Families with children, through a combination of changes to tax and benefits, will be "shouldering the burden" of austerity, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The average family of four will be £1,250 worse off a year by 2015. The research was commissioned by the Family and Parenting Institute, which last July awarded the government a C– for its family friendliness. It's an invaluable institution for the persistent and rigorous evaluation of how much more screwed you are under this government when you have dependents – but the sheer bleeding obviousness of its message makes me wonder why we can't, finally, bury this child-centric rhetoric and start talking about the issue that underlies it: equality.
It is obvious that families with children will be hardest hit by benefit changes because they are in the receipt of more benefits. This is because they are subject to circumstances in which a number of people in the house – the kids and, depending on their ages, the mother – have myriad physical needs but almost no earning power. While it is true that some children will inevitably be born into very high-income families in which the mother didn't work anyway, this is a very slender slice of society: the "yummy mummy" trope, where motherhood is synonymous with affluence and narcissism, is a construct kept up by the twin engines of misogyny and a fear of stealth redistribution. It bears no relation to the financial realities of raising children.
In some cases the economic argument is straightforward: a government paying towards childcare costs, as the working family tax credit used to do more generously, extends female workforce participation and is good for the nation's GDP. PricewaterhouseCoopers once did a report in which it found that funding universal free childcare would reap £40bn more than it spent – though, granted, that was over a period of 65 years, so it's unlikely to appeal to this coalition, which can't see to the end of the next three days. Other policy areas had more complicated benefits: Sure Start centres were the precinct of support and "intervention" which, it was hoped, would prevent all sorts of costly outcomes like delinquency. Their impact was found to be positive, although over a timespan too short to be conclusive.
Fundamentally, the last government concentrated on children because they were politically neutral. Who could accuse you of being leftwing when you are just trying to make things easier for a tiny mite who doesn't even have a vote? Children had to be "lifted out of poverty" – not just rhetorically, but as a statutory requirement – with no mention of the fact that their parents would, de facto, be lifted out also.
I don't begrudge the Labour party this legerdemain. That was the era of triangulation, when it was infra dig to talk about redistribution, when the only "equality" that dared speak its name was that of "opportunity", when socialism was a joke because capitalism needed no alternative, and when the biggest fear of all was that someone accused you of sounding like Michael Foot (we'll have to deal with this blind spot another time – suffice to say, one day this party will realise that hiding from unions and having your hair cut professionally do not, in themselves, win votes).
This present era, however, is not triangulated, it is deeply political: the cuts hit the poorest hardest as a logical result of "shrinking the state"; every person who, for reasons of age, infirmity or job opportunity, is not pumping out man-hours at maximum capacity, will find their state support eroded. The coalition has its own dodgy narrative, of course – "There Is No Alternative" being its main plank. So they too are avoiding the ideology of their decisions, and would prefer to insist that the coffers were empty than to admit to the politics behind the policies.
Nevertheless, in a way the "TINA" argument is less murky, because it's falsifiable. The problems with using children as a way of talking about broader equality are these: first, everyone can see you're doing it and yet it has sentiment on its side, so it's hard to contest. Instead, among those on the right, it fosters feelings of resentment towards families in need, which you can see in the ubiquitous rumours of benefit fraudsters with 14 children. This spectre of the social freeloader could be traced, I believe, directly back to Blairite rhetoric and the way it choked off real debate about what equality meant and what steps a reasonable society would take to promote it.
Second, when the debate centres on children – and the Children's Society responded to the IFS report with stark estimates that a benefit cap will undermine support for 200,000 children and potentially make 82,000 homeless – a sense of helplessness descends. They become as a snow leopard or a panda, threatened by circumstance, desperate for intervention (even £5 a month would help!). A crucial element of the equality argument is that we should seek it not only out of goodness but also out of pragmatism. Society will falter if enough people have insufficient stake in it, but it's hard to conceive of 82,000 homeless children as a threat to the structures of human co-operation. Picture the same number of homeless adults, and it's not hard at all.
The left has been hiding behind children for far too long; it's time to thrash this out as mature political creatures, and leave the kids to their (deprived, possibly homeless) childhoods.
Comments
4 January 2012 7:54PM
So child poverty is no longer a measure of destitution to be used legitimately, says who?
4 January 2012 7:56PM
Much effort and money has gone into taking the marginal cases "out of poverty", by which a small tax credit or benefit tweak lifts households across the statistical line in the sand when in reality a tenner a week doesn't change a great deal in terms of education, health or well-being. All this whilst real deprivation, drug addiction and other ailments ruin the lives of many children, only under the radar of "lifting children out of poverty" boasts and headlines.
