Large families

Orca "Choosing not to work" is very contentious when unemployment is high. Particularly for those with low skills and little experience.

Say you have two under fives partner has gone, died or whatever. You live in a rural area with few jobs locally. If you want to work you have to be able to earn enough to be better off. Afford transport to work and pay for child care etc.

I live in a small town but there is very little work here it would be about 6 and 10 miles to the nearest towns accessible by public transport.

There is a big group of retail distribution centers about 10miles way in another direction and you cannot get there without your own transport. There is no direct public transport which is viable in area like this. Pay is low and very early shift hours would add to child care problems. And we still want the food they package delivered cheaply to our supermarket shelves.

You also need job permanence as moving from employment back to benefit or even changing hours seems to cause no end of problems in getting tax credits etc sorted out. I have known families stuck with no income for a couple of weeks at at a time while state support is being recalculated.
If you were on temporary or part time work at the basic national wage level you have no chance of saving money.

So do you risk the trouble of taking short term jobs which can cause so much more stress or yourself and your family, or stay on benefit so you can continue to look after your children and feed them each week.

Look what trouble some of our well experienced GNers have had recently trying to get a job and they have not had to consider how to manage childcare.

It is factors like these that really make it difficult for anyone on low income to make any choice about working that is sound economically. Which factors the government rhetoric fails to recognise.

My comments about Orca's suggestion were obviously made whilst other people were posting.

I am hoping Orca was joking.
Somebody mentioned the American model - heaven help the poor if we ever go down that route.
It costs much more than £13.50 a week to feed and clothe a child so apart from idiots like Philpotts, I would suggest that many large families are accidental rather than cynically planned. And, of course, some people just like having children. How eccentric!

To get to the bare bones of this discussion: there is a family with four children and low income, partly derived from child benefit. Perhaps the parents have lost their jobs and live in an area of high unemployment. Perhaps they are too ill/disabled to work. If the child benefit is withdrawn after the first two, it will create some hardship for the whole family.

We have had the statistics to show that large families are unusual in Britain, so benefits payments to them do not take a huge chunk out of the overall budget.

My proposal is that things are left as they are as the number of large families is falling anyway.
Can we have some alternative proposals, please? Perhaps not of the type Orca has put forward.

Ah yes. She believed in racial purity too, along with another well known personage in Germany.

I know, orca, but I wonder if everyone realises that. I somethimes think they are not aware of where their comments are heading.

MiceElf Marie Stopes was one of them.

The remark about the compulsory sterilisation was not meant to be taken literally...I'd at least offer a bribe incentive

?

Roger Rabbit?

To talk of starvation might be something of an exaggeration although who knows where the actions being taken and those planned by George Osborne vis-à-vis the welfare system will lead in the future? I was very distressed to learn this weekend that a food bank is being established not far from where I live. The UK is somewhere about the sixth or seventh richest nation in the world and this is the twenty-first century. Oh Charles Dickens – where are you when we need you?

Compulsory sterilisation, however desirable in a handful of cases, is an abominable option is reality. The laws required to bring it into effect would be outrageous, dangerous, and totalitarian. NOT an option!

Now, just remind me. Who was it who felt that the unfit should not be allowed to 'breed'?

Eloe by monitoring the families through society and Social Services. The notion that children will starve is ridiculous nonsense. There is sufficient money given to families to cover their need not their greed. If the parents are responsible in their parental duties then they should put the needs to their children before their own. So luxuries such as expensive TV's, cigarettes and alcohol should be just that. If they are the sort if parents who put themselves and their life style before their children then steps can and should be taken.
The children in these minority of families are already being 'harmed' inasmuch as their views on what is normal and acceptable are being slanted and their own chances of growing up to be productive members of society are reduced.
I'm only talking about those who choose not to work and who prefer to stay at home all day living off society and contributing nothing. When I say they must earn their benefit there are plenty of volunteering opportunities, charities who need help, environmental schemes, etc., which not only teach transferable skills but can offer a path into paid employment.
Then there's always compulsory vasectomy!

I had got the same impression too. No-one has suggested how to keep the extra children fed and warm if what keeps them alive is withdrawn, or never provided. Back to Victorian poverty? That's what happens when society doesn't look after its poorest and its failures. Every society will have failures – people who are too reckless, too thick, or just too unlucky to cope without help. Civilised societies help their children.

Ana I think some of the comments made on this thread and on others, as well as in some letters to newspapers indicate a heartlessness that I find appalling. If, as some advocate, benefit payments don't take into consideration all the children in a family but only a "permissible number", then all children in that family will suffer. Presumably, therefore, advocates of this policy don't care what happens to the affected children.

Sel I hadn't realised that I was keeping you up by not replying further to your comment. I told you that I hadn't said anything of the sort and I hadn't. You know I hadn't as you specifically referred to my post. I didn't think there was anything to add. I should have thought you had something much more interesting to do than wait for me to repeat what I had already said. I certainly had.

Orca How would you wish to deal with it without affecting the children?

Galen people ought to be made to earn their benefits.

Yes Ana, I may go to sleep waiting

Sel, you're banging your head against a brick wall.

absent said that after reading letters in various papers and even some of the posts on Gransnet, she thinks there are people who would leave the children of existing large families on welfare (her word) to starve.

Of course there are no specific posts on Gransnet to validate her opinion, but the implication is there, nonetheless.

That's what David Cameron's said!i was just going to post that.
But how can you do it, and still protect the vulnerable?

Living on benefits as a life-style choice should not be tolerated. And the way the system works encourages some to produce 'extra' children to support that life-style.

Absent earlier this afternoon I asked you to justify this post - I copied and pasted your post when denied you had said any such thing and I was being silly.

I'll ask again and again, quote your post:

absent Fri 05-Apr-13 10:47:01

Greatnan I'm not so sure you're right. Reading letters in various newspapers and even some of the posts on Gransnet, I think that there are people who would leave the children of existing large families on welfare to starve. They would shake their heads and say how sad it is but the parents have been so irresponsible.

I think there's a danger that the children themselves are being overlooked in all this. Whatever their family circumstances, whether they be born into the Philpott family (God help them) or a large family in which the parents support their family without the help of benefits, it isn't their fault! And all children should have whatever help they can to achieve as much as they can. I think this should be the starting point and only after making sure that the kids are alright should the sins of the parents be addressed

movedalot I don't recall saying anything about encouraging people to have large families. I responded to Sel 's suggestion that benefits be restricted to the first three children. I suggested that such a huge drop in family income would inevitably affect children from a large family (whilst they might not actually starve, I suspect they would end up seriously malnourished).

I said that, given everybody was emphatic that children should not go without food or clothing and therefore the suggestion about restricting benefit was not viable, then other measures would be needed to prevent the long term unemployed from having more children. Nobody has commented on the desirability of such measures or made any other suggestions that do not involve punishing children for their parents' actions.

Ana I don't think someone did if you look back. Or maybe you are not talking about my posts – in which case, sorry.