The 'Underclass'. Discuss.

[MrsSeanBean]

I am coining the term the media use to describe people living in similar circumstances to Karen Matthews - never worked, 7 kids, 6 dads, largely feckless and with no apparent aspirations.

Do we have one? Why?

Who or what is responsible?

When did it all go wrong?

What can be done to resolve the situation?

Answers on a postcard please.

too much money? I wish. we're on benefits cos dh gave up his job to be a carer. And caring is much harder than going to work and the benefits are shite.
I'd rather dh was at work as a scientist cos he loved his job.

how could you possibly enforce the 'no benefits for more than 2 children' rule, without allowing the 3rd child to go hungry?

I agree, if you punish the mother by removing her benefits, you also punish the children.

However, in places where there are free breakfast clubs, and eligible kids get free lunches, I can see this being extended to include free dinners too, sadly and it is when these measures are in place that governments will take steps to stop handing out money. Because the children will have a house to live in, plus food to eat, there won't be any need to give money to the mother who spends it on fags and booze anyway.

And charities will step in to provide furniture and clothes. Honestly, I can see it going this way.

oh come on obm...do you really think all that benefit money is being spent on the children?

Squeakypop - I think your point about the interaction/ isolation is a key one.

Hippoptami - similarly. The lifestyle is seen as the 'norm' and there is no incentive to be different.

The link with the church is another intersting one. Declining morality/ increasing promiscuity doesn't help. Maybe the church should be more proactive in its support/ engagement with these communities.

I think the main problem is that everyone is too scared to 'judge'. But it is blatantly obvious to most people (as demonstrated by the posts on this thread) that the lifestyle in question is not helpful for individuals or society.

Don't blame the benefit system introduced as a safety net to stop people starving blame Thatcher's govt and her monetarist policies of the 1980s which destroyed all of our manufacturing industry and traditional hardworking communities that went with it. 4 million unemployed as a result - the 2nd and 3rd generation unemployed are as a result of this. It was seen as collateral damage, to free the state from the public spending burden and to reward the electorate with lower taxes. It didn't work.

Factor in our modern obsession with consumer goods and you have the seeds of the 'underclass'. The traditional classes are gone. The so called underclass are unemployed, live on rotten sink estates and have screwed up values which see petty crime as the answer to their money worries. NOT everyone is like this and YES we have always had poverty and substance misuse and fecklessness BUT something rotten has festered away since the 1980s. All the bonds of traditional working class life are gone, the kind of lives some of parents would have had. Not all of this was good but there was a purpose to life, a belief in earing an honest wage etc.

Also I can't believe I would ever say this, I have also been a leftie liberal type but tbh, the fact that it's now ok for people to have multiple partners with various kids just doesn't seem a good thing either.

Thanks for that fifitot.

Blaming someone who ran the country 20 years ago is hardly offering constructive advice to what can be done now to make this better.

'oh come on obm...do you really think all that benefit money is being spent on the children? '

Wrong way to look at it

Clerly some of the money is being used to feed the kids if they are alive

Now, if Mum is the sort to allow her kids to go without she will do that whether her income is £25 or £100. At the £100 of the scale there will be enough left over to feed the kids, give them clothes.

Everything should be about protecting kids imo. Every single thing. Sadly withdraing benefits / stopping whatever incomes will hurt children.

Now it seems to me if we want the kids to believe that they are worth more than being a zero froever, then leaving them starving / in those awful re-housing comlplexes / in holey clothes will not so that.

Being hungry and without a warm bed does not maximise ability for educational attainment.

Somebody said before that all kids ahd been given a chance to go to grammars- well apart from the obvious (that not everyone is that bright or the whole point of the grammar is that they are selective: if every kid who applied had an IQ over 145 then kis with IQ of 145 would be rejected!) a child who doesn't get a decent meal and the like will not attain educationally. they just won't.

I would never, ever vote for any measure which would penalise any child. Curtailing benefits would have this effect.

Also... I suggest, in the reason of avoiding a MN pile up, people state whether they include carers allowances / dla etc into benefits? It used to be accepted people didnt but I am somewhat aghast to see the Government does now in its new review.

Plus.... even if you are of the limiting children variant I suggest limiting payouts for PREGNANCIES is a bit more sensible (if still totally wrong) as otherwise mums of triplets / where twins were second babies would be stuffed.

I'm not surprised there is an underclass. You can't just walk into a job when you're unemployed, uneducated and have no work experience.

It's not seen as 'ok' to have different children with different partners. Look at the stick ulrika jonsson got (unfairly imo) as all her children live wiht her and she earns money to care for her family.

why is it assumed everyone on benefits is afeckless etc etc?

I'm not the underclass (imo! although some may disagree!) but all of my benefits are spent on my children. Except what I try to save. I do buy myself some clothes very occassionally, is that alright?! I don't think that I love my children MORE than 'the underclass'.

However, I wouldn't buy a Wii or a NIntendo DS, I would rather put any small amount of spare cash in the bank. But I guess that's because I have HOPE. THe luxury of hoping that my children will go to uni.

For the true underclass, this is too unimaginable. Why not live for today? It's not as though they have the option to walk into an agency and get a well-paid job.