4 January 2012 8:01PM
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4 January 2012 8:01PM
Face it, Zoe. The 'left' (whoever they may be; I'm not so sure they actually exist any more) are incapable of putting forward something better than what is going on right now.
If they were, then they would be in power.
4 January 2012 8:18PM
And the people, via the government, pay for the upkeep of individuals' children why?
4 January 2012 8:21PM
Child poverty is relative to median income... if we're all poorer, the maths says the median income will fall and with it the threshold for "child poverty". That means that less money will make a family in poverty than before!!!
Successive governments have tried their best to destroy parental responsibility for paying for their children and instead make the State pay. In an age of contraception having children is a choice and in making that choice comes the responsibility to pay for them.
Until all parties make it clear that parents are responsible for looking after and paying for their children and that child benefits should be reduced and only tax relief given for children (no income = no tax relief = no benefit) we are only encouraging feckless people to breed secure in the knowledge that they will be housed, given money for their children (which won't be spent on them entirely), and the fathers will not be paying child support as they aren't working either.
Gordon Brown's round the houses taking away child tax relief from those earning and giving it back to mothers regardless of income was patently daft and serves only to employ thousands of Labour HMRC employees / turkeys in marginal constituencies who won't vote for Christmas.
As for many children's charities and the FPI - they're just pressure groups who do stuff all to actually help poor families with grants and are just interested in more handouts to people who have chosen to have large families. The benefits system is rotten to the core in that it rewards the feckless who have to be paid for out of the taxes of mugs like me who have to work for a living and would prefer to keep more of my own money to spend on things I want (which includes a large proportion given away to charities that really do make a difference to the poor and whose work is far more effective than the State's.
4 January 2012 8:22PM
If every working person in Britain was paid the same amount, a) you'd have Communism, and b) you'd have a lot more "poverty", and c) there would still be "inequality".
Please decide to stop living in a dreamworld where "equality" will (or could) ever exist.
4 January 2012 8:34PM
The best way to redistribute wealth is to severely tax anyone earning over £200k and simultaneously raise the minimum wage for service industries that cannot be exported, and the minimum tax threshold.
4 January 2012 8:39PM
It's called society. While you're able bodied, you support the young and old because, you where once young and you will grow old.
That's not communism or at least a very limited view of it.
No, 10% of the population hold 90% of the wealth. If you divide it out, 90% of the country would be significantly richer.
No, 10% of the population hold 90% of the wealth. If you divide it out, 90% of the country would be significantly richer. And the 10% would still be able to heat their homes and feed their children.
But there are degrees of inequality. Not being able to eat out several nights a week at top restaurant compared to say eating one basic meal a day.
4 January 2012 8:40PM
The left made its biggest mistake when it abandoned demands for equality and replaced them with flannel about "equality of opportunity" and similar meritocratic ideas. The evil old Victorian idea of "deserving poor" had made its return thereby, with the "haves" awarding themselves the right of deciding who among the "have nots" were "deserving" - and who were not. That sort of arrogance should make any true leftist roar with defiance - the fact that New Labour instead purred approval was the surest sign that they had betrayed their supporters and become just another centre right wing party of the privileged.
4 January 2012 8:41PM
New Labour's failure to address the structural causes of poverty and inequality meant that much of what they did do was tantamount to placing sticking plaster on an open wound .And now we're seeing the ConDem Coalition Government ripping off that sticking plaster oblivious to the fact that the open wound is still very much there and festering with infection.
Child poverty rates in this country are around 20% of all children which is one of the highest in the developed world.But that's also a meaningless statistic given that around 60% of children in some communities are classified as living in poverty. And that raises a contentious issue that many on the Left refuse to address.Namely that some of the highest birth rates in this country occur in the poorest communities.And that the structural problems of unemployment,low pay,lack of affordable childcare,poor performing schools,lack of good quality vocational training and lack of decent social housing don't justify low inome parents having far more children than they can afford to have.
Long term child poverty in this country is disproportionately concentrated in families with three or more children.And whilst some of these families became poor as a result of parents becoming ill or losing their jobs many were never in the position to have a relatively large family in the first place.This therefore beggars the question as to whether the tax and benefit system should be changed to dis-suade low income parents from having more than two children.For the fact is that child poverty rates in this country could be reduced if there was a reduction in the current high birth rates in the poorest communities.
