To think there should be some reward for hard work?

If she won't (rather than can't) then ... . Long-gone to where? If no one is claiming tax credit on the second child which was once claimed then it could be transferred to the mother. However, the father would not then be able, in the future, to claim for another child while the state (taxpayers, friends and neighbours) are paying for the first. If he continues to claim, it should help with arranging that he pays what he should for the child.

I am not saying this is what I would want Ana, although it is interesting to think it through. I just have a feeling that, as society has individualised, with fewer legal partnerships, the government is aiming to individualise the benefit system. If we hear them say they are putting a benefit cap on each individual we will know it wasn't just a feeling

CSA doesn't always manage to ensure the payments from a father who has lied about his income. Sometimes the father can get away with paying nothing at all towards his offsprings' upbringing. Immoral imo.

Years ago, when life was so much simpler, fathers got a tax allowance for each child as well as a married man's allowance.

Life is so much more complicated these days.

Just differently complicated, I feel, rosequartz and we see more of the complications via the media.

I shouldn't have liked to spend my early 20s, getting married and having my first child in war-time as my mother did and I do seem to remember worrying about the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. It all seems fine looking back but we felt the complications of life at the time.

Pre National Insurance it was certainly more complicated. I wouldn't swap ours for the workhouse, etc.

I think change is difficult for most people. Young people don't see it as change as they haven't known anything different. Society has changed so I suppose the systems that run it will change too at some point.

Yes, the days I was talking about were pre 'Women's Liberation'!

When I was a working single parent after my ex and I split up, I claimed Family Income Supplement, FIS as it was known. It was a really simple system, you knew exactly what you were entitled to, and it actually went up as the children got older.

I wonder which government abolished it - will have to look it up!

the figures I quoted earlier may be out of date since 2012. I know they were correct then. I find out these things from a reliable source but I cannot say where from as it might reveal too much about my job and of course any one on this site may work for the same employer.

I know tax credits are payable to those on benefits as well as those who work, I don't know how this is worked out but the idea is to help those in work to be better off than on benefit. I just know that years ago when it first started I got child tax credits for 1 year before DD left school and I was much better off but when she left school I was back to square one.

FIS changed to Fsmily Credit in 1988

Same for me etheltbags1, although mine continued while DD was at college, but that was what the extra money was for, wasn't it, to help with bringing up children?

Mine ended when DD went to uni but if she had gone to the local college it was classed as continuing her further education (such as 6th form college) and I could have claimed tax credits, but uni is higher education so I could not claim. What is the difference to parents providing support to their kids. They all need the same financial help but uni is not counted for tax credits, however at the time 6th formers got £30 a week ESA. Sooo confusing

I suppose Uni students still got grants in those days?

no she had to get a loan which she has never earned enough to pay back has now tripled.

Oh, I'm sorry - as student loans weren't introduced (by Tony Blair) until 1998 I just assumed that your DD wouldn't have been affected, etheltbags1, but that was presumptious of me. I have no idea how old you are, or she is, of course!

Nightowl, I share the frustration expressed in your post. It isn't a secret on this forum, that I'm a Labour voter (even if with gritted teeth at times).

Like Nightowl, I have always supported the need for a fair benefit system. That isn't one in which so many families are better off financially on the dole, than in work. Before the current government introduced the cap on the amount of money any family on benefit can claim, I knew of a number of families with 6 children, whose income from benefits was in excess of £40,000. That simply can't be right, can it.

One of my children is a teacher, she has student debts and teaches in a school in an area of high deprivation. Her starting salary was £21,000. I accept the comments made by others, that teachers have traditionally started on a low salary, but it's been increased annually. That may not be the case now we have so many academies, or free schools.

I really understand where you are coming from Iam64. I have realised in the last couple of weeks that I do not, perhaps that should be no longer, believe "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" popularised by Karl Marx and which communist Russia tried to follow.

However, I do still believe in Social Democracy. I do believe that people can come together to support each other should they be in a time of need. I look at social democratic countries where when, because you have hit a "life happens" moment, you call on funding you have put into and often receive back amounts in relation to the position you were in when you were paying in.

I have a feeling that judging everyone, no matter what they have provided for themselves in the past, to have the same level of need is destructive to growth in the economy. It is also destructive to the people it traps in a benefit system; one where working will never give them as much.

I agree that it is undesirable that some people are better off on the dole than in work.

Whether or not this is because benefits are too high or wages too low is a matter of opinion.

It is hard to know what to do about families with six children where neither parent works.

If families such as these have benefits cut so that they can only feed and clothe say three of their children, what happens to the other three?

Presumably they would be taken into care eventually and that would cost the taxpayer even more.

Or we could have a situation where we have starving children in our midst. It happens in other countries.

petallus, of course you're right to express concern about the impact on children of the current cuts to benefits. We already have food banks, and breakfast clubs in our schools. My daughter found one of her 6 year old boys sobbing. He was "starving Miss, I've had nowt since me dinner yesterday and I've missed breakfast club". Her offer to give him her banana was met with more sobs "no miss, then you'll be starving". She sorted some food for him, and they shared a picnic so he stopped worrying she'd be starving, like him.

