Is it a right to have Kids you can’t afford!?!

[KN2212]

I am totally fed up of listening to people complain about how broke they are after having kids. Babies and childcare are cripplingly expensive but that’s pretty much common knowledge, right?

I fell out with a long term friend of mine about a year ago. Since the birth of her DD all she did was complain about the situation she’d orchestrated.
Her and her (now ex) partner had no home of their own, low income, high debt and no savings when they decided to go ahead and have a child (though granted had been together for 7 years). The poor boyfriend busted his butt working 13 hour shifts 6 days a week in a call centre whilst they all lived in one cramped room at her parents and she complained he wasn’t doing enough. Due to her crippling shopping debts and inability to hold a job they were never going to make enough to live and knew that pre getting pregnant.

(Other friends are in similar situations, complaining about how they ‘can’t afford to go back to work’ because of childcare costs but equally can’t afford to live if they don’t go back to work!!! Come on and take some responsibility you knew this was going to be your situation.)

Whilst she was complaining over coffee one day about how the benefit system wasn’t giving her enough free money I called her out on her obvious poor planning and asked why she didn’t wait and save pre child. She got very defensive and said that they were never going to be able to afford a child due to their financial situation so why bother waiting?

It just got me thinking really hard, since when did having children become a right? It seemed so clear to her that she deserved to have a child despite not being able to afford one and that the government should now support her because she deserved to have her daughter.
Am I wrong in thinking that having children you can’t support is completely irresponsible and shitty and entitled?

I know a lot of women who want kids but are having to wait and plan and save and do it ‘the right way’ it seems unfair to them. When women like my ex friend do exactly what they want without planning and then hold the government over a barrel saying that their kids don’t have food and clothes. It just sucks like the children shouldn’t have to suffer but the tax payer shouldn’t have to pay for your unfair choices.

To clarify I have empathy for unplanned pregnancy’s no contraception is 100% but that’s not the kind of situation I’m talking about here. I’m talking about planned pregnancies.

Or perhaps the OP's question could have been rephrased as: "Would it be right to prevent people on a low income from having a family?'

Doesn't sound good that way round, does it?

I hear you OP but I don't know the answer. There will always be people who take responsibility for themselves and others who expect things handed to them on a plate.

My friend stopped at 1 as she couldn't afford more, couldn't afford a bigger house and the childcare. Others who are in social housing for example don't necessarily have to think about that as they can apply for a bigger house if necessary.

For me I think it's those in social housing who have more and more children then complain when the council can't give them 4/5/6 bedrooms houses.

I couldn't agree more OP.

Life has become all about people knowing their rights and not understanding responsibilities. See every complaint about schools, lying to the NHS to get IVF and thinking that the patriarchy somehow owes women a living so they can have babies.

I think you should be asking why people don't plan better. Most of us were not planned, but we are here and have families of our own. Poor people and those who are not poor but terrible with money will always have kids. That's just the human condition. Unprotected sex is often the only pleasurable thing many have and the results are often permanent. I don't think it will ever change but at least we're not having 17 kids like many did pre contraception

Meh, waiting for the 'right' time - when exactly is that OP? When your body is most primed to have children is also the time in life you're most likely to be just scraping by as you build careers, save etc. But if you wait until you're really stable, usually well past prime fertility, you risk blowing all your gains on IVF (happened to several mates of mine) with zero guarantee of it ever resulting in a child (know one of those too).

As has already been pointed out, one of the biggest problems is an unequal society where many, many people will struggle to ever have enough - so why not have babies while you can and build your life around that? Why is a child benefit any different from the govt building roads for you to drive on? Lots of poor people can't afford cars, why should their taxes go towards paying for you to careen around in your environment-destroying status symbol? Why is it always the poor who are 'entitled' for their choices when the wealthy benefit off of various govt programs just as much and sponge just as much? Concert halls and tax evasion is just a bit more glamorous perhaps - clearly not entitled at all

And then there's the very clear logical fallacy: don't have children you can't afford. You do realise that can change in a heartbeat right? A car accident, serious illness, a death, job loss - your own ability to provide for your children is actually incredibly frail. Of the mums I know who have been on benefits, 2 were widowed early (cancer and heart failure, both in their 30s with very young children), 1 left the husband who beat her, 1 lost their sole source of income due to a major depressive episode, 1 has a brain injury from a car accident. All planned their kids, all could afford them ... until they couldn't. So knock on wood OP and get your head out of your arse - next time it could be you.

