I lose my job, that might happen to us one day.

Nightynight · 12/04/2007 17:51

the big difference is that in france or germany they will pay your mortgage and they wont in the UK. So I darent get a UK mortgage, becuase we would lose our house if I lost my job.

cant afford redundancy insurance, and my industry is high risk.

chocolattegirl · 12/04/2007 17:56

Primitive tribes never had more children than there were adults to carry them - so they could all could flee from danger if necessary. Any additional children would have be left behind (as were probably elderly folk to old to run from danger). Hard lines on the tribesman who fancied a big family....

Why shouldn't we pay for our children if we have them? We get a lot of help from the state if we have kids already. How much more do you want??! {hmm]

ebenezer · 12/04/2007 18:01

Lovely idea... but..ummm...who pays the SAHMs? The WOHMs? I think not!!!!

Judy1234 · 12/04/2007 18:47

The working mothers currently pay the stay at home single mothers and fathers on benefits, yes. Many of us are happy to pay that as we know we might also fall on hard times but it's a fact - working mothers pay stay at home mothers where they don't have a man to keep them.

As for benefits being hard - yes very hard, I am sure but you live. You don't die of starvation as you might in a desert in Africa. Even if you didn't get them you can live more easily eating scraps - what's that hobby of getting free left over food or is it only people in London who play around with that stuff? This is a good country to have no work in, much better than most of the rest of the planet.

Original poster

springbean · 12/04/2007 18:49

My thoughts may well be rather odd and ,perhaps, expressed in a less than perfectly eloquent manner, was dangling baby troll on my knee, littleole, but hell they were sincere.

I just think modern life has become far too abstract, and if it is true that success in Darwinian terms has been reduced to ability to work the phones/ computer well in a tiny little tin box called an office, then this has indeed become a somewhat disappointing state of affairs.

Nuff said, and I may well go and try life on a kibbutz.

OP posts:

chocolattegirl · 12/04/2007 19:17

I think I understand Springbean - I sometimes feel as though I'm working to pay for the activities my DD does when I'm not there (which I probably couldn't afford if I were a permanent SAHM so in that case she wouldn't do them anyway). My personality is not really one to lend itself to stopping in a house all day long though - I feel the need to 'escape' if only for a few hours. My need for work or at least an occupation outside of the house is probably psychological rather than financial as I often wondered what my Mum did all day once we'd gone to school (and what she had to spend herself as opposed to money reserved for housekeeping funds?) and I have a thing about being 'trapped' at home whilst everyone else is having a jolly good time at work without me. What that says about me, my generation or society, I'm not quite sure .

Greenleeves · 12/04/2007 19:19

chocolattegirl - being a SAHM doesn't actually mean you have to stay in the house all day, you are allowed out for short periods

chocolattegirl · 12/04/2007 19:21

well yeah .

I think I've got a touch of cabin fever at the moment from spring cleaning most of the week.

scrapper · 12/04/2007 19:31

Greenleeves - Yes, but only if you have a special permission note and don't forget the curfew.

LadyMacbeth · 12/04/2007 19:31

Actually I think Springbean has a point, and FWIW jumping on her and calling her a troll is not particularly nice IMO.

Several generations ago, large families were the norm. The cost of living has gone up and therefore some people do have to do some figures before javing more children.

Houses are more expensive therefore in order to buy/rent a larger house you have to (usually) pay more...

We rely far more on cars to get around therefore by the time we get to dc3/4 we are looking into people carriers...

3.Having another child means more time off work / a longer delay in retuurning to work.

And kids EXPECT a lot more these days -= better clothes, toys etc...

Leading on from that people in general expect more these days - expensive holidays, designer clothes etc...

I am by no means speaking about everybody here, but this is a general trend that society has shifted massively towards. I'm not saying it's right and I'm not saying it's wrong it is the way it is.

I spoke to a man at a wedding the other day. He was going on about his wife wanting to buy a million pound house then dropped in the fact he had a Volvo X50 . In the next breath he started going on about how he couldn't afford a third child! I gave him a him a bit of a (drunken) earful about that one.

chocolattegirl · 12/04/2007 19:37

LM - I often tell my daughter that she has much more than I had at her age. Telling her that we only had 3 tv channels (and some people didn't even have colour - and definitely no remote controls!) when I was six and you just get this 'don't be silly Mummy' look. How on earth did we manage with such deprived childhoods? .

LadyMacbeth · 12/04/2007 19:41

I know CG - my sister is at Uni (she's 11 years younger than me) and she has: a mobile, a car, a laptop, broadband connection, her own TV... When I was at uni {rattles Zimmer} I had to queue for an outdoor pay phone, had a HUGE PC that took up half my room (with no Internet connection) and got to borry my parent's creaking estate one term. How things have changed in the last decade alone!

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