Bridget Phillipson urges Britons to have more children amid ‘worrying’ birth rates
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/uk/bridget-phillipson-britons-children-birth-rates/
Posted by ThatchersDirtyTaint
Bridget Phillipson urges Britons to have more children amid ‘worrying’ birth rates
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/uk/bridget-phillipson-britons-children-birth-rates/
Posted by ThatchersDirtyTaint
36 Comments
Nope. Can’t pay to pre school them. Can’t afford holidays out of term time. Can’t afford a bigger house to put them in. Can’t afford good food to feed them.
Ok fine I’ll have six children. Thanks for the suggestion.
Now both parents have to work to be able to live comfortably, the idea of having kids is less appealing. Childcare can cost as much as you earn a month. Make life easier and people might start having more kids.
Thanks for that Bridget , has she been affected by the cost of living crisis.
Rent/mortgage,
food,
utilities,
tax
Yeah, then throw a couple of babies into the mix and see how far your monthly salary goes then.
I remember the saying if you can’t afford them, don’t have them!
Perhaps she, and her party, could take a pause from demonising the disabled community or the trans community just long enough to actually make the UK a place in which people want to, and can afford to, bring up kids? I’m lucky in that I’m a foster carer so a lot of the expenses of the ones I have are covered but even then it’s expensive so I can’t imagine what parents are going through without that help.
Oddly there is also this artificial divide in which people who really, really cannot afford to be having kids seem to have a lot and the, for want of a better phrase, more stable family homes, usually have two parents who have to choose between destitution or never seeing their child.
Feel I missed the boat on that one and also can’t bothered/afford to have them. I also like reading and going to lots of gigs and living a bachelor lifestyle. Though I admit some aspects of family life looks like fun but most of my friends who have them seem to be miserable.
I had a child this year. It’s incredibly stressful. I regret that our lifestyle is so anti-human that many feel they can’t afford the joy of parenthood.
With global instability and national degeneration, I worry for my child’s future.
The maternity wards can barely cope with current levels of childbirth never mind an uptick.
Housing is become less affordable as each day goes by. A lot of crime is becoming normalised as it’s no longer dealt with. Our front-line public services haven’t kept up with population increase in the last 25 years. A lot of our key purchases are all but monopolised by giant corporations chasing profits. The government even fines families for wanting 1 week a year to relax together at a time that they can afford.
We’re getting shafted each and every day.
I can understand why many people don’t want to have children these days.
My eldest is at uni with debt, his brother has bad mental health because he can’t get a job (400+ applications). Finally got his younger brother in a specialist provision school at 16, but it took years. No affordable housing unless you’re vunerable, and if it wasn’t for our local pantry distributing all the perfectly good fruit and veg that would have been thrown away, our diet would be not that great.
And also the general attitude towards parents over the years… there are parents that only see their kids for 3 hours a day due to working and childcare.
Two full time workers can barely afford to keep one.
Do they want women back in the work force, or do they want us to have kids? You can’t have both with the cost of childcare.
incentivise them, rather than the rhetoric that parents trying to parent are scroungers
Having kids would be by far and away the worst decision I could make.
I’ve only just, this year gotten comfortable. I’m 38.
People have no money.
Sure, it’s out of a lot of people’s financial means and your kids’ futures would essentially be fucked…but come pretty please? 🥺
We had to wait for 4 years to have a second one because we couldn’t afford childcare. In other European countries they have public nurseries at affordable prices, here it was more than my wife’s salary only for 1 child. It’s ridiculous the cost.
I’m really starting to think we need a revolution before the planet burns. These fucking morons, all they care about is growth at the cost of everything. Why? Because our system relies on it. Therefore we need to change the system. Something these people will never do because they serve the system not the people. Something needs to be done.
How can they when wages are low, rents are extremely high, nothing left to save money for a mortgage deposit unless you live with your parents, and pay cheap board.
It used to be possible for 1 person to work, have a mortgage and bills and raise children on one income. Now even on two incomes it’s a struggle, childcare is extortionate now compared to the 80s and 90s when they had council nursery schemes which cost a couple a quid a session.
What is the point in having kids? The society we know and love is due to collapse because of climate change? Tell me again why we should be having lots of kids? Just to watch them die with us, this world is sick.
