Couples 'up to £200 a MONTH worse off than single mothers'

treliac

drc wrote: »

our benefits system is unsustainable and doesn't promote social or family cohesion.

In fact, it does the very opposite. It puts larger numbers of children at greater risk than ever before and it adds to poverty, financial, physical and emotional, rather than doing anything to address their problems.

StevieJ

MrsE wrote: »

I don't buy a paper but if I did I would buy the mail.

Its got the best travel, womens, cooking & beauty articles

That is what I like to see :T

LydiaJ

richardvc wrote: »

What I find sad about this article is that it attacks single mums but doesn't truly recognise that the other guilty parties are the fathers who have disappeared and do not contribute to their child's upbringing be it financial or emotional.

I wouldn't/couldn't be a single mum - I couldn't cope with bringing up kids on my own and relying solely on benefits.

Big "thank you" for pointing out the way in which the single mums always get the blame but the absent dads don't. (This is not to say that everything is the fault of the absent dads. Sometimes it's one thing, sometimes another. Some dads swan off into the sunset without a backward glance; others are desperate to be with their kids and cruelly eliminated by vindictive ex-partners; some hang around doing the best they can with alternate weekends etc. If it comes to that, some of them wanted to split up and some of them wanted to stay together.)

However, I have two points to make about your final sentence...

a) Most single mums didn't choose to be single mums. Almost all the single mums I know were married when they had their babies, but the husbands chose to leave. (That's my situation too, except that some time after he left, he died.) Most of us didn't have the option to say "I wouldn't/couldn't be a single mum". We just found that all of a sudden, that was what we had become.

b) Who says that "being a single mum" equates to "relying solely on benefits". I don't. YummyMummy20 doesn't. Wageslave doesn't. SingleSue wouldn't if her sons weren't autistic.

LydiaJ

lemonjelly wrote: »

If I had kids, would I feel £109 a week is a decent return in order to not be living with them? Not spend time with them? Not see them grow?

Careful lemonjelly. You are supposed to be keeping your gender secret, aren't you? Yes, there are some absent parents who are female, but they're a minority, so to avoid implying that you're male, you should put "... in order to not be living with them, or else bringing them up on my own without the help and support of a resident co-parent".

ILW

LydiaJ wrote: »

Big "thank you" for pointing out the way in which the single mums always get the blame but the absent dads don't. (This is not to say that everything is the fault of the absent dads. Sometimes it's one thing, sometimes another. Some dads swan off into the sunset without a backward glance; others are desperate to be with their kids and cruelly eliminated by vindictive ex-partners; some hang around doing the best they can with alternate weekends etc. If it comes to that, some of them wanted to split up and some of them wanted to stay together.)

However, I have two points to make about your final sentence...

a) Most single mums didn't choose to be single mums. Almost all the single mums I know were married when they had their babies, but the husbands chose to leave. (That's my situation too, except that some time after he left, he died.) Most of us didn't have the option to say "I wouldn't/couldn't be a single mum". We just found that all of a sudden, that was what we had become.

b) Who says that "being a single mum" equates to "relying solely on benefits". I don't. YummyMummy20 doesn't. Wageslave doesn't. SingleSue wouldn't if her sons weren't autistic.

It may be just symantics, but I think most have an entirely different view of "singles mothers" on one hand and divorcees and widows on the other. It would be better if the distniction was used more frequently.

The_White_Horse

ILW wrote: »

It may be just symantics, but I think most have an entirely different view of "singles mothers" on one hand and divorcees and widows on the other. It would be better if the distniction was used more frequently.

this is very true - you can't compare a widow or someone who was happily married when pregnant whose husband then leaves her, to a pram faced slag

carolt

All fair points, Lydia.

I don't think anyone here has a problem with single parents per se, eg yourself, Sue or Wageslave, who all work hard and who didn't choose to be single parents.

I personally do have a big problem, though, with a system that (a) encourages some women to breed to get more benefits etc - and it's not even them I'm really fed up with, but the wrong-headed system that incentivises people to do this and (b) that implicitly encourages women in relationships to lie about it, and hide it, due to the effects it would have on ther benefits.

I don't think that there is anything contradictory in saying that BUT at the same time wishing that the limited amount of money available for benefits was targeted at those in genuine need, be they single parents (like Sue) or poor families with 2 parents.

LydiaJ

Thanks Carol.

The thing is, there aren't any easy answers. It was inevitable, once society decided that sex outside and/or before marriage was acceptable, that there would be a big increase in both divorced and never-married parents. If there is to be a benefit "safety net" that enables the genuinely unfortunate to provide food, shoes and other necessities for their kids, then there will be people who will milk the system. If you try to have rules about sorting out the deserving from the undeserving, you end up spending masses on the implementation and bureaucracy, and annoying people by making them jump through unnecessary hoops - like Max Headroom going to those endless job centre interviews where he had to list what jobs he had been applying for.

Furthermore, there are two things to set about means-tested benefits - how generous they are to the people at the bottom, and how steeply they tail off for people who are earning a bit more than the bottom. If you make the benefit big enough to enable the poorest to cope, then you still have to pay quite a lot of top-up benefit to those on minimum wage, or working won't make them significantly better off, and there will be no incentive for them to work. And then the benefit has to tail off gently all the way up to much higher earners, to make sure that working is worth it. So you end up with the ridiculous situation that
a) SingleSue deserves a decent standard of living and can't afford a holiday without help
b) I work 65% of full time and claim tax credits, and don't feel much incentive to work more hours because I only get to keep 31% of any extra money I earn.
c) Tax credits are payable to couples earning above median income, as long as they have kids.

Don't get me wrong. I think the benefits bill is unsustainably high and needs to be cut. I think that there are probably loopholes that could be closed, and ways in which the system could be changed to make the incentives work in a more positive direction. But I am quite sure that it's not at all easy to do that, and that whatever is done, there will be unintended negative consequences.

Brodiebobs

i agree with lots of the points raised, but i can offer a flip side> Fortunately i'm not in the position to be a single parent, but we both are on comparatively low incomes. When my partner lost his job two weeks before i was due to have my youngest we went to sign on. because i was 'employed' (on smp £123 a week) we were only entitled to JSA, no other help and the person assessing us laughed and said if we split up i'd quote "get a fortune in payments". disgusting.

lostinrates

LydiaJ wrote: »

But I am quite sure that it's not at all easy to do that, and that whatever is done, there will be unintended negative consequences.

agree, agree, and agree again. I also think there could be unintended positive consequences. Stronger family networks, stronger society networks. I feel really torn about using Sue as an example, she is so patient to all of us...but the fact of the matter is, that Sue ''proved'' herself hard working, patient, trying so hard (with excellent results) to gain skills now for when her boys are more independant, trying to enable her boys to be usful members of society....so what did her ''community do''? they rallied. Now this is good for Sue, obviously, and for her boys, not just in the result but that her boys see that people who try get reward. For thus of us luckier we found ourselves able to both be confronted with someone else's reality and also take stock of our own blessings. Some people, also valued, felt sympathy but unable to contribute, some felt hard hearted: that's fine to..they got out of the enterprise what they put in and let us get on with it. Anther benefit for the whole community was a more open ear to the arguments some of just blot out as offensive...when ''offensive'' people proved they were not made of stone it makes it easier to listen...still to disagree a lot, bu to at least read their posts. I believe this ''community remedy'' was beneficial to far more than the obvious recipients.

edit: sincere apologies to Sue, I don't mean to keep harping on about it. My point is I think a lot of the system ''buffers'' us from reality, and not just at the ''bottom''