Do the proposed tax free childcare plans insult stay at home parents?

[Jac1978]

Working families will receive £1200 a year per child up to a maximum of 20% of their total childcare costs from 2015. Both parents or a single parent must be working and earning less than £150,000 a year to qualify.

Is this a welcome boost to help parents who can't afford childcare or does it insult parents who choose to stay at home and look after their children themselves? Should they be encouraging parents to work or stay at home or should they not help parents at all as it is their decision to have children?

kazoo - How do you do that Faster in today's society with every penny going on getting a mortgage,frozen salaries etc?

if you want to have years not working, it is clearly going to take years of saving, so I would do that. you would clearly need to cut back on everything. e.g. no foreign hols, camping the UK instead.

living in shared accom pre dc, maybe taking a lodger before dc, small house. etc. basically cutting all costs back.

Did all that Faster and ditto.

We can't afford to help wealthy families bringing in 60k and over so I suggest such families save for childcare instead of having help from a cash strapped treasury.

I still don't understand why Fathers cannot claim it whether their partners stay at home or not because they will be paying tax and it's a tax break for those who work with children

Not all sahp's receive financial support off the government. Most people I know with one parent at home have made sacrifices in order to do that. I know all my cousins and partners with children work and they have nicer houses, cars and holidays than us, so i suppose we have sacrificed that in order for me to care (and I have to unfortunately, there is no other way around it)

Oh my word Faster HOW RUDE

I don't stay at home to benefit the likes of you, I stay at home for the good of my children, that my husband provides for by working long, unsociable hours.

I don't want money off someone because I do choose to stay at home but I do not expect thinly veiled insults that imply that I am a leech on society because I put my children first and my finances second.

(and before everyone starts that does not mean I think working Mums/Dads are rubbish and should be at home like me. I just don't see why my choice for my children is deemed less valid)

and I don't get a benefit bean barr child benefit btw

ankle - which is fine as long but don't expect anyone else, apart from your DH, to do anything that benefits you.

eh?

Pardon!

PomPom. Tax credits will be UC soon and no a sahp won't receive childcare sudsidy. Which is really stupid because how can they join the workforce, attend interviews if no childcare subsidy?

anklebitersmum

ditto, finances come second to our dc in our household too.
I don't receive any benefit at all, but dh gets WTC and gives it to me, lol.

Soooooo we're so unworthy,can't believe how much being with your baby or young children is looked down on these days.

you are making this way too personal

but...and here is the thing... you cannot expect anyone else who is working to pay for it, by working themselves. other than the other parent.

if you don't expect it fine. if you do, the system is moving towards work.

Nobody apart from hubby does do anything that benefits me financially. No benefits at all barr CB. That's it. That and hubby's wage. Which he's taxed on. Which goes into the pot that all these subsidies are coming out of.

And again I say " How Rude "

if the system is working towards work they need to fulfill their legal obligations under the carers act to support carers to work, but the trouble is they WONT
gah!

owl - carers is completely different matter and I do think you are getting treated badly.

ankle - I have no idea why you find it so offensive saying that a SAHP is not contributing tax.

Some people are enabled to pay 40% in tax because of the partner at home.

There is no way my dp could do his job if I worked full time.Well he could but the dc would suffer.

So part time elcrappo job it is for me then.Will barely earn enough to run the extra car we'll need.

Faster.

We will have to beg to differ on this one.

If you think the system is moving towards work, then you are very mistaken. There are many households with 2 parents working who will not both be able to afford to work due to childcare cuts. Those with high earning potential will be the only people to benefit.
Those on benefit already will continue for the most part as there is only a necessity to be seeking work. As there isn't any work available they will still get benefit.
Many like me who chose to be a long time sahp will not all of a sudden wish to work.
I don't know where these extra jobs are coming from, nor the people to fill them tbh.

Spot on potato

Strange that the Conservatives are party to any measure that offends parents, when so many of the population are parents.

When they introduced changes to child benefit they penalised families where one of the parents stays at home to look after the children. So, someone in a job like being a member of a school's leadership team (in London very likely to be earning £60+), a professional person, or a middle manager in a reasonably large corporation, whose other half looks after their children at home, loses financial support, while two earners, both leaving their children to be looked after by other people, are subsidised.

Clearly this is an economic argument, a money-orientated government which wants everyone to work (some of them working only to look after children of other people who work), But, as the new Pope said yesterday, we are not just producers and consumers. There is more to life. And bringing up children is part of that.

But, apart from that, there is an environmental cost, because all those working people have to use transport to get to work, have to be maintained at work, and need a range of additional props to make up for the loss of their time to their children.

It is actually better for the environment for people (and I know that many mothers don't want to go to work, they feel they have to) to bring up their own children as they want.

So, why are ordinary hard-working parents (not the paid ones, those who work so hard to bring their children up themselves - as they should) constantly vilified and penalised by those who presume to lead us?

how does a SAHP benefit Ms/Mr Average?

this is what I found rude. Along with ankle - which is fine as long but don't expect anyone else, apart from your DH, to do anything that benefits you.

In the same vein as if I said "well how does you working at Tescos (for example) while the taxpayer pays for your childcare benefit me?" I would be being rude.

I don't think I need paying to look after my own children. I had them I should be there for them. So I am.

well said overboard

While I'm in the mood - suggest reading a very good article in the Daily Telegraph today - by Allison Pearson - 'Good parenting can't be measured in GDP'.

That is a fantastic article overboard. It's not often I am in complete agreement with something in The Daily Telegraph but I honestly felt like standing up and giving Allison Pearson a round of applause! Here's the link :

www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-politics/9943272/Good-parenting-cant-be-measured-in-GDP.html

I think the wind is changing and although Gov isn't exactly encouraging a sahp, the result of their policies will make more sahp's out of necessity not choice.
All of a sudden people will stop bashing sahp's when they become one themselves and society will not look at people raising their own children as a luxury.
Hopefully the words "parents providing childcare" will be a phrase of the past and instead we will be raising, nurturing, loving our children not seeing them in terms of who provides childcare.

The Telegraph is one of the most sexist papers in the UK.
If childcare was so brilliant and the right thing to do men would be clamouring to do it. They don't because it isn't. Every culture contracts it out as it's dull if you do it 24/7 but lovely for a few hours a day which is the position most parents want.