Tackling structural inequalites and empowering women in some communities would imo bring about a natural reduction in the high birth rates currently seen in many of the most deprived communities.However the fact that this country desperately needs a redistribution of wealth through the tax and benefit system isn't imo an excuse for men and women to behave irresponsibility.And as someone whose politics is on the social democratic end of the Left i have no problem believing that men and women who chose to have large numbers of children they clearly can't afford are behaving irresponsibly.
4 January 2012 8:42PM
I recommend a tax break for married couples :o)
4 January 2012 8:45PM
Because it is the mark of a civilized country that it does not allow the children of its people to live on the streets? Or maybe that is also something that has been decided, on our behalf, that we can no longer afford.
4 January 2012 8:50PM
Hi, sorry so slow off the block.
I don't think it's illegitimate: I just don't think it's effective. I wonder why poverty can't be a measure of destitution: I wonder why we've arrived at this place where the condition in which adults are living is unimportant, while the condition in which children survive is still cause for concern. I mean. I know how we arrived here, that's what I'm going on about. But I don't think it's a particularly helpful place to be.
4 January 2012 8:51PM
I think it was imported wholesale, actually, as is so often the case with British politics, from America. During the Clinton years the myth arose of the "welfare queen," who drove around in a Cadillac and had numerous kids by numerous fathers.
4 January 2012 8:57PM
First of all, let's be clear there is absolute poverty in the UK, rather too much, in fact far too much.
But let's also be honest and accept that we have for several political generations failed to be honest about the causes of this absolute poverty.
We need to break the cycle fo benefit dependency and poor parenting, we need to remove the option of generational benefit dependency and teenage pregnancy and so on and so on.
Once we do this then we can start taking more positive fluffy steps that will make us all feel better; until then it's time for medicine that works even if it leaves a nasty aftertaste.
4 January 2012 9:02PM
There's quite a lot here: in Germany, there is very little tradition or structure - or at least, there was, until the Pensions Pope remade social policy in 2005 - for childcare outside the home. And the schoolday even once the children were older finished at 12. So to be a family in which both parents worked was functionally impossible except for families in Berlin, and the tax system both reflected and promoted that. The French situation is different again.
Your point of view seems to be that to want two people to work is a neo-liberal conspiracy which is bad for women. But I can tell you for no money that a system in which full-time motherhood is the main or even only option for women does a number of things: it does promote inequality between the sexes, since paid work is valued more highly, culturall and obviously financially, than domestic work; it bores some women to death if they have to do it for too long; it is a waste of the skills and education of mothers, which is bad for economies, especially when the working-age population is shrinking; it suffocates women's career prospects for far longer than the period that their children are dependent, and if they do happen to split from their husbands, pretty well guarantees them poverty in their old age; and it reduces the birthrate, which it's true that some people might think a good thing for environmental reasons, but is no good for that working-age population. There's nothing "metropolitan" about these statements, they are true for women across the spectrum of society.
Lower incomes families are better off on benefits because wage settlements have been suppressed for years, partly by the dwindling influence of unions, partly because the government has been subsidising corporate superprofits with the business of so-called "in work benefits". And that's another story altogether. It would be a pretty hard sell to say that lower income families did better on benefits because... erm... both parents were encouraged to work.
4 January 2012 9:03PM
Have you read Maurice Glasman in the New Statesman today? What do you think?
4 January 2012 9:07PM
You don't really want me to explain the purpose of civilisation, do you? You just want to make a bold statement.
Do correct me if I'm wrong.
4 January 2012 9:08PM
I like all these ideas.
4 January 2012 9:10PM
I know, and I also hate this "social mobility" agenda that everybody signed up to, as if it didn't matter that some people were in the gutter, so long as the flesh of the fountain was in perpetual motion.
4 January 2012 9:14PM
But what's your solution to this "unpalatable truth": to cap birthrates? To cap it for people under a certain wealth treshhold? To wtihdraw benefits for every child beyond, say, the third?
4 January 2012 9:16PM
Without wanting to be personal look around you at the Guardian and ask yourself to what degree does the Guardian advance the cause of social mobility?
Why do you hate the social mobility agenda, do you think that some have a noble right to go to the right college uggg St Kate's!!!! and land the cushy jobs while others are destined to work at Tescos?
A quick burst of maths; there will always be those at the bottom. The question is what is life like at the bottom? Is it nasty, brutish and short or decent and tolerable.
4 January 2012 9:16PM
Child poverty, fuel poverty - how about just simple, plain, basic poverty? This question has been dodged for far too long, and not just by Labour. First recognize it, then you have at least a chance of dealing with it.
