Should childcare be paid for and other benefits given just for having a child/children?

[Sunshine236]

Does everyone think childcare should be paid for?

It's controversial but why do some people feel entitled to be monetarily supplemented because they’ve had a child?

It’s surely a lifestyle choice and people should ensure they can afford to have children?

For sure there should absolutely be a safety net for those who have had children and circumstances change seeing them need urgent support, but I’ve read people earning £100k are receiving some kind of support each month and now we're looking to provide further free childcare.

There are so many other issues such as social care, NHS funding etc that need funding which money could go towards, rather than supplementing people who are already receiving a decent salary just because they’ve had a child/children?

@ZeldaWillTellYourFortune I disagree with you there, not least because it doesn’t work as a deterrent - anyone whose pension was docked would likely have it made up with pension credit so that they didn’t fall into poverty. But the moral side of it also doesn’t add up - you’d have to prove that the way the child turned out was directly caused by the parenting and not one of society’s other many ills.

I don’t know what the answer is as clearly it’s not on to incentivise inadequate parents to have kids (and those parents will of course say that their kids are needed to save society), but equally child poverty needs to be tackled because that’s the best hope of stopping kids from ending up in prison or addicted to drugs etc.

I am the child of addicts and no longer speak to my parents so I know that only too well.

So as an adult, you're happy to accept that none of your success is your own, your parents are responsible for it and you should support them fully financially post employment age? Because if we're blaming the parents for their adult children's failings, it seems only fair they reap a reward. 10% tax on e eey child into their parents pension cup?

What happens to criminals etc who's parents are dead? Or those raised in care? Or who have low income jobs or none? Summarily execution for anyone not financially contributing to society for more than X months who don't have a parent to pay the penalty?

Someone might have already pointed this out but people with children are, in the big picture, subsidising the 'lifestyle choice ' of people without. People with children are paying to bring up the humans who will keep actual human civilisation going when we're all too old to do that. We're all going to get old, or sick, or we're going to retire and be euthanised. It's the children people are having now who will run the banks that administer your pension, or fly you to the euthanasia clinic, or bury your neighbour so you don't spend your retirement surrounded by rotting human corpses. As well as which, 're childcare, only working parents are entitled to the full amount of hours. So they pay for it via tax anyway. They're 'subsidising ' it exactly as much as anyone else.

True. Alternatively, „the immigrants“ can do the care work, because „there are more than enough people in world“ - as if those people from other countries could just be shipped over here to work in care homes and then sent back when they get old themselves. And what if they want to have kids?
(I‘m aware that there are already many immigrants working in care homes, I just find comments like that make them appear as disposable workforce, not people who might have their own ideas of how they want to live their lives beyond working in care homes.)

@inamarina not only that in case people hadn't notice bringing people from another country to work means they are adding to our housing crisis issue and schools!. It's just not as simple as some are saying here.

It is 100pc a lifestyle choice - I think people who justify having kids by saying it's for the greater good - are kidding themselves. On a personal level you do it because you want kids, right? Saying that, who cares? I still think there should be benefits for them. I also think obese, smokers and drug addicts who do action sports and then develop illnesses and break bones while skiing should be treated btw.

Really government is subsidising employers again so that they can get away with paying poor wages to their employees.
Subsidised childcare isn't the best answer for small children.
Tax credits and legislation to ensure (women) can have a career break without penalty might be useful.

The birth rate has also been dropping to the extent that my local council cancelled building a new school because there weren’t going to be the children to fill it. People are put off of having children due to the early childcare costs. We had discounted having another child, at least anytime soon, because of them. Funding means we might be able to have another sooner. We might have three but SIL hasn’t had any and is now too old, my brother and step brother are both not having children too.

It's not really a choice when it's not bearable to live without having them, for very many people. It's a "choice" in the sense that existentialists and therapists use the word, i.e. in the sense of yes you can live in pain or you can die.

Yes, bring in a policy that cuts population growth in the working class and lower middle class until they die out until the only British are those earning 100k plus.
Meanwhile any job done by people on less than that, including those kids edu action, their nursing, even the delivering of those elite British babies, to be done by immigrants.
And those immigrants can't have any real security, because they need to go "home" to make babies in their home country to full these jobs in the future,or come over post-creation but presumably the welfare state won't be looking after in their dotage so again they'll need to go "home"

I mean it just seems a very short sighted vision.

