Why doesn’t the country support having children?

[NameChangeAsICouldBeOverReacting]

Just seen an article on The Guardian about the 15 free hours for childcare for under 2’s and how the whole system is a mess.

I’m just starting to lose hope that this country doesn’t support working families anymore?

AIBU and need to think more positively, or have we screwed up massively by not supporting families?

The Guardian article which I read.

I guess the silver lining is that people are thinking more about the very important decision to have children.

But if one full time minimum wage was enough to feed, clothe and house a family of four and/or pay for full time nursery for two children, how would the sums add up? A 21 year old single person on minimum wage living at home would be absolutely loaded. Ditto a DINKY couple if they were being paid enough to support two entire families. How much would nursery or cost if each of the workers was being paid enough to support an entire family. And then minimum wage would have to go up again because it would need to cover the increased costs of single parents sending their children to nursery.

In general minimum wage laws work well, but the addition of a bit of government subsidy for single parents and the parents of 1-5 year olds is a reasonable compromise.

Nursery fees seem to be the same as care home fees.
Surely the question should be why are the companies that run them putting their fees up ? Is anybody questioning why they put the fees up in the first place.
Who owns the nurseries and how do they live ? Surely service users should be demanding that the government looks in why they are charging so much in the first place ?

Reading this thread is depressing - just makes me realise how many people out there who don't care about the next generation - and tell parents to suck it up back in my day crap....

Can't wait for you all to get old and need the younger people to help you out in your older years.. as there won't be any because people can't afford to have children.

Because children are supposed to be supported by two parents, with childcare and employment split according to the couple's preference. People blaming the problems caused by breeding with a useless lump on the government, and a lack of government subsidies for having kids, is galling.

I'd support far more punitive measures for getting the non-supportive partner to pay far more towards their kids than CMS ask for, even if its held over as a payroll-deductible debt, similar to student loans. The fact that someone can be prosecuted for not paying their TV license but not for avoiding child maintenance is a joke.

The more pertinent issue is that wages are not high enough to support parents. Quality of housing stock has fallen (future generations will be in flats, not houses) and with everything around us getting more expensive and wages not keeping up, I can really understand why some young people decide not to have families. Which is such a sad state of affairs, if those would otherwise be couples who would have had children. The Govt. needs to address wages, first and foremost and make sure ordinary working families have the basic means to live - not just scrape by in a miserable state of existence but actually have some quality of life as a young family. I think we're really in a terrible way at the moment for people just starting out and I do worry about my sons and how they will manage in the years to come,.

Have you seen what's happened to minimum wage rates and heating costs recently? It's really not a mystery why fees would be going up.

I'm sure some care homes and nurseries are making good profits, but there are also a lot closing down because the sums don't work. Nurseries' problems are exacerbated by the low rates paid by the government for "free hours".

@GreatGateauxsby I was just responding to a PP asking why people are complaining but not accepting the 30 hours. (So yes I was missing the point of the thread!)

Appreciate your honesty! It’s telling that earning 100k has been described as only “quite well-earning” already on this thread…

I agree wholeheartedly with your post and the majority of comments on this thread. Childcare should be properly funded and it’s shocking that it isn’t.

I’m sorry to hear you feel like you can’t have a third child. Is waiting until one is at school an option? That has definitely helped us! (Household income of less than 100k in London)

Real support for families would involve higher wages so that one parent could stay at home with under fives, and possibly work part-time thereafter. This does not suit an economy that is driven by consumerism and that everyone who does not go out and earn money is unemployed. How one can designate a woman with five children unemployed I cannot fathom, but so it is. When we get a system that values parents bringing up their own children rather than outsourcing it to for-profit nurseries we might get a system that really supports families rather than pushing the idea that no-one is fulfilled unless they work (by which is meant being active in the economy by having a paid job).

It's an amazing trick the right wing have pulled off. They got people to vote for Brexit as part of being patriotic but they also don't support children (saying cheaper to import adult qualified and skilled migrants) in which case the historic British population become a shrinking hopeless underclass pool of cheap workers.

Surestart not so sure really. The places I visited in London were awful. A friend of mine also said to me I rather move than send my child to a place like that.

I am one of those that do not expect the state to support my lifestyle choices.

