MSE News: Minister answers concerns on lone parent benefits

DaisyFlower

sh1305 wrote: »

Most child care providers are only open until around 5.30pm. Couple that with possible travel time, the parent really has no choice but to work within school hours.

Some jobs require shift work. How many child care providers are open at 2am?

Some jobs are shifts so wouldnt work but thats an extreme example. Most office jobs are 9-5 office based so time to drop off and collect. If there is travelling involved then childcare nearer to the workplace can also be considered.

As for costs, its rare a single parent wouldn't get help from tax credits with childcare - not to mention its an expense that should be thought of when planning to have children rather than make that lifestyle choice and not consider how it will be paid for and presume it will be handed to you on a plate.

SingleSue

I had choice when I was married, now I don't have choice as a single parent.

I chose for a time to be a stay at home mum (didn't last long, I admit) but I didn't go back to work because of financial reasons but by choice. Hubby wasn't a huge earner but we were thrifty with our money and went without what we called luxuries (but others may call neccessities). I fitted my hours around his, so that childcare was not a problem, which was as much of a problem back then, as it is now!

Now I have no choice, I can only work in employment which fits into the boys schedule due to lack of disabled childcare and as those jobs are like gold dust, I am stuck...I have not given up though.

With 2 adults, there is leeway (there will be some who due to shifts, will not have this leeway), with only one adult, there is no leeway at all, no-one to take up the slack, no-one to cover.

Indie_Kid

DaisyFlower wrote: »

Some jobs are shifts so wouldnt work but thats an extreme example. Most office jobs are 9-5 office based so time to drop off and collect. If there is travelling involved then childcare nearer to the workplace can also be considered.

And what about before school? And where are all these 9-5 Mon-Fri office jobs?

SingleSue

The sort I used to do before children SH.....well strictly speaking, it was 7-6 Mon - Sat minimum but then I was a manager.

My last employment was 6pm-10pm Mon - Fri in an office (basic hours, you could do extra day hours too as and when needed). They decided to trial evening work to lessen the stress on the day shift and it worked an absolute treat, plus gave all us mums wanting to work, a chance to work in an area we had worked in before and still fit it around the children/childcare probs etc.

looby75

DaisyFlower wrote: »

There may be a few that will truly struggle for childcare, ie the child is disabled, but for the majority childcare is available. There are not many areas that dont have a nursery/childminder/after school club available.

you would be surprised just how many areas don't have adequate childcare, it's a recognised problem up and down the country.

Just google lack of childcare and you will see how common a problem it is.

moggylover

DaisyFlower wrote: »

So parents who are home 24/7 are real parents and those that leave their childrens side are not - what a load of rubbish!! I assume then that you dont let your children go to school, or parties, or activities unless you are with them then?

No-one could assume that rubbish from what I posted unless I touched a nerve. Note that I said I intended to return to part-time work (which actually would have financially supported us even without my partner) once my children were in school.

In view of the hours I had worked until moving down here it could be argued that I had actually worked two years for most people for every one of my own and I certainly paid in a very large amount of tax during that period, so I'm afraid I feel no guilt at all at needing some support for a while:)

However, as to the "activities" let me tell you just how unreasonable many working parents are in expecting clubs to be run for their children and yet not ever being available to offer any support in running the activities, fundraising or even getting their own children there or picking them up in time. My ex coaches a local junior rugby team, and despite some of the parents treating it as exceptionally cheap babysitting by doing the "drop and run" at the gates on training evenings, those same parents often have great difficulty remembering that their little darling needs to be picked up, leaving a situation where at least two coaches or club members have to hang around (and it has been known for this to be an hour or more) until someone finally turns up to collect their child because they are not allowed to either leave them unattended, wait on their own with them, or drive them somewhere else.

I have spent the last three or four seasons trying almost single-handedly to keep the refreshments shed, which provides necessary funds for the club, running (so single-handedly in fact that my then 10 year old son came and made teas and coffees with me for two seasons and handled the money) and got heartily sick of the arrogant comments regarding "I've worked all week", etc. and the fact that parents would also drop-off even very small children (under 8's and 9's) to play on a Sunday and then clear off to "do their own thing" with their own hobbies so that the entire responsibility for their child becomes dumped on the coach and club officials yet again.

