To ask why women financially dependent on men are viewed as morally superior to those dependent on the state?!

[Primarkismyonlyoption]

Just that really, my experience and something I see everywhere.
Having a baby on benefits? Irresponsible. Single mums? A drain on society raising kids without fathers who are growing up to be uncontrollable. A government document citing such women as raising the 'psychopaths of the future'. Women to blame for a cycle of poverty which never ends.
What scroungers. Lack of morals. Less so than married women whose husbands work. Why?
Why are women in relationships where men provide financially known as SAHMs but single mums are just that. Implying thay staying at home is only a morally acceptable choice if you have a partner. The single parents are pushed to find work by baby aged 2. Housework for them isnt seen as work at all but sitting on their arses all day.

Instead of the moral segregation of women based on their relationship status why can we not view their lives as equal in the case of any woman whom cannot be financially independent in their own right, and start to look at how more women can become independent of both men and the welfare state?
And to stop double standards as if mums hide what money they have in order to claim money for their kids they are done for benefit fraud.
If men do it by hiding capital in court for maintenence or divorce, the woman is still gets judged for having to live off benefits whilst men get off scot free and go on to impregnate more whomen whom may or may not stay together. Worse, imo, the judgement of women recieving welfare assistance is doubled if there are more than one father, the children are mixed race, the more children there are or the fact the woman dares to have a sexual relationship with another partner whom she cannot afford to live with because most men cannot or won't take financial responsibility for children who aren't theirs just because they love their mum. And why should they?
As it happens I had babies on benefits and have fucking grafted to get to where I am. I work equally hard as I did then but in a totally different way. Yet the difference in how I am treated is astounding.
AIBU to ask for your views on this and what can we do to change it?

OP, I grew up rurally and not in the UK and it was a different kind of poor tbh. But no, in general you don't go out and get pregnant without a man to support you. You get married first! If he runs off it's very bad luck. But you definitely dont just get pregnant and then expect state support as if it's a basic human right, no.

What about couples going for IVF? If it costs the taxpayer through healthcare how is that different?

ThroughThickAndThin01
"Not on mn they're not. Stay at home leeches I believe a poster called them yesterday."

In the scenario this OP is describing I consider both the decade+ of being a SAHL Mums as well as the benefits Mums to be leeches.

However I can answer why society sees only the benefits Mums as leeches in one sentence "You cost taxpayer's money. Duh."

Sorry guess that was technically two sentences. 😜

And i have every sympathy as it must be horrible, but funded IVF costs the state just as single parents do. It is just a different way of paying for people to have kids.

I think it's more about shaming women who dare to walk away from (even abussive) men and thinking they can do it on their own. I mean single mums being blamed for raising feral children is a joke, at least women are stepping up to their responsibilities unlike absent fathers who do no parenting and sometimes, who don't even pay. Why aren't they blamed? No instead, blame is piled on the women who have left, or been left by men.

Plus there are plenty of relationships out there where women do all the parenting anyway, some even pay all child related expenses, but they aren't blamed because a man exists within the house.

OP, it is interesting reading comments on this thread, even though none are deliberately unkind, they subscribe to the patriarchal acceptance that mothers ought to bear the sacrifice and responsibility for continuing the human race!
If a mother is in a couple then her finances are deemed to be her own business. But society not only tolerates a world without universally available to all childcare funded by taxpayers (like hospitals and roads) but blames and shames mothers who are left holding the baby.

We need to get to a point where we see childcare so all the parents male and female can be free to work and have a life as the norm.

I work now and fund my household and altho i dont waste my time feeling superior to married sahms who in the past made strange or judgemental remarks about my situation, i am proud that i can do what i struggled to do when i first became a single mother. It is a long journey (for me there were many obstacles, the simple equation of low earning power not being = childcare plus rent + bills

Possibly because the stay at home mother has entered into an agreement with her DH that she provides childcare which facilitates him to go to work. They have both discussed and agreed how to structure their family so that it is self-sufficient, rather than it needing to be supported by the state?

Good question op. As far I'm concerned
a SAHM who lives in a sleepy village and is married to a top surgeon. Is not one bit different to a single unemployed mum living on a council estate. I always have and always will alude to that.
Their husbands might be successful. It doesn't mean they are.