I do believe that wages are too low. I do not agree that organisations like Tesco for example, pay the minimum wage, leaving their employees dependent on tax credits, or housing benefits.

It's no good us moaning and making comparisons with how little our own grandparents, parents had. That way leads the 3 Yorkshire men sketch. We live in a society with a huge gulf between the rich and the poor. The working poor are really struggling, and the current government has successfully led a campaign to dehumanise and ostracise those on benefits. Conveniently forgetting of course, that many working people rely on benefits, because they earn so little. The way in which the NHS and other public services are being privatised frightens me. That poor little lad in my daughter's class represents so many children in 21st century Britain.

I'm off to look at the Gransnet Manifesto - to see if we have any constructive ideas.

That makes an assumption that a couple with 6 children are all on benefits.

I know a couple with 5 children who both work. The father works in a factory the cleans work wear and the mum works in Morrison's. I don't know what they earn but I could take an intelligent guess the dad earns £7.80 an hour as I have seen his job advertised and the mum a little less. The youngest child is 3 years old and the oldest is 14.

I don't think they could earn over £30.000 between them, the amount they would need to earn to get the £26.000 limit on benefits. They are a great family, the kids are polite, clean and the house is small but that's because they own it rather than have social housing which would state they 'need' more bedrooms, another issue.

I know this because they are two of my best friends.

I get so bad tempered when the left say that flipping burgers or stacking shelves is not a real job or worthwhile. It most definately is and we should proud of people such as my friends who work hard, yes get any benefits due such as tax credit or child allowance but pride themselves in doing what's required to raise their family. I am sure if either one of them lost their job they would find employment soonest because that's what they are like, grafters.

It's not the left who say that flipping burgers or stacking shelves is not a real job. It's the bosses who pay them minimum wage because they know they can get away with it because the pittance they get will be made up to a better amount for them to try and live on.
I am proud of people who do such work. Just about every one in my family has done it at one time or another, including me.
I am not proud of employers who keep pay down and pay as little tax in this country as they can get away with.
The working poor are again going to be penalised if this government gets back in next year. The rich are going to gain. That can't be right.

Let's take you're example POGs of a couple with 5 children. If they are not working, the most they could get on benefits would be £26000. If with your friends they are working and earning £30000 ( gross) then they would be entitled to another £13000 a year in child tax credits and child benefit.

And Osborne wants to reduce that £26000 to £23000, GrannyTwice. Nice man, isn't he.
Anyone heard of fareshare? It will really come into its own for feeding those five children won't it?

there are lots of issues with the concept of the benefit cap but for me, two of them are that it differentially hits families living in London and also of course is affected by number of children.

They do not really want people on benefits to live in London, GrannyTwice.

www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/26/housing-east-london-estate-viability-affordability

"The idea is, yet again, to rally the strivers against the supposed skivers. The difficulty – as the Treasury immediately admitted – is that half of the 10 million households losing are not skiving at all, but toiling for wages so inadequate that they require a state top-up. Large poor families will be hit far harder, as a fresh tightening of the benefit cap chops a fifth off some household budgets. The ancient discourse about the undeserving poor has been resurrected to a remarkable degree during the past few years, and has often played well for Mr Osborne. But amid tales of bedroom tax evictions, deaths in the disability benefit appeal queue, and coalition bungling on universal credit, voters may now demand clarity about who, exactly, is going to lose out, when they hear war declared on social security in the abstract.

The chancellor struck a confident note in general on Monday, and in one sense offered a strikingly honest pre-election statement about just how many people are set for further difficulties. But however confident Mr Osborne feels about the economy, he should not assume that the majority will be content to see low-paid workers with sky-high rents singled out for particular pain."

I do hope some of you agree with this. Apparently 10m. households are going to be hit with Osborne's new austerity measures. There are only 26 m. households in the UK. That's a lot of people who will not be voting for him.

I know this will lead to opprobrium being heaped on my head but why have 5 children unless you can afford to keep and feed them? The family in POGS illustration shows that some families can manage to look after so many children but it seems that they might be the exception. We do have choices in these matters.
In a slightly different context I was struck recently when a very nice young man said to me quite innocently "I`d only be £200 a month better off working so its not really worth my while." In the room at the same time was a disabled man who busts a gut in a low paid and very hard physical job to be £35 a month better off. I know who I respect more. The disabled man was brought up by hard working people who just expected to work. The first is from a large family only one of whom has ever worked.
Ideology is all very well but we`re dealing with actual people not just theories here and there`s no accounting for different individuals` take on things.

There are so many components to this whole debate, aren't there? But low pay has to be one of them. There must be something profoundly wrong about very large profitable companies, many of whom do not pay their fair share of tax, paying such low wages that the state ( ie the taxpayer - by which I mean all of us) has to make their wages up. The lack of affordable housing is another big issue that isn't going to go away. Obviously getting young people into work is really important but shouldn't be done on the backs of freezing the benefits of the ' working poor'. The issue of large families is really tricky because once the children are born, what on earth can a society do in terms of supporting them?