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

I think you have children. Did you not use the NHS then?

I agree with the two child cap. The UK reminds me of the film Idiocracy now. People with qualifications and good jobs are having one child because they can’t afford more nursery fees higher mortgage payments for a bigger house, high food costs etc. All the families I know with three or four children rely on the state to fund them so don’t worry about it.

I agree that men not looking after their families is a big problem now and we need harsher legislation. Disability aside it should be criminal for a parent to not provide for their children.

In some U.S. States they literally force them into work if they think they're not working in order to avoid paying maintenance. Or they set the amount so high they have no choice but to find employment. They need to do that here.

In the USA it actually is a crime.

This! They are their responsibility too!!!

Yep

1200 for a room in a shared house round here!

Anyone who thinks a parent reliant on benefits is having more kids to get their nest lined by the state needs to give their head a shake
families reliant on the state have poorer health outcomes, lower educational attainment, worse job prospects and generally a poorer outlook on life in general (of course this doesn’t apply to every single child raised on benefits, just the average). The choice to have more children if you are on benefits It is very rarely a conscious choice, far more related to social capital, education and limited options.

cutting benefits just causes poorer kids, thus perpetuating the problem of “poor choices” which is ACTUALLY limited access to and diminished capacity to MAKE choices.

if you want to change a generation, give them the tools to change and financing experiences, necessities and education is very much a part of that.

"I agree with the two child cap. The UK reminds me of the film Idiocracy now. People with qualifications and good jobs are having one child because they can’t afford more nursery fees higher mortgage payments for a bigger house, high food costs etc. All the families I know with three or four children rely on the state to fund them so don’t worry about it."

Are you genuinely trying to argue that professional people who are homeowners with secure employment and a high income are somehow worse off than people living in poverty on benefits? 😂

You should be grateful that working class women are still having children at the numbers they are - because if the birth rate continues to fall, and the public discourse around immigration continues to be as idiotic as it is now, we'd all be facing the end of retirement before 75.

Can I just remind you - having more money doesn't make you nicer or more intelligent than poorer people. FFS - look at the government. Some of the most privileged people imaginable, but they've still managed to govern in such a way as to make almost everyone's lives exponentially worse over the past 14 years.

Yep! Was in the same position and whenever anyone said to me “oooh, twins - two for the price of one” I wanted to scream at them, they’re more than twice the cost of one!! If we’d only had one on our second pregnancy there wouldn’t have been the need for a different car, new cots (couldn’t fit the older ones cot in same room with a second cot) new pushchair, an extra car seat, extra high chair etc etc And nursery weren’t interested in letting us pay for one child when we needed 2 places!

My understanding of the cap on more children was that multiples didn’t count if there was only one older child, but I haven’t checked it as mine were born before the 2015 date.

But reading through the comments it does make me think rather than thinking you’ll have the kids you can afford, we should be thinking about having the number of kids the planet can afford. Personally can’t understand the desire to have so many children, I really struggle to give the 3 I have as much of my time as I would like, if I had anymore they’d get even less of my time.

Are you genuinely trying to argue that professional people who are homeowners with secure employment and a high income are somehow worse off than people living in poverty on benefits? 😂

I thought theyre point was pretty clear. Wealthier people may have just one or two because they don't want to compromise on other things for those children.

In their perception, they can't afford to look after another one.

No, I'm not rich.

And I don't understand why the birth rate going up helps with caring jobs?

Why don't we just improve salaries for already-born people better through subsidies, and incentivise people to do it? Rather than breeding more children like they're some capitalist commodity?

In fairness your post suggests you're someone who's given no serious thought or attention to the evidence around the impact of families not having enough money to cover basic living costs.

"We're not in the immediate post war period anymore and child benefit for that extra 3rd, 4th+ child in 2024 is not going to make diddly squat difference in reality."

Except the evidence - which you've obviously not looked at - shows it does.

It can be the difference between having to sit with the lights off one evening a week, or having electricity around the clock. It can be the difference between replacing a child's outgrown school shoes for a pair that fits, or sending them to school in tight shoes for a months.

