Don’t have more kids if you can’t afford them!

[SportMum1982]

I’m not a raving Tory! But honestly I would have loved more children!!! I would have loved 4 kids but I know we cannot afford 4 kids.

Why do people expect the state to pay for their children? Bar education though! If I’m being really cruel tell me, but I feel I did want more kids but stopped.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67999028

Now you're just getting into sweeping blanket statements that have no basis in evidence op. I live in a deprived area. The kids who live around me who's parents are on benefits are looked after very well even though things are tight. In fact often the kids are turned out better than the parents are. Showing your true colours there.

The irony is that without migration uk birth rate is too low to self support. Yet the less than rich are punished and ridiculed for having more than 2. So this country wants man power it doesn't have but not immigration or children. It wants parents working and fewer on welfare support but doesn't want to put in place the mechanisms to support people who want to work to do that if when they have challenges.
Something's gotta give

It's this.

We have immigration and pro natalist polices or both - or we have a smaller working population. Smaller working population means increased tax burden, encouragement/need to work much longer and/or massive service cuts.

It's like Brexit -assuming you can have the benefit of belong to EU and also leaving.

There also a nasty tone as there often is with population world wide or within countries that the wrong people are having babies - apparently in last century
eugenics movement got heavily into birth control movement so perhaps it's that.

We know the 2 child benefit limit policy had no effect on family size and hasn't got more back into work - we do know it's pushed more children into poverty - and that's known to adversely impact mental health of a family and long term health and prospects of those children - who will grow up and get taxed - and will find it harder to get the better paid jobs - and will use NHS services - so will cost us long term.

I do get the whole personal responsibility angle as we like most parents had to have hard look at number of children we could cope with and afford - if it was an easier environment to have more children many parents I know say they would have - and that's often a head over heart decision it can rankle when others seem not to be so constrained. It does ignore issue of why it's so hard though - house prices and childcare costs and yes so many men walking away form their kids and paying a pittance if anything toward their upkeep.

I also think it's worth noting that low paid, formerly seen as unskilled jobs like working in a shop etc still require a number of qualifications now. So if you didn't pass those at school, you need to pay to go back and restudy- but if you don't have a job and the money available to save to pay for fees then how do you do that without having a job in the first place? It's a cycle. Many young people leave school without sufficient qualifications at 16 that will make it very difficult for them to get an entry level job in what is now a more competitive market. Just using the two examples you've given, for childcare you need to study childcare courses at college to be able to work in childcare and to work in a shop you likely now need maths and English qualifications. So if you don't have the education (perhaps you moved a lot as a child and fell behind, perhaps you were bullied badly, perhaps undiagnosed dyslexia)- how do you get those jobs?? Therefore people fall into a trap of having to rely on benefits and instead maybe focus on trying to build a family.

I keep coming back to this issue - which is what is the evidence on how the two child cap has worked?

So many people on this thread arguing that we have to have a punitive welfare system, otherwise vast numbers of people wouldn't work and would have loads of children. But that's clearly not the case - most people work, most people want to work, and most people have fewer than 2 children. Only 15% of families have three or more children, and most of those people will be in employment.

The evidence on the cap suggests that so far it's had a very minimal impact on women's decision making when it comes to family size.

What we do know is that the cap has pushed some larger families into deep poverty, and that this degree of poverty has a serious negative impact on the developmental and physical health of children, on adults' ability to parent well, and on children's educational outcomes.

So why support it? Out of block headed vindictiveness towards usually very young, working class women who make bad life choices?

@Lavender14 But money matters. Never more so than today. The children in our secondary school are required to have a laptop to receive schoolwork/ homework on. Imagine trying to provide that for several, it’s hard enough doing it for one. And yes there is some help available for those really struggling to afford it.. but resources are so stretched already that they won’t be able to keep doing it. So then you potentially have several kids trying to work with one device- how is that not detrimental to the kids.

It’s to save money. Which we are lacking.

Not a huge fan of Apple products, but there's a scheme in the local authority where the DC in secondary schools get an iPad each to study with and access educational resources from. It cuts out stigma as all children are on an even footing.

We only "need" more children if they are going to be net providers, either financially or in terms of providing a service that is in desperate need otherwise they just add to the financial/social burden of the state and taxpayers. It doesn't follow that every extra child born will become a fantastic contributor to the system. Unfortunately a lot of children follow their parents example and end up in the same cycle of welfare poverty.

