Angry at scrapping of 2 child limit

[BearBuggy]

I know there are a few families that find themselves in rotten circumstances and this isn’t aimed at them . However I live in an area where having children to continue to receive benefits was the norm and only now the cap is in place has that stopped.

The Scottish government has now announced it will be scrapped. I am so angry I’m paying towards people breeding children they can’t afford. I didn’t vote SNp this time because of this, as did many of my friends. They lost heavily in my area but still seem to not care what the tax payer is saying.

Nothing to do with 3 years being a good age developmentally then ...that must just work for the employed.

How are you going to make them? What about the working parents who don't adequately provide either from poverty or neglect should they be made to as well?

Stop reading the daily mail and check out some books from the social studies section of your library. Or google some questions you have.

You can even ask chat GPT:

The reasons some parents rely on benefits rather than working can vary widely and are often influenced by a combination of personal, social, and systemic factors. It’s important to approach this topic with nuance and understanding, as each family’s situation is unique. Some of the common reasons include:

1. Childcare Challenges

•	<strong>Cost of Childcare:</strong> Childcare can be prohibitively expensive, and for some parents, especially single parents, the cost of working may outweigh the financial benefits if their earnings barely cover childcare expenses.
•	<strong>Lack of Availability:</strong> In some areas, quality childcare is not easily accessible, making it difficult for parents to work.

2. Health Issues

•	<strong>Physical or Mental Health Problems:</strong> Some parents may be unable to work due to their own health issues or because they are caring for a child with special needs or disabilities.
•	<strong>Chronic Illness or Disability:</strong> Long-term conditions can limit the ability to take on or sustain employment.

3. Limited Job Opportunities

•	<strong>Low-Skilled Work:</strong> Some parents may lack the qualifications or skills needed for higher-paying jobs, leaving them with low-wage options that don’t make financial sense compared to benefits.
•	<strong>Regional Unemployment:</strong> In areas with limited job opportunities, finding sustainable work can be a significant challenge.

4. Economic Factors

•	<strong>Benefits Trap:</strong> In some cases, the design of the welfare system can create a “benefits trap,” where taking a low-paying job results in a loss of benefits and leaves a family worse off financially.
•	<strong>Housing and Other Costs:</strong> Parents might rely on benefits to cover essential costs like rent, utilities, or medical expenses that their wages would not adequately cover.

5. Family and Social Circumstances

•	<strong>Lack of Support Networks:</strong> Without a support network (e.g., family or community assistance), some parents find it difficult to balance work and family responsibilities.
•	<strong>Generational Poverty:</strong> Families with a history of reliance on benefits may find it harder to break out of the cycle due to systemic barriers and lack of opportunities.

6. Cultural and Societal Attitudes

•	<strong>Stigma or Assumptions:</strong> While some may assume parents on benefits are “choosing” not to work, this is often a simplistic view. Societal pressures and systemic failures play significant roles.
•	<strong>Desire to Be Present for Children:</strong> Some parents prioritize being at home with their children, especially during their early years, over entering the workforce.

7. Government Policies

•	Some governments provide incentives or safety nets that allow families to prioritize caregiving over employment in certain circumstances. These policies may inadvertently reduce motivation to enter low-paying jobs.

While some may see benefits reliance as a lifestyle choice, for most parents, it is a result of complex and interconnected challenges. Addressing these issues often requires systemic reforms, such as affordable childcare, better job opportunities, and support for those with health or family care needs.

I was really referring to work
ie if the parents won’t ( work) although now reading over the original posters comment I see I misunderstood and they actually meant
won’t provide for

In that case if a parent won’t provide for the basic needs of their kids irrespective of income that’s called neglect and social services need to get involved

Using ‘Breed’ to describe poeple having children is disgusting.

Who used the term breeding.
Your original post wasn’t tagged

My mother had me when she was working till 11 pm every night for a bank and also doing her MBA. I think she did her exams 3 weeks after giving birth and then worked during her mat leave (at home) after she had my sister.. when I was a baby she also went to do her exams for a few weeks on campus and I was left with my grandma..

We did live with my grandparents who provided 24/7 childcare and I went to daycare when my sister was born. She did only manage 2 kids (3 pregnancies but lost the last one as she had to work all hours even when her father had just died, stress and sadness was too much), I was an accident when she was 28 (just gotten married ).

