To think we’re going to have to do more to support single mums

[Flowersinthehood]

I don’t know if this is the norm or just my social circle I’m in but my five closest friends are all single mums. Three of them have become single mum's in the last two years, two have been single mums since their children were babies. I’m in the middle.
How they are coping with it seems to vary so much depending on level of income, type of job, support network, the nature of the split, their children and their ages/ characters/ SEN, whether there a homeowner, MH.
However there are struggles for all of us.

Childcare is too short, hard to get and expensive. It’s super difficult to find a house to rent. UC, if you get it, doesn’t pay childcare in advance so for something like the school holidays is a huge outlay, especially for more than one child. Yes these costs should be shared but in a domestic abuse or coercive control situation, ex H’s aren’t always involved.
Very often women get trapped not working and it’s not because they don’t want to, it’s because the barriers to get back in the workplace are huge, especially when you’re feeling vulnerable.
The housing situation is hugely biased. No single parent who gets benefits, even ones who work can find a private tenancy. Discrimination, although supposedly outlawed, is still rife.
Flexible working, again, not easy to obtain.
WFH roles are harder to get, most only let you WFH after a period of time. Yet at the same time, childcare is being reduced due to the amount of people WFH.

I suppose my thoughts are that none of these help women leave unhappy, potentially dangerous or abusive relationships.
On MN I see a lot of ‘LTB’ but with no actual support when women actually do. It feels very much like the only women who are allowed to leave, according to MN, are those who own a property in their own name, earn six figures and have a car.
What about the rest of us?
Do governments feel that making things hard is necessary? Would women be having more babies in short term or non sustainable relationships if we made things better for women?

No, absolutely - women do what they need to to survive, and to keep their kids fed and safe - and that's used against us a lot.

Of course there are exceptions, and plenty of them.

In a lot of situations though, grey rocking rather than increasing drama, sticking resolutely to agreements (just like when training a dog, or raising a child) would make a world of difference to their quality of life. It's hard, it takes discipline (which can feel impossible when you're already worn down), but you've gotta do it, or nothing will change.

And I realise no-one thinks their relationship will break down, but giving up your earning capacity is always going to leave you vulnerable. And having the children already makes you vulnerable, so making it worse is risky.

Last time I checked I was a female, hard to tell these days of course but you never know stranger things may have happened I mean next people will be saying all females have to think the same otherwise they will be thought of as a man

Re: your last two questions, history would seem to suggest that the answers are yes and yes. When there were no benefits / support / anything for unmarried mothers, there were very few unmarried mothers. And the divorce rate was a lot lower too. We may or may not think that it's good that it's become easier to leave partners, have children without partners etc, but I just don't think the money is there for any more "support". It's like people living longer and longer; it may be a good thing, but we just can't afford to keep having people retire at 65 if living to 90+ is going to become commonplace. The fact is that stuff is expensive and it's going to be tougher running a household on one salary. I don't think government can fix that.

Perhaps the absent / feckless / imprisoned / abusive / cheating (delete as applicable) fathers should be forced to pay for their children then.

They are the ones who are equally responsible, who impregnated these unfortunate women, and they are the ones who then fucked off and left her to it.

Would more women have more babies in short term or non sustainable relationships if we made things better for women?

Why on earth would we want to encourage women to have children in short-term, non sustainable relationships?! As belts are being tightened, government spending slashed to balance the books and councils running out of money…why do you want to increase the burden on the taxpayer?

Quite right. Off to the workhouse with the trollops! Their children can be adopted by the respectable.

We need to start judging dads who do not live with or 50/50 their children. We need to turn st them. Call them drains on society. That they made reckless choices and should not breed with every women they meet. How it’s terrible to not want to spend as much time as possible being a proper real parent.

We won’t though.

I will say like you I also am around a lot of single mothers. A couple who formed a stable partnership, had children and it collapsed.

I feel sorry for them. I don’t feel sorry for the ones I know who chose to have kids with openly worthless men or put less thought into their choice to have kids than I do in deciding whether to have ketchup on my chips. I feel sorry for the kids but not men and women who make stupid procreative choices.

I wonder if lone mums nowadays would benefit from a Kate and Allie style partnership? Kate and Allie

Oh yes the two options:

1. Encouraging women to have children in “short-term, non-sustainable relationships”.

2. Workhouses and forcible adoptions.

That’s it. Those are the options.

Well said. The other side of the coin is there is nothing available for parents who are together if just one is earning more than £99k. Sounds like a dream doesn’t it, one person earning say £120k, right? But what if you live in london and you qualify for 0 hours free childcare and you’re taxed 40%? Then you pay £2,100 per month per child, plus mortgage, plus living expenses. So when you’re being asked to pay more to help single mums, whilst the Dad pays sweet FA I have to agree, you can’t keep blanket taxing people. The take home after 40% tax is not enough to keep head above water in this day and age. The answer can’t keep being ‘tax them more’. Theres nothing left…..