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.

There will be new jobs that we can’t even imagine now, though.

Loads will be replaced I agree. The challenge isn’t so much how to get more dc born now but how to capture taxes from AI / mechanisation.

Jesus wept. At the 20 - 40 age range that we have children, no one is thinking 'Oh, I need to be careful because tomorrow I might develop cancer and the treatment for that might leave me with life long disabilities' or 'oh, maybe I shouldn't drive anymore just in case I get in an accident and have life changing injuries'......best most people can do is put insurance in place to help manage redundancy and the payment of the mortgage.

No one expects to die and leave their partner a single parent at 35. No one expects their partner to cheat and move out and never be seen again.

Lucky you that none of this has ever happened to you.

As another poster said, get the benefit scroungers working. Far too many people not working because they don't want to.

How’s that going to help in 20 or 30 years’ time?

It won't help today, never mind in 20-30 years. There are not enough jobs, and the number of jobs we do have is quickly dwindling.

Last time I checked, there were 2 active job seekers for every vacancy, and that is not including those on long-term sick or disability benefits.

But people know that almost half of marriages end in divorce and also, surely, that they could become ill and be unable to work or be made redundant. Just blindly have children and not considering what could happen is pretty stupid. How much intelligence does it take to realise that if something happens you are going to struggle much more with 4 children than 2?

You can’t live life in fear of something disastrous happening.

But then when something disastrous does happen, you can't expect others to be very sympathetic when you chose to have 3, 4 or even more children and now you can't afford them.

And as stated, plenty of people have children when they can't even afford to raise one child, let alone several.

It's not a matter of living life in fear of something, it's a matter of being sensible and only have 1 or 2 children.

Because everyone should think “Oh I won’t have another child in case everything goes tits up at some point in the next 20 years so I might save my fellow taxpayers a bit of money”. See how ridiculous this situation?

Are we now in the situation where, given lots of people including my daughter, have only one child should the welfare system discourage child bearing at all?

I don't know where you live but what i see in my social circle is that half of the people I know are single and the rest are unmarried couples. I bought so many things new as i had hardly any friends with kids before i went to my nct class. I am in my 30s, my dh got a vasectomy when I was 6 months pregnant with first child. Every couple in our nct class is a homeowner (and in London, home ownership for those below 35 is 30%)

People aren't having kids, the local schools can't fill their places. London birth rate will drop to 1 in a decade. We will have a one child policy by default as so many people are single. So even a couple having 2 would still balance out to average of 1.

I live in the Midlands and I can assure you people are having kids here. Almost all my neighbours have at least 2 children and many have 3 or even 4. Two families in my village have 7 children each!

Surely anyone with any sense would realise if they only have 1 or 2 children and then something happens - illness, job loss, death, accident, divorce etc it will be easier to manage money wise than if you have 3, 4, 5 children?

It's not a matter of thinking of saving the taxpayer but being able to manage. Far less expensive to food/clothe etc 1 or 2 children than more.

Do so many parents really go into parenthood with so little thought?

It's probably not representative. Majority of the British population is urban. For someone in my age group, having even one kid feels like a rebellion even.

Even Muslim women in hijab that I meet in the hospital tell me 2 is enough (and she was 1 of 5). Echoed by my British Bangladeshi colleague. These are extremely socially conservative women and they are having 2.

The UK's birth rate, measured by the total fertility rate (TFR), has been declining in recent years. In 2023, the TFR for England and Wales fell to 1.44 children per woman, the lowest on record. This means that, on average, women in England and Wales are having fewer children than in previous years.

Having seven children is ridiculous is this day and age.

They closed down the maternity unit in royal free hospital near me cos there were so.few babies born there. Half the people I know who were born in nw london in the 90s were born there!

What's ridiculous is getting annoyed about it. Women who have 7 children are statistical outliers. We no longer get upset about women who choose not to have children, thankfully, and enough women are choosing to be child-free that the occasional woman who has lots of children is really nothing to get worked up about.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/26/placemaking-gentrification-london-luxury-apartments-expensive-restaurants-schools

I agree. I'm sick of people banging on about the birth rate dropping. The world is insanely and dangerously overpopulated. I went to Venice last year and it was a nightmare. There were so many people I wanted to scream. The traffic near me is a living hell, and my local woods have been hacked down to make way for a new housing estate. Now we've been told the fields in the centre of the village have got to go as well. But no matter how many of these horrible rabbit hutches we build we always need more, more, more.

In 1900 there were a billion humans. By 1960 that had trebled to three billion. Now it's eight billion and heading for ten. In Africa the birth rate is so high the African population is going to double. Also, we're on the verge of radically extending the lifespan. I heard an expert say that AI could double the human lifespan within a decade. Serious people are working on drugs to slow and even reverse human ageing. (Just google senolytic drugs, for example.) So pretty soon people won't be dying and making room.

When it comes to benefits, the real issue is who's having kids. I'm happy to help good people who are struggling. But it's ridiculous that, as a society, we allow violent, ignorant, abusive people, with no moral compass and no idea how to behave, to have as many kids as they like. The damage and misery this causes is beyond words.

Hope you are fine with retiring at 80 then.

I think that people who are socking away money into private pensions to avoid income tax will find they can't withdraw until age 70. Our nhs and pension system aren't build for birth rate of 1. And I say this as someone stopping at 1.

The lives of some children are tragic and I honestly wouldn't have known have callous some people are towards their own children. I don't know what the political solution is, but many families are clearly having children to avoid work.

Do you mean you need the birth rate to be much higher? Because that causes other issues. Mostly resources and lowering workforce requirements.

It ideally needs to be at 2.1 but I do see it as an unsolvable problem cos its a cultural shift. Countries with excellent childcare provision and incentives for parenthood have falling birth rates below replacement level. Israel is a real outlier and there are cultural and historical reasons for that.

I do think if anyone wants kids they shouldn't be discouraged within reason (as long as not addicts or criminals) and they should be helped cos they are the minority in our generation. The poor have never produced kids at such a low rate in history. Middle class are opting out or having them late (1 child policy practically when you average it out).

Rich are having lots see boris 9th or 10th child but they are a very small elite .