Oh definitely, agree re: many jobs needing you to have minimum of qualifications for certain basic jobs like shop assistants or childcare practitioners etc. it is not getting any easier for people when it comes to finding jobs.

In my case my funding was approved to allow me the chance to get further ahead for the future. I feel really grateful that I can study. I only started out doing free Open Learn courses via the OU (really enjoyed the Money Academy one) in my free time and look where it takes you 😉

They can also use other resources though? As I've said I live in an area of economic deprivation and our local library is where loads of older kids head after school to use the computers for their homework. Most also have smart phones that have Internet access although granted that's not the ideal way to work.

I'd say that's a failing on the part of the education system assuming that all children will have access to laptops or pcs easily and conveniently and are therefore creating an environment where the more money you have the better your academic chances are. There will always be children who can't afford these things for whatever reason so our education system shouldn't be set up in a way that pretends those children don't exist. That's not on the children or even necessarily on the parents that's on our education system because there are other ways to teach.

I run an education centre for kids who fell away from school and none of them have access to technology outside their phones so we work round that and make sure they achieve their qualifications and we have computers in our centre they can use for homework etc outside of class time. But then the reason these kids work with me at all is because the one size fits all approach of our education system inevitably means some kids get left behind. That needs to change but again, that takes resourcing etc from government to better resource, staff and financially support schools to be able to do that in the first place.

I'm not sure why you'd suggest removing benefits from parents as a means to help address poverty among school pupils.

@madderthanahatter

Why should society fund people who'd rather go to university? We already do, everyone is entitled to tuition fee loans. Almost students will also get maintenance loans and grants.

A low income family getting a top up so they can improve their prospects and their children's is something I'm fully behind.

It helped me immensely to have maintenance and UC so I could escape a bad situation and better myself.

@Lavender14 personally I think that far too many children are growing up with neglect and abuse and the thresholds for removal are far, far too low.

In other countries where children's services are funded properly (as they should be given these are the most vulnerable members of society) growing up in state care is not a life ruining prospect and is far preferable to growing up with parents who neglect/ abuse you.

It is entirely possible to fund small children's homes properly, with stable long-term staff, proper counselling and pastoral support, educational and extra-curricular opportunities comparable to those provided by responsible parents, security and genuine care. Children in state care where this is provided have outcomes comparable to children who are raised by their parents - despite their early trauma from having to be removed - per the evidence from Denmark, for example.

Vulnerable children are therefore protected from incapable/ horrific parents and such people are not financially incentivised to have more children.

This would be a far better use of tax revenues than many of the things it is wasted on currently and would reap huge benefits for the economy in years to come, as well as being the morally right thing to do to prioritise children's welfare over their parent's desires, since the parents in question clearly aren't capable of doing that themselves.

I don’t think anyone regardless of finances should have any more than 3. I don’t really see the need for more than 2. Anyone could be on their arse financially very quickly, or bereaved, disabled etc.
When I see people having huge families it just seems really selfish of the parents to me. Just saw the Wicks’s are having another and I just think why? Why not just appreciate the lovely life you already have?

Of course we should be empowering people to better themselves! They will become more employable and will probably be able to come off benefits. Self esteems will be boosted which often helps a person realise that they can make better choices.

I mean the thresholds for removal are too high. Depending how you look at it, I suppose! By low I meant how low their level of parenting has to be before anything is done.

Children growing up without proper nutrition, clothing, experiences, no exposure to nature or culture, emotional neglect as well as physical, no 1:1 focused time from adults. Reception teachers reporting children starting school in nappies, unable to communicate properly, unable to follow basic intructions or understand consequences. Children who have never left the area where they were born. Children growing up in chaotic and filthy households, without proper beds, without toys or books, without parents who even bother to take them to a library if they can't afford books from charity shops or bother to check freecycle etc. Parents who are addicts or model inappropriate behaviours or have children with several partners or introduce partners they've known less than even a year into their children's lives. Parents who even move these relative strangers into their children's home (the most dangerous thing you can do to a child). Parents who can't be bothered to take any steps to improve their children's lives but feel they should be "entitled" to have more. Parents who sadly are too mentally challenged to be capable of decent parenting even if they tried, and those who could but have no intention of doing so. You're right that there will always be people like this. It's also the case that giving them more money is extremely unlikely to help the child in any significant way. As things stand "children's services" can go into a home and observe a child in a house covered in dog poo, undernourished, with no proper place to sleep or personal space or toys and see clear evidence of emotional as well as physical neglect or even outright abuse (shouting at children, even bruises on them) and yet STILL they are not removed. It's easier to get an animal removed by the RSPCA to protect it than it is to protect a child because the adults wishes are prioritised over child welfare which is a disgrace.

