Preparedness for when

Doveling

Good morning.
I don't express myself very well sometimes. Frugalsod puts things I mean in just the right way.

I know it is a choice and a privilege to have children and I am very lucky that I have three and have been able to stay at home with them without hardship.However, the children of today are the next generation of doctors, dustbinmen, scientists. I don't see why women (mostly) should have to make sacrifices in order to nurture their children and provide stable homes when these children will benefit society in the future. Children are a precious commodity and parenting has worth.

Also, poverty is relative to the society in which we live. When I was little I had handmedowns etc., not because we were very poor,that was just how things were done then.

It would worry me that people were expected to pray before getting a food parcel. Isn't that comparable to what happened in the rice missions abroad. Again in a different age.

Anyway, great discussion and exchange of ideas. You've fired me up and I am doing my physio with a vengeance so that I can get back to work and try to make a difference where I live even if I can't change the world :rotfl:x.

calicocat

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

...and on topics re health.

I didn't know that::eek:

http://action.sumofus.org/a/weapons-NHS/?sub=tw

so just when and where did that get reported in the newspapers then?:cool:

:eek: :eek:

Cheeky ruggers....!!

I wonder if we'll be able to buy a 22 ruger along with our prescriptions then.

What is this country coming to...? We need to keep our own NHS.!

Nargleblast

As a mum you get used to being in the wrong - stay at home with the kids and you are a sponger, squandering taxpayers' money (child benefit, tax credits) on smart phones and nail extensions ( used to be fags and bingo ). Go to work to pay the bills and you are what some Germans even today call a Rabensmutter (raven mother), abandoning your poor defenceless mites to the care of others while you whoop it up at the office with your Starbucks coffee planning your next night out with the girls.......My first OH actually cited in our divorce/property settlement that I would rather go out to work than stay at home and care for our DD! The fact that we would have been out on the street without a roof over our heads because he was a lazy !!!!!! who wouldn't work because he resented paying taxes was ignored.....but that was a long time ago.....

I think we should all do what is right for ourselves and our families and to hell with what outsiders think.

jk0

Mojoworking wrote: »

I just think wages should be enough that you can still have your own home and not both have to work. I feel ive had to sacrifice having more kids (have 1dd) as we struggled so much with full time child care costs in her first five years and we aren't big earners but come in just over criteria. My dad could afford his mortgage bills etc so mum stayed home raised kids. There was the sense of community we all crave. Nothing open on Sunday meant we had to spend time together (whether we wanted to or not)

Now I wonder if we shouldve not gone down the home owner route as I work in the charity sector now and each year I get notice (no redundancy) and might or might not have a job the following year. It's worrying but there aren't many jobs about with security or benefits of full pay when sick anymore.

Also lots of oh family were horrible to me that I put dd into child care as they all stayed at home. But they are on benefits and there homes are safe. They did offer to help me for £100 a week which was about £50 less a week than nursery but I just thought there was more flexibility and consistency with nursery. But I am looked upon as a bad mother. I did miss lots that I won't get back. I don't know what the answer is.

I was going to ask about grandparents. I'm shocked that they wanted £100 per week to look after their own grandchildren. I'm sure you would have given them petrol money if they are that hard up, but to actually want wages? That's bad.

GreyQueen

Morning all.

Interesting discussions, as always.

Thinking back to my own family, very ordinary unskilled labouring people, yes, the ordinary working man was just about able to keep a SAHM wife for a handful of years when the children were at their smallest, in the 1960s when I was born. But by just about, I mean the following;

Rented acccomodation, usually council. Dad tried to get a mortage in the early sixties and no one would lend to him; didn't earn enough to get a mortgage on a £3,000 house. They wouldn't factor a wife's earnings into the equation because the babies were expected to come along and that would be that for her earning power for years. One of the (private) houses rented by my auntie, uncle and their very young children was half-closed off and derelict and rat-infested; you couldn't use the upstairs. It has been extensively remodelled by incomers and is now an upmarket B & B, but it, and another house my family rented privately, were condemned as unfit for human habitation in the 20th century.

