What is this 2 child cap benefit anyway? Who does it affect?

Sorry should be AND

A determined Labour government with a big majority could make the tax system much more redistributive but politics is the art of the possible. The ability of the very wealthy to put income beyond the reach of the tax inspector and to pass capital and land through trusts means increased taxation will fall on the middle classes and that is every politician's problem. Labour can no longer depend on the mass vote of a working class reducing in size since the 1920s and so has to make itself acceptable to middle class voters.

It was brought in because the UK was attracting a lot of very large families, from overseas that could. Live better on benefits here than they could even dream of earning back home. For all those about to jump up and down and call me racist, it's actually about economics, the UK simply can't afford it. It was also paid to families left at home in much cheaper to live in countries in Europe provided that one parent came and worked here.

Childr benefit IS the old family allowance paid for every child, £25.60 per week for the first child and £17.90 for every other child .
The child benefit they are talking about is when you get universal credit or working tax credits.

I have to agree people need to work out if they can afford to have children , it’s not up to the government to pay for them .

How about those who had little chance to decide?

When their partner moves on to pastures new, or dies, when their financial means change, and countless other scenarios?

What then?

Yes we should try to proceed in an organised fashion from birth to death but life - and conception - isn't usually like that for many people. Society needs to pick up the slack with these people, for the sake of the children and for the sake of society itself. As for getting money off the fathers, I presume the dad in question isn't working, because my policeman son is docked some £250/month directly from his salary for his two children, when he has them to stay 3/7ths of the time anyway, plus his ex gets family allowance for the children too. There are lots of forms of unfairness, and many of them are suffered by a non-vocal and often despised section of the populace - the white, heterosexual, middle-class male.

There are plenty of absent parents who don't pay, though.

I've no idea how that works out, but I know plenty of situations where they just trot off into the horizon.

I am a retired secondary school teacher and my husband is a retired actuarial analyst. We only had two children because that's all we felt we could afford. When the first one was born, in 1986, I gave up work for nearly five years and we were quite short of money, especially in the first few years. I bought nearly all of my baby equipment second hand; cot, pram, baby bath, stair gate, etc etc. My pushchair was a gift from a grandparent. I breastfed both my children for over a year in each case, and donated breast milk to the prem baby unit until the AIDS scare made this impossible. On my ward when my first child was born (I was 28, and then considered to be an "elderly primagravid"), there was a seventeen year old unmarried mother. She received a cheque from "the social" for several hundred pounds, a lot of money then, and bought absolutely everything for her baby brand new from Mothercare. Nothing has changed. There will always be careful, sensible parents, who live according to their means, and feckless parents who procreate first and then plead poverty. Society should not encourage scrounging. I know there are some deserving cases, but the system is broken and doesn't reward hard work or thrift. It never did.

There are people like you, people like the 17year old, and a whole lot of others in between.

When I had my three children in the second half of the 60s and early 70s, I received no payment for the first baby but eight shillings each for the second and third plus milk tokens. That was the then Family Allowance and I write this merely for information. The difference in the national situation then and now is so marked I feel totally unqualified to comment!

If you can’t afford more than two children don’t have them!

It is totally different now, I think, as you say, as are people's indidual circumstances.

I'm glad I'm not living as some are doing.

Glenfinnan

If you can’t afford more than two children don’t have them!

What if you could afford them when you had them, but your circumstances changed through no fault of your own?

I have only just joined this forum but am thinking of leaving again as I am quite shocked at comments here n this issue. Partly at people not understanding what the 2 child limit is. As has been explained by a couple of people it is nothing to do with child benefit which is a universal benefit though one that since a few years has been clawed back through taxation from higher income families. The two-child limit applies to universal credit (and tax credits which UC is replacing). UC is made up of various elements but the standard basic amount for a couple over 25 is around £600 a month. If in private rented accommodation rather than council housing this amount may have to include a contribution to rent as well as cover food, heat & light, clothes, transport etc etc. The amount per child for the first two children is approx £300 per month, but any further children are not entitled to anything other than the £17 per week child benefit which I’m sure we all know is not enough to feed and clothe a child. There are lots of reasons why a household may include several children just as there are lots of reasons (low pay, disability, caring responsibilities, mental illness, poor education etc etc) why people may be partly or solely dependent on state benefits. Once a child is born it has the same right to the basic requirements of life such as food and shelter as any other children. I don’t understand why people are happy to live in a country with so much wealth around and children going hungry. I am also puzzled about the amount of anger about some poor parents/fathers not paying more out of the very little they have when nobody seems angry about very wealthy individuals and large companies who spend lots of money and effort to save themselves money in tax bills. If you, the taxpayer, are feeling burdened by paying for other people’s ‘lifestyle’, big televisions and the like then you maybe should look for a better target. However, I didn’t really mean to open up more avenues for argument - just taken aback and saddened and put off by the lack of compassion and lack of knowledge about the lives of very poor people in this country. All the charities that work to alleviate poverty in the UK speak with one voice on the 2 child limit and I hope the government listens to them.

