Fed up of my cousins comments about benefits and UC

[glassor2]

I’m a single mum of two kids, ages 13 and 5. My older son has a relationship with his dad, but my younger son’s dad moved away a couple of years ago and doesn’t see him often-usually once or twice a year. He doesn’t provide any financial support, and since he moves around for work (he used to live in Canada and now lives in Australia), it has been challenging to get child maintenance to chase him.

I work 3-4 days a week (sometimes more if there’s overtime available) and receive a top up from UC. My mum occasionally helps with child care, but she also has a full time job. It can be difficult handling everything on my own, but I manage.

Anyway, I have a family member I'm quite close to, and she often makes comments, not aimed at me, but towards people who claim UC. For example, she mentioned that it's unfair for her to pay almost £300 a month in tax while others can work part time and avoid paying anything (I don’t earn enough to pay tax) and that she has to pay more to subsidise the people that don't. She even told the entire family that she pays almost £400 a month, including national insurance, which made things awkward and nobody knew what to say.

From what I know, she doesn't earn a huge wage, so I can see why it would be frustrating for her to have to pay that much. It's a lot of money. However, it's not our fault, and if she's upset, her anger should be directed at the government, not at those who are rightfully claiming.

Everyone’s situation is different, and some people need help. I never chose to be a single parent, and I can't control the fact that my ex chose to leave and decided not to support his child financially. I'm doing my best, just like many others on UC are.

I don't think she's intentionally trying to upset me, but she is.

AIBU? How do I tackle this?

The hand wringing about single parent families on this thread is laughable. My children are safer and happier with one parent than I ever was with two. Even if we get some help.

100%. Mine did it at middle age, became a despicable bastard. It happens and not infrequently.
I don't think it's so much that they change though, it's probably more that they just stop pretending to be good people. Once a woman is pregnant or has given birth a man may feel that she is trapped, so he then has the confidence she won't leave and is free to be his true twattish self. It's amazing how long some of them can keep the mask on. In my ex's case he developed friendships with people who were sociopaths (one was even a convicted murderer, as I later found out) and it was the first time in his life he felt validated for his prickishness, so that emboldened him. That and a crapton of disgusting, particularly misogynistic porn.

A breakup of a LTR, especially when children are involved, is no different in terms of the stress it causes.

That's terrible. And he doesn't support them either?

No. Became self employed. Lives in a 300k house, drives a new BMW and on paper makes 14k pa. Pays 10 quid. CMS been going through enforcement action for about 4 years now... No joy. House in his GFs name etc.
Thankfully I have a good job, but I am realistic that I had an advantaged childhood/education and parents who helped me out with childcare sometimes, plus was already at a decent point in my career before I had kids.
He was always trying to sabotage my career and get me to leave work. Thank god I didn't!

Because this country doesn’t provide feee childcare so in cases like the OP where there is effectively no other parent, there is no alternative.

DD's dad moved an hour and a half away to live with OW, I had to give up my well paid job due to SS taking a very dim view of 7 year olds being left alone at 5am (when I had to leave for work), or until 10pm (if I was on an afternoon shift), or all night (on the occasions where I had to cover staff shortages), my LL (exH's mother), evicting me from the house we lived in, oh and exH draining the joint account of most of the money. As I said up-thread, there was no crystal ball to predict that 7 years after having DD any of that would happen, so I suppose my "flippant choice" was not moving in the exH and the OW, because other that that ridiculous notion there was not a lot I could do about the situation I found myself in. The only thing I could do was throw myself at the mercy of the state and hope things improved whilst trying to keep it all together for the sake of DD who is now in her 30's, has a degree and is living a great life.

So, instead of the judgy snide remarks, thank your lucky stars that you have never had to experience the shit I, and many others have been through, because until you do, you really have no idea.

If your youngest son is 5 can you reach out to his school to understand what wraparound care is available and if any is funded for low income families? By using this you could take on more hours equivalent to FT?

you are past the hardest period of early years so well done, it’s hard to juggle at that age but hopefully come September you can have more options and your eldest may even be able to help soon.

At least you are working and not a complete benefits sponge, tell your cousin to go * and aspire to more herself…£300 a month is less than average. How much does she think NHS, public services (police/emergency etc) and schools alone cost to run - services she happily uses! As a society people have no clue how lucky we are that these and other things like pensions, child benefit and elderly care etc are provided. Benefits abuse is my absolute pet hate

@Dontcallmescarface indeed - life isn’t black and white - yes there are piss takers but for every piss taker there is someone in ‘not predictable’ circumstances.how many ‘amazing dads’ do we see posted about on here who subsequently bugger off with some bint from work and try to get away with paying next to nothing and having kids as little as possible !! It’s a fair old few and plenty of middle class middle to high earning ones too

That’s not how it works. It’s interesting to me that when I look around my group of friends, all of whom are educated to at least undergrad level we had children later and fewer of them. One or two a piece (and some choosing to stay happily child free). So that tells me that education has a part to play (and the evidence supports this across countries and cultures). So for me the logical conclusion, rather than pulling the rug out from under people’s feet, is to put money into ensuring kids are healthy and have access to aspiration and opportunity and good quality education. Many of them will already have a work ethic from watching their parent/parents working their arses off to support them because let’s not forget that a HUGE percentage of people claiming UC are also working.

This is a really nice and accessible article about the myths around poverty and the welfare state if you’re interested https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/pdfs/catalystaugust2002.pdf

(also worth pointing out that there wasn’t always a welfare state and birth rates were much higher. As was infant and maternal mortality. I mean, I guess dead people can’t claim benefits so maybe that’s the answer 🙄)

Again the focus here is on the parents not the kids, who have zero say in how and where they are born. This is where all of these arguments fall down because even if we accept that there are feckless people deliberately choosing to live off welfare (which is a far more nuanced and complex discussion outside the scope of what I can be arsed with today) you are still arguing that these children deserve to go cold and hungry because of decisions made by their parents. And yeah, as far as I’m concerned that is pretty disgusting and controversial.

