- 23 Sep 2005
- 1,275
- 73
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As the title says, Should there be limits set on the amount of children parents can have? Also your opinions on issues concerning benefits?
I know this is a very controversial and serious issue, but i think its something where more needs to be done about it.
In my country, parents can apply for child benefits if the parents are not working. The culture of benefits in general in my culture has created a culture of benefit scroungers i.e. people who can work but choose not to because they can apply for money from the government. This has partly arised out of there not being enough properly enforced rules and regulations concerning the application for benefits from the general public. For example/more info;
"illegal immigrants 4million pound benefit fraud empire";
BBC NEWS | England | London | Benefit fraud funded £4m empire
"Anti-fraud schemes 'too costly'";
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7203296.stm
The whole philosophy of benefits is to reduce the amount of homeless people living on the streets and to help reduce child poverty and improve the living standards of children whose parents are poor etc.
"Fifth of young 'in benefit homes'"
"One in five children are living in households claiming out-of-work benefit, according to government figures released by the Conservatives.
They say 2.2 million youngsters are affected, which means the UK has the Europe's highest proportion of children who live in workless households.
In some parts almost half were said to be in households dependent on benefits - 49.2% in central Manchester.
But the government said the rate was one of the fastest falling in Europe";
BBC NEWS | UK | Fifth of young 'in benefit homes'
"'Work or lose home' says minister";
BBC NEWS | UK | 'Work or lose home' says minister
Etc...
If a girl gets pregnant and doesn't have a home or a job, she can apply for a council house (where she will be given priority on the waiting list) and child benefits so she can afford to pay for her child's needs.
Not surprisingly though, a lot of young women/girls who live in area's where work opportunities are not fantastic, many young women now see having a baby as a way to have their own home.
I am sure there are many women who have babies not because they want a council house and benefits but rather just because they end up getting pregnant for whatever reasons. However unsurprisingly many people who work very hard to try and save up money to have a home and afford a child of their own before they have a child, and spend the rest of their lives working hard to support their child/ren, look at such mothers on benefits with disdain.
Society is currently very unfair in this respect- if you don't work and get pregnant at a young age, the government will give you a house and money to spend for free, but if you work really hard and practice safe sex and try to pay for your own child, prospects of ever owning a house of your own or paying off debts before you're 40 are quite unlikely/very difficult to achieve.
So naturally people are getting p*ssed off with the system- people who don't work at all get an easier/freer life than those who work really hard.
The problem now is that with more and more people going on benefits, people are able to afford children due to benefits that they wouldn't otherwise be able to afford to have unless they worked very hard.
At current there is no restriction on the amount of children people can have in this country, and the more children benefits people have the more money and larger houses they can apply for from the government.
I remember seeing a couple on the Jeremy Kyle show who had 12 children together- and all of their children were being payed for via benefits from the government. People are becoming more and more unhappy with these sorts of parents, they understandably think "Why should my tax have to pay for other people's children whose parents are not working at all but are rather just producing more and more children, when i have to work to pay for my own children?"
IMHO, in life i think you should pay for what you have and not rely on other hard working people's tax to pay for the lifestyle which you choose to have.
But with the 12 children couple, apart from the massive amount of benefits they were claiming for their children, i also think there's an issue of welfare as well when it comes to so many children. For example, if the couple spent 1hr of quality time with each child a day, then they would spend 12hrs alone on just spending quality time with their children, which is not really possible when you consider all else that the parents will need to do in that day. So at the end of the day, one or more of the children will inevitably end up getting neglected/ignored by his/her parents because they don't have time for him/her.
How is this possibly fair on the child? They didn't ask to be brought into the world.
I remember seeing this program on one of America's largest families. I am not kidding you, this couple had 24 children (and were planning on having more)! As the program followed the couple and children's hectic lives, i remember one of the reporters interviewed one of the younger boys (he was about 7years old). The reported asked this little boy that "if he could choose to have less brothers and sisters, would he?" and the little boy answered "yes", he said "i don't like having so many brothers and sisters because sometimes they pick on me and my parents don't have the time to help me, my parents hardly ever spend time with me and i hardly ever get to be with my mum on my own".
I found this pretty heartbreaking to be honest, considering that this was coming from one of the many children these parents had had- the mother was pregnant for the 25th time. When she and her husband was asked why they had so many children, she just replied "i just love having babies".
I think such people are selfish and irresponsible to continuously bring more and more children into the world, regardless of whether its in their current children's best interests or not.
Its not so bad when you have a single un-working mother with just 2 or 3 children or less, but when you get mothers who have been on benefits for years and years and have like 5 children and have never done a proper days work in their lives, it starts to take the p*ss.
I think more needs to be done about this sort of problem. The problem is, is that if you set limits on the amount of children a couple produces, then how do you go about enforcing the law when couples have children regardless.
I do think more support needs to go towards working couples though, particularly those paying off expensive things like house mortgages.
What do you think on all of this? Do you think there should be limits set on the amount of children parents can have (as is the case in countries like China)? Or do you think we should be taking different courses of action etc?
