The road less travelled

Person_one

daviecol wrote: »

Incidentally do you know many kids under like 12? How many of their parents are still together, out of curiosity?

I know lots of kids under 12, including my own niece and nephew and three sort of but not really god-children, all of whom live with both parents.

Some of my peers are single parents, but most are not.

daviecol

Person_one wrote: »

I'm in North West England!

Its probably more to do with your prejudice and your martyr complex.

Probably, your cleverer than me so no doubt you'll have it worked out.

Slinky_Malinky

As a single mum I too have been judged as scum -when I first got divorced and had to claim benefits ( I had given up my full time job of 20 years to raise my son, not expecting my husband to decide he did not want family life)

I now work part time - earning around £7Kpa - and I am very grateful that CB and tax credits help me to make ends meet. However I do not live the life of Riley, I am exhausted,depressed and isolated. My colleagues are quite vocal in their dissaproval of single mothers and folk who claim tax credits i.e. me, so it seems I am still scum to some people.

One thing I can tell you - while I am very glad that the handouts I get help us to live, given the choice I would give up this money in a heartbeat to be in a happy loving relationship.

brians_daughter

Whilst i agree with the post, i do fear that you have somewhat diluted the support by coming across as a martyr for doing what every family who can, should be doing.

SingleSue

I am a single mum on benefits but it was not always like that.

I met my now ex husband when I was almost 17, we married when I was almost 20 and had our first child when I was 23, two more followed at age 26 and 27. Both of us worked, both pre and post the boys arrival, in fact, I was a high rate tax payer by age 20, purely down to working my bottom off in 80+ hour weeks.

Unfortunately, two of the boys were pretty quickly found to have an autistic spectrum disorder and other disabilities, which meant that working during the day was not so easy as childcare was impossible to obtain, so I switched to working opposite shifts to my husband and doing extra hours during the day when appointments/school issues allowed, this, coupled with an increase in his salary allowed us to move away from tax credits and to have an income in excess of 65k jointly in the last year we were together.

Fast forward to when we had been together almost 20 years and he got closer than he should have done with my best friend, the end result was the break down of our marriage (that is a pretty condensed version of what happened!). With the marriage gone, so was the childcare...and so was my job. A job I loved and had fought for promotion in.

I am now a carer for the boys which has the end result of very little sleep, lots of rushing about and a huge amount of stress, working during the day is still very difficult (I seem to be at the schools almost as much as the boys) and further compounded by eldest also being diagnosed with a physical disability which requires lots of different appointments or the school ringing in a panic as he has dislocated something, so I am having to rely on benefits whilst also trying to fit the square peg of employment into the round hole of the boys needs...so far with no luck.

The boys however, have a very strong work ethic, they have been told that I will not accept them laying about doing nothing regardless of their disabilities. Eldest already has a part time job which he fits around his studies (doing A levels) and is hoping to go to university, middle son is one of the top students in his year and is hoping to go to Cambridge (although not quite sure how this dream and his aspergers and poor living skills will work) and youngest....well youngest is youngest and we never quite know what is going on in his head.

Most of their friends are of the more well to do middle class sections of society (as are mine), they have very middle class views and a drive to succeed in their respective future careers. They don't see living on benefits as an attractive proposition, they think it is all rather a waste of life.

So not all single parents on benefits are those who open their legs at every opportunity, some of us do have decent morals.

property.advert

I don't attribute much weight to views of the single parent who decided to split up because it just wasn't working out that month or when they say that they would love to swap for the family life of a couple together because they could have had that but decided to split up and fill their pockets with lovely benefits.

I'll put a pound to a penny that if you were significantly worse off deciding to split up and claim benefits then far far fewer would do so.

We have to stop this lunacy where a chav girl gets pregnant by a known or unknown father and looks upon it as a way of life; council funded property and another feral brat on the streets in a dozen summers.

