AIBU to think one adult should be able to support a family with a full time job?

[Kendodd]

Talking about a normal size family, two/three children. Not talking about riches either, just an ordinary place to live and everyone well fed and clothed, all needs covered without state benefits. Any full time job as well, not just some fancy high paid thing.
I know for lots of people working really hard in full time jobs supporting their family just isn't possible on the money.

YANBU - they should be able to support a family.
YABU - they shouldn't be able to have a home and children on an unskilled job.

@KingdomScrolls

The thing is when only one income is needed, it's so often women who give up work and that causes all kinds of other imbalances. You could live on one salary in the seventies but people would also turn a blind eye to a man giving his wife a slap, consent within marriage was assumed, women were expected to run around after their husbands and there was little financial independence if you wanted to leave.

Did you actually live in the 70s or are you merely speculating? Some of thise things did happen and shouldn't have but not in the vast majority of relationships.

@AllTheUsernamesAreAlreadyTaken

It’s so sad how worthless so many posters deem low paid workers as well as the jobs they do

Where has anyone said that ?

Some jobs are low skilled and therefore paid less unfortunately.

In the 1970s maybe but not any more!

Neither set of my grandparents were able to survive on one wage packet in the 40s and 50s.

It should be enough it rarely is when on an average wage, when we were in the situation it was existing over living, stressful budgeting, planning weeks ahead.

@Butchyrestingface

In the 1970s maybe but not any more!

Neither set of my grandparents were able to survive on one wage packet in the 40s and 50s.

Exactly! One ofmy GM had 3 jobs but it was never mentioned. She was a "housewife" officially.

It’s so sad how worthless so many posters deem low paid workers as well as the jobs they do
I don't think people under value the low paid workers. We need them and without them, we wouldn't be able to get on with life. They totally and completely deserve tax credits to be able to indeed support their family.

I just don't agree that a FT, ie 40 hours working person with tax credits/UC top up can't provide for their family.

It’s so sad how worthless so many posters deem low paid workers as well as the jobs they do

I agree.
You would have thought covid would have shown us what jobs are really valuable, and that it's not measured by how much people are paid.
Also upsetting, although not surprising, is the number of posters who think a women working full time in a care home, Amazon warehouse or supermarket or something should not have the, imo perfectly reasonable, expectation that she could support herself and a couple of kids without anybody going hungry or cold.

@vivainsomnia

It’s so sad how worthless so many posters deem low paid workers as well as the jobs they do I don't think people under value the low paid workers. We need them and without them, we wouldn't be able to get on with life. They totally and completely deserve tax credits to be able to indeed support their family.

I just don't agree that a FT, ie 40 hours working person with tax credits/UC top up can't provide for their family.

But the OP is specifically excluding state benefits viv. She’s saying that society should be arranged so that a single low skilled job should be sufficient to support a family of four or five without any UC/tax credits at all, and is lamenting that this is currently not the case.

@Kendodd

It’s so sad how worthless so many posters deem low paid workers as well as the jobs they do

I agree.
You would have thought covid would have shown us what jobs are really valuable, and that it's not measured by how much people are paid.
Also upsetting, although not surprising, is the number of posters who think a women working full time in a care home, Amazon warehouse or supermarket or something should not have the, imo perfectly reasonable, expectation that she could support herself and a couple of kids without anybody going hungry or cold.

I dont think a woman should have to support herself and her children alone though. If widowed then state support should be provided.

Both parents should be equally responsible.
Men get away with providing paltry CS and just walk away.
There should be a massive overhaul of the system and they should be held responsible.

Whereas I think that a single parent on a minimum full time wage should definitely be able to support her family without going hungry or cold or living on a financial knife-edge, but that it’s OK if some of that money comes from state topups

@NeverTalkToStrangers

Whereas I think that a single parent on a minimum full time wage should definitely be able to support her family without going hungry or cold or living on a financial knife-edge, but that it’s OK if some of that money comes from state topups

So fathers are not responsible for children they create?

They totally and completely deserve tax credits to be able to indeed support their family.
Why should the tax payer fund low pay?
I read once that the amount Philip Green spent on his third superyacht was equivalent to the amount of tax credits paid to BHS staff so they could feed their children.
And the increase in Geoff Bazo's wealth, just during the pandemic would have been enough to give 900,000+ Amazon employees a bonus of over $100,000 each.
Those figures might not be completely accurate, but they're close enough and you get the just.

Oh definitely arm the CSA as well. Separate discussion.

Men get away with providing paltry CS and just walk away.
There should be a massive overhaul of the system and they should be held responsible.
Completely agree but think this is a separate issue.
Two incomes should provide a better financial lifestyle. Bigger house, meals out, holidays etc. I don't think it's right that it should take two incomes to get by, that should be doable on one income imo.

Why is it a separate issue?
Pp was insisting that a single parent in a low paid job should magically be able to provide for her DC alone.
Why when there is another parent who is equally responsible for those children ?
It perpetuates this shitty system of feckless men breeding and walking away.

@sayanythingelse

It SHOULD be but it isn't.

My mum never worked after having children and we lived comfortably on my dad's salary working in a factory. We had a nice house, holidays abroad and never wanted for anything.

