‘Why should I pay for you to have a child?’

[Cuppasoupmonster]

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/18/pay-child-uk-childcare?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR2yWUzAXpWYbFCLjFDcKiQU5fwjZ-vd1FyGHsnWwcCfTDeSy57AX014AnI#Echobox=1666093596

Great article!

I reduced my working days in order to support my daughter in looking after my grandson, and now my granddaughter. It is an absolute privilege for me to be able to do this. I am able to do so because I planned my career so that Id be able to retire at 58 if I chose to, which I did.
IMO, there is nothing more valuable to me than being able to help raise my grandchildren.

This journo irritated me. She had a baby and suddenly realised there were issues. Try listening to older women!
In fairness I think it is almost impossible to understand the impact of having a small child until you are responsible 24/7 for a small child. My child-free boss can’t understand why I refuse to check my emails before 9am but she has no idea how time consuming it is to get a child ready for school in the morning. It’s just impossible to convey

Meh I'm with the first poster here. More now than ever the stories and information is all out there. If people won't listen, what are we supposed to do? I told the people i work with, bosses and staff alike (I was the first one with children) for years. Then the younger women started having babies and i was unreasonable for not wanting to have meetings over lunchtimes so they could go home on time when nobody had ever accommodated me.

It is TEDIOUS.

I'm right-wing, and the sort of person who immediately thinks, "why should I pay for your childcare." But actually I'm open to the idea of comprehensive childcare for all, not because it would benefit me and people like me, but because there are some children who will get better parenting from the state than they get at home.

You could sell me the idea of universal free (at the point of use) childcare on the grounds that it will reduce the influence of the kind of parents you describe on their own children. (It would also kill off once and for all the idea that being a full-time parent to your own child is a job that the state will pay you to do. The idea that having a baby isn't an automatic get-out-of-working card presses another of my right-wing buttons.)

So for all you left-wingers on here, don't give up on this idea. You may be able to sell it in surprising places.

(For the same reason I might support free child-care, I might also support more spending at schools, on free school meals, extra-curricular activities, maybe even free selective boarding schools for the exceptionally talented... My thinking is we have no control over who has children, we should give them the best start they can, so they become the best possible adults. Also, we should do this for their sake, they didn't choose their parents.)

‘This journo irritated me. She had a baby and suddenly realised there were issues. Try listening to older women!’

yup!

YY. Or younger women, or really any other women.

Ok, she's got a small baby and she is phoning it in at work. But it's not good.

When a Guardian journalist writes this sort of sanctimonious article, I know the kind of images they have in their mind. They picture some good, hard-working single mum, with two quiet, polite children, who can hardly afford to heat her tiny flat. They imagine the kids sat at the kitchen table doing their homework, too cold and hungry to concentrate. Then they imagine some greedy, fat Tory in his mansion complaining that he can't afford a new swimming pool, etc.

The reality is different. Every single person on mumsnet knows a family of ignorant, vicious chavs with four or five horrible, feral kids.

I don't.

It's possible of course that reality is complex and includes both stereotypes, and many others besides.

We have a Tory government. They have huge private wealth and they don’t give a shiny shit about helping women who want to work, or affordable child care, or the NHS , or State education. They have the money to pay for anything they need. Their kids get ‘jobs’ pouncing about opening art galleries and marry other millionaires and billionaires.
you want that to change, then stop voting for them.

@Getoff that's a really interesting point. I'm pretty left wing but some of the biggest frustrations I have currently are the people cheating the benefit system and passing on how to do it while the fortune in taxes I pay supports them instead of the people who actually need it. Making sure the kids have an even start and the parents don't benefit from having loads of kids would be a great outcome. How we get there is another question, and if free childcare would support that.

Looking at other countries and cherry-picking their best bits is stupid. You have to look at their social, health care, education and tax systems as a whole before you judge. Different countries prioritise different things.

Sorry I only skim read so apologies If I'm repeating what's already been said but unfortunately these high costs don't get passed on to staff despite many being qualified, keeping up with training such as paediatric first aid, mental health training, sign language and many more, spending the time they aren't paid for planning activities and doing paperwork. Nor do they get any kind of discount for paying to send their child there so they make £20 to look after others children to leave theirs all day. It's utterly mad

"We have a Tory government. They have huge private wealth and they don’t give a shiny shit about helping women who want to work, or affordable child care, or the NHS , or State education. They have the money to pay for anything they need. Their kids get ‘jobs’ pouncing about opening art galleries and marry other millionaires and billionaires.
you want that to change, then stop voting for them."

I've just googled Keir Starmer, Lisa Nandy, Yvette Cooper and Angela Rayner. Seems they're not short of a few bob either. Who shall I vote for then?
I agree that childcare costs in the UK are extortionate, but as far as I'm aware that's pretty much always been the case. I was a sahm, fortunately from choice, as childcare (which was very thin on the ground anyway) would have taken up all my salary and then some.

“Why should I pay for you to have a child? If you can’t afford to look after your child, don’t have one,”

Sounds like a reasonable approach to me. For the protocol, I do have a DD in nursery and pay £1,700 per month. I made sure that I could afford this before I had her.

Gosh the Guardian makes my blood boil.

And different countries pay more income tax than we do.

Maybe it’s more a lack of empathy or imagination? I have no kids yet but I can absolutely imagine how consuming it is raising them and how hectic mornings must be! I do have an interest/concern about things like under funded schools and expensive child care and over worked social workers as well just because I’m not the type to only care about an issue when it directly affects me. To me it’s just obvious how ultimately we live in a society and these things will affect us all in some way or other.

