To not understand why people are anti benefits to SAHP but want more help to pay childcare?

[mamapants]

I regularly see posts where people are considering giving up work temporarily to stay at home and would need benefits in order to do so. Although answers are split they tend to be mainly posters saying that isn't what benefits for and that the person should go back to work even though all the wages gained go on childcare. And a lot of comments about tax not being there to fund your choices etc.
At the same time posters and society as a whole seem to have no issue whatsoever in claiming 'benefits' to pay their childcare bill. Often amounting to more money. And normally saying there should be more help.
Why are they treated differently? Surely you could argue that having your childcare paid is having tax payers paying for your choices and if you can't afford to work then you shouldn't expect someone else to fund it.
Interested in why they are viewed so differently.

One is an investment, even if a potential one, the other is a net loss.

@reginafelangee

*Why?

Because one is paying you for you to stay at home and the other is helping you get out to work.*

They’re not just ‘at home’ though are they - they’re looking after their children. A task that most parents deem important enough that they’re willing to fork out significant sums of money for someone else to do.

This is partly semantics. You wouldn’t think of saying to a nanny ‘what do you DO all day? Why should I pay for you to ‘stay at home’??’ But you see it all the time in a veiled way.

What I did come on here to say is that much, much more should be done to enable mums and dads who have taken career breaks to reenter the workforce. Many of the most important skillsets are transferable and don’t disappear.

I can only speak to my experience.

I was on on £28k when I started mat leave, went back when DD was 9 months old, paying £900 a month childcare fees which was tough financially.

By being at work I was able to progress, seek promotion and development.

I got 1 year of government childcare funding when DD was 3 years old, which reduced my monthly childcare costs to £240 so the government paid about £3000 towards her childcare in that year

DD is now 5 and I earn £50k which I expect to go up to £65k in March next year.

Since returning to work after Mat leave I have paid the government in excess of £20k in tax and NI.

Had I chosen to be a SAHP, my DH is earning £18K, so minimum I would get according to 'Entitled to' is £300 a month, which assuming I claimed for 4 years until DD started school would be about £14K the government would have given me and I would have a 4 yr gap in employment so would be less likely to return at even the salary I left at.

So in my experience returning to work and being supported with childcare was a better deal for me and for the government accountant.

I think that's true about career breaks, especially for those with in demand and specialist skills.

For some children having a sahp in those early years is a huge investment. Some children do not thrive in childcare and that should be recognised as these parents are making a sacrifice and that choice should be there and be seen as of equal worth

X post with mamapants about net contributors.

Also, you can be earning a good wage but stashing a lot into private pensions which give you tax relief but you're not called a scrounger if you do that.

@matildeHidalgo Those people then pay tax when claiming their private pension.

@Lessthanzero

"Is raising the next generation not doing your bit for society - unless you're a childminder and being paid for it?"

Not if all they do is raise subsequent generations.

@TorysSuckRevokeArticle50 isn't that nearer £8k towards childcare from your figures?

SimonJT - They can take 25% tax free. And at retirement they still are unlikely to be net contributors as they will be getting a state pension.
Honestly, tax payers should get off their moral high horses - most aren't doing the country any favours.

Help towards childcare is because the parents/s can not afford to work and pay he fill amount of childcare but while doing so they are paying tax

Claiming benefits because you don’t want to work while your child is at home is completely different - you are not contributing by way of tax and your child is your responsibility

The benefit system is to support those who need help not those who don’t want to work for whatever reason but they can do

It’s not for others to support you financially because you want to stay at home with your child/children it’s the parents responsibility

@mamapants yes sorry I multiplied 240 when I should have multiples the 660. Point remains the same though that I've paid significantly more in that period in tax and NI and cost less to the gift by working than by claiming benefits. The short term cost of childcare, is out weighed by long term tax and NI contributions and increased salary potential from the lack of a career break.

Perhaps if employers would be willing to allow both parents to have flexible working patterns and pay a living wage, most of the burden of childcare would not fall on the mother and families do get trapped in situations where it does not pay for one to not work.

