To think some posters need a "reality check" re. views on benefit changes

[lesley33]

I have some concerns about some of the proposed changes to benefits and how these may adversely affect people. So this is NOT a thread about that. But I am getting increasingly fed up at some of the frankly ridiculous reasons some posters are giving against the proposed changes. Examples include:

1. That children 12 and over will be traumatised if both parents work - even if second parent only works 20 hours a week.

1. That a parent with children 12 and over shouldn't have to commute up to 90 minutes each way to work. Far from ideal I know and if someone is on low wages this might not be affordable. But perfectly doable.

1. That childcare is impossible to get for teenagers. Ignoring the fact that many parents, myself included use a combination of kids home alone and afterschool activities.

AIBU to think some people need a reality check? Plenty of people with children already work, many with both parents working full time by the time their kids are teenagers. Plenty of people have long commutes, struggle with childcare, etc. Things might not be "ideal", but these are things that many many working parents already do.

I don't get HB and I've worked full time since my DTs were born. Thus far, I've spent upwards of £40,000 on childcare to get mine up to school age. Yep, that's right, £40,000. How the hell is any parent supposed to afford that - let alone a single mother or a family with a child who has even-more-expensive SN? I have only managed it because I saved hard beforehand, had an inheritance to help out and managed to get a job that allowed me to work from home from time to time. How many people are that fortunate?

People manage because 4 out of 5 working parents don't use professional childcare in the main. They rely on their own parents or friends. But if we all move to where the work is and we all have to work well into the normal age of retirement, that's no longer going to be an option is it. More and more people are going to need professional childcare, which is decreasing. CMs are leaving the profession in droves and nurseries often have 18-month waiting lists (handy seeing as you only get 9 months notice you've got a baby on the way...) And if you have children with SN it's even worse.

There are 14 weeks of school hols. Even allowing for the usual statutory 4 weeks paid leave, that's 10 to cover at a cost, on average of £200 a week (school hol club here is £40 a day per child for those who seem very interested in this), so £2000 a year NOT including wraparound care during school time. Broken down over the year, a family will be having to pay about £250 each and every month just to cover childcare for ONE child.

So let's all have just one child then. Oh, no, if we did that the population would implode, the economy would collapse and there'd be no future workers around to help out the pension crisis...

I do think we need a radical overhaul of the benefit system because it traps people in poverty, but I don't this this is the same thing as hitting those least able to take it. It's penalising the less well off for being less well off. Where are the opportunities for people to help themselves? Education has become a postcode lottery played and won by the better off and higher education is now a luxury well beyond most people's means. Extra-curricular activities are going the same way in all but the most urban areas. Childcare prices out anyone without family support unless they are earning a decent income. Help for disability is laughable - the rhetoric and the legislation is there, sure, but it's not translating into reality.

And on that note, I am bowing out of this thread.

I thought you said he hadn't worked for a while.....

Alouisee - yes, in a perfect world, my twatty Ex-H would get off his arse and go out to work and pay maintenance - but he has told me that he will let the DWP stop ALL his benefits, and him live under a bridge, before he gives me a PENNY for DS1. .

So no, I CAN'T get him to support me. . If I could, then maybe we would still be married. He worked right up until I was 6 months pregnant, then gave up his job, and told me it was my place to look after the dc, go out to work and do all the housework. While paying for childcare for the dc because it 'wasn't his job'. While he screwed some other woman in our bed. .

He hasn't worked since,and DS1 is almost 10yo. But this benefits cap STILL won't make him go out to work. He'll just carry on doing dodgy deals etc. While it's people like ME that will suffer. I am disabled and I have worked for 4 out of the last 8 years. He hasn't worked in a decade.

I think it is a really, really bad idea to try to bind women closer to men with whom they have had children either through childcare arrangements or financial support, if the relationship has fallen apart and if the women do not wish to have anything more to do with the men. If govt policy edges women into that sort of situation then I hope there will be long and loud protests. It would give abusive men carte blanche to jerk women around.