Poverty is an inevitable consequence of the free market - that's why we have a benefit system to prevent it turning into abject destitution; and on the whole, it's worked, at least at making the intolerable tolerable for those many of us who choose not to think about it too much.
What we are now seeing is a decision to turn on the poor and blame them for their own circumstances: in itself, this isn't entirely a bad thing - it can never be a mistake to remind people, ie all of us, that we have responsibilities as well as rights. But we don't do this with any sense of equality or justice: and the poor know it, and resent it. Which is one reason why they feel no obligation to play the game by the rules of the state or government of the day, and certainly one powerful reason why so few of them buy into the Big Society rhetoric.
Labour's huge, historic mistake is that it has assumed the state's point of view and tried to turn itself into Lady Bountiful - tweaking a criminally inequitable system by dishing out largesse - thinly, but rather more thickly when it can call upon a goodness-and-apple-pie appeal to protect children - but resolutely turning our eyes from the inherent flaw in the system itself.
It's scarcely surprising that the working man and woman resent what some of them see as a subsidy paid to the benefit-dependent to breed, cementing them into a lifetime of further dependence, while their taxes, rents, fuel, food prices and more continue to rise as their income remains stagnant or diminishes. It's hardly rocket-science to divide and rule when such divisions as these are built into the system which - or so we're told - exists to protect those in need. It doesn't, of course: it just buys them off with peanuts, which are then snatched from their mouths when the economy gets a fit of the jitters.
Add to the mix a foul popular press which encourages the prejudices of working people who have scarcely time or energy to examine them, and you have British society de nos jours: stratified, mutually incomprehending, seethingly aware that something just isn't right but baffled by political duplicity into believing that we really are "all in this together".
It's a trick that's worked for generations: but it won't work forever - and we may now be approaching the point at which support for the lies of late capitalist economics is whipped away: the younger and revolutionary Wightpaint would have welcomed this - the older and frailler one is much less confident that whatever succeeds this system has to be better, or can be achieved without violence. But - we can tolerate poverty only for so long as poverty tolerates us, the rest of society, the fairly comfortable, and - of course - that 1%: intensifying division between those that have and those that haven't, at this particular time and more generally, is obviously immoral and wrong, but, even from the point of view of those who so persistently do it, bloody stupid, and bloody dangerous.
4 January 2012 9:18PM
Thanks for the long response....but I think the independent tax situation is crucial.
Do you think is right that our system allows very affluent dual-income households to pay less tax than single income-households?
I think this the foundation of that odd hybrid, UK feminism. And why the reaction to married tax allowances is so violent from the Left.
If we had transferable tax allowances, at least mothers would have a choice.
BTW - I believe that if you are a German single mother - and your relationship with the child's father is not at least registered with the local authority - you do not get social support to live independently.
Men's alimony payments are also tax-deductable in Germany. Which makes sense as the majority of fathers are divorced by mothers and maybe cast out of the family home through not particular fault of their own.
4 January 2012 9:23PM
They never give an answer to this - I've tried to elicit one in other threads; I even agree that the benefits and housing advantages available to single parents, or poor couples, are actively disadvantaging those who need housing (in particular) and do not have children and would choose not to have them if they can't afford to keep them from their own resources.
There's a sense of grievance I can understand only too well, having chaired a fairly large housing association, but people can't find the answers to it: because the system has been devised in a particular way, there AREN'T any answers to it at the micro level.
4 January 2012 9:24PM
I've always seen the definition of poverty in relative rather than absolute terms as a con trick, and Virginia Bottomley as its biggest victim, under the influence of her permanent secretary. So, the broad thrust of this piece is right. But I will resist stealth redistirbution as hard as I can, for much the same reason. It's a con, and people realise they've been conned. Labour has a long road to recovery, I'm pleased to say, and largely because those favouring the con are still in charge. A long term Labour supporting friend of mine put it well recently - Labour gave too much away. And they want to give away more. Owt for nowt, as they say in Yorkshire.
4 January 2012 9:26PM
Government's job should be to make life as healthy and safe and fruitful for as many as it can (see Germany). A government that looks after the few at the cost to the many is not a government. It's a group of parasites. When this lot have redistributed our wealth to their friends in the City and then have left, leaving children without education, homes, jobs and even enough food to eat, our society will be broken totally beyond repair.
4 January 2012 9:26PM
Who is the 'left'? New Labour were all in favour of wealth redistribution - 60 million to Blair and rising with the awfuk Mandelson working for a bank and every private healthcare company in the universe having at least 1 ex New Labour minster on the board.
