Credit Crunch Return ???

blackandwhitebunny

dandy-candy wrote: »

But the problem is it wouldn't work. There will always be people intentionally having large families, often on religious reasons. I live in a very Jewish area and the orthodox Jews locally have 5 children plus per family as the norm. I have no idea if they claim benefits but either way they would keep having lots of kids. Now some might say that its their job to pay for them, but seriously I don't ever want to live in a country where you see malnourished kids dressed in rags because the benefit systems says "Tough luck - you shouldn't have had so many kids"

I do think though that saying some people will still do it so we have to take responsibility is part of the problem, it allows people to opt out of responsibility for their own actions. I would also rather not live in a country where children have malnutrition and dirty clothes but unfortunately we already do.

ab7

HariboJunkie wrote: »

I find that last sentence very offensive both to men and women as it implies that there are swathes of immoral, grasping women out hunting for men and men who are stupid enough to be taken in by them and work themselves into the ground so their wives can get their nails done.

Do you think there could, just possibly, be a category of families where the husband and wife mutually agree that they would prefer the mother to give up work for a few years to raise their children in the way that they see as best? How many women do you personally know who set out to trap a man into providing them with a life they want at no cost to themselves? Raising children can be a full time job if you choose to make it so and many women do with their husbands' 100% behind them in that decision.

Not only is are you right about that comment haribo, but the rest of these type of comments are so completely small minded and out of touch with today's Britain it beggars belief. Over 50% of today's families are actually made up of step-families, and often have more than 3 children at certain times e.g. weekends/holidays and are struggling to make ends meet. Various religions will not allow contraception, and trust me, nor will the government want to cap children. Because they are tomorrow's workers. Britain has changed so much in the past 20 years, and as usual it will the poorer families who suffer if these cuts were put into place!!!

blackandwhitebunny

At no point have I suggested that the government should cap the number of children rather that they should cap the number of children for whom benefits are paid. I know this is an emotive issue and don't want to upset people. However we do live in an overcrowded country in an overcrowded world - maybe encouraging people to have fewer children would not be a bad thing. My OH and I have not been fortunate enough to have children although we would have loved to have done so - having said that we would never have considered having any we could not afford to support ourselves.

GreyQueen

Whether a woman wants to be a SAHM Mum or a working part-time or working full-time Mum is a very personal decision and shaped on a case-by-case basis by her own circumstances and those of her partner (if applicable) and her wider family support (if applicable) and the earning power she has as an individual (highly variable).

I wouldn't presume to tell another woman what her choices should be regarding the number of her children.

As a woman, my life-choice is to be childfree and I am glad that I live in a society where I can exercise a choice which is unthinkable in many parts of the world today and relatively-recent in this one.

We certainly owe a moral duty of care to support people with dependant children, just as we have a duty towards our elderly, our chronically-ill, our disabled and those who are vulnerable due to other reasons.

We human beings are terribly fragile and a stroke, an accident, a deprivation of oxygen at birth, any one of a number of things could catapult us in a heartbeat from being capable and self-supporting to being vulnerable and dependant. Old age will rob us of much which we take for granted now.

As Doris Day once remarked; "Old age ain't no place for sissies!"

Ultimately, we are all in this together and we need to have compassion but we also need our fellow citizens to exercise a degree of commonsense and personal responsibility. Contraception is available but is an imprecise science and there are plenty of well-beloved and well-cared-for children who were "accidents".

In my work and in my neighbourhood, I encounter women who pop out a babe every 11 months or so whilst passing themselves off as lone parents. Some of these babes are to the same fathers; some of these relationships have lasted a decade or more, with the man contributing beggar-all to the upbringing of his children, essentially using the woman a baby machine and sex object.

I think this is unhealthy for a society. The girls raised up in these homes are often in the family way before they can legally give consent to sex and the lads learn a powerful dis-respect for girls and women. The fragments of these families churn in turmoil through the System; in and out of care, homelessness, prison, family breakdown after family breakdown, with a string of vulnerable children left in their wake.

I don't have any answers, but I think that the way so many people live now is heartbeaking and, if you have a benefit system which rewards multiplicities of children, you will get those who take advantage. They are a significant minority in my city but it may be different where the other posters are living; I can only speak from my own experience.

Sadly, a lot of the multi-mums and multi-dads I see are people whom would never get within sniffing distance of a childcare job due to their addictions to drugs, alcohol, chaotic lifestyles and out and out dishonesty. I wish we could think of a better way to raise our coming generations............

ab7

GreyQueen wrote: »

Whether a woman wants to be a SAHM Mum or a working part-time or working full-time Mum is a very personal decision and shaped on a case-by-case basis by her own circumstances and those of her partner (if applicable) and her wider family support (if applicable) and the earning power she has as an individual (highly variable).


I don't have any answers, but I think that the way so many people live now is heartbeaking and, if you have a benefit system which rewards multiplicities of children, you will get those who take advantage. They are a significant minority in my city but it may be different where the other posters are living; I can only speak from my own experience.

