Eh, I'm not sure how it's astounding. They'd have been able to do so without the issues of being split before 2017.
Circumstances can change and that is a different situation entirely, but it should not be at all controversial to say that if you cannot afford to keep a roof over a child’s head, clothes on their back and food in their tummy then you should not be having that child.
There are many reasons it's controversial in the manner it's been put, including:
It's controversial because it can be read that you're telling the people born into that situation that they shouldn't exist - or potentially, that they should have been taken into foster care for their parents' fecklessness.
It's controversial because, as others have said, UC and the legacy benefits were largely created to be wage subsidies to enable businesses (including the government) to continue to pay low wages. Some of the most essential and difficult work in our society is at or barely above minimum wage. Society relying on people willing to work that labour and turning around saying you shouldn't have kids is controversial. No amount of hustle is going to make certain areas of work - many desperately needed and already understaffed - pay better. The market has failed there.
It's controversial because, regardless of the example given, the vast majority of families who end up with both parents out work end up resolving it.
It's controversial because it largely assumes that children have access to their parents income and associates parental care with that income. That's not inherently true.
So you think it’s totally okay for children to be starving, skipping meals, not having clean clothes to wear or shoes that fit, just so everybody and anybody can have as many children as they want? Fuck the life those kids have, that doesn’t matter to you, as long as their parent gets to have a child they can’t afford to bring up?.
I experienced all of those while having a father who made 6 figures back in the 80s and 90s. I literally got pulled into the school nurse repeatedly in high school and embarrassingly weighed because people thought I had an eating disorder, when really I just had limited access to food - he'd buy enough for maybe a week, and be gone for three. I was known to wait around for the end of lunch for people's leftovers, I was also regularly the dirty kid and experienced having the electric company come to shut off the electrics while home alone. Parents having money doesn't mean kids aren't skipping meals, starving, and far more.
I've long accepted I'm the type of parent many people hate - over twenty years ago, I was an immigrant teenage mum who had a child while we lived on my also teenage husband's student loan - that baby didn't experience any of that, and neither did any of our other kids who came after. As an immigrant, I wasn't eligible for benefits - not even child benefit - when my oldest was born so benefits weren't part of the consideration.
There are many of us who make choices many don't like where benefits don't factor and there are many kids who are badly neglected like I was who get ignored because the parents live in a naice postcode or have the right kind of job. Presuming low income means neglect and low standards is part of why parents like mine were get away with it.
I'd rather be the irresponsible parent I was than the kind my parents were.
There isn’t a magic money tree, as you’ve just said there is already a wage issue and every penny you pay out in benefits has to be paid IN in taxes
Not every penny - while currently the primary revenue stream, it is not the only one governments have.