Exactly this. People are all kinds of cool with benefits paid out to the middle classes. They’re not even seen as benefits (SMP, child benefit, pensions etc). They just don’t like the ones they haven’t had to use.

It blows my mind because in real life I bet most of these people are perfectly nice and personable. But when it comes to extending basic human kindness to people they see as ‘other’ poof decency gone. Madness. And they don’t even see how lacking in compassion and decency these opinions are. It’s straight out of the daily Mail ‘ooooh no, don’t look at these REALLY wealthy people who are hoarding resources and not able to share like most 5 year olds are able to master, look at those awful poor people trying to take your money’ distraction playbook. Makes me want to vomit.

@Thursday5pmisginoclock I don't understand your logic.
At the moment the OP works part time but need UC (aka government money) to top up her income.
If she worked full-time she could maybe get funding for childcare care (aka government money).
As I said way back in the thread there seems to be this strange attitude that benefits = bad.
Yet anything called "funding" - oh that's fine !

It’s really not controversial saying parents should look after their children, I don’t know where you’re coming from in this.

you are still arguing that these children deserve to go cold and hungry
Really? I thought I was just arguing for people to take responsibility for their children.

Some men are deadbeat dads. Sounds like both OP's children's dads are unfortunately. But I fail to see how that means you should be able to choose to work part time and claim top ups funded by other people who also have caring responsibilities and go out to work full time.

Why the defence of this tax dodging and take behaviour when it is condemned at the other end of the scale – relatively well off people structuring their taxes to pay less of them for instance.

It's clear that you know absolutely nothing about the causes of poverty.

@PixiePuffBall But I fail to see how that means you should be able to choose to work part time and claim top ups funded by other people who also have caring responsibilities and go out to work full time.

Because if the person is on a low wage and can't afford child care, the only alternative is funding for child care, which would enable them to work full time. That would come from taxpayers as well, and it would likely cost even more. Would you like to pay more just so you could feel assured people weren't just too lazy to work full time and were getting away with it?

Why the defence of this tax dodging and take behaviour when it is condemned at the other end of the scale – relatively well off people structuring their taxes to pay less of them for instance.

Working part time so you can take care of your kids is not "tax dodging behaviour" and not in the least comparable to a wealthy person evading taxes.

Are you really this confused about it or are you being disingenuous? It's not exactly rocket science. It's like you come from some utopia where genuine hardship doesn't exist.

This

My deductions each month are nearly £2k (not just tax admittedly)

I don’t moan at her that I’m helping to subsidise her. But I could if you’d like - she sounds dreadful

Agree just point out she’s not a contributor at that level of wage and tax and then roll your eyes if she mentions it again

I just don't understand how society is supposed to afford it? It doesn't seem sustainable. And posters are guilting the tax payer for letting kids stay in poverty when that's their parents responsibility?

As for before the welfare state-kids didn't cost anything like what they do now to raise! And they'd probably be working themselves from age 13 or 14. Don't think we want to go back to those days. People weren't having that many kids back then out of choice for the most part.

I've already said earlier in this thread why "subsidised" childcare is 1) not actually subsidised, 2) shouldn't be.

Why? Both are examples of people navigating a system to do what is in their interests. Tax avoidance is not tax evasion. One is legal the other is not.

I think that’s largely because the current benefits system is a sticking plaster and there hasn’t been meaningful investment in the nhs, early years and education more broadly for over a decade. Unfortunately we’re now seeing the cost of this. If we take sure start as an example, these centres were in the heart of communities and offered all sorts from affordable childcare (allowing parents to work/go to college etc), postnatal appointments (meaning mum’s with poor mental health were identified early - and maternal happiness is the single biggest predictor for children’s outcomes), universal and targeted speech and language support and so on. Unfortunately we had a change in government and social mobility has stagnated ever since. Same goes for health - tier 3 services are drowning because primary care has been on its arse for years meaning nothing is done till it’s a crisis. Education has been turned into some weird conveyor belt churning out over assessed, burnt out kids who can pass exams but not think critically. In short, it’s a bin fire.

You shouldn’t be feeling guilty imo, you should be absolutely incandescent that there is MORE than enough money but it’s not being distributed fairly. I honestly can’t see how any of this is fixable without taxing the rich more and closing the tax loopholes. I’ve worked in the public sector for nearly 20 years and never seen anything like this.

Thats a straw man if ever I heard one - nobody is saying people shouldn’t be taking care of their children. The OP of this thread is, I’m completely sure, taking very good care of her children. On her own. And she’s doing so with a small amount of financial support to help her make ends meet and be there for them while they are young. in fact, I think it would be less responsible to not accept the support and end up homeless or having to skip meals.

She wasn’t even MARRIED! Forsooth! clutches pearls for eternity 😆

Could you give a hint as to what page that's on? I looked back but I could only find flippant advice about getting a "higher paying job" to pay for childcare, which you were justifiably blasted for saying. I'd be interested to know why you think a subsidy is actually something other than a subsidy, and if so, what it is.

The difference in the two examples is that one person is doing it for survival and the other is doing it for increased comfort. You don't seem to want to accept that this difference is meaningful.

Just to be clear, the person saying ‘you’re arguing for children to be cold and hungry’ is accusing me of straw man argument? Ok then.

There are plenty of people on this thread saying the tax payer should take care of their kids, the answer is no you should be. If you don’t understand this simple concept of parenting then you’re part of the problem.