Why are the government BOTHERING to push single parents back into paid work?

[Coldtits]

If you have two children, pay for £35 a week childcare and work 16 hours at the minimum wage you get

£70 a week working tax credit
£117 a week child tax credit
£30 a week child benefit
any maintenance your ex partner/s give you
And some of your rent paid if you are renting

That's a total of £217 of government money PLUS whatever they pay towards your rent.

Without working you get
£60 income support - with whatever maintenance your ex gives you being knocked (less £20) off this sum
£90 child tax credit
£30 child benefit.

SO, this is £180.

It costs the government LESS for me to stay at home and not work, they way the current set up is.

Why, when they are screaming from the rooftops about single parents going back to work, would they make it financially advantagious to THE GOVERNMENT for them not to? Why have they done this?

"The 'average hard working taxpayer' is not responsible for the half of a partnership that disapeared off with a 17 year old. You are!"

Eh? So women whose partners run off with 17 year olds are responsible for those partner's behaviour are they?

I've read it all on MN, really I have.

oh and newpup - get this - my degree won't cost me a penny as I get full funding because of being on IS .

However, I think that improving my job prospects means that I'm less likely to get stuck in a dead end minimum wage job, meaning I'll pay more taxes back into the system.......and actually I don't give a flying monkey what anyone thinks about it.

Good point Peachy, had not thought of it like that.
I am surprised or perhaps not, that there is not childcare available for your son if you wish to use it.

Thanks Peachy .

I'm quite excited (and nervous) at the same time. I always said (after I ended up getting married and having children instead of taking up my University place) that I'd do a degree when I was older. And now I'm actually going to be starting it, but I haven't written anything serious/co-herent for about 11yrs so a little "EEEK" at the prospect of having to write anything that's either meaningful or that makes sense.

Little jingle Bellas. I was not suggesting you are responsible for your partners behaviour at all!

I stated that you are responsible for your child financially. I did not say that this was always fair or easy just that it was a responsibility not a right!

newpup I was desperate to go to do my pgce this year, got a decent degree (for someone with 3 kids- 2 sn- and a 5 week old baby)i the summer but no childcare is the norm for sn kids it seems

dh wants to go to uni so will and I will work PT (appointments) / he has a small business he will maintain so we'll extract a ft job and his degree from it but we are lucky to have the chance top be so creative with how we do it

As I have said, time and time again, my xp doesn't work and has no intention of working. He claims jobseekers and gets hassled far less about returning to work than I did.

Why ?? To me that is so wrong

I am going back to work 22 1/2 hours a week doing shift work. Xp could be my sole chidlcare as he doesn't work but he has made it clear that he doesn't want to be and that he wouldn't be reliable, so my mum, who is 59 and already works 28 hours a week doing shifts herself is going try and work her shifts around mine so that she can be my childcarer.

All whilst xp sits on his ass and does well whatever he damn well likes all day every day. Yet I don't see any big campaign going to get the likes of him back to work.

newpup - but what about if working leaves the single mother below the poverty line instead of on it? Should she (and her children) be forced to live an even shittier life just to say they're working???

That is why the system does not work.

newpup, why am I the only one financially responsible for my children? I didn't have them on my own you know...I have a vague memory of someone tall dark and incompetent being involved...

oh and here's another shocker for you..........I may decide to stay at home until DS3 is 7 (the age I believe they're lowering it to that you have to return to work) - will depend on how I'm doing with my degree and whether I'll be able to afford to complete it once working.

And yes the system is crap, but I don't seem them suggesting any reforms to the actual system, just keeping it as it is except expecting single mothers to go out to work before it's financially viable.

I got a leaflet through the other day promoting govt. funding of childcare schemes. It really peed me off. Lots if little pictures of children playing saying 'we bang the drums whilst mummy goes to work' blahg blah. It drives me crazy. I am not talking about the whole working mum vs sahm crap, just why does the govt have such a chip about mothers looking after their own children?? Have families really been doing such a bad job of it all along?

No little jingle Bellas you are not the only one financially responsible for your children their father is too. However if he is being irresponsible then do you give up your responsibility too and hand it over to the taxpayer?

No, you work hard and overcome difficulties to provide for them yourself. Because you do not stop being a parent because your partner has!!

I just think that seeing as we're about to have an almighty recession, those people who actually want to work outside the home, ought to have first dibs on the few paid jobs there will be left.

If your partner was irresponsible then it might benefit your child to show them that that is not the way to live - you work hard and provide.

Yes but why are you so conspicuously silent on the subject of the irresponsible parents?

Do you not see that if some lone parents were being paid the maintenance that they would have been paid if their exes hadn't decided to up and be irresponsible, the question of claiming from the state wouldn't arise?