Nobody had anything like central heating; one coal fire to warm the whole house, and struggling to afford the coal. No carpets, no double-glazing, no car, no holidays, nothing much new that didn't come via a Green Sheild Stamp or a cataglogue book. Food very plain and all home-cooked. No outings bar perhaps one coach trip to the seaside in the summer, and then not every year. No telly (we eventually had one when Grandma had to move in with us and brought hers with her). My family started getting landlines as late as the 1980s.

When we got bigger, and needed more food, and more shoes, things got painfully hard and Mum went back to paid work, first part time then full time. She was a SAHM from 7 months into her pregnancy with me until I was 9 and the kid bruv 7.

We didn't feel particularly poor, everyone we knew with kids was in the same boat. You can see the pictures of the estate and barely one home in 20 had a car. And they were terrible bangers, kept limping along by home repairs on the side of the road on the weekend.

But I see that people who have kids now have and expect to have a lot more, on low earned-income and even on benefit-only income. Such as running a car whilst not working. Having i-phones, professionally done hair (cut and coloured), nice clothes. And eating out, and going on holidays. I wonder how many modern women, accustomed to having their own spending money and discretionary income to spend on frivolities for themselves, would like to be a SAHM for about 10 years, with squat, and living incredibly frugally in an atmosphere of constant money stress, in return for the irreplacable time with their young children?

[Deleted User]

My mother never worked, from the arrival of her first child, till the day she died.

They raised 4 children (born over a period of about 15 years - 3 born over just 5 years), on my father's wage, plus whatever us kids contributed (which wasn't a lot), once we were working.

There were really hard times, but that was when my father was unemployed (due to redundancy), rather than my mother not working.

Mojoworking

That was ohs sister. His mum has had her children and made it clear she wouldn't be helping. My mum had passed away so there weren't really any other choices.

I think weve destroyed families as there is no ordinary jobs any more like factorys or industry and its lots of retail on disgraceful terms and conditions with stupid shifts as we need to be able to access everything 24 hours a day. There just isn't time to do everything and actually that everything isn't actually important but we're running so fast to keep up I'm not sure what it is I'm aiming to achieve sometimes. It takes a lot not to get sucked in.

Mojoworking

Greyqueen when my mum died and I was going through the drawers we found hundreds of green shield stamps what were they for. I'm 36 so don't remember. I do remember collecting dinosaur cards from my dads ciggies I think when I was very young and really fab things like bike reflectors in the cereal and tokens to send off for kellogs bowls. Sorry went off topic.

[Deleted User]

Perhaps we should start a slow and backwards revolution towards making life better for ourselves by rejecting the consumerism and living an even more simple life than we do now. It will never ever be exactly the same as when I was younger in the 1950s but choosing to have a less 'things',luxuries, treats and not seeing the need to emulate the Joneses in any way while still enjoying those things we do and can have must leave us feeling more contented with our lot in the long run. Perhaps we could decide that 'enough' is going to make us happy rather than all the striving to get that next 'thing'. I know I'm preaching to the converted but if you're going to lead, life has taught me that you have to do it from the front and show the world that it CAN be done!

SpikyHedgehog

GreyQueen wrote: »

I once shocked the hell out of a sensitive little flower by expressing my preferred disposal after death; cut me up for spares and chuck the rest in a hole and plant a tree over it.

I think it was Chapterhouse Dune (SF novel) where the Bene Gesserit sisterhood had burial in the form of vertical holes drilled in the ground to put their bodies in, then planted trees over the top. To which I went Hell, yeah!!

Fruit trees, I think ;-) I've not got the books here but I'm sure it's an orchard.

Last time I'd looked at woodland burials, they were more than 4 times the cost of cremation, so I was planning cremation for myself, but when I'd talked to my children, they both said they'd want to be able to visit my grave & wouldn't want me cremated. As they get older, that may change, so it's something we'll revisit, but they're the ones who need to have input.