Almost every working parent I have encountered seems to forget that if their children want to do these things, and they don't want the cost of signing them up to be unaffordable, then considerable effort will be necessary to fundraise. Despite having a team for every year from under 8's to under 16's, we are lucky if there are ten parents in the entire club each season who will actually get off their bottoms and do anything (even sell raffle tickets) and since both the cricket club and the football club complain the same thing I doubt that this is unusual anywhere in the UK.

Society should not pay for peoples lifestyle choices and beliefs - thats up to the individual. Stay home with your children but only if you can afford to do so with no state assistance. If not, then financially supporting those children is a very important part of parenting.

I think money is one part of life in general, and that since my childhood it has become far too often the only part of anything that anyone appreciates:(. And yet, one only has to see how often the lack of "community" is bemoaned, and you know that creating "dormitory living" has caused society problems that are probably equal to any supposed financial or economic gain in having two parents working full time.

I also dont want my son to grow up to believe he has to work most days in order that his wife can stay home and not contribute - why should he have to just because of his sex? I want him to know that you can parent and work and do both fine - it doesnt have to be one or the other.

I ought to have made it clearer, that I am equally happy for EITHER parent to be a SAHP for those first formative years, or even for them to share that responsibility. Furthermore, nothing in my post suggested that one parent should never work: just that one or both should consider part-time work once the children are at school so that they can take responsibility for those children when not there. After all, one could equally say that the Government paying for childcare, or earlier and earlier starting school is "state assistance" (and a good deal more expensive in many cases).

As for "the working parent may be capable of giving quite a nice time when there" - again what tosh. So dads who work would fall into this too as thats how lots of SAHMs get to stay home - what a nice way to think that of the person supporting the household. Just because a person works doesnt make them a lesser parent - the children grow up with a good work ethic, they realise the value of working and what earning money covers and they benefit from that money by having a home, food etc.

It doesn't (and most definitely shouldn't) take two parents working full time and leaving the care of their children to others (paid or otherwise) to teach a work ethic, and nor should it take both of them working full time in order to realise what earning money covers, or for them to benefit from having a home, food, etc. If the cost of living is so extreme that it does take two parents working full-time to keep a roof over heads then Society needs to address this because it certainly should not be something that is considered the ideal.

My boys know exactly how hard I worked to have a home that was almost entirely paid for (and furnished, although not all new as I wanted, and had, no debt beyond a VERY small mortgage) before they were considered so that my partner and I could parent without dumping them into childcare or making them go without. They both know the benefit of earning money and paying their way, and they also know the benefit of strong familiale ties and loyalties and community spirit and team committment: things which a lot of their friends really do have trouble grasping because their own parents don't appear to have them. My entire aim had been that neither of us would have to be at work so many hours that we had to pay others to do the hands on jobs that were our responsibility in child rearing, and that both of us would have sufficient time to spend with them on activities (and the support of said activities) even if it meant that they sometimes had less "things".

I do sincerely believe that our Society has "lost the plot" these days, and that we are all too easily persuaded to think of life as being entirely about "work" and not about life at all. The media has certainly managed to hoodwink a very large number of supposedly intelligent people if we are willing to sign up to the idea that work should be the be all and end all of life instead of a means to an end imo.

I also do not think that anything much about Society has truly improved since I was a child, and certainly find that people are far more selfish and far less willing to lend a hand to each other now than they were then.

Frogletina

moggylover wrote: »

I do beg to differ. The pill was free at our local Family Planning Clinic from the late 60's on, and my mother was on it:) You could also get the coil, the cap and condoms free from them.

There was as little excuse for them being pregnant then as there is today I'm afraid but it still happened. Perhaps some of them would not have got a great deal of sex education (although I got mine in the last year of junior school and it did include contraception to some degree) but I don't think they could have claimed "ignorance of how it happened" past the first time.