They are not stupid or different to 'us'. 'they' are products of their environment and act according to human nature. ie, seeing things in the sphere of reference familiar to them.

maybe if women knew they wouldn't get as much financial help they wouldn't have 7 kids?..... is that a possibility?

and anyway, it's not just women..plenty of men live off the state for years..it's this "it's not worth getting a job cos i'm better off on benefits" mentality that has to change

Yes and if I'd known my husband was going to beat me up I wouldn't have had two.

I should have been sterilised at 16!!

It's not the mentality that's flawed. It's the reality. Why would anybody work when their family will suffer as a result??

Childcare costs more than they would earn. It's common sense. This is true for a person with 2 children, never mind 7 children.

I think fifitot's analysis is spot-on, in terms of the historical causes of the present situation.

Also agree with a lot of what NewsMonger is saying.

If I were part of the third or fourth generation of a family to be out of work, without qualifications (partly as a result of shit local schools), living on a sink estate with very little hope of gainful employment, I'm not sure I'd think that the normal social rules applied to me. I'd probably think - society doesn't give a fuck about me, so why should I give a fuck about it?

I think there is judgement MrsSeanBean. I felt it because I move in a middle-class World despite being a single mother on benefits.

The 'underclass' moves in its own cacoon. Possibly rarely meeting anybody who isn't in exactly the same boat. They won't judge eachother.

i think its unfair to label these kinds of people as underclass... like they are under us, beneath us in some way.

i suppose you could call many ofmy friends 'underclass' single mums that didnt finish their GCSE's b4 they had their babies. the babys dads disapeared, without giving them a penny.
its not their fault as such, they make silly mistakes as children, and that is what they are really, which gets you into a rut you cant get out off.

although i am lucky, my partner married me, and went out and got a job, i cannot go back to work much as i would love to, because there is no provision for married mums to get qualifications, only single mums.

PLENTY is done for this so called 'underclass', they can study and get their childcare AND course paid for, they get food vouchers their rent paid, etc etc

what makes me mad, is my UC friends are better off then i am, and i have a husband who earns and contributes tax from he wages towards paying for unemployed ppl to be better off.

that and we give all the council housing to the UC, and leave the workers to suffer in poor condition rented housing cos its all they can afford..

So YES there is an underclass, and these ppl shouldnt be molly coddled as much as they are, however they dont deserve rude sterotypes thrown at them, cos not ALL like the way they live

I'm with fifitot to a point.

After WW2 the economy was run on the basis of demand management i.e. the government ensured employment by creating the NHS, nationalising coal mines, railways etc. as employed people have disposable income and that generates demand for good and services which in turn creates employment etc. etc.

However when Thatcher got into power her economic policy was based on "the invisible hand" i.e. the government should not become involved in business. Therefore all nationalised services except the NHS were privatised and to make a higher profit corporations moved their manufacturing out of the UK, so suddenly areas where there had been generations of mines, rail workers, factory workers etc. suddenly had no employment, and for the first time the young men had no idea what they "could" do for a living. Women still had options for employment in the "home skill" roles Cooking, cleaning and caring. However these roles were normally part time and on a very low wage (Thatcher abolished minimum wage). This does not generate enough income for a better life, and therefore a depressing cycle starts.

Yes, I just covered this in my latest OU economic class

This is how IMHO
Why is still the sexist attitudes its not manly for a boy to grow up and say I want to work in a call centre, or I want to do an office job, even though more man are managers than women, if they do not have the intelligence for management (no pun intended), working with their hands is not the easy option it was in the 60's or 70's.

How to resolve it... Support world fair trade and human right organisations, as until it is equally financially viable for manufacturing to come to the UK, we will always struggle to improve the employment options available.

Well that's my opinion (borrowed heavily from the OU economic text book).

Feel free to disagree, after all under class or working class we still all live in a free country.

So some of you honestly believe we should still have heavy manufacturing industry in this country? How would this be possible without massive state subsidy?

Yes, blame her for not setting up alternatives in those towns heavily affected.

we still need 'stuff' and coal and whatever. We should make our own things.

imo thatcher messed the whole country up..
she sold off all the council housing as well.
so no one can get housed unless they are underclass or immigrants...

you're missing the point Natty, if you believe for a moment that the underclass are lucky in some way.

Yes there is provision for single mothers on benefits to re-train, and I'm taking up one of these courses. But I'm not from the third generation of single mother families. My parents are still married and my grandparents went to university and I'm doing a 'get back to work' course!!

But it still leaves me with some real logistical problems. The various allowances and so on never 100% meet the cost of childcare.

It will be extremely difficult to take up this course and I'll be begging and borrowing favours from my family and friends. LUcily for me, I am the only person they know in this situation and they're all rooting for me to get back on my feet.

The real underclass wouldn't have the confidence or the motivation to grab their chances.

needmorecoffee i agree.
i also think many ppl would enjoy more traditonal working roles, and more would work.

and to be fair on the single mums

why would they want to go out towork, probally in a minimum wage job, never see her kids andbe WORSE off as a result?

The point is the tax payer would have to fork out to make the coal and steel the same price as what comes from China.

the underclass are luckier than the little section of ppl that i am in..
we dont get any help, yet i cant afford to go back to work cos i have to find the money for 100% of everything.

even though we have no more money coming in than ppl on income support.

so yes the underclass ARE luckier than some, they CAN get out of their situation.

i CANT

unless i kick my husband out, the woman at the council TOLD me to do that in order to get on my course.