Funding everyone to have multiple children???

[MyLimeGuide]

Hello all, this issue seriously gets me down, as someone who has worked solidly since forever (im 45) always wanted 2 children. I have 1, realised I cant afford 2, seeing what labour have done, lifting the 2 child cap for benefits MADDENS me to the core! Not because of my own circumstances, im more than happy with one and I can give him everything.
Im a teacher, currently working in a SEN school, the majority of the cohort are from non working families with multiple siblings. Their biggest problem is neglect. Often these kids tell us their mum is pregnant again!!
i have seen this pattern with neglected children un every single school ive worked in. Unbelievable that Labour want to increase this!
It's not to help children, its the opposite.
Its unfair on hardworking people to be expected to fund it.
I believe EVERYONE is entitled to be a parent, regardless of circumstances, but NOT breed like its a hobby (a freeloading one with no care)

AIBU - Let everyone breed as much as they want regardless of circumstances its their god given right.

AINBU - This is unfair, children should be born into families that can afford to look after them fully and offer them the time and nurture they need to develop into humans with good mental health.

The benefit cap still exists, so will there be much real change I wonder.

Cynically I feel this change was largely made to appease certain backbenchers.

I see your point. But unfortunately the cap didn't stop these people from having more & more kids. Nothing will stop them. They will have them regardless of whether they can afford them (financially & timewise) so at least it means that the kids should hopefully have more food on the table.

They are having children regardless … the only people “punished” by the cap have been the children. Yes these people are feckless, but the children they have should not be disadvantaged by thier parents poor decisions. You have to invest, to try to raise the aspirations and opportunities of the next generation, so they make different decisions.

The evidence shows the 2 child cap made no difference to how many children people had. All it did was punish the children for being born and mean they had worse health and education outcomes which will cost the state more through their lifetime than some extra UC when they were young. I have a disabled child and do work but it’s hard as there is no childcare. It’s very difficult to find something that pays well and fits round caring. Does your Sen school offer before and after school care so parents can work?

I can't understand it.

The government could have increased the payment a little while leaving it capped at two children.
They could have given food and camp vouchers to schools and kinders.

It's unfair to the working families with children who pay tax.

Their taxes are not being well utilised to help neglected children.

I only have one but I think it’s massively ignorant to assume that anyone with multiple kids is a scrounger.

This is how I feel too. And yet I hear you OP - I used to do a similar job to you. I recognise your description of parental neglect, and families who have one baby after another without being able to provide so much of what their kids need. It's an awful thing to see, and really stays with you when you've seen it first hand. I also think that two children is PLENTY for any family.

Head over to one of the many other threads going on about this. YABU, including for starting another thread.

Ha!!! The irony of your comments!!!

Key word there is hopefully, in too many cases it will not. The OP's post is exactly what I found over 20 years ago, constant benefits from the workers provides no incentive to stop having children.

Can you point to any evidence that lifting the two child cap will lead to people having more children? Genuine question.

And by people, I assume you mean crap (or worse) parents who don’t give a shit about their offspring?

Because I’d be prepared to put money that those parents don’t sit down, work out the finances and make considered decisions before they get pregnant.

I agree. In any case the rape clause was inhumane and I'm glad to see the back of it.

I will get shot down for this but here goes. The sort of person who can’t self regulate enough to plan their family according to their means isn’t going to be spending that extra money on their children. Nobody needs more than two children. Everybody knows how they’re made. If as a woman you’re pregnant for the third time unplanned there are remedies. If you’re in a relationship where you are forced into unprotected sex there are choices. Maybe we should start to look more closely from a social services perspective at families who keep having children and whether they’re fit to keep them.

YNBU, I feel your pain. I also chose to have one child due to the costs of childcare and the necessity for us both to work. It was not just the financial resources but emotional/physical resources. We only had enough energy for one as there are only so many hours in the day to help with homework/activities after school. Please don't listen to the posters who think money grows on the magic money tree. I also do not believe that this money will reach the children who need it.

I’m sure it will encourage them to have more children.

How do you ensure the money is actually spent on the kids though? Someone who has child after child with no thought to funding them is unlikely to be spending it on the children, they’ll just be encouraged to have more and more babies that they can’t afford.
Maybe we need some sort of intelligence test before we are allowed to breed!

I only have one child and I disagree with scrapping the two child benefit cap. 2 children is enough and if you want more children then you’ll need to work hard and figure out if you can afford more children.

YABU because the premise of your question is flawed.

Of course people shouldn't have more kids than they can afford and/or care for properly. I think pretty much everyone would agree on that.

However, the evidence shows that the cap didn't actually deter people from having kids that they couldn't afford/ couldn't look after properly. The children were being born regardless, and the cap merely exacerbated the problems that they faced because it added increased financial hardship into the mix.

Punishing the innocent children of feckless parents by pushing them deeper into poverty achieves nothing. It is unjust, and in the long term, it will probably cost the state far more than a relatively small uplift in welfare benefits.

We should be investing in these children in order to try to level out the disadvantage that they are born with. We should be trying to break the cycle, and not just perpetuating it from one generation to the next.

Hard working people never neglect their kids do they according to these threads.

This seems to be one of those assumptions for which there is zero evidence. One thing doesn’t automatically lead to the most obvious outcome.

Unrelated, but I have a friend who worked for a company that introduced unlimited holiday entitlement. So long as the work got done, to the required standard, when it was needed, people could take as much holiday as they wanted.

Everyone who heard this said it would be a disaster - people would never be at work, people would take the piss, etc. Seems like a fair and obvious assumption.

In practice, the opposite happened - people overall took less holiday, to the extent that HR had to start badgering people to take it to ensure they met the legal minimum. It was then quietly dropped at the first opportunity.

Shouldn't you be getting ready to teach at this time of day. Perhaps you should get on with that instead of starting goady threads. It would help your pupils more.

You might be "sure", but the actual evidence suggests that the cap didn't make any difference to how many children people were having.

The experiment was tried and it failed. The children were being born anyway.

Of course it will. And having it would discourage surely?

The benefit cap exsists so those who dont work will most likely not see the increase, labour was pretty smart the way they did it. You need to earn £800 odd or have a disabled child/be disabled to lift the cap.