Totally agree OP.

I planned for my lovely daughter, but I didn't plan the marriage breakup when she was three years old. My parents were marvellous and supported my daughter and me for a couple of years. Life happens - you're extremely lucky if it all works out how you plan it - mine turned out better, as I met my lovely second husband once I got back to work, who has been an amazing father figure and husband.

Since when did having children become a right?
Since the beginning of time, for all animals, human and non human
Our bodies are built to be reproductively successful. I understand you are saying people should be financially stable before having children but if you are going to bring rights into it people should not be denied reproduction because of social constructs such as money and the unequal distribution of it.

Any time there's a 'should tax payers be paying for NHS IVF' thread that's exactly what post upon post upon post argues

That children are a privilege not a right
That if you can't afford to drop £7k in one go for a cycle of IVF, that you can't afford to have children

Infertility is defined by the WHO as a disease of the reproductive organs

But it's argued time and time again that public funds shouldn't be used to treat this disease because children are not a right

More and more CCGs are cutting all funding for IVF, so in a few years I've no doubt that only the wealthy who can fund private treatment will be able to have a child, if they or their partner have reproductive organs that - through no fault of their own - don't work

Don’t agree OP. You are talking as if the UK childcare system is a permanent structure which somehow trumps a biologically normal desire to have children.

I’m in France. We pay higher taxes, yet one of the benefits is that state funded creches / nannies / etc are available at a minimal cost to all, from three months of age. Nursery school starts when the child is 2-3, and runs from 0830 to 1630 (plus garderies earlier and later), four days a week, free of charge (except lunch).

The problem in the UK isn’t the perfectly normal desire to have a baby. It’s the fact that collective, state-funded childcare is totally lacking, and that the free-market, profit-making option dominates. I can’t believe the amount that friends in the UK pay for their childcare!

So in a way yr right: many people in the UK can’t ‘afford’ to have a baby in the current system. But the solution is to provide decent, affordable child care rather than leaving it to the market to decide who gets to have a baby and who doesn’t.

People do kind of need to be born though to keep society going. You don’t want a situation where there aren’t enough of a younger population to support an aging one

But if you wait until you're really stable, usually well past prime fertility, you risk blowing all your gains on IVF (happened to several mates of mine) with zero guarantee of it ever resulting in a child (know one of those too).

I'm not suggesting you were saying this at all, but just as a follow on from my PP, IVF for age related subfertility is a minority of cases - the majority of IVF treatment is due to medical factors that don't discriminate by age: eg male factor (the biggest single reason for needing IVF); tubal infertility, ovulatory disorders (eg PCOS), uterine factor (eg endometriosis) amongst others

Although it is absolutely the case that leaving it later and later to start TTC will absolutely make it more difficult to conceive at a population level, as fertility does of course decline with age

Children aren't a right, that's ridiculous. Having a body built to reproduce doesn't mean you have a right to have a baby that's like saying men are born with a penis, which is a sex organ therefore sex is a human right!

Children are a want, a desire. But they are not a right.

I think you have a point and that having children is something you should do when you are financially secure in a perfect world. There are other things to consider though like age and fertility and I think I would feel really uncomfortable saying only those people who are financially stable can have kids. Some people would never get the opportunity to have a family if that was the case. I think limiting the amount of child benefit to just one or two children though is sensible. There should not be the case where people get more money for having kids if on welfare. It is a tricky thing because it is not the child's fault if their parents circumstances change or if they were irresponsible enough to bring them into the world with no idea how they would support them.

When I had my two children we could afford them, not high earners but doing ok. Then we split when smallest was 3 momths and suddenly I had two lots of childcare if I needed to work, plus my job involved 5am starts and weekend days which childcare doesnt exist for. So I had to quit my job. Then the realisation that even though I was goos at what i did it is always going to be weekend working so I need to retrain.

