To want to shop my stepdaughter?

free school meals too. Hence the need for CAB to have a computer prog to work it all out.

Bagitha the job was twelve miles away and he had to start at 6.30 in the morning so needed to get the train as buses didn't run that early. Yes, I think he still got some benefits but when it was being calculated how much of his wages he could keep, travelling expenses were not being taken into account. So, if say he was making £30 more through working than being on benefits, he was having to pay £60 in train fares, making a net loss of £30.

Not only that but he gets no sick pay and is only on a three month contract. When that ends it's back to waiting weeks for benefits to kick in again. I think it is much better for people to work than living on benefits. However, it would be much easier if the system could be adapted to take into account the sort of work people have to take these days, short term contracts, minimum wage, no sick pay, varying hours etc.

I agree - I was listening to a programme on getting mums back to work yesterday on the M40...
And thinking where I live most people probably get employment by making themselves available for "temping" . Which is difficult for mums because they need to make arrangements and can't be willing to temp at a moment's notice.

I agree too, petallus. What a horrible position to be in and one which our charming politicians just don't seem to understand. Of course it's better for people to work, and they feel better for it as having a useful role in society, but if their working conditions "beat them up" like that is it any wonder some of them just give up. It's enough to depress anyone.

I think where you live there are simply more jobs as well, jess, compared to, say, Hull.

I remember once being called to a patient as his wife was worried that he was delirious as he was talking of going to work! He was! He had a temperature of 104f.
He had never worked in his life! When I asked him once why he didn't work as he was obviously fit enough, he replied "doc, I've 20kids and if I went to work I'd be worse off!"
His mother said the trouble with him was "too much A,B andC"
Ale, baccy and c--ck!

Jeni the ABC made me smile. But it's interesting how people assume those with large families are having lots of sex. My m-i-l, a quiet, virtuous woman, had 12 children and I always imagined she only had sex 12 times but was just very fertile . As for your patient, I wonder if he subconsciously wished he wasn't trapped by his situation and could go out and earn his own living, and have a more interesting life and this was being expressed in his delirium?

No! I knew the family very well! His mother had him sasses!

Meant sassed

I can't remember if it was her or my other patient with 20+ children who said " doc he's only got to hang his trousers over the end of the bed and there I am pregnant!"

When I was 19 I travelled some distance to take my baby daughter to see her. GGM asked me if I was on the "pill thing" I was embarrassed as she was in her 90's so what would she know about sex?

I told her I was and she proceeded to tell me "he only had to hang his trousers etc" so after GGM had 8 children she made GGD sleep in the same rooms as the boys. There was going to be no more, but she wished the pill had been available in her day!

Mind you , I managed to get pregnant 2 years after having been sterilised!
My dh blamed golf!

My adult GD is quite happy to discuss contraception with me but her ex-boyfriend was shocked that she could mention such things to her granny!

On a related subject, I remember an item in the early days of the Today programme when Radio 4 was still the Home Service. An interviewee whose children (5, I think) all had the same birthday, was asked 'why?' by the presenter. 'Well,' she replied, 'we always celebrate my husband's birthday in July.'

If a woman has a very regular menstrual cycle, it is not surprising that her children are born around the same date of the month.
I have always had a very open attitude to sex and when my GS was 16 he asked me to get him some condoms as he was too shy. I was very happy that he and his girl friend were practising safe sex, so I was happy to help, but I did get a strange look from the cashier at Tescos.
I had no sex education at all, either from my mother, a superstitious catholic who was 42 when I was born, or my convent grammar school. I was determined that my own girls would grow up just accepting the knowledge of human reproduction as perfectly normal and unembarrassing. They passed this attitude to their own children.
The more sex education young people get, the less likely they are to have unwanted pregnancies/STD's.
Of course, not all teenage pregnancies are unwanted. Sometimes having a baby seems a good alternative to being unemployed or feeling unloved.
The best way to reduce over population in Asia and Africa is to educate girls, but we have a long way to go to convince the men who run things that educated women are a good idea.

My daughter has six children and was furious to be asked by a junior doctor if she had them to get benefits - her husband works very hard to support them all, and she herself did an OU degree and had a successful career. She is also asked if she is catholic - few people seem to understand that it is possible simply to like a large family. Of course, they would have been much better off financially if they had limited their family, but when I saw five of the six together at Christmas in NZ, I realised how much they all gained from their mutual love and support. (The sixth lives with his fiance and their two little girls in Kent, but we will all be at their wedding in August).

Both my GC were born 38 weeks after their father's birthday. I babysit while they stay in a hotel for the birthday celebration, I wave them off with a cheery "enjoy yourselves" but as the door closes "be careful"

Gosh, crass... Greatnan what is wrong with asking more tactfully "how do you feel about the size of your family" or some such open question...?
I did meet one young woman recently with a large family. And they were on benefits, although her OH was working hard to get a vocational qualification.
She was very happy about having lots of kids and seemed to be doing a very good job as a parent. Oldest a confident child doing well in secondary school etc.

Jess, why would anyone need to ask anyone else about the size of their family? Would the question be asked of someone with one child? Her reason for having a large family was absolutely no business of the junior doctor. If she had not been so ill, she would have pursued a complaint. He was not asking if she needed advice about contraception (she didn't - she has an OU degree in Health Studies!) but was suggesting that she was in some way producing children simply to get benefits.

Well I was giving him the benefit (!) of the doubt. Probably wrongly really. But drs can and should check if women want to talk about contraception or sterilisation. Just because people highly educated doesn't mean they always get their act together.
You know what they say about doctor's wives for instance.
I had a colleague once whose wife was a doctor, doing a PHd. She got pregnant one month after giving birth, much to his shock and surprise.

Kiwi bluntness often verges on rudeness – it's one of the few things I dislike about NZ. Absentdaughter, who is currently expecting her fifth child, has been similarly questioned about her large family and her mother-in-law has even been told on a networking site to teach her sons and daughters about contraception. Absentdaughter is definitely not amused.

Yes, I think I would but I'd also consider some sort of help for them because obviously they shouldn't break the law because I probably would find it very difficult to deal with myself.

Nannym I have also struggled with this sort of thing but it wasn't quite so close to home. I had a young lady (in her 20s) working with me (I was her manager) and she and her sister and mother were all claiming benefits and she insisted she couldn't do more than a certain number of hours because it would affect her benefits. They (I think) told the benefits agency that they couldn't find full-time jobs. She and her sister, and probably her mother were all perfectly capable, as far as I could see, of doing full-time work. Mother did beauty treatments for cash at home and they all had the latest mobile 'phones and clothes. I was struggling on a retail salary and permanently exhausted and was full of resentment towards this family. More than once I found the 'phone number to report them anonymously but never actually made the call. I decided that a) maybe I didn't have the full story and b) these things tend to rise to the surface anyway and maybe the system would eventually catch up with them. I am secretly hoping it did.

Just to add a little to the above post, I should have made it clear that this young lady refused to work more than one day a week and if on the rota for more, would 'phone in sick! Needless to say, she wasn't the best member of staff - I inherited her when I took the job!

I had a member of staff who kept phoning in sick with his bad leg - he had a small knee operation somewhere along the line, but managed 5 a side football every few days. Turned out he was running a martial arts club, and whenever staff were short, he would have to go and open up! He was rumbled so many times, threatened and disciplined, and to this day he is still getting away with it. Another three years and he will be able to retire on a full pension, having only worked about 60% of his required week for the majority of his career. He has learned what he can get away with, and each time it gets risky for him, he tows the line for a month or so. Then a new manager will take over, and off he goes again!