If we want some redistribution we need to start collectin some money so here are a few ideas to begin with:
1/ Remove the artificial limit on the highest council tax band and reintroduce a link between property value and the rate payable on it. How hard it can be to revalue every year when they can work out values for housing benefits?
2/ Remove the exemption from stamp duty for properties bought by commercial organisations.
3/ When calculating losses for tax relief purposes all fees and charges paid from one part of an organisation to another part should be discounted.
4/ All organisations claiming charitable status should be required to publish, in full, all payments and receipts over £500 in the same way as councils and other public bodies. Let Policy Exchange and the IEA bloody justify their tax relief.
5/ MP's and others in a position where they can claim expenses from the public purse to be required to put their claim online in a publicly accessible database before they are reimbursed.
6/ All undeveloped land with planning permission to be subject to taxes as if the land had been developed unless developed with 6 months.
7/ Any company taking on an indentu... a workfare employee to be required to provide publicly accessible audited records to prove that they are not replacing paid employees with workfare.
8/ NO tax reliefs on income or pension contributions, to be paid at above the 20% rate.
9/ End the upper limit on NI.
10/ Do not allow tax relief on charitable giving to political parties unless the donation is declared in public.
4 January 2012 9:28PM
Another good article Zoe,unless Labour stop being Tories they may as well give up.
4 January 2012 9:30PM
Surely food vouchers would be a good idea to stop the poor spending their Child Benefit on cigs?
Stopping Child Benefit after two kids is also a good idea. If people cant afford to have children they shouldnt - it ain't rocket science.
4 January 2012 9:30PM
After reading the article last week about how desperate Greek families are placing their children in care I honestly wonder if this will be a choice some may be faced with here.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/28/greek-economic-crisis-children-victims?INTCMP=SRCH
I agree Zoe that there needs to be a serious debate about how to tackle the issues of poverty and equality, the problem is that time isn't on the side of those faced with the immediate reality of benefits cuts or eviction.
4 January 2012 9:31PM
In a short post, you admirably sum up the problem (if I may patronizingly say so...!). It's not just the Guardian of course, but all those who will not accept the further logic to which their principles inexorably lead - or would, if they were prepared to follow them there.
Life at the bottom - no simple answer to that, is there? And here lies the root of so many divisions - if you have children you are, to an extent (however limited) shielded, protected, and advantaged; it enrages some on these threads when it is denied that pregnancy ensues because it's economically advantageous but - I have to say from my own observations at the heart of social housing that they're right, that it does, and that it's unfair on those who are also in desperate need, and on those who are called upon to bear the bulk of the cost of paying for it.
If only all Guardian writers were as aware of these pressures and strains as Zoe Williams, however, there might be more of a coherent case against this government, and more sustained intellectual and principled pressure on the Labour Party, than is offered at the moment.
4 January 2012 9:34PM
It would make more jobs available for those of us women who have never wanted marriage or children, but instead get used and thrown away as maternity cover so that other people can maintain a 2-income lifestyle (and pay someone else to bring up their own kids – why have them if you find them boring to be with?). When jobs are in short supply, and some of us face having no income at all, it is wrong for some people to treat having 2 incomes as a right.
It is impossible even when working for a single person to afford even a cheap flat in most areas, as housing prices are predicated on 2 incomes, while it's equally impossible to get social housing because being childfree means you're not 'needy' enough.
4 January 2012 9:35PM
Great idea - now tell me how someone is to know years in advance that their partner is going to walk out on them, or die, or one of them is going to suffer a serious illness or they will be laid off...
Right wing policy - sound bites that make no sense but appeal to bigots.
4 January 2012 9:37PM
After 2 kids, doctors should recommend long-term contraceptive implants or vasectomies.
4 January 2012 9:37PM
Why do parents with only one earner who decide to maximise family time with young kids rather than maximising the family income deserve to be vilified by the likes of Zoe Williams?
4 January 2012 9:39PM
So Labour ‘hid’ behind child poverty to make a positive difference – well what a horrific thing to do! Seriously hardly the crime of the year is it? Seems to me it made a positive difference for the many. But perhaps they didn’t hide; maybe they did it for the good of children, families and society? Meanwhile our current Government seems intent on making children and young people’s lives miserable –Unemployment, homelessness, heating or eating?