DH works 60 hours a week and I've just cut down to 20 to make childcare easier. We lived in a rented house because even though we have a deposit, we don't earn enough between us to get a big enough mortgage for a 3 bed semi.
We live comfortably but we don't have money for extras now I'm part time. We could never live a life on one salary like my parents did.

I'm intrigued by this. My Dad was a senior academic and my mum a nurse. We were 4 kids living in a nice but falling down house in the NW and had only ONE foreign holiday in all the years I was growing up. (Others were camping in the UK) No way could we have survived if my Mum hadn't worked.

@TempleofZoom

Why is it a separate issue? Pp was insisting that a single parent in a low paid job should magically be able to provide for her DC alone. Why when there is another parent who is equally responsible for those children ? It perpetuates this shitty system of feckless men breeding and walking away.

I don’t think you’re going to get any disagreement on here that if there are two biological parents who are able to earn and support their child then they should both do that, and the UK government does a very poor job of enforcing that principle.

The OP has raised a more interesting debate about what should happen where that is not the case, where one parent is required to care for young or disabled children because their salaries won’t cover professional childcare. Or where one parent can’t work due to disability, mental illness, addiction, imprisonment or death, or has skipped the country. That’s a lot of families.

Also what should happen where the father is “unknown”? What pressure should the state exert to discover their identity?

I don't have that view because my mum/dh's mum always worked. And it was hard for dh's mum to support a family on her single wage in the 1990s even if her house cost £100k.

I also think that women should work even if it's to increase tax revenues. We have an ageing population and unless we want the retirement age to be 85, we should encourage most people to work. What I would say is we should make part time childcare hours more affordable so that if parents want to go part time to spend more time with kids, they can afford to. This would also help full time working mothers too. Also now that pensions are so much lower in real terms than they used to be, no one can depend on their spouse's pension so accumulating more working years is probably better.

Do you also mean that the single working person's pension has to support an elderly couple into their 90s. That's a quite tall order!

Personally, I think that minimum wage should be enough to support half the costs of providing for an average sized family, eg one adult and one child. I don't think it's reasonable to expect to be able to support the relative luxury of having one partner at home on minimum wage. I really don't see that as a fundamental right.

The OP has raised a more interesting debate about what should happen where that is not the case, where one parent is required to care for young or disabled children because their salaries won’t cover professional childcare. Or where one parent can’t work due to disability, mental illness, addiction, imprisonment or death, or has skipped the country. That’s a lot of families.

Personally, I think that's where state support should kick in.

If employers had to pay all of their staff enough to cover these eventualities, just in case, the reality is that there would be fewer jobs all round.

But the OP is specifically excluding state benefits viv. She’s saying that society should be arranged so that a single low skilled job should be sufficient to support a family of four or five without any UC/tax credits at all, and is lamenting that this is currently not the case
Fair enough, but ultimately, it doesn't make that much difference because if you do work 40h at NMW and stick to the 2 children rule, unless you live somewhere very expensive, you are probably not getting much in UC anyway.

The issue is when people work less than 40 hours, with many considering 30h to be FT, and those who think they are entitled to 4 or 5 children. Inevitably, the more children, the less able is the second partner to work and make it worthwhile financially, and 5 children obviously cost much more than 2.

But as already stated, you can't really administer a NMW for those with families but single get to earn less for the same job, so it does make sense to have a system in place that looks at individual cases and provide additional income to allow them to support the family.

I'm pleased though that they raised the criteria as being entitled to only 16h or even 24h was utterly ridiculous. I still feel it's ridiculous to base it on NMW, so that someone earning more can still work less than FT and claim UC. This is wrong.

It should be like this I whole heartedly agree

Agree Jax
Both my DP WOH, although Mums job wasnt really ever mentioned and we had a standard 3 bed in the 70s.
Drove an old car( one) holidays camping or staying with relatives.
Second hand everything, everything cooked from scratch.
Fish and chips once a month.
I dont recall eating out.
Flasks , egg sarnies and a wagon wheel on a day out.
That was fun on a warm day

I'm not sure how realistic it is to expect to raise a family of four on one minimum wage even if you get UC. I grew up in the 90s tbf but I don't remember anyone with a SAHP living in super nice houses or having foreign holidays. Both my parents worked in decent jobs and I still had to share a bedroom with my sister.

I think a lot depends on what you consider a minimum lifestyle, is owning your own home a right? Separate beds for the kids? Frequent trips/meals out (adds up with 4 people)? Tesco v aldi shops? Middle of a bustling city? Would it make sense for a single person to earn enough for all of this as the absolute minimum?

Also the basis of comparison can be completely different. My MIL bought a 3 bed terrace in zone 3 north london in 1997 on a single salary, the neighbours were druggies. My Dh remembers a little girl in torn clothes gnawing on a chicken bone in the neighbour's garden and when the house was sold, cocaine was found in the boiler. Today, the same house is worth in excess of 750k and while it isn't naice in the conventional sense, the people who buy homes on that street tend to be professionals and its actually considered a fairly decent area. There are a lot of anecdotes on Mumsnet of single income families who managed to buy houses in Hackney and other areas of zone 2 london. The thing is, those areas were considered bad areas in the past but now that they are all gentrified, it does attract people from wealthier backgrounds as compared to 20 years ago.

So when you say' my mum was a nurse but could afford to raise 2 kids and managed to buy a house in South London', south london is quite a different place these days!