I do wonder if fertility has just dropped for the next generation cos I was nowhere as stressed as her and i only managed to conceive 2 weeks after I was made redundant and dh was on sick leave from his gruelling job at an investment bank. This was after 9 years of marriage and I think this is my first and only child. I suspect microplastics and general increased anxiety plays a role.

She has 5 children now and one is under 3. She doesn't need to look for work.

The op and the person I was replying to- you can see in the dropdown quote history.

I was wondering where you picked it up from.
I saw the MNetter reiterate it but that was after your post
Thanks anyway I went through pages of posts and didn’t think to look at OPs 🤯

She must be in a limited capacity for work group due to disability, then, as benefits are stopped if you're not looking for work otherwise.

No it doesn't. I wasn't talking 50% of the population, I was talking about the households with the lowest income levels. I hoped this was obvious from the words I used, apologies if not the case.

The 43% of families with 3+ children come from less than 20% of the population. The other 57% of families with 3+ children come come from the other 80%.

Eg Parents on benefits are several times more likely than the rest of the population to have families with 3 or more children.

Does that make sense to you now?

Surely we should want the rich to have as many children as possible and the poor to have as few children as possible. That is the best way to reduce inequality.

Actually that creates more chaos- read Peter turchin. More elite aspirants. More rich people's children mean they aspire to the same careers and wealth of their parents. But tough luck there are only that many CEO, top barrister, MP positions that you can realistically hold. In fact the swelling of the ranks of the wealthy in the usa did indirectly create trump- a heir and a billionaire who was abysmally bad in managing a business empire (there are far more able billionaires) that he had to resort to extreme politics to garner true power. In fact many prominent us politicians were ex lawyers but entered politics because the top law firms only accept a small proportion of law students.

'The social pyramid has grown top heavy,” he explains, with rich families and top universities churning out more wealthy graduates than the system can accommodate. To illustrate this, Turchin describes a game of musical chairs with a twist. There’s always been a limited number of powerful positions, be they senator, governor, supreme court justice or media mogul. In an era of elite overproduction, rather than chairs being taken away whenever the music stops, the number of competitors increases instead. Before you know it, there are far more people than can realistically attain high office. Fights break out. Norms (and chairs) are overturned as “elite aspirants” – those who have been brought up in the expectation of a say in how things are run – turn into counter-elites, prepared to smash the system to get their way. This isn’t just a US problem, by the way; Turchin says that Britain is on a similar trajectory. In fact, among OECD countries, it’s next in line. Germany is further behind, but also on the same “slippery slope”.

This is an age old problem and in the past the priesthood, wars and sending upper middle class men to the colonies to be colonial Administrators was a way of keeping the number of elites down. This no longer exists (other than emigration). So if the economy isn't growing and there are fewer opportunities, some elites will get angry and desperate.

I understand the point you're trying to make but I can't make the figures add up. You are saying that 20% of the population has a low income, yes? And that 43% of the total population has three or more children per family.

When you are considering evidence for your argument, you may reasonably infer that it is likely that the 20% of the population who are poor have more children per family, because 43% of the population has three or more children per family. However, inference is not evidence. The 43% of the population who have three or more children per family might be distributed equally throughout the population. They also might largely fall into the bracket described as low income families. In order to know that, we need to know the percentage of low income families who have three or more children per family, as well as the figure for the general population.

No, she is saying of the families that have 3+ children, 43% of them are from the 20% of the population on a low income. The other 57% of 3+ child families are from the 80% of the population that do not have low income.

Meaning that almost half of the large families come from the poorest 20% so 3 or more children are far more common in poor families.

I don't know where these figures came from but I think there's been some kind of switch.

The following statistics are from government figures published in April 2024, quoted from the child poverty action group:

• 69% of poor children lived in working families
• 46% of children in families with three or more children were in poverty, up from 36% in 2011/12
• poor families have fallen deeper into poverty: 2.9 million children were in deep poverty (ie with a household income below 50% of after-housing-costs equivalised median income), 600,000 more than in 2010/11
• 36% of all children in poverty were in families with a youngest child aged under five
• 47% of children in Asian and British Asian families were in poverty, 51% of children in Black/African/Caribbean and Black British families, and 24% of children in white families
• 44% of children in lone parent families were in poverty
• 34% of children living in families where someone has a disability were in poverty

The bold figure: 46% of children in families with three or more children were in poverty.

That's not families on a low income. that is all families with three or more children.

Making claims that poor people have more children isn't demonstrated by these figures which are taken out of context.