Oh, perfect. I’d just been waiting to be urged by a pillock. I’ll do it now, cheers.
I don’t know who she is but she failed reality check
The economy is dead in the water and these goons have no clue how to fix it. Landlords cannot provide housing security, social housing is almost non-existent and private housing is far too expensive. How, and indeed why, would anyone start a family in this fucked up failed state of a country?
Ah so we are going to build millions of social homes to lower the cost of somewhere to live and stop the extraction of wealth from younger people to older/wealthier people.
Right?
Just had my second and would love three or four but no. It’s £126 per day PER CHILD for my nursery, SMP is less than 10% of my household monthly outgoing, schools nearby are shocking, I already have to pay for private medical insurance for them as our GP would let you die, can’t afford to buy them a home and can’t afford to rent a house with more than 3 bedrooms. It’s almost impossible now to have the families people want.
Ive decided not ti return to work because childcare costs would be my whole wage packet, so im not generating any tax and my husband is shouldering the family’s financial costs. It’s stressful so why would we add to it with more kids.
Me & my partner looked after her Niece & Nephew for 24 hours.
£53 on going to a farm.
£28 on McDonald’s.
£32 on a shop trip to get bits in for tea, fruit shoots and a couple of colouring books to keep them busy.
So… £113 in 24 hours.
Their parents used that 24 hours to go and buy uniform for September, lunch-boxes and have dinner together.
I don’t know who the fuck can look at that and think “yeah, I want that for myself for the next 16-20 years.
I hate this “have children for your country” attitude. Didn’t people get offered financial incentives too at one point (not just benefits)? If you already want kids, you’re already trying. If you’re having kids for any other reason than wanting to be a good parent, you’re an arsehole. We’ll just end up with more neglected kids who grow up to be horrible people.
The UK government should make it affordable to have children. Over the last 20 years we have had mixed messages from, “if you can’t feed them don’t have them” to “it doesn’t matter who has them, we desperately need more”.
Trying to secure future slaves for the machine. Remember that same machine that’s chewing everybody up.
More children, or as they like to call them, more tax payers.
Our inherited wealth, billionaire overlords are becoming concerned that their children may not have enough slaves to lord over. “Get busy peasant, I can’t be expected to mow my own lawn”.
I’m not having kids because I can’t see how they’re going to get a better quality of life than me, this world is a cesspit and it’s only getting worse
I think everyone will agree to have more children if the government can make the following changes:
1. Make paternity leave that same as maternity leave.
2. Make both paternity pay and maternity pay 100% of your original wage or statutory maternity/paternity pay which ever is HIGHER for the first 6 months and then a 50% reduction for the final 6 months.
3. Make day care from birth if single parent home and from age 2 in a duel parent home free and 40hrs a week.
4. Increase minimum wage to match minimum cost of living.
5. Remove stamp duty for 3-4 bed home if it is your primary residence and it is below £350k.
6. Make breakfast and after-school clubs free for low income earners.
7. Provide parenting classes for free and support centres for parents.
8. Make uniforms free for low income families.
Make employment laws stricter:
1. It is illegal to contact workers outside of working hours unless they have been given 24hrs notice to agree to overtime.
2. Make all overtime paid.
3. Make WFH full time the default for any office based organisation.
4. Make the full working week 4 days at 30hrs.
5. Increase pension contributions by the employer to a minimum of 10% of the workers wage.
6. Make employment protections kick in as soon as probation is complete (not the current after 2 years of service).
7. Make it mandatory for company annual wage increases to match inflation.
First, tell us where all the money has gone, because we don’t bloody have it.
I can barely afford to feed and house myself. I work too much and have no personal time, meeting people is hard. But yeah, let’s all have kids and give them a worse life than we have now.
Having kids today is like carrying an armful of logs into a burning house. Irresponsible and inhumane.
Tax the wealthy so we can afford them then, please.
Sunak proudly boasted about paying his taxes a couple of years ago, by showing how he paid a lower percentage (<20%) than most normal brits, despite earning over £1M in that year. The rules haven’t changed under Labour, this is still happening.
Start taxing wealth. Make council tax progressive. Tax all income progressively, rather than letting the wealthiest play tax games to our detriment.