Actually, I wanted to go have a coil In the early 70's and was refused it because in those days you needed your husband's permission to have it fitted and I was unable to obtain that (that's another story which I won't repeat here)

Also I had to pay for the pill, it certainly was not free at my local family planning clinic

moggylover

[QUOTE=Oldernotwiser;39978040]We will have to disagree. I went on the pill in 1970, through the FPA and I certainly had to pay (totally free contraception for all didn't come in until 1975, I think). Services were still geared quite heavily to engaged women and that was certainly the story I felt I had to tell.

Nowadays, condoms are handed out to anyone who wants them at FE colleges, with no questions asked, including to under age students. There's just no comparison.[/QUOTE]

It may have been regional then, but certainly my mother never had to pay for the pill and we had free FPA services in Slough well before 1975, when I went on the pill myself, again free, and did not feel at all that I had to say I was engaged.

What we did have though was a wonderful family doctor who was a Catholic and who refused to prescribe contraceptives of any sort at all but did tell my mother that the local FPA would do so:eek::rotfl::rotfl:

Not at all sure they could do that nowadays.

FBaby

sh1305 wrote: »

Single parents don't really have that much of a choice. There is the issue of child care for many - as highlighted in this thread many times. And then there's finding a suitable job to fit around school hours.

How is that any different to couples? Most mothers have the exact same problem, with their partner not able to pick kids up and they have to either find a job that fits around whatever childcare provision there is available, or they find childcare that fits around their job. Yet it's amazing how many mothers in couple are managing to do that.... Most of my female colleagues are mothers of young children and almost all of them have sole responsibility for taking and picking them up from different childcare providers. Somehow, they are managing to find ways around problems that so many single parents seem to face without solutions.

moggylover

FBaby wrote: »

You did misinterpreted my comments. I think the choices you have made to delay having children until you were well educated and able to afford your with partner to SAH to bring up your children were very good ones. I don't see anything wrong with this at all. However, I believe that the moment you rely on another source to financially support your family, you lose that choice. It shouldn't be for the parent to decide whether they have a right to stay at home just because THEY believe it is better for their children. There is a difference between a choice that -might- be better for children (-might- because research is certainly not supporting one or the other) and be imposed something that will make children suffer. No, growing up with a single working mother does not in itself make the children suffer. My father was brought up by a working single mum and didn't suffer. I did too and again, didn't suffer. In my case, i would even say that it had benefited me, but of course, not having the experience the other side, it can only be a supposition.

Well, as I said, I never complained at paying large amounts of tax whilst I was working and trying to provide ready for having children and much of that money might well have been going to provide an education for the younger set on MSE and whilst being on benefits was not what I would have chosen as the course my life took, at the time, and for various reasons in addition to parenthood, it was the only one open to me and I have absolutely not one shred of shame regarding that:)



I don't know how many single parents on benefits trully genuinely believe that bringing up their children on minimal financial support is better than if they went to work (as you seem to do) and how many are convincing themselves of it because they prefer this lifestyle, but I feel that relying on benefits to support your choice is just not equitable in light of all the working parents who don't have that choice.

It isn't so much that I believe that bring up children as a single parent on benefits is the way to go, but that I genuinely believe that to CHOOSE to have two full-time working parents in a relationship is not something to be considered ideal either.

Furthermore, I do think that a Society that begrudged assisting those parents who have ended up on their own with the responsibility of their children to spend at least the pre-school years at home with them full time, or assistance in supporting them whilst working part-time once the children are in school is sadly lacking the ability to see the bigger picture and is once again just valuing one small part of what humanity has become apart (money) and ignoring the many other facets of what life is about.

That doesn't equate either to me never wanting to earn my own way in life, nor to my being able to instill a responsible work ethic in my children.

Of course, all of that is a by the by as we currently have far more people out of work than we have jobs available (let alone jobs that will actually allow flexibility around family needs) and it may well be that with the ever increasing mechanisation, to say nothing of the majority of the work being shipped off to places were slave labour rates can be paid, that the only way forward in the future will be for all of us to work much shorter hours in order for there to be sufficient work to go around, and to rethink our whole way of life entirely.:eek::D