Am I the only person who thinks parents should feed their kids outside of school?

[HalloweenDoughnutAnyone]

Obviously it goes without saying I don't want any child to go hungry. But. Am I the only person who thinks parents should feed their kids outside of school?

Just that really.. it's free school dinners. Not free lunch all year round.

I don't understand why people think the tax payer should be paying even more? Maybe, if you can't afford to cover the basics (food and clothing) you should think twice before having a child?

Or should we extend free school dinners, to cover all the food a child needs inside and outside of school ?

I'm not tarring everyone with the same brush but I know people who rely on free school dinners. But have sky tv, expensive mobile contracts etc

Maybe, if you can't afford to cover the basics (food and clothing) you should think twice before having a child?

I cannot believe that we are in the year 2020 and some people still come out with this shit.

Not all babies are planned. Accidents happen. What would you do OP? - force people to have abortions if their bank balance wasn't high enough?

Not all parents' financial circumstances stay the same after a baby arrives. What would you do OP? - send people to debtor's prison for having the misfortune to be made redundant during a global pandemic?

Even if the parents are the most feckless buggers in the world, how does punishing their innocent child help matters?

Of course children need to be fed, and it is our responsibility to make sure they are.

Jesus.

Speak for yourself. As a tax payer I'd be happy to fund school meals. We fund the governments expenses so what's a few extra sarnies.

It's not about what parents should do, most parents would give their last meal to their child. It's about as a society l, knowing how shit times are, knowing for a fact children are going hungry and trying to do something about it.

Get it out of your head that children are going hungry because of feckless parents. Sure some might, but a lot of it is due to shit wages, government incompetence and a fucking pandemic. God these posts are infuriating.

if you can't afford to cover the basics (food and clothing) you should think twice before having a child

well, obviously
but someone will pop up whining "do you only want rich people to have children"

but regardless, the school diners? really?
You might as well as well tell parents to pay for private schools, NHS treatments and so on. Come on.

Well you sound like a right peach op.

Am I the only person who thinks Tory mps should feed themselves instead of putting food under expenses and letting the taxpayer cover it.

I don't understand why people think the tax payer should be paying even more?

There's a pandemic. Businesses closing, one million job losses.

That's why.

Yes. You're the only person. Literally everyone else in the world thinks school should feed their kids every day all year round....

When my Nan was a kid one school in every area opened in the holidays to provide school lunches because it was recognised that holidays are a particularly difficult time for families.

When I was a kid that had stopped and holidays were a horrific time for my siblings (and me, but I was only 7 when we were removed) because they knew they'd be hungry for most of the time.

The children who would benefit from this are the most vulnerable children in our society. You can tell a lot about people by how they treat their most vulnerable.

I take it if you ever found yourself destitute op you would be first to opt out of this scheme.

We can afford a 3% payrise and increase in expenses allowance for MPs. We can afford to feed the most vulnerable children in the school holidays.

But if the parents don’t feed their kids outside of school, who suffers? It’s not the parents, it’s the children.
So you’re happy for children to go hungry because for whatever reason their parents can’t/won’t feed them? You’re happy for them to suffer because of their parents decisions?

YANBU to expect this to fall to parents on the whole.
YABU to assume everyone not able to feed their kids has spent the cash on fripperies instead.
YABU to dress up the recent vote as anything other than party political point scoring at the expense of (some) vulnerable children.

Last year we had our first child and we planned and budgeted for maternity leave, what we didn't expect was for me to lose my job due to Covid shortly after returning to work and then my DH furloughed for 3 months, on top of that we lost two parents and had to pay towards their funerals.

Surely it can't be hard to see how even people who are usually good savers have have their savings reduced to nothing within a year.

Yes, feeding your children should be no1 priority when your income is reduced, but what if your landlord doesn't think so.

The idea of having welfare and subsidies and benefits is to help the disadvantaged and to help those most in need.

The fact that some might take the piss is no reason to withdraw help for all who qualify.

''it goes without saying I don't want any child to go hungry. But ...''

But what? To punish the piss takers we take away help for all? If we don't help out children more children WILL be going hungry. Or shall we all just go back to the time when the poor were poor and their kids - ? Well they just died.

So you think it’s reasonable to let existing children who are alive right now go hungry and unfed because their parents are struggling? It’s fine for small, hungry children to pay the price of their parents struggling financially because of a global pandemic and unprecedented financial hardship?

OP, have you ever stopped to ask yourself if you might be one of the bad guys?

GF.

@YardleyX

In my area the council were delivering packed lunches to all the free school meals gang throughout lockdown and the school holidays.

Most of the people receiving them were asking on Facebook if anybody wanted them, and were otherwise putting them in the bin.

Yeah, definitely "most" of the people were doing that. Sure.

It's ok for MPs to have subsidised lunches all year round on £70k + salaries though, yeh?

OP, I'm with you in a way. Totally agree with free school meals through the school term- breakfast included. But at some point, we have to stop expecting the state to pay for everything. My DH and I just had this very conversation today and find that the sense of entitlement seems to be growing. I'm by no way at all bashing those in genuine need, not at all and hope my answer doesn't come across that way. As a nation though, we can't afford to keep subbing and supporting everyone.

Maybe, if you can't afford to cover the basics (food and clothing) you should think twice before having a child?

Maybe when you had that child you could easily afford to feed and clothe it but a pandemic came along and made you redundant? Just a thought.

I’d rather we pursued personal responsibility than just hand over more money. It would be better long term. Feeding a child should be a very basic parenting responsibility and the majority get child benefits already.

Children are expensive and it should be a huge decision to become a parent as the financial implications are enormous.

Even if every single parent decided sod it I dont want to feed my kids (except you of course OP you are the only one) and spend it all on flash TVs and sky yawn yawn yawn. As a civilised society what are we supposed to do? Ignore it and keep lining the pockets of people who really dont need it, or come up with ideas to help the vulnerable (which in case you didnt think about when writing your post is a child) I know what I would rather do.

YANBU, but the liberal hand-wringers here will tell you that all these hungry children were conceived accidentally when their parents were flush with money, and now the government should feed them. While the parent spends their last £5 on a packet of cigarettes rather than a load of bread, some tins of beans and a bag of apples.

Although I do agree that MPs shouldn’t be claiming any more for their lunch than the school meals allowance.

As a nation though, we can't afford to keep subbing and supporting everyone.

Then we can’t afford lockdowns. We can’t take away people’s ability to make a living and then tell their kids to starve.

It's actually would be more efficient cost wise, and environmentally, for schools to just give everyone a good healthy lunch. Not to mention the health savings down the road.

As far as whether parents can afford kids, I am not really that keen on the idea of a society where a family is something you only get if you happen to be lucky enough to have money. It's rather reminiscent of the kinds of places and times where the servant class had to ask permission from their betters to marry and procreate since it meant their betters would have to provide for the extra people.