To think some older women having tax payers funded ivf are hypocrites?

[Spiderbug]

There seems to be a substantial group of people who are ok with calling teen mums a waste of their tax money but then leave child bearing too late and expect the tax payers to foot the bill for their multiple ivf cycles which costs the tax payer up to 100 million a year.

Hypocrites!!!

I can understand where you are coming from OP.

I have never thought about it that way, and I don’t know what the stats are.

But from personal experience I feel a little overprotective over teen mums, and hate the way that they are generally treated as a category, or how they are judged as a category.

I was a teen mum, and with help and support I was able to complete studies, get into work, climb the career ladder and contribute towards society. I know many women who have had children before 25, and are the hardest working people I know - because we don’t have time to mess around. And actually have caught up to peers by the time we are 30s. I have friends that have kids in their 30s, and some choose not to work or work part time instead. Same thing - just timelines have rotated .

I think what frustrates me is the prejudice towards teen mums. And now that we are seeing a rise in infertility, I think we need to stop judging women for when they have children - across the board.

If you have them young, as long as you look after them and get the support, it’s no one’s business. If you choose to wait, well good for you, but that also isn’t anyone’s business.

Also when I was younger raising my child, I didn’t have much of a social life, so didn’t see my friends as much. That is fine. But now that a lot of them are in their 30s/40s - and I have more free time so can actually hang out with them - I get comments of “you are so lucky that you have your children”. Sometimes I want to say “well you are lucky you have your experiences” - we all make choices. But it can’t be easy if you feel like you are fighting against the biological clock - which I see a lot in my friendship circles.

Not only are BU, but you are also judgemental and downright awful.

There was a time university was just a place for a small group of highly intelligent people to study and they paid with their own money, no government loan.

This demonstrates you haven't got a clue what you're talking about @Spiderbug and suggest you might find out about higher education for a large part of the 20th century in the UK, when there were widely available, non repayable maintenance grants and no tuition fees.

For someone of 23 (you haven't corrected people pointing that out , including me) you sound very bitter and only you know why that is. I was born to an unmarried mother in the early 60s and if you want to hear real horror stories about how they were treated, that's a good place to start, not 8 years ago.

We need to stop judging women for their choices, full stop. And the problem with this thread is that OP is being openly vile about choices groups of people have made, purely because some people were rude to her.

It's usually how bullies are made, to be fair. Someone was once mean to them so they are now mean to everyone else before they can get in first.

if you read my other comment I mentioned that. That’s the second half of the 1900s. Before that you had to pay and only a very small number of highly intelligent people went. Guess you don’t know what you’re talking about either

Any clue on how young, unmarried mothers were treated in that same time period? Because it was much worse than these days. Good chance you'd have been shipped off to a convent and the baby whipped away from you before you'd had chance to have seen it.

Those days weren't the glory days of the welfare state...

I am aware and never said they were?

You can't pick and choose which things from the past are good though. You want university to be like it was in the first half of the 20th century? Then all welfare goes back there, because it's too entwined to do it any other way.

Things have moved on. People are entitled to stuff. Get over it. Stop acting like it's ok for you to think some people are wasting tax payers money, but not for people to think the same about you, when all anyone is doing is using a service they're entitled to use.

I think you'll find that certainly prior to WW2 the defining factor of many (not all) people who went to university was well enough off families who could fund them, rather than being "highly intelligent" per se.

You seem to want to categorise anyone who doesn't fit into your rather limited world view as wrong and hit out at them. Maybe recognise that women needing fertility help, people wanting to do a degree of their choice and teenagers who get pregnant are all infinitely better off now than they would have been 100 years ago and ease the chip off your shoulder.

Well I’m not trying to pick and choose I’m just putting it back on them who do think they can pick and choose. They want young unmarried mothers off in the convent like the good old days then they need to also accept paying for their own alcohol destroyed liver to be replaced and their own tuition fees.

But you didn't have to have a baby at sixteen. Contraception freely available, safe, legal terminations likewise. You do actually get to 'pick and choose'.

You just seem to get very exercised by people not thinking much of your choices, and to be hitting out at a random selection of targets.

But you want university to be only accessible to the uber wealthy and/or intelligent, that's what your post about the good old days suggests.

You need to stop caring what people think about you and just live your life in a way that makes you happy. Do you think your old neighbour cares whether you think he should or shouldn't have a liver because he drinks? Nope, he's gone through the process, been given something he's entitled to, end of.