If what I suggested was implemented then people would know that having children was a serious commitment and that unless they provide a child with a decent life then their children will be removed, a culture shift might take place. This would enable more financial support to be provided to those who are decent parents but have temporarily found themselves in a difficult financial situation i.e. the only problem is finances so more financial support could realistically fix it; meaningful support could be provided to help them get out of that situation, not maintain it as the status quo from now on. And the rest of the resources currently given to people who are quite clearly never going to be capable of providing a decent life for a child can be diverted to do that for those children away from those shitty excuses for parents, where it will actually make a difference. It makes me very angry that the welfare of the children is used in these arguments as a justification for perpetuating the horrific circumstances that many children are being forced to live in when the real concern of people making those arguments is usually not actually for the children at all given that it is quite clear that more money given to those parents will not fix because those parents' choices already demonstrate their inability to prioritise their children's needs over their own.

@BatteryPowerGnat what age group are you? Im early 30s and my mum said when she had me she literally could pick her house om the street (new build estate). She also moved once before this. The housing crisis and school place crisis was like this in the 90s. Same with GP and dentist. People are severely over crowded, I can't understand all this "birth rate is falling" nonsense. Why should mothers sort it out? People couldn't even feed their children in covid so we shouldn't be pushing this narrative of having kids you can afford. What about the DC?

I think the problem you're missing in your argument (which isn't bad in itself) is that poverty alone should not be a reason for children to be removed from a home which is in itself deeply, deeply traumatic. Living in a small, well staffed children's home is not a comparable solution to living in a home with your family who love you and despite best efforts of staff can still be further traumatising to the children living there as they're then exposed to the potentially distressing behaviours of other traumatised children who are living there who may be there for different reasons.

Families living in poverty where the only concern is the parents ability to make ends meet (rather than a conscious decision to mismanage money at the expense of their children or due to other issues such as addiction or domestic violence or just a genuine lack of parental understanding and capacity etc that can be harmful to children in themselves) should be supported in every way possible to stay together as this is less traumatic for the child than being removed from otherwise loving and caring parents. Removed from their extended family, removed from their school, removed from their friends and every other support network they know. The trauma of that initial removal is deep and needs to be taken very seriously and should only be done where the benefit to the child clearly outweighs the trauma that removal will cause.

My question to you would be, why would we pay foster carers, social workers, admin fees, legal fees, placement fees etc etc at a huge expense when we could pay a smaller amount to help that family stay together with support for the parents to ensure that money is spent appropriately and meets the child's needs? A family in poverty needs help and support, not their children removed from them unless as I've said there's actual safeguarding concerns outside of the poverty itself. If you think the solution is to pay other people to help the child instead of the parents themselves (provided they are otherwise loving and caring) to help the child, then I'd really ask yourself why you think that? Especially given that our current system is on its knees and there are many children out there in situations where they very urgently need to be taken into care because their homes are unsafe rather than just poor.

I think the problem you're missing in your argument (which isn't bad in itself) is that poverty alone should not be a reason for children to be removed from a home which is in itself deeply, deeply traumatic

That isn't missing from what I said. I explicitly said that where the problem was only financial then removing neglected and abused children would actually free up financial resources to be directed to children who had no issues in their family homes other than finances. That subset of parents should receive additional financial and other support so that they can rectify the situation.

I lived in poverty when younger. I know what it's like. I also know that in the majority of cases the poverty is an effect, not a cause, of the parents' issues. Therefore you cannot "treat" the poverty with money in most cases: as evidence has demonstrated it does not reduce the rates of child poverty and neglect in most cases because that subset of parents are incapable of being decent parents or providing a suitable home for a child regardless. The tolerance for this needs to be zero.

"It’s to save money. Which we are lacking."

You think the best and most moral way for us to save money is to take it away from children in the poorest families in the UK?

Despite what we know about the long term health, social and educational costs of pushing families into deep poverty?