I am sure being a SAHP is not always an easy option- and sometimes there may be little option due to affordability of childcare. However I don’t think it makes sense to pit parents against each other. As others have alluded to, being a sahp is likely to have ongoing impact on wage and career in the longer term.

However I don’t think it makes sense to pit parents against each other

Hear hear.

And this thread illustrates that most posters don't have even a basic understanding of economics so it's pointless arguing.

I don’t get the stigma. Either way I’d need to claim something.. be it child care costs or benefits, the main difference is claiming childcare costs is £100’s literally could be £600pcm back towards childcare for 2 full time places which still would have my own wage swallowed up with travel costs and childcare extras. I’d need to pay for a 5 day 12 hour place for both of them even though I’d probably be averaging 3/4days.. my employer isn’t flexible, rotas go down a week in advance and dp works 5days which can’t be more flexible without loosing a chunk of our income. His wage is double mine so it’d be the same for sick days for them, neither of us get paid to be off or can wfh in our jobs.

But if I stay at home n claim £20 I’m the problem. There’s no way my tax is enough for what I’d be able to claim in childcare costs.. and neither would his be.

Plan is obviously the latter, combined with retraining and looking for a more flexible role.

Help towards childcare is because the parents/s can not afford to work and pay he fill amount of childcare but while doing so they are paying tax

Depends what you mean by paying tax. They won't necessarily be paying income tax because there's no requirement on UC for even one parent, let alone both, to be over the income tax threshold in order to get childcare help. They will pay VAT, council tax etc. But that would also likely be the case if not working, unless very low income and able to get help with council tax.

If you cannot afford to fund the upbringing of children, be that funding a SAH lifestyle or paying for childcare to go back to work, then you shouldn't have children.

"Benefits" should be there for either those who for physical or mental reasons CANNOT work and for families who have had some kind of change in circumstance.

As others have said though - employees are putting money back into the state through tax and NI whereas SAHPs on benefits do not.

The "net effect" will be less for an employee plus employment rates go up.

As others have said though - employees are putting money back into the state through tax and NI

As several others have said, not necessarily they're not. Why do people keep making this assumption?

It's not assumption it's a fact.

More tax/NI is paid either directly by the parent or indirectly through the childminders/nannies/nursery employees who all of have jobs as a result of the parent being in paid employment.

It's basic economics, not rocket science.

@FrangipaniBlue
I work PT school hours, so I don't pay for childcare, and I don't pay tax either, and I get tax credits. So I'm still not contributing anything really. I didn't have a baby expecting to get divorced a few years later, but that's life.

Why do people keep making this assumption?

It's not an assumption, it's a generalisation.

Tax and economic policy can't possibly be based on every possible individual circumstance, but rather statistical probabilities and predictions of future outcomes.

Again frangipani, a parent who isn't earning enough to pay tax and NI can quite easily be paying, directly or indirectly, a childcare worker who isn't either. There's no rule saying a nursery worker or CM has to earn over the NI threshold. Plenty of them don't! There are part time childcare workers whose wages are paid from provider income derived significantly from the state, who don't pay tax or NI due to part time work and who get help for their own childcare costs too. It happens. I'm related to a couple of them.

Because ironically, people think that they have paid into the pot so should get a few years free,if we add into the mix that it a net contributor to the system needs to earn circa 37K a year and you can see the issue.

We could add that before the tories implemented a benefit cap of 26K a year, with labours backing, MN in general was full on brigading of threads where people highlighting some are taking the piss.

Along the meme of 'how does anyone know the financial situation of friends', it was generally disregarded in the run up to 2010.

It is why MN has become a meme online , and it isn't because they are a champion of working class, nor being better educated.

the vast consensus on MN is that it's harder being a SAHP than a WOHP.

I've not seen this. I would disagree here, and I've done both. I thought being a sahm was very easy compared to working out of the home, and then having to do everything housework related after 7, although I guess it depends on your job and hours.

Benefits shouldn’t be a way of life. Therefore if you can’t afford to have children without resorting to social welfare, you shouldn’t have them.

I’m all for making childcare more affordable because then in essence two people are working and paying tax: the mother in question and the childcare worker. Whereas if someone decides to give up work and live off the taxpayer, the economy suffers.