To not accept that there is 'period poverty' in the UK.....?

[rosetree7]

Fully expecting to be told I am BU, but I genuinely do not get this 'period poverty' malarkey.

Some reports say periods cost £42-45 a month (£500 a year.) Never in my life have I - or anyone else I know - spent £42-45 a MONTH on their period. Not even a tenth of that actually.

Some of the things they (supposedly) spend money on are tampons and STs (obviously...) You can get a pack of sanitary towels for less than a pound. Less than 50p in some shops!

And also mooncups.

Although mooncups cost £16 to £22, most mooncups will last 10 years, so you'd only buy 3 or 4 in your lifetime!!! And they also spend on pain relief - but paracetamol and ibuprofen are 16 to 26p a packet from Wilkos. And plenty of other shops sell them for a similar price!

Oh and apparently, they have to keep spending money on new underwear every month. What a load of shit.. I have bought 18 pairs of underpants in 5 years, (at a cost of around £25 for the entire 5 years!) 5 pairs of them are dark coloured - and I wear them for my periods. Never in my life have I bought new underpants for every new period.

So what is this all about? And how on earth are they coming up with such a ludicrous figure as £42-45 a month?! I mean, some girls are apparently using toilet roll as they 'can't afford' sanitary towels? In most cases, toilet roll is more expensive than sanitary towels FGS!

I haven't read the entire thread but as a mother of four daughters and a step daughter I still have not spent anywhere near £25 a month!
Pads are about £2 a pack, so I'd spend maybe £12 if that per month.
I spend more a week on cat food!

@SugarIsAmazing maybe you should go back & RTFT before commenting on your weekly cat food bill

Well in the good old days of me being at school a super tampon and a super pad lasted an hour, and by lasted I mean full of blood and in the case of the pad falling to pieces.

Ok at night it was down to 3 changes in the night so only 3 pads and 3 tampons.

So that's 38 in 24 hours. Now after 4-5 days it got less so I could last 2 hours with a tampon/pad combo.

So we are now at 238 pads+tampons. The prescription meds I needed were free because I was a child. As were the meds to stop me throwing up.

As for a moon cup, no way would I have been emptying and washing that in the school toilets. and can a 10/11 year old really manage a mooncup?

I haven't read the entire thread

Believe me that’s obvious.

cory

@SugarIsAmazing and how fortunate you are to afford to spend that much weekly on cat food.

What if it came down to a choice... cat food or sanpro for the DD's---- because you couldn't afford both?

other people have a choice between human food for their kids or sanpro for themselves

If someone is down to their last £1 we should be looking at how they spend their money/benefits to ensure they aren't spending unnecessarily. ie is the best utility tariffs, learning to economise, know how to batch cook and stretch meals, even that they are on the best Sky package for their income (some packages are very expensive and Sky do their very best to keep your custom).

This reminds me of 'means-testing' a humiliating practice that was used in this country in the 1930s as a way of deciding what support poor families should get. This comment assumes, similarly, that people who can't manage must be at fault in some way.

A friend who has small children and had a partner with a decent job, the partner left, lost his job, so no child maintenance. No jobs available that would fit in with childcare, no childcare that's affordable either. She has no telly, doesn't smoke/drink, cooks and grows own vegetables, no car, a second-hand mobile given by a friend on cheapest possible tariff. She can make her own clothes, knit, and buys all her things from boot sales and charity shops, and gets books from the library for entertainment. She cuts her own hair, doesn't buy make-up, doesn't go on holidays, She is educated beyond post-graduate level. Despite all this no money for birthday or stocking presents for kids, and by presents I mean something between 5 and 10 pounds.

Tell me what re-education should she be undergoing, what deficiency does she have, what aspect of her life is so feckless and wasteful that means that she is a fault for not managing on an allowance that is not sufficient?

Tesco value sanitary towels (10 pack) are 23p

Not a lot of help when the bus fare to the nearest supermarket of any description is £6.50 return though, and periods are irregular.

I always put a pack of towels or tampons in the food donation box in the supermarket when I go.