Primarkismyonlyoption

"What about couples going for IVF? If it costs the taxpayer through healthcare how is that different?"

If benefits dependent Mum's put their kids up for adoption as babies then less couples might turn to IVF treatments. Win win.

What about gay women needing donors through clinics? Should they have picked a man instead as thats what youre supposed to do? It isnt the 1950s and motherhood has changed. Some for better others for worse.

true if they are in receipt of FIS it is private, usually.

...🙄

You really can’t argue with stupid, so I’ll save my energy.

Well.
I’m financially dependent on both OH AND the state.
So I’m top level shit.

I don’t think the NHS should provide IVF and I think people should pay for their own families. If a guy fucks off and doesn’t provide for his family he should be pursued criminally, as it’s child negligence. Bank accounts and assets should be seized.

I recognise this is not a popular view.

The state hasn't chosen to be financially responsible for you or your offspring

you sound very outraged about this, but it can't come as a shock to you that some marriages do actually work and in many of those the man and the woman choose to take on particular roles. This has been the case since time began

Why do we fight about moral superiority when the solution is that the two people responsible for choosing to have a baby (and it is a choice, not a right) should be responsible for supporting that child.

The state should provide a safety net in exceptional circumstances.

Yanbu! What about the women who had children with a man who didn't keep his end of the deal? The sahms whose husband or partner died? They are judged just as harshly as the women we assume chose to raise children on benefits.

The patriarchy fucks us all over enough without us turning on each other

On AIBU earlier.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3161061-To-be-struggling-with-school-uniform-costs

I judge the men for not supporting their children and letting state pick up the tab.

and start to look at how more women can become independent of both men and the welfare state?

You have to remember that some women are actually truly happy being financially dependent on someone. It works for them.

The government only want women back in work so they get more money from taxes. They don't give to fucks if women feel empowered or on the same level as men.

Companies who employ people only want to employ you so they can make more money. They also don't give a flying fuck if your a women working to feel empowered/trying to be on the same level as a.man.

No one at the top gives a fig about anything but money. Were all pawns in their little money game.

Oh look, another thread slagging off other women.

How lovely.

My first thought was 'goady OP' and my second was 'actually, good question'.

I'd love to say we live in a world where people aren't judgemental and wait until they have all the facts before forming an opinion, but obviously that's not true.

I've never really thought about it this way because I'm always aware that for every single mother on benefits, there's a man somewhere who is or was involved somehow. Sometimes these women are widows, obviously. Occasionally they were irresponsible. Most of the time they're victims of abandonment, feckless and selfish men, domestic violence or something along those lines.

Lone parenthood looks so, so, so hard and draining that I really can't find it in myself to look for yet another stick to beat them with. I know I'm not supposed to say it, but it's true - I think single parents are fucking heroes and deserve medals. (Yes, apart from the shit ones, but there are shit parents in every demographic. You know what I mean.)

so if you are poor and have noone to act as breadwinner because all the men around are unemployed or poor, should never have kids.

No. you have a very first-world problem. Why in the world go and have children if you have no man? Should that be the target of life? Why not aim higher, learn, gain knowledge/skills, earn a decent living, etc?
Why should having a child take precedence over all this? That too on tax-payer money?

I think people who sit around insulting SAHMs whether they are married, cohabiting or single are dicks. But I have never actually met anybody who does this. I hear about it a lot on Mumsnet but I'm starting to think Mumsnet talks a lot of rubbish. Why would anybody care if somebody else stayed at home with their children? If they are single and therefore probably (but not always) taking benefits to do so they are not taking 30 free hours of childcare a week or childcare vouchers. If they are married or cohabiting or working from home or have other income such as rental income or investments, and can afford to stay at home for a while then it really doesn't matter what any busybody thinks. It's nothing to do with them.

Your OP is annoying as it refers to women as 'dependent' on men because you assume that a woman at home mustn't have any money of her own. Not always true and even if it were the couple would be co-dependent. One providing money, the other childcare. One is not feeding off the other like a parasite.

Not
Thing is many people would support that as a party manifesto