Ex-H = 9yo DS1's father. Feckless waste of space that was only discovered when I was 6 months pregnant with DS1.

Ex-P = 8yo DS2 and 1yo DS3's father. Works hard for low wages, pays maintenace, but not the greatest PARTNER. Can't really help out with childcare as he works shifts in the local hospital kitchen.

And now I'm REALLY bowing out of this thread.

He sounds a real catch Remains of the day, what was it that attracted you to him and made you decide to have his baby ?

Remains was quoting me. When we married, he worked FT, I fell pg, he gave up work and morphed into a tosspot of the highest order.

And I HAVEN'T been 'bullshitting', and my name was changed because my Ex-P knew my old log-in name and was reading my posts. So kindly fuck off and stop personally attacking me, Alouisee.

Alouisee - wasn't me that reported - I usually ignore the shit that is thrown at me on here. I have to live this day in day out, with people in RL calling me a scrounger because I have a seizure in a cafe and drop water on their shoes. Words on a screen aren't going to hurt me enough to run crying to mummy (or MNHQ) if I have to cope with that shit most days.

I say again Alouise Would you want someone looking after YOUR children who DIDNT want to be there?!

I reported the posts actually.

So did I, Shirley.

maybe we step away for the personal?

Bloody hell Remains, sounds like we married the same bloke!

Well, Heswall, perhaps not all of us had adequate childhoods. I had undiagnosed Aspergers and was also adopted into an abusive family. What a marvellous combination that was.

What attracted me to my XH was that he said he loved and wanted to marry me. I didn't know that words are cheap because I hadn't ever had loving words, cheap / false or not. Nobody told me when I was growing up that I was worthy of love - double whammy because my own mother didn't want me or so I was told all the time. Nobody told me that actions are what you look at in a man, or a friend. I had to learn that and it took some time.

And my upbringing was fucking idyllic compared to many people on this thread.

Hope this helps.

... And to get back to the OP - YANBU! Very valid points

I have to agree with math that making women reliant on the whims of their ex-partners in order to be able to work is a very dangerous path to go down. I have BTDT, my ex wasn't particularly abusive, but he is manipulative, and his agreement to look after our children while I worked came solely from a desire to get back together with me. He didn't have anywhere suitable to have the children so he came to look after them in my house, he repeatedly searched my house, stole my phone to read my text messages and hacked into my computer, and every time he found something he didn't like he would withdraw his "goodwill" and refuse to look after them (meaning also that they didn't see him) and leaving me on the back foot practically begging him for help. Eventually he found out I was seeing someone and relatively soon after that moved 400 miles away having himself met someone else while all this had been going on. It was a a really stressful time tbh, I had no idea from one week to the next if I'd be able to go to work, and it was only down to my good reputation at work and a very understanding boss that I managed to keep my job. It is not a sensible or reasonable solution to a lone parent's childcare problems.

HuntyCat - that's 2x in two days I've seen you write that life begins at conception and that termination is murder (that's what you said in the other post). know it's your view, and of course you're entitled to it, but the way you've expressed it, in such a categoric way, knowing that MN is pro-choice on the whole ... I dunno, but I think it's a bit off. I think you could have said 'I don't believe in terminating pregnancies' and left it like that. Would have been the more sensitive thing to do.

How did THAT get deleted? It wasn't a direct personal attack - it was a ponderance on a question Alouisee asked?!

OK, fair do's Matches. But when I am basically being told that I should have done something against MY personal beliefs when I found myself accidentally pregnant, I do get a bit, erm, vocal.

Well Winter I had far from an ideal childhood myself, care homes, battered by both parents that kind of thing which made me adament nothing short of prince charming himself would be good enough for my child and indeed I aborted a pregnancy that would have taken me down the path of history perhaps repeating itself.
I found that did indeed help