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

The living costs of someone renting privately in Fulham and raising four kids aged 12, 5, 3 and 7 months:

2 x nursery at £2,000 and £1,600 pcm
Cheapest 3 bed flat: £2,5000pcm

We are already on £6,100 a month in outgoings, before you’ve looked at wraparound care, council tax, food etc.

Are you kidding? Fucking hell. The laundry alone would put most people's upper limit of children far lower than that.

I do feel for the children involved. I have 4, was in a stable marriage with a higher earner now divorced. To be fair I could claim for three under new rules as last pregnancy was twins ( exceptional circumstances).

I do get a little bit of UC ( certainly less than I pay in tax every month) and work full time. I suppose the difference is ex is an involved parent and does/ pays his share.

I do think the real problem is the feckless parents ( normally fathers) who disappear at the end of a relationship. They should still be paying half / doing half the parenting imho.

I'd like to see absent fathers have more of a responsibility. CMS in this country is an absolute joke. They might think more carefully before having unprotected sex.

@SchoolQuestionnaire

When you give lower earners unlimited child benefit you are giving them an economic incentive to have more children.

Do you know what was happening before the two child cap?

The lower earners responded to the incentive by having even more children. Those children then also grew up in poverty, had worse educational outcomes, poorer health etc..

You simply cannot give incentives for people to have even more children when those parents cannot FULLY (not just the basics) provide for them until they become functioning adults. This is hugely expensive for society, and is also one of the reasons why we have such poor productivity.

The result of pre-cap was generational poverty where lower earners have 4 kids, and 3 kids stay in poverty while only 1 becomes productive. This effect then mushrooms out over the entire UK economy and you end up with masses of people with low skills doing low wage work.

The two child cap has to remain in place until the prospective parents become mature adults capable of fully parenting their chidren until they are functioning adults.

No more, no less. Thats why personal responsibility matters here.

She would have known that by having more children that her money wouldn’t increase and she would have more to provide for with what ever money she was receiving. So surely after being 1 over the cap it would have been a struggle then to go on and have more. I am on benefits and I completely agreed with the limit if you’re not willing to work to keep your children then you shouldn’t have them . Working people have to decide if they can afford on there income another child so why wouldn’t people on benefits just be able to keep having them being paid for .

sal

Not sure the child benefits will stretch to it, tbh.

I think the UK has some serious issues to address in terms of inequality etc. But it is also a fact that most people can’t afford to support more than 2 children.

I had a friend who got pregnant the second time with twins. She and her husband could afford two easily, three stretched them to breaking point financially. Which child should they have gotten rid of?? Life doesn't always work out perfectly for many of us, no matter how well we plan.

@Lorac23

Twins (or more) are exempt.

Don’t have more kids if you can’t afford them!
By and large people are following the op's advice, which is why the birth rate is dropping and many countries are at risk of population collapse.

Children are not just pets that people have for their own amusement, they are the next generation and vital for the continuation of human society.

Maybe if men were forced to pay for the children WHICH THEY ARE 50% RESPONSIBLE FOR CREATING then they would wear fricking condoms.

All the mother-bashing in this thread is disgusting.

This ^

From the ONS

UK inflation continues to remain at a high level, with a 40-year high recorded in October 2022. This higher level of inflation has continued into 2023 with food and non-alcoholic beverages continuing to be a large contributing factor. The price of these items rose by 16.9% in the 12 months to December 2022, up from 16.5% in November.

The huge rise in the cost of living in the last few years has taken a lot of people from getting by with £150+ spare at the end of the month to having to borrow £50+ from friends or family to get buy until the end of the month.

Tone deaf much?

People have more children and then struggle with the cap because
A) they are in a secure relationship when they conceive
B) they are optimists and think it will be fine
C) they don't have that level of understanding
D) contraception fail or rape
E) absent fathers can get out of paying easily

So the cap has failed as instead of people not having children it leaves a level of poverty which as a country we will be paying for for the next 70 years in wasted talent

On the other hand two parent families at all income levels are also struggling currently and environment requires fewer children. Fewer children are being born to families best places to give them a good upbringing so another loss of talent

It's a tricky one

This is quite a significant generational shift which isn’t discussed much, in the general ‘declining birth rate’ conversation.

My DH and I are both one of 4. Among my friends it is common to be one of 3 or 4.

But I don’t know anyone with more than two children. The economics don’t add up vs maintaining a decent standard of living.

I agree in principle.

But it’s much more nuanced:

Children don’t deserve to suffer because of their parents’ poor judgement.

People’s circumstances change and do so unexpectedly

Life is so expensive that even one child can be prohibitive - so are we saying kids are only for the middle classes and above?

Poor education and poverty of opportunity leads to poor choices - not inherent stupidity.

Tbh this is small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.

The aging population is a far bigger concern, if we weren't spending so much caring for older people who haven't planned propely for their later years we'd maybe be able to help struggling families more.

So instead of saying "don't have more kids if you can't afford it" maybe we should be saying "don't get old if you can't afford your own care".

To quote a pp 'It's not the taxpayer who should be picking up the pieces of people's bad decisions.'

Agree.

Two for us is financially manageable- any more and we’d really feel the pinch trying to maintain what we have now. Cut backs would be inevitable!

I do agree there can be a change in circumstances bust these are very much the minority
Even if you take the COC people out the equation, there are still a high number of women in poverty still choosing to have children
There are even baby banks catering for women that are pregnant. If you can't afford the basics then you aren't going to manage when baby is born.

I think contraception seems to fail a hell of a more in low low income families that it does in middle or higher families.

I think we do need to hold people accountable the struggle is not making the children stuffer. If someone is in a couple married whatever both earning and then fall on hard times I think all should be supported out that’s a sudden change in circumstances.

However I think having a system where people know they will get an extra X per child and get a bigger house if they have another isn’t the way to encourage responsibility.

It’s working out a way to help the children without it incentivising parents / adults to procreate without thought.

There were plenty of people near me when I was growing up (im now 38) in bigger families, supported solely by the benefits system. Without exception, they were problem families.

There's also a generational element.

I grew up on a council estate, everyone I knew growing up was from large families ie 4 siblings and above. Even though we generally all had shit childhoods plagued by poverty most have gone on to have many children themselves because they don't know any different. Conversely I work now with a lot of privately educated people from wealthy backgrounds and they generally only have 1 or 2 siblings and have few themselves. Yes it's a sweeping generalisation and won't apply to everyone; but there's an undeniable divide.