So, you choose to have a child and live on credit cards and it all goes tits up.
When we decided to have our second child, we were aware that this would mean a shortened maternity leave and continued high childcare costs, but we were desperate for our four-year-old daughter not to be an only child. Sadly, that decision was the start of our real money troubles. As much as we love our gorgeous son, we have been struggling ever since he was born.
Okay, so I’ve been where this couple are – although the circumstances were different. We had no children and I lost my work – but the bottom line was the same – we made choices. Some of them less than wise. The difference, however, is that I never claimed “poverty” (we were broke, but working on sorting it), nor did I suggest that it was in some way someone else’s fault. It was mine and I dug myself out of it. it’s been a painful process but we are pretty much in the clear. Our credit rating is still trashed, but I don’t miss the credit cards and never want another. The new bike is being bought out of money I have saved. Best way, too.
Mind you, I could have helped my finances writing a whinging article and getting the Groan to pay me for it…
Other than comment and opinion pieces from the print edition I don’t think The Guardian pays for contributions to Comment Is Free website. I think a clue is in the name đ
But yes, a whine that they don’t have enough money to support the lifestyle they want is rather vacuous and pathetic.
Thank goodness today’s lot didn’t live after the war there were lots of single mothers they were called widows you didn’t hear them moaning they got on with living within there means , yes things were tough ,
But then along came the welfare state where people were led to rely on the government to provide for them , not having the sense to realise that it was the money they paid in taxes they were getting back.
Family allowance was paid to encourage people to have babies as the population had been depleted by the war, it was never intended as a means of improving ones lifestyle, and in my opinion I cannot see why it is still paid.
Here I was, feeling miserable with a cold and a NAS making death rattles, and you came along and cheered me up.
And it didn’t take long to find Margaret Thatcher blamed by a clinically retarded correspondent in the comments.
Everything is Thatcher’s fault – even your cold.
But of course:- All the left does well and consistently is:- agitprop, sophistry, lies & mud-slinging.
That shouldn’t be a surprise or even a disappointment to any rational person; but what is a disappointment is the readiness of such a large segment of the British who are prepared to believe such arrant nonsense, even when it’s palpably untrue.
It is a pity that ejaculation during intercourse is not more like it’s done in films, in which the seed is deposited outside of the body, which would allow inspection and removal of the tadpoles that would never make the grade. The price that we pay is Thatcher-blamers.
Had this congenital cretin bothered to read the article – which would have tried him immensely – he’d have read that Mrs Whiny’s husband was A Builder.
I wonder where all those building jobs went, who took them, and who permitted this to happen.
The answer, my friends, is Thatcher. And you are right, Longrider, that bitch is making my cold worse still, despite Mandela’s saintly ministrations.
â ⊠we were desperate for our four-year-old daughter not to be an only child.â
Slightly OT, I know, but Iâve often wondered at the logic behind this idea. Some years ago, friends of mine with, at the time, not a pot to p*ss in and an extremely shaky marriage to boot (now divorced, natch) had their second child for exactly the same reason, saying that they wanted their first child to have âsomeone to play with.â When I had the temerity to suggest that, each child being an individual in their own right with their own independent personalities, what would they do if these two little individuals happened not to get on at all and to loathe the sight of each other, the very idea was dismissed as being totally out of the question as if they somehow knew (oh, the power of wishful thinking!) that their children would â of course â be best of friends from the first second they clapped eyes on each other.
Needless to say â bloody know-all that I am â what I suggested has turned out to be absolutely spot-on. The boys are like chalk and cheese, have nothing in common, do nothing but quarrel and fight with each other, and the older one â clearly deeply resentful of his younger sibling â seems to take great delight in bullying the little one mercilessly. Neither is a happy child and both are now experiencing behavioural problems at school and in various outside activities, like sports clubs.
No doubt the financial pressures and their parentsâ break-up hasnât helped, but I canât help but think that, at a subconscious level, there were responsibilities, or at least expectations (âYou will both be friends â thatâs what we had you/your brother forâ), placed upon both of their young shoulders which shouldnât have been there in the first place and that, being children, they have picked up on that and are now (again subconsciously) rebelling against.
If a couple simply wants two, three, four or more children just because they do, why on earth donât they just say so, rather than trying to pretend that theyâre only having as many children as they do (however many that is) for the good of all the others, not for themselves at all? There are pros and cons to being an only child, just as there are pros and cons to having siblings. Surely the most important thing is that you want whatever children you have – whether just the one, or loads and loads – for themselves, however they turn out, regardless of whether or not they can fulfil some whimsical “role” which parents have preordained for them to match their own idealised vision of what “a family” should be.