So is marriage the solution to all social evils?

[BrummieOnTheRun]

"...in the wake of a Tory report that says unmarried parents are driving a generation of children into crime and drug dependency...The Tories claim the rise in cohabitation and single parenthood is unleashing a social and economic crisis.
In an appeal to grassroots supporters, the party will this week put the promotion of marriage back at the heart of its agenda, warning of dire consequences if more couples are not encouraged to wed."

So is the solution marriage, or encouraging more household back into employment?
We married this year after 15 years of sinful co-habiting and I don't feel marriage makes a blind bit of difference to a good relationship. I see the lack of any working role models in these households as being the bigger issue.
But then I'm sure some of these kids are from single-parent households where the mother is killing herself with multiple jobs trying to make ends meet, so...???
Any opinions?
Full article here: /link{http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2496320,00.html}

we are just outside London batters, I truly dont understand how Londoners manage.

pensions? Ive heard about those. Am resigned to working at B&Q until Im 80.

well it's all a bit hypothetical to me

and tangenitally connected to being married or cohabiting or a single parent if no one can afford to exist

I have worked it out many times, and you can be better off on benefits, particularly on your own, but even with a reasonable job.

If all your friends are sitting around watching TV all day smoking and playing on the playstation, what incentive have you to go out to work in a low-status, stressful job for more or less the same standard of living that they can get for nothing?

There are so many people slaving away in jobs which are hard, dirty and boring, as well as being stressful to boot (oppressive boss, working conditions and the like). They do it for a very small improvement in their lot. Why? I watched a couple on TV who were living in a council house and were on and off benefits. The guy was working in a donut factory for the minimum wage, and they had NO prospect of ever moving out of the 5th floor council flat. Why would you bother? Would you?

The miracle is that so many people do work, not that don't. I'm not sure if it is any co-incidence that there are now 1.24 million people between 16 and 24 who are not in education, training or employment (NEETS as they are known)

'pensions? Ive heard about those. Am resigned to working at B&Q until Im 80. '

LOL!

You can have B&Q, I'll take the role of greeter at ASDA!

I've decided this thread is just too depressing for me

Agree glenn - how on earth have we ended up off topic and back on to good old benefits?

"Benefits" is like a magnet topic, drawing unsuspecting mumsnetters inexorably closer until we end up discussing it yet again.

Hey, my sister did her masters at University of Phoenix! Now here it is on MN!

i'm your average joe -

My parents are divorced, my mum is a nurse and my dad is an account - they both give a shit about me.

i got pg at 16 the council gave me a house in shitty area where i got bullied for not leaving my baby with a 13yr old while i went out and got off my face on smack. (by bullied i do mean having my head smacked up a wall and my then boyf having his arms smashed to pieces with a bar)

i got in a taxi and left that house - ungrateful arent i?
then i went to live with my (then) boyfriend who had the same kind of mentality as the morons that bullied me for wanting a better life for me and my baby. He knocked me about so i went back to my mums, the council wouldnt rehouse me because i'd walked out of the house they had given me and i had a roof over my head (well i was living in my mums dining room sharing my single bed with my 1 yr old) They messed my benefit payments up so i didnt get any money for a mth and was having to scrounge off my mum for nappies for dd1. i took an overdose and got given a counsellor and diagnosed with pnd aged 18.

my mum then put the money up for me to rent a private flat which was full of damp because of no heating and made us ill, i went back to the council after being evicted for not paying my rent because i wasn't getting enough money to live there (yes i was working 16hrs a week in a shop and paying my childminder £42) eventually after i squatted for 3mths they rehoused me to where i live now, which is very nice if tiny and cheap to rent. i have done various jobs and after i moved in here my dp came to live with me he has also always worked since leaving uni.

So you can see i could at any point have given up on working and stayed on benefits and joined the other smack heads.

I didn't.

now im a childminder earning roughly 10k (tho prob not even that after expenses etc)
my dp is in IT and earns 20k a yr.

we have 2 children. we can't afford a house.

we tried to buy a house, they would only lend us 88k, houses cost 100k and we have over the years of hard times got ourselves 10k of debt. dp pays his student loan and a pension.

i don't know how we will get a house, or if things will get better etc all i know is that we are trying our damnest to give us and our kids a better life. i will not back down and end up on benefits again.

our minimum amount to pay out for bills, food, petrol is £1,800 a mth

I just wanted to say following your post LMG, that you sound very hard working, very enterprising, and that it sounds like you are setting up a good future for your LOs.

I have probably had many advantages that you haven't, but I still live in a 2 bed flat, and I still can't especially see any major financial benefits accruing from work.

However, the benefits aren't merely financial, which is what I think you are expressing in a different way!