Nice article that fails to make the most basic point that we all need a thriving, healthy and well-educated generation that is 30-50 years younger than ourselves to (a) keep the economy going so that our pensions keep flowing and (b) keep civilisation going so that we have hospitals and roads and supermarkets etc after we have retired.

It's not that I'm paying for you to have a baby, I'm paying for the formative years of the engineers, technologists, surgeons, nurses public sector workers etc of the 2050s and 2060s to be done right, so that the world then can be a nicer place.

IMO, there is nothing more valuable to me than being able to help raise my grandchildren.

@Soontobe60 - I wasn't implying women shouldn't be SAHM or GM who look after children or that women don't or shouldn't enjoy spending time with children.

I was more focused on societal expectation that families ie women will just fill the gaps -and often can harshly judge those that don't -rather than look at provision and funding more generally and then accords very low status to ones that do - whether that's paid or unpaid.

As a society we don't seem to value elder care or child raising and politically it's a divisive area with potentially huge costs so it's avoided - though as many PP have said I've read many better articles on the area.

She’s always been irritating. It’s doesn’t even propose much of a solution, it’s just a whinge. And she’s not the first woman to have a baby but seems to think she is.

I don’t/couldn’t have children but have always been happy for my taxes to support those who do. However the recent suggestion (“bonk for Britain”) that I should further subsidise incentives for women to have four or more children felt like adding insult to injury.

The thing about the whole 'why should I subsidise your choice to have children thing' is it comes from resentment of SOME parents who take the piss (and usually also shout very loudly about it) and need to be reminded that children are a choice and everyone doesn't have to cater to their every whim.

Yes, on a large scale children are our future, we should invest in them, and every one deserves education/not to be hungry/a good start in life.

However when dealing with individuals parents, having a child/children was your choice and no I shouldn't have to work every Christmas so you can 'make memories' with your kids/ pick up your slack at work/ wait at the crossing until it goes green to cross rather than choose to cross when it's clear because you're teaching your child it and I (a stranger) am at fault for not modelling it (and then yelled abuse at in the street for it - yes has happened)

I'm not saying it's right but I am saying I understand where this attitude of resentment comes from.

Hmm. Funnily enough I was just thinking about how it would be spectacularly unwise to build any sort of plan these days that relied on any form of government or indeed societal support.

I was actually thinking in terms of education. Even if a pro-education party took over today, then they'd still have fuck all money to provide the sort of decent education I had as a child.

The answer is to plan to provide for yourself and your family. Food, education, housing. Spectacularly not easy, but I'd not rely on anything. To be fair, my family have always operated this way, as we share care and resposibility for a disabled relative who would be stuffed on the state.

If we're asking why should I, why should younger people be paying for pensioners to sit around on state pensions and use up most of the valuable NHS resources? It makes me laugh when they say "I've worked all my life" (many women of retirement age now lived off their husband's salary and hardly worked a bloody day in their lives) and then ponitifcate about lazy people on benefits
(most of whom are actually working, and benefit fraud is tiny) and women wanting childcare when they are in receipt of the biggest state handout there is, and are costing the country far more than any other section of the population.

Some health problems they can't help but a lot of them could get off their arse and walk, or eat fewer custard creams and M&S ready meals and perhaps then they wouldn't always be cluttering up the GP and hospital and a younger working person might be able to get an appointment. And a load of them keep voting the Tories in as well. I hope this is coming to bite a lot of them on the arse now.

The answer to the "Why should I pay for other people?" is because we are in a society, and not just rolling around scratching our arses like chimps as the writer says. Being lazy good for nothings is not limited to any particular section of the population. Just that some seem to get more easily accused of it than others, and often those who are flogging their guts out, and by people who think a busy day is having a hair cut and a trip to Waitrose.

We already have a falling birth rate - below replacement level - and are going to have serious issues with an aging population.

I'm not against there being less humans overall, but if everyone who isn't rich stopped having children from today, we'd have major social problems. Unless we massively increased immigration, but that's not exactly popular...

Same here. Then I had a heart attack caused by an unknown underlying condition which meant I could no longer do my hcp job. Then my husband left. I’m now reliant on disability benefits whilst looking for a job that fits in around school hours.
not everyone’s circumstances stay the same and unless you’ve planned for every eventuality you might just come unstuck at some point.

I worked in Finland sporadically for a while. They had 24/7 childcare in state nurseries at the time and there was a lot of grumbling about parents abusing it. Part of my research involved finding out about childcare and I can remember talking to one professional who said the nursery he managed was particularly busy at weekends. As far as I'm aware, the abuse of the system led to use being limited but that might have been a local rather than national decision. When I was there income tax started at 40%, which I don't imagine would be popular here.

I'm in the eyebrow-raising camp. You have a baby and then you think about how you're going to care for it?

So those of you who think that it isn't the role of the state to provide childcare (and presumably the state should not be looking after smokers, or the obese, or drug users, or immigrants or alcoholics or people who have climbing or skiing or stupid accidents, or indeed anyone whose "choice" impacts on you) what do you think the answer is? That only those people who can afford £1700 a month for childcare should have children? That only those people who can exist without welfare benefits should have children?

Is that really the answer? Is it not the answer to make childcare more affordable? To make wages higher? so that people can live?

And what about those people who can afford children, but then something unforseen happens to them, they get ill, disabled, their partner dies, they lose their job, a covid pandemic decimates their industry, what happens then? That their partner walks out on them. What happens to the children then? They already exist. They already need childcare.

Surely you can see that it is the responsibility of the state to provide childcare. That it benefits society and the children, even if the feckless parents don't deserve it. That it will have an impact on productivity and the economy? I just don't get that view at all. To me it's clear that affordable, high quality childcare is absolutely part of the necessary infrastructure of any modern economy.