Being a sahp should be an option for those that want to - UC pay 85% of childcare costs but thats a lot. SAHP can save the country money . It should be an equal choice

and when I say an equal choice I don’t mean rewarded for being a SAHP I mean just not penalised with threats of sanctions if not working etc etc

@Grammarnut

Real support for families would involve higher wages so that one parent could stay at home with under fives, and possibly work part-time thereafter.

This, exactly. My parent's generation were able to have my mum stay at home, whilst my father went to work and on his salary, they could just about afford the mortgage, and the bills. Even with two people in fairly well-paid, professional jobs nowadays, it's hard to make ends meet. One can see why under those pressing circumstances, people might just make the decision to not have children. As a parent, you also want to give you children a good quality of life and that comes at additional expense

Childcare fees are horrific. And so are nursery prices. I saw a thread on here the other day where someone claimed they paid £50,000 a year for childcare - not sure if that was true, but if it was that is hilarious. Who would pay that? You could get a nanny for a third of that.

I saw the thread where someone was paying 4k a month so effectively 50k a year. But they also said a Nanny was a similar cost. I'm not sure how you work out a nanny would be a third of that?
My kids are teens now and the 30 hours "free" came into effect when DD was 3....but it wasn't free. The government paid an arbitrary amount to the pre school which didn't cover their costs, and parents made up the shortfall. I don't think they are allowed to charge anything extra for the funded hours now and at least one pre school in our area closed because they couldn't make the numbers work.

That's ironic - the EU was being used to import plenty of low paid unskilled migrants, the skilled ones are still able to apply for the visa scheme no matter what country they were from. I'm pro-immigration but I'd ask pro-EU folk why they thought an unskilled worker from Croatia was any more acceptable for free movement than an unskilled worker from India, and never got a satisfactory answer.

Your private pension also depends on who's paying into it when you retire. Though if you're in an employer pension with defined benefits you may be just "all right Jack" as others have said.
But you'll definitely still need HCPs and care workers to operate on your dodgy hip and wipe your bum. So don't knock people having kids - they will be looking after you either financially or physically.

The problem is the cost of nurseries. Big corporations could maybe have nurseries for their staff. The ones with whole buildings and big office spaces. That would be a great benefit.

@Grammarnut if you had spent any time with under fives you would know that both parents and children benefit from time spent with peers in the workplace or social skills development at nursery. What is needed is (a) some type of student loan system so parents don't hate pay astronomical fees at a time their income shrinks and outgoings are raised, ( b) more flexible pension age so grandmothers can help as they have done in virtually all previous societies and cultures (c) social housing so people can afford housing

That one parent is almost always the mother though which has its own issues such as the gender pay gap, inequality in the workplace and making it even harder for women to compete with men who almost always don't take a career break or go part time.

If it did happen, it would need to be presented as a choice that both parents should consider but in reality, I doubt this would be the case.

That's an issue with the men becoming fathers though, we can't legislate for people deciding to have kids with someone following old fashioned ideas!

Lol. Where have I knocked people for having kids????

Just want people to stop moaning and being so self entitled and pay for their own kids! Not at all the same as knocking people for having kids!!

and yes re pension, I am. Because I take responsibility for MYSELF

May have already been explained, but also you need to consider its not totally FREE. Instead of paying the usual hourly rate for those nursery hours, you will instead be charged 'extras' that you wouldn't usually pay separately for if you were not using funded hours.

So, for example, a non-funded day at DS nursery is £74 and this includes all nappies, wipes, breakfast, lunch, tea and 2 snacks. When the 30 funded hours kick in we would get a few hours per day funded (not the full day - the funding is 30 hours stretched across 50 weeks, instead of term-time only in a lot of private nurseries, equating to 22 hours per week only) plus be charged £9.80 for meals and £2.50 for nappy changes per day.

The 'extras' are how the nurseries manage to offer the funded hours at all because the amount the gov subsidises them for offering the hours is far less than they would typically charge a full fee-paying hour. To make up the shortfall so it is financially viable, they charge random 'extras' to balance the books.

It certainly isn't 30 hours entirely free childcare.

SHOUTS TORIES

We currently pay £2k+ per month for just one child and I'm now expecting twins which will mean £6k+ per month for 3 under 2.

We are fortunate enough that we can take the hit because we know it's temporary and will be financially beneficial in the long term whilst painful during the nursery years but twins can happen to anyone and for so many people, it would mean giving up work due to costs.