Personally I’d like to see employers start paying their staff living wages so tax payers don’t have to top them up with tax credits; that might sort out some fairness and inequalities. When super rich multinationals pay their staff minimum wage and we all top it up then something has gone very wrong - that’s the something for nothing society. There is enough money in this country for everyone, just needs sharing out a bit instead of the trickle up effect.
4 January 2012 9:40PM
RE men's alimony payments - "present" fathers don't get tax relief for the cost of bringing up their children so wouldn't a be a bit of an anomaly if an absent (for whatever reason, I wasn't being derogatory) fathers did?
I'm all for transferable tax allowances.
4 January 2012 9:40PM
Great idea - now tell me how someone is to know years in advance that their partner is going to walk out on them, or die, or one of them is going to suffer a serious illness or they will be laid off... Right wing policy - sound bites that make no sense but appeal to bigots.
Since when did encouraging personal responsibility become the exclusive policy of right wingers? Jesus wept!
4 January 2012 9:41PM
You haven't got a clue, have you? The tax rise will achieve less than nothing, as anyone affected will either work less or arrange his or her affairs to avoid the tax. Raising the minimum wage will not do much good, except for people earning marginally below it, who will get a pay rise. Those earning much less will probably lose their jobs.
4 January 2012 9:42PM
@zoe:
What's this obsession with Germany? You know how low the birthrate still is here, right?
How you do it is: give women opportunity + rigorous broad scientific education + affordable housing + a culture that (for historical reasons) refuses to obsessive fetishise motherhood and reproduction as the UK has being doung for the last 15 years.
(And amazing how so many woman columnists who have been part of part of that navel-gazing child-centric culture are suddenly saying perhaps it's not such a good idea after all).
The welfare state is now deeply anti-feminist. It rewards women who, say, reproduce with the most inappropriate man in town (and who can treat the resulting children practically anyway she likes) infinitely more than capable, ambitious ones.
4 January 2012 9:42PM
In the 80's was the first time I ever saw young people in cardboard boxes in shop doorways and the number is back on the increase
The number of homeless people in the UK has risen by 17%, according to the latest figures released by the Government.
and what can the homeless expect?
Homeless life expectancy 30 years below average
Meanwhile elsewhere in London:
UK's most expensive flat sold in London for GBP 136 million
4 January 2012 9:43PM
I am glad that you are talking about single people as well as those with children. Equality of opportunity does not make everyone have jobs worth £20,000 or more. We still need retail staff, cleaners and care workers.
4 January 2012 9:43PM
I think it is a great pity that more youngsters cannot be persuaded that having kids before you are emotionally or financially settled isn't such a great idea.
4 January 2012 9:44PM
Again, I understand this point of view but ..... food vouchers are demeaning for very obvious reasons; when I was unemployed years ago, Ted Heath provided vouchers to dole claimants for butter: it infuriated me and I told a startled benefit clerk that so far as I was concerned, Ted could go and enjoy a Last Tango in Bexley with it...
Perhaps you have to be aware of the background to the times to quite get that.... I.e, be old.
Stopping Child Benefit after two kids - almost in spite of myself, I sympathize with that; but who is going to suffer? The kids - and that's why we recoil from it: we do, that's why it's not been done. You say people who can't afford to have children shouldn't have them - but if you were my age, and perhaps you are, you'd know that no one could REALLY afford children after the war; they were a huge burden on people who had to fight for every penny, but of course - children were born in record numbers. The baby boom generation, much though I despise that term because it lumps us all together in a meaninglessly glib phrase, came about - as a hopeful investment in the future after a rotten past. A difference then, of course, was that people could buy a house if they saved for it, and rented property was somewhat more secure - no chance of either of those now, so what are people to do? Not have children if they can't afford them, you say: but that means that many will have no children at all, ever.... and is that what we want? And is that in any sense equitable? You can have children, because you have money: but I can't? Is that right?
4 January 2012 9:45PM
Hi Fainche,You are right this is coming and I see no way of stopping it until the the damage and wasted lives are there for all to see.
4 January 2012 9:45PM
You still didn't answer the question.
Deflection (psychology) - a defensive act to divert attention from something unpleasant or difficult to think about
4 January 2012 9:46PM
Children are now very well catered for in the welfare state. it is the elderly who are neglected, both in healthcare and the benefits system.
If the BBC has any proper compassion, it would ditch Children in Need and replace it with an appeal on behalf of the elderly. But they won't because it doesn't make 'nice' television.
4 January 2012 9:47PM
There is a big difference between those who are hit by illness etc. after the event ,and those who "take on" "responsibilities" knowing they can't afford them.