You had a baby young, got given what the state says you're entitled to. Doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, it doesn't change that you did that or got that or what you want to do moving forward, does it?

Some people get IVF on the NHS. They've gone through the process and they're entitled to it. Some people went to uni, got a loan they're entitled to.

No one else's views matter on what you do with your life. There will ALWAYS be people who disapprove of your choices, no matter what they are. You could do everything "right" in the eyes of the woman who clearly sparked this thread. It would be wrong in someone else's.

Just go be happy instead of bitter.

and my neighbour didn’t have to be an alcoholic and destroy his liver ? People don’t have to choose mickey mouse degrees to study at university. You see my point?

Who wants unmarried mothers in convents ? I’ve never heard even the most conservative right wing people advocating for this. Seriously

And if you didn't go to work you'd still be living parasitically off the state.

If you really want to scream at someone about student loans go and take on Blair or the companies who demand you have a degree or two in some cases to even get a foot in the door.

You get judged as a woman. Get. Over. It. You're judging millions of women who you've never met and know nothing about because of someone who lived next to you. So far you've judged mothers over 35, women with degrees. How dare people use a system they've spent years paying into.

Is this a thread about teenage mums vs older mums? University degrees? Alcoholics?

I'm struggling to see the relevance as to what someone chooses to study at uni as any relation to an age someone chooses to have a baby (or even why your old neighbour us brought into it)

I’m just talking about people in general who judge teen mums without realising they themselves have been wasting taxpayer money

Who is they? Who are all these alcoholics needing liver transplants that want young unmarried mums in covents?

Where are you getting all these facts from about all these random, niche groups of people? So far we've had older mums getting IVF apparently all hate teenage mums. And we now have alcoholics needing liver transplants wanting young unmarried mums all shipped off to covents.

Never said “all” older mums having ivf think this way. In fact I’ve said a million times I only mean the hypocrites who think this way. Plenty of people judging teen mums for apparently wasting tax money when a lot of these people have themselves wasted taxpayer money for whatever reason

But why is it up to you to decide what constitutes wastes tax payers money?

Alcoholism is a complex disease. Are you saying that people who are alcoholics should just be left to rot with no state support? Most of us who pay in to the system accept that part of we pay for is to provide a safety net for the most vulnerable in society even if we don't agree with their life choices whether that be teen pregnancy or addiction.

And infertility is classed as a disease of the reproductive system so why wouldn't people be offered treatment for this? And its one that causes both mental and physical trauma to people. Is there only certain diseases that people should get treatment for?

And what do you count as an unworthy degree? Fashion? Media? Because there are plenty people who do these degrees who go on to become very successful and probably earn much more than you ever will.

You've been judged as a teenage mum? That's life unfortunately. Most of us get judged at some point in our life. And you've done a pretty food job in this thread of judging a whole raft of people.

And IVF isn't a "waste of tax payers money". As mentioned above, it's a treatment for infertility which classed by the World Health Organisation as a medical disease.

Don't like it? There's plenty of countries you can move to where they have no state funded health care.

Sorry, how are these people wasting tax payers money? They're using the healthcare or education provisions. That's incredibly different to not working and expecting free money.

I know it's like comparing apples and oranges. I'm failing to see the how people using a system they've paid into is the same as people taking benefits from a system they haven't been paying into.

Not that I have a problem with our benefit system supporting vulnerable mothers but it's not comparable to people using health and education systems.

A lot of your questions I’ve already answered if you want to scroll up and read them alternatively I suppose I could copy and paste my own comments lol. As I said I’m not judging anyone who does any of those things if they’re a nice person I’m not actually opposed to student loans or nhs ivf. I’m just pointing out some people are hypocrites judging me when they cost the taxpayer themselves, I overheard my neighbour telling someone how much of a useless waste of space young mums like me are but he was drinking every day and the taxpayer funded his new liver.

You don't have a point. You chose to have a baby at sixteen and received whatever benefits you were entitled to. Just like the people who get IVF on the NHS or the alcoholic who gets a liver transplant, and people who do a degree and never earn enough to repay the loan.

You all chose to use taxpayer money to which you were entitled.

You just need to own your own decisions and stop looking sideways and inventing irrational, embittered reasons to rant about entire groups of people on the internet.