I totally understand we all have different opinions on this. I don’t want to this a debate on whether children should get free meals in the holidays. But I feel like I need to rant.
My mum had me when she was quite young. She was a single mum and went onto have my brother but that relationship didn’t last long. She was a single mum to both of us until she met our stepdad when we were a little older.
She didn’t have much money. We got free school meals at school, not in the holidays because obviously it wasn’t a thing then but I can guarantee you if she was given vouchers to spend she would have taken them. As well as not having much money she was always terrible with money too. She would go out 3 nights a week and smoke straight cigarettes also which didn’t help.
Now, here’s the thing. We didn’t go without. We were fed and clothed because of my wonderful grandparents!! They stepped up. We were always there, they always gave my mums money for food and clothes for us. My mum never give us breakfast and we’d be given a biscuit in the car.
Without my grandparents we would pretty much be starving and in poverty. It was a mix of a single parent not having much money and also being terrible with money.
Sorry if this is long but my mum is now older, wiser and re married with children much younger than me. They don’t struggle. She is considerably better off.
Yet she’s been very nasty about how the whole free school meal things ‘why should tax payers pay’ - bearing in mind she doesn’t work but her husband does, ‘people shouldn’t have kids if they can’t feed them’ etc etc. She is entitled to this opinion but she’s forgotten what things were lien when her older children were little. Like I said we would have gone hungry if it wasn’t for my grandma and grandpa.
Aibu to be annoyed that she’s forgotten what things were like for us?? We didn’t starve but without our grandparents providing us we would have!