I would hardly define looking after your own children as irresponsible behaviour, btw.

interesting - so working single parents are actually better off than living on benefits. That's not what's always being spouted on this board

As for the governments motivation - I suppose they are looking at the bigger picture longterm. Its easier to get abetter job when you already work and you can increase hours as the children grow older. I suppose they are trying to instill some kind of work ethic back into some single parents who think because they have made bad choices they are entitled to stay at home for the forseeable and become even more of a drain.

The longer you are on benefits the harder it is to get off them so I suppose they are trying to encourage people back into work with a financial incentive.

I do think that giving esp. young single mothers the opportunity to improve their qualifications so they can get themselves into a good career is a great idea- but just getting people to go out and get a job for the sake of it is short sighted, IMO.

no connie some parents will be worse off working - depending on the age of their children. And what do you mean it's not spouted on here? You've obviously mnissed all the threads from the working poor (expat and family I believe are one of those group - sorry expat ).

I have a friend who is currently on benenfits, has a 2yr old DS. She's desperate to do a course in childcare, but as she can't afford the childcare, and the ones she wants to do are vocational courses she can't do it. Perhaps the goverment should be doing more about helping woman prepare to go back to work.

"single parents who think because they have made bad choices"

What a trollish thing to say.

The single parents whose partners left them for a 17 year old, or died, must really love reading something like that.

And of course, relationships always break down because of women's bad choices.

RE irrresponsible parents- you could also argue that the safety net of the state does make up for those who have been made victims by fecklass fathers? not for ever perhaps but whilst the children are tinies- it's not just double the parenting but so much more: half the parents to take days off when child is sick / on holidays, half the one to one opportunities, etc etc- good role models surrunding work are essential; but also surrounding good parenting. Blimey, good parent skills imo are the most important thing of all- raising the next generation is about as important as it gets!. Now, lifelong benefit dependency is only essential for the very few most disabled and their carers, but the difference between lifelong and temporary is very important and a child won't learn it's OK to be feckles just because Mum or Dad has a few years out of paid work to care for them. Especially as a sensible government system would target or even reward those claimants who were getting qualifications- not just degrees, sometimes it's as basic as literacy- and this reinforces the value of education to chldren.

Obviously the tax system will only hold so much and we all need to acknowledge this in our lifestyle decisions, but when the Government actively targets a group they should look at where the active harm is done- such as absent parents (I put parents because MIL was harmed by an absent mother, its not just dads)- and target them first, esp. when the job stock is limited so those more flexible (and absent parents are as they can work nights / shifts etc when childcare is usualy impossible to come by) can take up jobs offering less do-able hours.

As a Mum with a DH I am lucky: between us we can shuffle, argue, sometimes cock it up but mosty cover all f what needs to be done. We don't get benefits beyond tax credits and disability benefits and we don't need them as with DH's wages we can live, even if things can be a bit stressful. Without DH I can't imagine how I could possibly manage work, there just isn't that give. Who would be at the school to pick up and at home to meet the SN taxi? Who could take the boys if they're sick or a meeting runs late? etc etc.

Also- with parents on benefits being better off- work often comes at a cost: travel, clothes, etc so we found that when we were on benefits for a small time when DH was ill and i'd just had ds3, we were better off but on balance we felt as if we were 'bad' for not working (even though when DH lost his job I was 38 weeks PG and actualy did have a very good job to go back to). Its generally acknowledged that if you're poor you lose out through access to credit, plus self esteem is a big thing. And flexibility- if yu're on benefits and iving in a house owned by an evil landloerd you're stuffd; on a low income you have the flexibility to look around as people don't want claimants as tenants often.

I agree I am responsible for my child - I never tried to claim otherwise

Just not sure how many responsibilities I can shoulder on my own tbh. And as for the suggestion I am somehow responsible for my ex's philandering

I think I love Peachy 'cos she has said it all for me really.

V good post Peachy

I think you could turn this issue on its head a little. Many lone parents without support from the state could not work if they wanted to. Thus if you feel (as I do) that lone parents should have the same chances to maintain their skills and connection with the labour market as parents in couples then they will need to be subsidied.

Another point is that it is probably cheaper in the long run to pay a lone parent more money for a few years now when working than keep her on benefits for 10/15 years during which time her chances of getting any job at all fade away to zero. (The longer you are on benefits, the smaller the chance you have of getting a job).

If this policy only gets a fraction of women into stable well paid employment (without subsidy), surely it is a good thing?

I never said everyone who was a single parent was so because of bad choices. But there's no denying alot of them are. A quick look in the lone parents section will show you that.

which begs the question of why women choose to have kids with arseholes in the first place?

Being a single parent is not an excuse not to work - whether it makes financial sense is tough shit tbh. Maybe then less bad choices will be made?