Sorry, to me that wasn't clear from reading your post but in that case I agree with your principle points. I do however think that it can be a bit more grey in that poverty itself can cause difficulties for the adults in terms of how they cope with that. Obviously we'd like to think that all parents are resilient etc but the reality is that they aren't. So where we're talking about parents issues I still feel it's important to make sure that work is done thoroughly to establish if the poverty is the result of the parents issues, or if the parents issues are the result of the poverty - for example poor physical and mental health would be strongly connected with living in poverty and the stress and deprivation that goes alongside that. So I think that while yes, thresholds have got way, way too high for family support and removal criteria especially since covid and that needs addressed, I still think that removal should come where other interventions have been tried and failed and that requires time and resources to go towards that family. So having a very low threshold for removal would need to be a careful balance between doing what's best for the child and ensuring the adults in the picture are given an adequate chance and support to better themselves.

The real major problem is that at the minute lowering thresholds (which I agree is needed) is just untenable because there's nowhere for children to go who are removed. The best outcome for a child in care is kinship care, second to that it's foster care in terms of community integration and outcomes. And due to the housing crisis and the exponential rises in COL there are significantly fewer people who feel able to take on care of a child in need. So there's other work that really needs to happen at government level around helping people manage the costs of living, the costs of maintaining children they already have etc to free people up to step into those roles to help out more vulnerable children. To me it's all a cycle and there may be families who child benefit for their 3rd child might be the difference in making that decision and feeling they could afford to take in their neice or nephew in the context of other household outgoings. Making people poorer is still going to have an impact on the kids who need to be removed because it limits where they can be placed.

Whilst moaning about the proposed VAT on her little darlings education.

My question to you would be, why would we pay foster carers, social workers, admin fees, legal fees, placement fees etc etc at a huge expense when we could pay a smaller amount to help that family stay together with support for the parents to ensure that money is spent appropriately and meets the child's needs?

Because the evidence is abundant that for the subset of people I was referring to - who are easy to identify if children's services are competent and properly funded - have never and will never meet their children's needs even if you give them more money. This is manifestly clear.

And, because the children's needs should be prioritised and - as I said - they can have comparable outcomes to those raised by competent parents if removed and care is funded properly. They have no realistic prospect of reaching the average outcome if left with such families, whether they are given more money or not.

The idea we must give neglectful, useless, selfish and even abusive parents more money in order to protect children is wrong. This would not protect a large proportion of the children living in poverty at all because the reasons for poverty in such cases are not caused by lack of money: the lack of money is a symptom arising for the underlying causes which make it inappropriate for a child to be left in the care of such people. Irresponsible, selfish, stupid, incapable or even deliberately neglectful or abusive so-called-parents. Children are not experiments. They should not be left there to see what happens. Minimum standards of care (much, MUCH higher than now) should be set and children removed immediately if they are not. Put the presumption on the side of the child, not the parent.

It would not be difficult for a competent children's services to distinguish between those who had simply fallen on hard financial times and those who are incompetent and irresponsible and should not have any child in their care because there is clear evidence in those cases of the parent making irresponsible/ neglectful choices quite aside from their financial situation (although often such choices will also have resulted in them having little money as well).

Basically - poor people are morally awful people, and the evidence of their awfulness is their poverty?

Have you got evidence that being a sh*t person is a determiner of likelihood of living in poverty?

Because the evidence from social research I've seen suggests that the people who are most likely to live in poverty as adults are

• people who were born into poverty
• people who were abused and neglected as children
• mentally and physically disabled people and their carers
• people with learning disabilities
• people who were raised in families where the adults were addicts or mentally ill

"The tolerance for this needs to be zero."

What would that intolerance look like? Leaving the children of the unemployed to starve in the streets, or take all children of non-working families, or the poorest working families into care at birth? Forcible sterilisation & abortion?

"The idea we must give neglectful, useless, selfish and even abusive parents more money in order to protect children is wrong."

Just to be clear - choosing to have a child when doing so means you'll be required to claim welfare benefits in order to keep a roof over their heads/feed/clothe them, as large numbers of families do in the UK, qualifies you as a 'neglectful' 'useless,' selfish' parent and your child would be better off in care?

Because choosing to have children when you're very poor is fundamentally abusive?

Hilarious. You haven't understood my posts at all.

I have stated clearly at least twice now that for the people I am talking about poverty is a symptom, not the cause, or their problems therefore money cannot and will not fix it and certainly doesn't help their children as they do not spend it on them anyway.

I also explicitly stated that other people find themselves in difficult financial situations due to bad luck, where the problem is actually finances only, not the result of repeated bad choices due to other factors that make them incapable of being decent parents and providing an acceptable upbringing for a child.

Regarding your list the only one that doesn't apply to my life is learning disabilities, so you can take your moralising elsewhere thank you.