How utterly blinkered some of the attitudes are on here. There are many reasons why sanitary protection may not be available. I went to school with a girl who lived with an ageing father, she told him when she started her periods, he didn't want to know such details and forbade her to mention it again. And ignored a request for money to buy any, wouldn't buy her deodorant, only allowed baths twice a week. As the family weren't entitled to FSM she got £2 a day dinner money and skipped lunch a few times to buy it. Now, yes, it didn't kill her to skip her lunch a couple of times, but what if she HAD been on FSM? Father wouldn't give her money without every penny accounted for so if she'd been on FSM, there's no way she could have physically got any money to buy anything like that. Not lack of money but an old fashioned approach to parenting by a man who just couldn't deal with it and his daughter suffered. This kind of thing still happens, though maybe because parents are addicted to something and the whole family goes without to meet the addiction - I have washed my dd's friends clothes when she stayed for a sleepover because she tearfully admitted to dd that her parents didn't have enough money to get the washing machine fixed, as well as run the home and have gas, electric and food. I caught dd sneaking a wash in (more astounded than anything else!) And she explained. I spoke to dd after this and I know she does give this girl some sanitary wear from time to time, under the guise of "mum bought the wrong ones" or similar. There have also been items of clothing go through our washing that aren't dd's I don't comment, just wash and dry alongside.
In both these instances the parents may be to blame, or not to blame, but the children suffer regardless.
It may or may not cost the 'average' woman £500 a year for periods, however regardless of what the figure is, it's still beyond some people's grasp to access what they need.

The people posting on her making thoughtless comments about cat food and teaching poor people to budget, should try to be poor for a while. Not just a week or a month but long term so that your shoes/coat/clothes start to fall apart and you can't afford to replace them. So that your appliances fail and you can't afford to replace them, and a launderette costs more than you can spare. Your telly breaks down, your tablet packs up and you can't afford to replace them. Try giving up your pets because you can't afford to feed them or pay for their basic medical care, give up make-up, outings, takeaways, meals out, cinema, clothes, have to limit washing clothes or yourself because your water is a smart meter and you need to save the money, No alcohol, no treats....Go hungry so your kids can eat, then come back and lecture on how poor people must be incapable of budgeting or poor people must be exaggerating, all the poor girls must be choosing to bleed through the wads of toilet paper in their knickers, they must like the idea of being mocked for leaks and bloodstains.

What is it with some of the people on this thread, they not only question whether people are really poor but they would begrudge a young girl a sanitary towel? It seems as if for some people it's not enough for people to be poor but they want to humiliate and embarrass them too, Is it that some people are so perverse that they actually like the idea of people being ground down, and while they're down let's kick them too. Where does this petty, mean-spiritedness come from? It seems that rather than want everyone to have a decent standard of living, there's an active need to demolish others. It's just horrifying, bordering on sadistic and people should have the decency to be ashamed of attitudes like that.

I haven't read the entire thread but as a mother of four daughters and a step daughter I still have not spent anywhere near £25 a month!
Pads are about £2 a pack, so I'd spend maybe £12 if that per month.
I spend more a week on cat food!

Maybe you should then you would realise some people have to priororise either putting money in the electric meter or buying food as they dont have money for both never mind san pro?
What would you do if you had to wait 6 weeks for U.C to start again and didn't have any money to feed your kids never mind your cat?

Its also pretty easy to say people should figure out where they are going wrong with budgeting when you havent a clue how the real world works. A disabled relative has had his disabilty benefit stopped on tje say so of someone who admitted they dont know anything about his illness. He gets £72 a week to live on. This is to pay for rent, travel to hospital for his regular treatments, job centre to sign on (no employer would look at him) heat his house (only one room he cant afford more) and buy food. He used to get £78 but he got a tiny pension come through he paid into years ago so they took the amount off his benefits. If he was working he would get more in tax credits than his pension is worth but as a single man with a debilitating illness they take it off his benefits.
Tell me how does he 'budget' better? If he was a she where is the extra money to come from to buy san pro? As it is relatives pay for his car insurance etc so he isnt isolated and can get to get to hosp (its too far away to get a bus) and his phone in case of emergencies and occasional food shops.

Go on tell me people are living it up on benefits and just need to get thier act together and batch cooking will save the day!