I said on another thread that I think there needs to be a debate about whether the state should subsidise large families (I didn't disagree with child benefit being restricted to two children).

I do however think that childcare is a cost of working, and should be tax deductible, at least for the first child.

can you define what you mean by the phrase 'lifestyle choice'?
Why not just say it's a choice, why is it called a lifestyle choice?
What other things are also described as lifestyle choices, and why, what are the criteria that make it a lifestyle choice?

I also think we need to hold parents accountable for outcomes, more. If their kids, despite all of the money society sinks into them, turn out to be criminals, addicts, abusers, deadbeats, unemployable, etc., the parents should be charged back. Reduce their state pensions by an amount that recompenses society for the burden they created

I am interested in knowing if you still do everything your parents tell you.

If not, why do you think anyone else does?

And therefore why do you think that parents are responsible for their offspring?

We all have agency and free will and we are only responsible for our own failings, nobody else's (obvious cases of neglect aside).

Also "deadbeats" and "unemployable" might be neurodiverse. Are you going to fine the parents for their dodgy genes as well?

You can keep moaning as much you like but the free childcare is here to stay and people will have more kids and parents are applauding this move by the government.
Also, a question to posters who have proposed for immigrants to come and serve you, what makes you so entitled? Do you think British colonies and slavery still exists? Get over your entitlement!

Most of those problems are due to choice of mate and the child's upbringing, long before adulthood.

There needs to start being some accountability by parents. The notion that in 2023 people can just procreate at will, expecting the full support and approval of their fellow citizens, no matter how shitty their parenting and how godawful the outcomes they inflict on their children and the rest of us, is just absurd.

If the village is expected to pay, pay and pay, the village should demand accountability. Maybe if people were required to reimburse us for the woes they caused, they'd be more careful with contraception and planning.

No one is talking about kidnapping people from other nations and forcing them to work here. But more open immigration policies would solve the problems that a lot of insular (and frankly racist) nations are complaining about when they bemoan lower birth rates.

There is zero shortage of humans on this poor planet. Quite the reverse, and we are killing off other species each and every day.

Did you not read what I wrote?!

I think comparing freedom of movement to slavery is pretty disgusting, quite frankly. I don’t think anyone suggesting facilitating people coming to live in the UK if they’d like to is suggesting people be forced to come here and work in care homes.

Funny how when it’s your kids working in care homes, you’re the saviour of mankind but offering anyone else the opportunity to do it is colonialism.

@fitzwilliamdarcy Giving people the opportunity to work in the UK could certainly help the aging population, but then they may decide to have children and some people won’t want their taxes to help pay for those children’s care and education.

Unless immigrants get sent home and replaced with new, childless ones?

The cycle of discontent will continue!

I'm really not trying to be rude but I don't understand this. I'm all for childcare benefits, but - yes - @Ovidnaso having kids is totally a choice. In most, except really sad cases, you opt to have them. If that choice was removed you would likely realise, it is bearable to live without them. I know that because I'm not able to have them - despite wanting to - and still life goes on. It is bearable. And I will still still fight for childcare rights as it's important and I don't begrudge people who can have their desires met. In the same way I want good schools and good hospitals and good social care.

Do you have any idea how much childcare costs?

I’m childfree but this policy could actually persuade me to have children.

@Thesharkradar I suppose I mean it's a lifestyle choice insofar as you have (in most cases) willingly opted to chosen to have a lifestyle that involves raising children. You're right, I could just call it a choice. I'm bit begrudging people doing it, I totally understand it, and think childcare should be funded. But it's a choice, unlike being born disabled and needing continuing care on the NHS is, for example.

That should read not begrudging!

In 2023 in a country where women have access to contraception and there isn't as strong a stigma to not doing so, having children IS a choice.

We no longer physically have to bear children because we're not reliably able to stop pregnancies and we aren't socially obligated (on an individual level) to have them. So it's not the only choice any more - it's a choice, about the kind of life you want to lead.

I don't think people should be using it disparagingly but it's disingenuous to say it's not a choice these days (for women in countries with access to contraception) just because there's a biological urge to do so for some people.

Humans have rational thought and don't HAVE to act on a biological urge - we choose to do.