You'll find that helping people financially who have families....brings returns years later. Having families living in poverty will cost you later.

The proof what you are seeing today....10 years of austerity....look at the results...

Sometimes it makes sense to spend on welfare....I'm.not saying we should support workshy...but we should provide a good base you children to flourish and grow unhealthy and able for the challenges

The problem is that when people are making choices, they calculate the pros and cons for them.

If there's not much gap between how much money you can get when working against how much you get when not working/working less then it's natural that many people will choose not to work, or work less. Working is effort, and less pleasant than doing whatever you like.

But then you get fewer and fewer working people supporting everyone else. It's not sustainable.

It isn't possible to give people the same level of lifestyle when they don't work as when they do without removing the incentive to work. Yet somehow, that's what we seem to keep trying to do as a country. It's pushed as the morally 'right' goal, for everyone to have a 'decent lifestyle': where 'decent lifestyle' is defined as what you get when you work a basic job. Which simply doesn't make sense. The problem isn't that not enough money is being allocated for welfare by the state (it's actually ever-increasing): the problem is that this unachievable goal causes a spiral.

I think a good solution would be to have childcare - which is the main barrier to work for parents - funded by the state universally (not means tested) out of taxation - exactly the same as schools - so that everyone pays for it spread out over their lifetime.

Additional support can then also be directly targetted in kind to children who need it by childcare and school settings: it might be less efficient, but then you can be sure the kids get the benefit.

Then you can give genuinely basic welfare support, knowing that the expensive bits are already covered elsewhere. Importantly, the whole package of accomodation, money given to parents towards children, other money should be significantly less than you would get working a NMW job.

It gets rid of the lifelong disadvantage women end up with when deciding that it doesn't pay for them to work with small children, it also means absent fathers don't get away without contributing (because everyone does), and also means the state doesn't double-pay into those families where the father is supporting financially (they currently have to assume he won't). It gets rid of those cliff edges which make working not make sense.

So almost half of 3+ child families are living in poverty. That certainly looks to me like poor families are more likely to have more children.

It has also been proven many times that the people most likely to have more children are the people that can't afford them.

The other thing which should happen is to make a huge effort to get tax credits and in-work benefits right down.

The only rationale for having them is to make jobs viable to employers when the value created by that job isn't high enough for NMW. The idea being that at least some value is created by the work, and then the state tops up. That's cheaper than the job not existing, the small amount of value not created, and the state having to fund the person entirely.

But it causes so much distortion.

And most of the people now getting these top up benefits are on a high enough salary that the employer is paying employer's NI.

That makes zero sense!

Much better to reduce employer's NI, so that the job is still viable at a higher NMW.

Yeah because that tends to be the focus of their lives... there's a link between levels of education and having less kids as well...
People with more opportunities in life tend to have less kids.
People need something to care about and that gives their life meaning.
If all you have is a minimum wage Jon where you are treated like shit or no Jon at all then you aren't going to get your life's purpose from that are you.. if you dropped out of school at 16, you likely aren't going to get it from education...
So you might get it from building a big family.
It's not just about 'getting extra money from the government so you don't have to work' it's much deeper than that
You can see the correlation between poverty and birthrate worldwide
People want their lives to mean something, they want self esteem. Being a parent gives then a role, makes them feel loved and important. And it doesn't matter how good of a parent they are it still is fuelled by this desire.
You can't just make people poorer and think it will encourage them to have less kids. It doesn't... the poorer you make people the more kids they will have.
So the bloody child benefit cap has always just been a vote winning gimmick. It doesn't save any money for the government in reality.
You want people to stop having so many kids then give them access to other forms of self esteem and ambition and meaning. Make it easier for working class people to get into university for example.. improve education.. work with kids in schools to encourage ambition.
And DO NOT allow any child to languish in poverty... it just entrenches the problem. As those kids are more likely to have bad outcomes.. they are less likely to ever work.. more likely to have multiple children themselves..
The child benefit can helps no one anywhere and just exacerbates the issues it claims to be addressing

With both parents in work setting a good role model

There are many forms of access to higher education these days if people want them.
Obviously not everyone can attend University as it requires a certain level of educational attainment but University is not the be all and end all of gaining self esteem.

Unlike laundry and cleaning, raising children is labour that benefits the whole of society. There literally wouldn't be a society if we didn't have new generations. Child benefit is a universal benefit, so we already do pay mothers to do it!