BTW - the loss of benefits for a third child born after 2017 - that would put a family reliant on UC nearly £270 down a month. So a family that had one child born before 2017 and twins born after would get an extra £269 a month, compared to a family with three children where two were born in separate pregnancies after 2017. That's a big difference for people on low incomes. It's not an insignificant amount.

UC is intended to be a 'subsistence income' - ie, it's just enough to cover a family's basic needs. A family on UC with 3 children who don't get benefit for the third child by definition don't have enough income to meet their basic needs - and there are social, educational and health consequences for children growing up in a family which has insufficient income to meet basic needs.

People prioritise different things. I worked really hard to get a "career" type of job. Its not super well paid on the level of investment banker but its OK and I find it really interesting and there is a chance of carer progression. I have one child - to me this is the perfect balance. If I had more children I would have had to put my career on the back burner.

Some people DON'T prioritise super high powered "careers". Maybe they find nurturing type jobs in childcare, elderly care rewarding. Maybe they prioritise having a larger family etc so go for the types of female dominated jobs that are low paid, very hard work but easier to balance with children (e.g. night shifts, cleaners etc). We NEED people to do those jobs. Since they haven't centred their career its perfectly reasonable for them to have prioritised something else (e.g. having 3 kids which really isn't that unreasonable). We could make life much much harder for them in order to punish them for having more children when people like me only have one. But then there would be less people choosing to go into those jobs and we would all be panicking about the childcare crisis. Since the salary of many jobs doesn't cover living costs like rent in many places, they need to be subsidised by the government. Its not the best way of doing it but its not the worst.

We also need people to have children. I don't subscribe to the whole "DEMOGRAPHIC TIME BOMB" panic you see on the interwebs but you need enough young people born each year to balance out people retiring on the other end.

Feckless parents who maltreat their kids are a whole other conversation. But most people claiming benefits in the UK are not like that.

Babies don't fit into capitalism very well at all. I don't think the logic of capitalism (which is all about production) works very well alongside looking after children and other "non-productive" jobs. But without people having babies or doing those "non-productive" jobs capitalist systems stop working. So its a problem that needs solving somehow.

I beg to differ.

Did you know… you can earn good money and still manage not to pull other people down?

Buuut sadly, sometimes money and self importance just goes to someone’s head 😬.

How privileged I am through hard work and dedication. Grew up on a council estate and went to the roughest school in the area for a while. I see the ones I went to school with four/five kids, no holidays, council flat, five different fellas, never worked. I knew from an early age that wasn’t for me but then I had decent parents.

No, I went private 🙄

Of course you did.

You don’t even know what I do and what I see every day, I’m around these low lives a lot so do not preach to me until you’ve walked in my shoes.
do you that 80% of Muslim men don’t work none of the lower caste women work and all have 5/8 kids who will also never work yet seem to have nice cars etc. the women then realise they can have freedom so run to a women’s refuge where they then get houses a lot quicker than families that have been here for years. Then because the men can be so dangerous each child gets a separate social worker ( how much does this cost?) then you have the social worker that realised it was the same children in three separate houses all being claimed for by three different women. When she reported it she was told to shut her mouth. I’m sure you will think I’ve made it all up but I really don’t care.

Why wouldn’t I. My company provided private health.

This is an interesting perspective. I don't agree: I think it is patronising to imply that poor people have no agency. There are always choices and this helplessness seems to apply selectively. For example, from your argument it follows that such people should not have the right to vote. You claim they have no capacity to make sensible choices even about their own lives so clearly they have even less capacity - in your worldview - to make sensible choices for others about complex issues.

Rights come with responsibilities. You can't have it both ways. So presumably you believe such people should be given more money but also have their right to vote withdrawn because the justification you've provided for the former precludes them being capable of making responsible choices about the latter in your opinion?

I agree wholeheartedly. Sick of the attitude of I’m entitled to benefits so society can pick up the tab for my desire to have more children. They get a 2 bedroom council house. Then breed 4 children (who are likely to be on benefits their entire lives because monkey see monkey do) then demand that they are given a bigger house to accommodate them. The unemployed should be prevented from having children. 😡