Sadly, a lot of the multi-mums and multi-dads I see are people whom would never get within sniffing distance of a childcare job due to their addictions to drugs, alcohol, chaotic lifestyles and out and out dishonesty. I wish we could think of a better way to raise our coming generations............

Thank you for that well measured post , nor do I think b&wbunny that you think children should be capped.
I agree that not all children are not being raised in a healthy environment, but for every one of these families you mention, there are least 4 who are. These are the families who would bear the brunt of certain cuts and I have seen posts from mums on here who struggle with these benefits to keep afloat. There are social and cultural aspects in that debate that would take far to long to go into

I think what irritates me about the way this thread has gone is that it has gone from discussing how the big companies/heads of banks are causing problems which are reflected on society such as this
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/8687609/Top-company-directors-receiving-gold-plated-pensions.html to the above comments on child based benefits. Huge comparison

ceridwen

ab7 wrote: »

Various religions will not allow contraception, and trust me, nor will the government want to cap children. Because they are tomorrow's workers. Britain has changed so much in the past 20 years, and as usual it will the poorer families who suffer if these cuts were put into place!!!

Well - if people want to say "Its my religion not to use contraception" then THEY are the ones that should maybe have a rethink on that point - and if they still decide to listen to the teachings of their particular church on that point, then its up to them to deal with the consequences personally.

As for the Government wanting lots of children born because they are "tomorrow's workers" - well...actually there isnt enough jobs to go round anyway and if some future time came when there werent sufficient young people for what jobs we DO have - then at that point we could re-open those currently wide open floodgates to immigrants to recruit however many we need. How come so many people are having to take lower-level jobs than they could reasonably expect or make do with a part-time job (when they are a full-time worker by necessity)?

Anyways - that all brings us neatly back round to the general state of present day Society - like the effects of the Credit Crunch and the rest of the reasons why we are all in this position now - so perhaps we should bring this back round to the other reasons for our current problems (ie the ones we might likely all agree on).

Going4TheDream

dandy-candy wrote: »

But the problem is it wouldn't work. There will always be people intentionally having large families, often on religious reasons. I live in a very Jewish area and the orthodox Jews locally have 5 children plus per family as the norm. I have no idea if they claim benefits but either way they would keep having lots of kids. Now some might say that its their job to pay for them, but seriously I don't ever want to live in a country where you see malnourished kids dressed in rags because the benefit systems says "Tough luck - you shouldn't have had so many kids"

I don't think anyone wants to see children living in poverty however encouraging or allowing and certainly not discouraging parents to increase their family size, irrespective of their cultural or religious practices, whilst having no means to support them perpetuates the very poverty that benefits system were put in place to prevent. By default parents more often that not find that work doesn't pay when they have a large number of mouths to feed or childcare to pay etc and thus they find themselves trapped in a cycle of poverty from which they are unable to escape. Children living in poverty often fail to escape poverty in their adult life so the cycle goes on. Many studies across the western world have found that 4 in 10 of children bought up in or born into very low income families go on to be adults living in poverty and go on to state that in order to break the cycle of poverty there needs to be changes in the family values, promotion of education to children and that increasing family income alone is not enough to break the cycle.

Is it morally right that we as a country therefore encourage poverty under these circumstances?

betheebee

Rainy-Days wrote: »

All this unease in the stock markets and Euro takes me back to when the proverbial really did hit the fan back in 2008! Big stores such as Principles, Woolworths and Zavvi going to the wall was sad to see.

Today, the news is dominated by yet another serious possibility that we are in for another credit crunch / recession on that scale. In reality we have been tetering on the edge of recession since we came out of the last one. The whole world economy is in dire straights and it is going to take something mammoth - such as the Euro to completely collapse - to take everyone back to the begining and starting all over again. The USA is laden with trillions in debt that even children being born today will stll be paying that debt when they come to retire!

It makes for pretty concerning reading and the only way we came through the last bout was for us all to batten down the hatches and spending out on what we only had to on essentials. If we did not learn anything from the last bout, then we quite well will from this time round. The old stylers will come through it because, put quite simply, they have been able to spot a bargain at 200 paces and learned to cut their cloth according to their budget - regardless of how difficult that may be, or is about to become.

Getting back to the OP and away from birth control, religion, child benefit disscusions, I also have been stocking up on essentials for the food store for quite a while now as I never belived that we had recovered from the last recession, its the same one it's just that it's getting worse. I'm lucky not to have debts or a mortgage, that was paid off years ago thanks to Mr. Lottery. However I am worried for my 2 Daughters who have a mortgage and rent to pay. My SiL's firm went into liquidation and he was in a blind panic wondering how to cope with the bills. He was one of the lucky ones and was able to find another job, some of my friends are still unable to find work and may loose their home. I don't know what the answer to the economic mess we are in but I don't think that bailing out other countries debts is going to help this country one bit.