Personally I think pads and tampons should be free and given out at health clinics to any woman who wants them.

I certainly think they should be free to women and girls from families reliant on means-tested benefits.

Dottier

Well said. This thread is a revelation in how people see others who are less fortunate than themselves. Its shameful.

My own period poverty was when I was in an abusive marriage. The financial abuse meant his money was his and mine had to pay the bills and keep a roof over our heads. I had a flipping mortgage! Yet I was eating the cheapest things I could get from the oopsie shelf in the supermarket and stuffing my knickers with loo roll from work. Whilst he ate out every day and fucked off down the pub.

In that case you'd have a job analysing what my benefits were spent on because I didn't get any.

If someone is down to their last £1 we should be looking at how they spend their money/benefits to ensure they aren't spending unnecessarily. ie is the best utility tariffs, learning to economise, know how to batch cook and stretch meals,

I work on a project that does that (among other things) for vulnerable families. Our funding has just been reduced by 30%, because of spending cuts.

Perhaps you'd like to start a campaign for investment in coaching services for people who lack independent living skills? I'll happily provide you with evidence that it actually saves money in the long run.

Willow agree and your post about your relative is all too familiar, it's appalling what people with disabilities are being put through, can't believe how many people manage not to notice and then when they do spend all their energy on finding ways to blame the person not the system.

Bishop I'm sorry you went through that. I think UC will make life worse for a lot of women/children, unless I'm wrong I understand that it will be paid per family so that abusers will be able to control money and women will find it even harder to leave. Not to mention lack of funding for shelters and other important services.

It's incredible that people are literally killing themselves over benefits being stopped and yet still people come along and claim there's not a problem.

If someone is down to their last £1 we should be looking at how they spend their money/benefits to ensure they aren't spending unnecessarily

That statement is chilling. We (who are the we? Well-off people?) should look at how they (so they are poor people, right?) spend their money to make sure they aren't spending unnecessarily? What do you class as unnecessary? Who will define what is luxury and what is necessary? How will this be policed? What will the punishment be if they spend on something that is considered unnecessary?

What I find utterly galling about threads like this is that people are so entrenched in their own privilege that they're unable or choose to deliberately not to see how their experiences don't apply to everyone.

But hey, we can all relax, there's not period poverty because someone on MN says there isn't.

YABVU OP. Also some of the comments on this thread are ridiculous.
While it may not cost £42 a month it does often cost more than people can actually afford. The cheap San pro are not any good for a lot of women. They are not absorbent enough.

Of course there is period poverty.
Unfortunately someone chose to use a less common amount of 25 quid per month for someone with exceptionally heavy periods. So they lose the argument.
Often people simply don’t have the education nor ability to budget - and these are the people who most need to budget. That is life.

Often people simply don’t have the education nor ability to budget - and these are the people who most need to budget

You can talk about budgeting all you like but if you have cut all our outgoings down to the bone and your incomings fall short of that, budgeting won't help you.

Thymelord not to mention that it costs more to do this than to pay the benefits in the first place, as well as the fact that if you cut people's spending back to the bare bones it causes further problems -mental health issues from isolation and lack of stimulation for a start. All of which lead to social breakdown, huge health costs and so on. In addition to which paying people decent benefits cuts down potential social unrest. It was thought that the lack of support available in countries like Germany in the 1920s/30s was a factor in the huge social unrest that led to the rise of facism and ultimately WW2.

What I find utterly galling about threads like this is that people are so entrenched in their own privilege...

How do we change that? Because you're right it's appalling. Much better to teach people to have empathy and kindness than "the poor" to budget and "make better choices"

My DC have incredibly privileged lives but they know and recognise it. I can't imagine them ever expressing a view so limited as some stated here.

*How do we change that? Because you're right it's appalling. Much better to teach people to have empathy and kindness than "the poor" to budget and "make better choices"

My DC have incredibly privileged lives but they know and recognise it. I can't imagine them ever expressing a view so limited as some stated here*

Totally agree.

Although I suspect that a good many people who have less than edifying views don't want to change. They'd rather demonise those less educated or less privileged because that is easier than acknowledging that simply by a stroke of ill-luck their lives could change in an instant.