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

@Thebestwaytoscareatory

I can agree with that. Its the old in the UK that are destroying the UK economy with their constant demands for public subsidies.

Conversely, if you do want a higher fertility rate you have to make it available for all people at every income level.

If you only make it available for the massively wealthy (self-funfing) and lower earners (subsidised) you will end up with similar problems 50 years down the line with masses of older people who need heavy public subsidies.

I don’t think the two child cap is the way to address this, leaving children in poverty just builds up more and more problems.

But I absolutely agree that a lot of parents of larger families make bad choices in having more children than they can afford, and then turn around and have a go at the state for not supporting them. This is a separate issue to when someone has a change of circumstances. If you’re struggling with two or three kids, yea you’re going to struggle a hell of a lot more with four or five!

There’s no point in pretending that all the large families in poverty are there through circumstances entirely outside of their control. They should not be punished for it, all kids deserve a decent life. But we should be looking at what the drivers are for these families and figuring out how we can make the future parents make better choices.

I do agree that there are too many people having lots of children just because they want them with no thought at all to being able to provide for them.
People do need to take more responsibility for themselves and their families futures. Yes, things can change and that can be devastating, but that's not everyone that is having loads of children.
I think people should also acknowledge in their decisions that things can and do go wrong sometimes and expect life to have it's ups and downs and consider 'what if we split up?' or 'what if I lose my job?' etc and make sure they really can manage (at least for a while) if things suddenly don't go their way.

None of which anyone has said

We need to save our indignation for employers, who are the ones being subsidised, paying poor wages while raking in huge profits.

the article mentions two women, the second one Frances is the one who's relationship broke down after the third child. The first lady is a mum of 5 but it doesn't state whether she is a single parent or not. I am guessing it's not always cut and dried.

Yeah like £20 a week more is a big incentive to have more kids.

A friend wanted two children but had triplets the second time she was pregnant. Having four children wasn’t planned but what happened.

I’m sure plenty of people are financially comfortable enough to have several children but then something unexpected happens and they can’t afford their lifestyle anymore.

Decisions tend to be made on how things are the time and what can be reasonably expected on the future. Sometimes those decisions aren’t the ones that would have been made with hindsight.

Okay so my friend and her husband wanted a big family...They have six beautiful children... husband gets cancer and died within 3 weeks of diagnosis...she's left a single Mum.. barely making ends meet..
What's the answer op?🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Sorry, thought that was a theoretical friend. Read it again and realized that wasn't the case.

Circumstances change. Sometimes really quickly.

Experienced this with two years went from two good wages and 55K in bank to no income due to redundancy and savings spent on a house needing work and worried would lose.

https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/research-for-the-world/politics/two-child-benefit-cap-poverty#:~:text=We%20find%2C%20first%2C%20that%20the,a%20number%20of%20other%20reasons.

We find, first, that the two-child limit has had minimal impact on the birth rate. In part this is because of a lack of knowledge about the policy, which could change as time goes on. But there are a number of other reasons. For many families we interviewed, times were good when they had their additional child, so the level of benefits that would be available in a time of need was simply not part of the equation.

I suspect that would have been us - had last much wanted child when it looked like we could afford it. They also say it's had no impact on employment rates and has plunged more children into poverty.

Parents should all take out life insurance. It's really heartbreaking and sorry for her loss, but surely if having 6 children people would or at least should consider what if we split/one us dies or loses their income? That's a lot of responsibility having that many children with 2 parents let alone 1. Of course the children should be supported, it's not their fault their parents felt the need for lots of children.

Life insurance FGS!

I don’t disagree that people should generally have less children. If I’m honest I will never understand why anyone has more than two unless they are wealthy as it automatically makes the family situation more precarious if the worst was to happen.

However, people are clearly still having lots of children. Those children deserve to grow up in a warm, dry home with enough food to eat. It isn’t their fault and if they were still growing up in poverty before the cap then I would argue that we need to do more, not less.

It's all fucking relevant though isn't it

It mostly comes back to really shit pay and so many jobs not being properly valued by this society (hence the low pay). Companies raking in profits while squeezing their workers dry, and the State topping up the poor pay.

Having said that, five kids is a lot. You ought to know how babies are made after a couple of pregnancies.

These articles always say its "not by choice" because of contraceptive failures etc..

We live in a country where termination is safe & legal and widely available. Not to mention - isn't it funny how most people on higher incomes manage to limit their family size?

Its one thing where you've ended up with 3 kids but 5 is a hell of a lot of contraceptive mistakes.

Okay so my friend and her husband wanted a big family...They have six beautiful children... husband gets cancer and died within 3 weeks of diagnosis

I want lots of things I can't have.

It is socially irresponsible to be having 6 children, whether you are paying for them yourself or not.

Not sure this can ever be a productive conversation to be honest.

There are parents who are feckless. And tbh, their kids wouldn’t even benefit from the extra money. There are people who think their need for more children is a priority over the quality of life they will have. Too many people believe ‘have the child, all children are a blessing and you won’t ever regret it’ which is lot true.

But on the other hand, people get sick. Their kids get sick. Their male partner walks away and thinks it’s fine to not bother contributing in time or money. We judge women for working and pedal lines like ‘ I could let someone else raise my baby’ or ‘you should put your children first not your job’ and make women feel they should make themselves financially vulnerable to be a good mum. These things which are never said to Dads.

Then we blame single mothers for the poorer outcomes for children from single parent families.

I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t think it’s continuing to pay for indefinite amounts of kids. But I don’t think you can blame all people for poor planning either.

So it’s never a good conversation. People tend to start arguing about extremes. ‘Should disabled people NEVER have children’ or ‘if you have more than one you asked and deserve to end up in poverty’ and so on.

Reading the article I would say that the case studies don't necessarily support the argument that the problem is the cap.

Study1 - the mother with a disabled child needing medical supplies - the issue here seems to be that the "system" isn't providing support for the disability as the child doesn't meet the criteria - all the threads on here on how hard it is to get the disability element of UC suggest this might not be an uncommon problem. The change that is needed here is almost certainly to be less tight over disability support especially where a child's well being is involved.

Study 2 - seems to be a mother who didn't ask herself how she could afford more children.

Study 3 - mother who had done her sums but assumed she'd be a 2 parent family. Now on her own and the ex doesn't pay support. Change needed here is not for the state to pay more benefits but for the state to go after the deadbeat (and all of his ilk) and MAKE them pay for the children they fathered. Ideally also start trying to nudge society to treat deadbeats like we now do drunk drivers....

Wow there’s a lot of hate for people with larger families on this thread

Yep - and the answer to that is to kill the old people. Shrink the economy even more so there's even less money, no public services and hardly any work. But hey, house prices will go down! That might cheer you up while your one child waits until you're old enough to kill off ...

People don't understand cause & effect, they can't join the dots.

Very sad situation but if you have a big family then surely you'd put provision in place for such an event - critical illness, life insurance.

That's exactly what it is.

I know plenty of single mothers with five or more kiddies ..one never worked since leaving school and when the Job Centre put pressure on her to go out to work, she worked for a few months but then fell pregnant again.

I have seen her for over 30 years pushing a buggy around town, dressed impeccably, think she’s a grandmother now