Suddenly I find myself a jobless single mum with a nearly 4 year old on MRC of DLA and a nearly 2 year old who has spent the majority of the last year poorly.

Yes in mumsnet world we probably should have wauted until we had x amount in savings but I also knew fertility would be stacked against me. In reality life just happens sometimes and where we were 5 years ago sure as hell isnt where we are today sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.

It is tight but we get by but unfortuantly that is reliant on benefits until I get my degree finished.

A problem high-lighted here is we have moved away from a benefit system that was supposed to provide a safety net for people*, to one where many people rely on benefits to get by, even though they are in paid work. If we scrapped Tax credits (which are really a subsidy to employers) and raised the minimum wage to something more sensible, many people would move off benefits.

*Some people will always need support, and should rightly be given it.

Tilly you massively taken that thread out of context and using it a vague way to prove your own point

Wow, my grammar is amazing this morning!

We have stopped at one as one is what we can afford. I want to be able to give him every opportunity we can and wouldn’t be able to do that with two.

Saying that, if I was going to have a child in poverty I wouldn’t have had any. Why would I bring a child into this world already at a disadvantage, it’s hard enough as it is.

I'm on maternity leave ATM. I'm going back to work in January and will have a 3 year old and 1 year old in nursery. Even with "free" hours for the older child, the bill will be a grand a month. It's only just worthwhile me working. If I was on minimum wage or my employer did not allow me to work flexibly then I'd have to be a SAHP. Also I came very close to being made redundant while on maternity leave. If that had happened I would have struggled to find something else suitable.

I think a system where childcare is so high that people can't afford to work is wrong and that the taxpayer should be supporting children. I consider looking after the next generation to be a good use of taxes.

I also think that people have the right to have a child, it's the most basic biological urge. All living things are just looking to reproduce then die.

I’m really surprised at how out of context some people have decided to take what I said (first time poster)!

🙈 children should be only for the wealthy? That’s not what I said AT ALL. I asked if it was a right for someone who had no home, a low income and circa £35,000 in credit card debt to choose to have a child she very openly could not afford?

I grew up in a low income home who geared their budget to myself and my brother and that worked just fine. My parents had little but also didn’t have flash cars on finance or thousands in debt.

Should my friend not have taken responsibility for the dire financial situation she was in and chosen not to do it?

OP I agree that the person in question should have cleared some personal debt before trying to have a baby; their individual circumstances could have been improved so they weren’t facing hardship.

It isn’t about needing to earn a certain amount or being a homeowner before having a child, or that people on a low income don’t have a right to have children. So many things are out with immediate control or out of reach and you can’t wait forever.

It’s about getting a slight handle on the things you can control.

The rights of the fertile to procreate whatever their fitness or circumstances are protected while the rights of the infertile to access medical treatment to enable them to procreate are heavily circumscribed. Still no one said life was fair....

Well what you actually said is

Am I wrong in thinking that having children you can’t support is completely irresponsible and shitty and entitled?

which would mean never having children for a lot of low income people.

But almost no one knows that they will be financially comfortable for life, most people are only one or two missed pay checks away from losing their homes whether through rent or mortgage arrears. We would have a very small percentage of the population allowed to reproduce if you had to prove you are financially comfortable for life before having a child. And if these very wealthy people are the only ones to reproduce, do you think they will want their children to work as members of the newly created lowly paid underclass who would not be allowed to reproduce? So who then will take on the less desirable, menial jobs that keep the country running behind the scenes?

We should have a universal basic income, and properly funded early years childcare, or subsidised time off for parents who wish to care for their own DC for the first few years of life, then flexible working to fit around school. There's no reason in this day and age that a great number of jobs could be done at least partly from home due to portable computers and the internet. I think it would make for a much more functional and happy society. Won't ever happen though sadly.

I think everyone who wants them does deserve to have children- it’s actually written into the human rights act!

What’s wrong is a structure whereby it is difficult for an ordinary family to meet a child’s basic needs.

Housing and childcare costs could be lower if there was the political will to make this happen.