Lovemygirls, your attitude is a credit to you and illustrates your resilience and determination.

I know someone who is single, earns £30k per annum and bought a 2 bed house in London 3 years ago for £125k with a 100% mortgage. She used a mortgage broker, did one of those self-certified mortgages so the salary she actually used included her overtime. Building societies only offered her £90k. The stupid thing is, her mortgage is less than her rent. One of the things they should do is look at affordability instead of relying exclusively on multiples of ones salary.

I'm certainly not better off as a single parent - three kids, i work full time. my wages after 18 years in the same job = £1200 a month, my tax credit is £480...child benefit is around £160 a month. childcare is currently £250 a month. the tax credit in no way compensates for losing another wage. I've run up a lot of debt over the years and pay back as much of that as possible leaving very little for luxuries. I've never had a holiday with my children - i do run a car, but the public transport is so crappy where we live (two buses to school = an hour - ten minute journey by car) that i justify it. i realise there are people a LOT worse off than me, and count my blessings daily - but I don't feel properly rewarded for working in a shitty stressful job. I also don't feel compensated (other than in hugs!) for the effort i put into raising my children on my own.

there can be a tendency to think single parents have a life of riley, leaving the kids to roam the street while we whore it up with a procession of 'uncles', raking in benefits hand over fist to spend on sovereign rings for the weans christmas. It really couldn't be further from the truth and it would be swapable for the presence of a supportive partner - although i obviously realise not all partners are supportative

They do now speedy. They will more or less lend you any multiple of your income as long as you can demonstrate that you'd be able to afford the monthly payments.

Wish I could call upon a procession of "uncles". All of whom looked like Johnny Depp... but I digress.

Thanks for that.

i think everyone thinks the grass is greener on the other side - its not.

whatever we have we want more.

It's far from easy whatever we decide to do.

I'm hoping by 2009 we will have our own 3 bed house (by then our dd's will be 9 and 3) and be thinking about getting married but at the moment we can't afford a luxery such as a wedding!!

Though i will be working hard trying to make it happen.

i also agree with the bit about having a supportive partner being more valuable than benefits - we've had a run of bad luck this past month and last night i could say to dp "at least we have each other" we've gone a week with no washing machine or oven, i wouldn't want to last a week without my dp - soft i know but he is what drives me, we push each other along, hopefully one day we'll have pushed ourselves to where we want to be and we can be content.

Yes, I think that to preach to people that marriage is the answer to their problems is a bit like Marie Antionette saying "Let them eat cake".

I admire you Lovemygirl, I sincerely mean that. Reading this thread, I have to say that I am embarrassed by our joint income, even though I know we have earnt it. Threads like this remind me of the struggles that so many in this country face everyday.

I think persephonesnape and LMG have answered WhenSantaWentQuitelyMad's question about why we get drawn back to depressing discussions about tax and benefits...because you try so hard to do the right thing (and, boy, can that be hard - respect to you both) and you just feel shafted from a great height.

So I just find the superficial sticking plaster solutions (get married!) that both parties are proposing just insulting to the intelligence (Labour's most stunning contribution to the working family debate was a tax-effient savings schemes for family parties for gods sake). What are the lib dems going to come up with? More hanging baskets in the streets? This isn't really rocket science, is it?

Thanks have to say im very suprised i havent had any "wtf did you get pg at 16 for!!" comments, like i did when i told everyone i was pg - like i did it on purpose..........

i'm very proud of myself too, its been really hard but i couldn't give up on my life, my dreams, they're harder to achieve sometimes than they would be if i hadn't been thourhg all that crap but i kinda had to go through that to get where i am now and be the person i am now.

But by the grace of God.......

Oh Brummie, I wasn't criticising. In fact I think I was the one who steered it onto benefits somehow.

It is interlinked, because I was arguing that the benefits/tax system disincentivises marriage. I realise that it is much more complex than that, and in the end I think I concluded that marriage could well be a correlated but independent factor anyway.

I think there is always a danger that people with "perfect" (for which read "lucky") lives think "Why can't everyone be like me and it would all be simple?"

I prefer to agree with speedymama and say "there but for the grace of God".

Make people work for their benefits, workfare. That would solve most of this. Or give everyone whether they work or not £200 a week irrespective of income and abolish the benefits system. We'd need to do a lot of chopping back of wasted public money but that would be no bad thing.

Oh, I didn't think you were criticising Tax/benefits one of my biggest irritations and I do think it's very much linked. Interesting discussion.

What would you do with the pre-school children of single mothers though? Shovel them into a large playpen? Trouble is, this would have to be paid for too.

I don't know what the answer is but I thank my lucky stars that I am not in that situation.