You know, a decade or two ago people used to look at Waynetta Slob from the Harry Enfield Show and laugh as it was hilarious, whereas today it would hardly be funny because it is not longer a parody of a life gone wrong but merely a reflection of the way life is in some areas.

daviecol

property.advert wrote: »

I don't attribute much weight to views of the single parent who decided to split up because it just wasn't working out that month or when they say that they would love to swap for the family life of a couple together because they could have had that but decided to split up and fill their pockets with lovely benefits.

I'll put a pound to a penny that if you were significantly worse off deciding to split up and claim benefits then far far fewer would do so.

We have to stop this lunacy where a chav girl gets pregnant by a known or unknown father and looks upon it as a way of life; council funded property and another feral brat on the streets in a dozen summers.

You know, a decade or two ago people used to look at Waynetta Slob from the Harry Enfield Show and laugh as it was hilarious, whereas today it would hardly be funny because it is not longer a parody of a life gone wrong but merely a reflection of the way life is in some areas.

I really have to agree, I'm not having a go at couples that have children together then split up. People are complicated, life is complicated, love is complicated. People do go their separate ways.

But being young with no job and getting pregnant is totally unacceptable in my opinion. My daughter is 18 and she already has 2 people who she went to school with that have babies. No boyfriends, just babies.

A 19 year old that I know is pregnant and when I asked her if she was moving in with the father her reply was 'oh I'm not sure who he is, it could be one of four lads!

The reality is the moral of the nation has eroded and I'm afraid what the future holds.

January20

daviecol wrote: »

Maybe it's something to do with my location? North East England?

I live in the North East and most of the people I know through my work and my personal life are in families with 2 parents. Which part of the North East do you live in? (if you don't mind being a little more precise )

clearingout

Slinky_Malinky wrote: »

I now work part time - earning around £7Kpa - and I am very grateful that CB and tax credits help me to make ends meet. However I do not live the life of Riley, I am exhausted,depressed and isolated. My colleagues are quite vocal in their dissaproval of single mothers and folk who claim tax credits i.e. me, so it seems I am still scum to some people.

this illustrates the point I made earlier - we can't all be rocket scientists, some of us have to do the rubbish jobs or the jobs that pay less to enable the rocket scientists to do their jobs. The Government, in it's wisdom, considers that lower paid workers need their wages topping up. Yet we judge people in this position? Anyone who works surely has the right to feel proud that they are contributing? Why should they put up with being talked about in negative terms, often in front of the them? Why on earth is their contribution not valued?

OP - when you make comments about 'single mothers' you upset a lot of people, by far the majority of which are single mothers as a result of difficult circumstances, not 'on purpose'. I don't personally know of women who get pregnant for the council house or the benefits, but what I can understand is how someone from a poorer background, who is judged all the way along their schooling as 'never going to achieve much' would consider motherhood a pathway to 'respectability' and some kind of status in society. Most of us have children hoping that their lives will be better than ours and do what we can to achieve that with them. I don't doubt that the 'Jezza' section of society feel the same. But as long as we, as a society, think it appropriate to make derogatory comments about low paid workers, benefit scroungers, single mums etc. etc. then we devalue them as people and as actual and potential contributors. You wouldn't dare suggest, that I, as someone with a Masters degree and now a trainee teacher is somehow a 'scrounger' yet with my current, very low salary, I receive all most as much again in tax credits which is keeping my children in childcare whilst I care for your children and helps with the essential bills. So when you talk about 'single mums' and 'scroungers' you offend me - I couldn't train as a teacher without that financial support, I simply couldn't afford to and I would be far better off on benefits as a result.

I should also add that I've seen it said, more than once on this site, that single mums in my situation should have thought more carefully when making our marriage choices and deciding who to have children with. That's something else that sends me over the edge!!!

Marisco

property.advert wrote: »

I'll put a pound to a penny that if you were significantly worse off deciding to split up and claim benefits then far far fewer would do so.

Are you really suggesting that people split up because the benefits are so generous?? Or are you suggesting that people should stay together regardless of how unhappy they are?