I feel strongly about this issues, but am quite undecided on what exactly to do about them.
I know this is a very controversial and serious issue, but i think its something where more needs to be done about it.
In my country, parents can apply for child benefits if the parents are not working. The culture of benefits in general in my culture has created a culture of benefit scroungers i.e. people who can work but choose not to because they can apply for money from the government. This has partly arised out of there not being enough properly enforced rules and regulations concerning the application for benefits from the general public. For example/more info;
"illegal immigrants 4million pound benefit fraud empire";
BBC NEWS | England | London | Benefit fraud funded £4m empire
"Anti-fraud schemes 'too costly'";
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7203296.stm
The whole philosophy of benefits is to reduce the amount of homeless people living on the streets and to help reduce child poverty and improve the living standards of children whose parents are poor etc.
"Fifth of young 'in benefit homes'"
"One in five children are living in households claiming out-of-work benefit, according to government figures released by the Conservatives.
They say 2.2 million youngsters are affected, which means the UK has the Europe's highest proportion of children who live in workless households.
In some parts almost half were said to be in households dependent on benefits - 49.2% in central Manchester.
But the government said the rate was one of the fastest falling in Europe";
BBC NEWS | UK | Fifth of young 'in benefit homes'
"'Work or lose home' says minister";
BBC NEWS | UK | 'Work or lose home' says minister
Etc...
If a girl gets pregnant and doesn't have a home or a job, she can apply for a council house (where she will be given priority on the waiting list) and child benefits so she can afford to pay for her child's needs.
Not surprisingly though, a lot of young women/girls who live in area's where work opportunities are not fantastic, many young women now see having a baby as a way to have their own home.
I am sure there are many women who have babies not because they want a council house and benefits but rather just because they end up getting pregnant for whatever reasons. However unsurprisingly many people who work very hard to try and save up money to have a home and afford a child of their own before they have a child, and spend the rest of their lives working hard to support their child/ren, look at such mothers on benefits with disdain.
Society is currently very unfair in this respect- if you don't work and get pregnant at a young age, the government will give you a house and money to spend for free, but if you work really hard and practice safe sex and try to pay for your own child, prospects of ever owning a house of your own or paying off debts before you're 40 are quite unlikely/very difficult to achieve.
So naturally people are getting p*ssed off with the system- people who don't work at all get an easier/freer life than those who work really hard.
The problem now is that with more and more people going on benefits, people are able to afford children due to benefits that they wouldn't otherwise be able to afford to have unless they worked very hard.
At current there is no restriction on the amount of children people can have in this country, and the more children benefits people have the more money and larger houses they can apply for from the government.
I remember seeing a couple on the Jeremy Kyle show who had 12 children together- and all of their children were being payed for via benefits from the government. People are becoming more and more unhappy with these sorts of parents, they understandably think "Why should my tax have to pay for other people's children whose parents are not working at all but are rather just producing more and more children, when i have to work to pay for my own children?"
IMHO, in life i think you should pay for what you have and not rely on other hard working people's tax to pay for the lifestyle which you choose to have.
But with the 12 children couple, apart from the massive amount of benefits they were claiming for their children, i also think there's an issue of welfare as well when it comes to so many children. For example, if the couple spent 1hr of quality time with each child a day, then they would spend 12hrs alone on just spending quality time with their children, which is not really possible when you consider all else that the parents will need to do in that day. So at the end of the day, one or more of the children will inevitably end up getting neglected/ignored by his/her parents because they don't have time for him/her.
How is this possibly fair on the child? They didn't ask to be brought into the world.
I remember seeing this program on one of America's largest families. I am not kidding you, this couple had 24 children (and were planning on having more)! As the program followed the couple and children's hectic lives, i remember one of the reporters interviewed one of the younger boys (he was about 7years old). The reported asked this little boy that "if he could choose to have less brothers and sisters, would he?" and the little boy answered "yes", he said "i don't like having so many brothers and sisters because sometimes they pick on me and my parents don't have the time to help me, my parents hardly ever spend time with me and i hardly ever get to be with my mum on my own".
I found this pretty heartbreaking to be honest, considering that this was coming from one of the many children these parents had had- the mother was pregnant for the 25th time. When she and her husband was asked why they had so many children, she just replied "i just love having babies".
I think such people are selfish and irresponsible to continuously bring more and more children into the world, regardless of whether its in their current children's best interests or not.
Its not so bad when you have a single un-working mother with just 2 or 3 children or less, but when you get mothers who have been on benefits for years and years and have like 5 children and have never done a proper days work in their lives, it starts to take the p*ss.
I think more needs to be done about this sort of problem. The problem is, is that if you set limits on the amount of children a couple produces, then how do you go about enforcing the law when couples have children regardless.
I do think more support needs to go towards working couples though, particularly those paying off expensive things like house mortgages.
What do you think on all of this? Do you think there should be limits set on the amount of children parents can have (as is the case in countries like China)? Or do you think we should be taking different courses of action etc?
I feel strongly about this issues, but am quite undecided on what exactly to do about them.