Oh don't leave because of that.
Stay here and annoy them.

We can't compare the past with the present, though. When I was a child (in the 60s) the norm was for one parent (almost always the father) to support a family on his wage alone, so there was no need to pay childcare costs.

If people couldn't afford to buy a house there were plenty of council houses with cheap rents and secure tenancies. By comparison to today, houses were cheap to buy, and most were bought with one salary.

On the whole, women who got pregnant and weren't married either 'had to get married' whether they liked it or not, or their babies were given up for adoption.

There were fewer things to buy, so far less pressure to have toys and gadgets - many people didn't even have a house phone, never mind a mobile, but there were alternatives that are not available now. Credit cards didn't exist, so unless people used 'provvy' cheques or HP they saved to buy things for the house, and made do with second hand until they had enough, but furniture lasted, and there were fewer trends and things being 'in' or 'out'. Children wore baseball boots or similar to play in, not branded trainers, and nobody was victimised for having the 'wrong' ones.

Most women could knit, and made clothes for babies and children with cheap yarn. (I still do, but they cost more than bought ones, by a long way.)

Now there are zero hours contracts, low wages, high rents, extortionate childcare and energy costs. Houses cost far more than they did, compared to wages. More people go to university and parents have to contribute, whilst young people have student loans. There are bills for things like broadband and mobile contracts, both of which are essential now but didn't exist before. Even TV channels cost money. Food is expensive. There is a bigger gulf between rich and poor, so less of a feeling that 'we are all in the same boat' and more of a need to have the things that others do, particularly for children.

Whether we (as individuals) like it or not, things are different, so comparing now and then makes no sense.

Well said, LailaAnn. I agree with MissA. Stay, and keep posting. This place has shown little that could be described as 'Christian' charity lately.

I have just read some more comments posted probably since I started writing my essay above - so apologies if I have written as if all posters were lacking compassion or understanding when clearly they are not.

MissAdventure

There are people like you, people like the 17year old, and a whole lot of others in between.

Precisely MissAdventure.

If only life went according to the plans we make, and there were no circumstances that were beyond our control, eh?!

It occurred to me a while back (because these discussions resurface fairly frequently) that if a couple sat down with a spreadsheet and worked out the cost of having a child - from birth to adulthood - and then factored in all the computations of what might happen to derail their planned parenthood, it's possible quite a number of people would decide not to have them.

The same with buying a house... what if xxx happens?

Fortunately, it doesn't work like that - life, I mean. Because, if it did, no-one would have children or buy a house, just in case, you know. And businesses might not grow if they speculated in the same fashion - better not to invest in this equipment or that technology, because you never know, do you?.

There will always be circumstances which affect us over which we have no control as there will also be unforeseen personal and family 'events'. But you can't live life on the razor's edge, and I don't think most people do. And they cope the best they can when circumstances and the unknown happen -it's in the nature of being human.

Doodledog

Well said, LailaAnn. I agree with MissA. Stay, and keep posting. This place has shown little that could be described as 'Christian' charity lately.

I know, I quite agree.

I just wanted to add. People had catalogues that they chose their birthday presents from

Nope.
Nobody could ever know for certain what might befall them, all we can do is make the best of where we find ourselves.

Classic

It was brought in because the UK was attracting a lot of very large families, from overseas that could. Live better on benefits here than they could even dream of earning back home. For all those about to jump up and down and call me racist, it's actually about economics, the UK simply can't afford it. It was also paid to families left at home in much cheaper to live in countries in Europe provided that one parent came and worked here.

Not about to jump up and down and call you racist but I couldn’t let this pass without pointing out it is complete and total nonsense as a reason why the 2 child limit was brought in. The government at the time wanted to cut the benefits bill and look tough towards the poor. Saying it was about large families coming from somewhere else is an explanation produced after the event to encourage people to believe that all our country’s problems are down to foreigners rather than to huge inequality, under-investment in public services and the like. I don’t think everyone who believes this kind of stuff is racist but I do think you are easily distracted from the real issues and maybe just don’t like to think about ordinary people, just like you, not having enough food to keep body and soul together, day in, day out.

My mum ran the Kay's catalogue.
I can remember lugging the damn thing up and down the road to aunt Joycie, aunt Doll, aunt Carol.

and everyone had to give their 'club' money in on a Sunday at family tea

Classic

It was brought in because the UK was attracting a lot of very large families, from overseas that could. Live better on benefits here than they could even dream of earning back home. For all those about to jump up and down and call me racist, it's actually about economics, the UK simply can't afford it. It was also paid to families left at home in much cheaper to live in countries in Europe provided that one parent came and worked here.

Sorry - meant to add that it is meaningless to say the UK can’t afford it. If people and companies with a lot of money paid tax properly we could afford for everyone to eat. If we can’t afford as a society to feed all our children, what are we worth?