Two Child Rule

In the turmoil of Brexit, I had completely forgotten about the forthcoming changes to tax credits. From April 2017, only the first two children in a family will be supported by tax credits, and children born after April 2017 will not. I cannot find anything about what happens if you have more than two children and are already claiming tax credits for all of them. Perhaps the government haven't thought about that. Maybe I will have to choose a child to stop claiming for, a Sophie's Choice. Also, when my eldest ages out of payments, do I get to claim for the other two again? How is this going to work?

I mean, there are other rules that are frankly ridiculous like single parents now having to look for work when their youngest child turns three (from January 2017). It's ridiculous because you only get 15hrs free childcare per week and childcare costs literally cost all your wages - the reason I don't have a job at the moment is because I cannot get a job that would pay more than the FOUR HUNDRED AND FORTY POUNDS it would cost me for 40 hours childcare in an educational setting per week. There's a reason the old rules required parents to look for work after their youngest child was in primary school - the school-age children account for a mere £60 of that.

The pension age has also gone up, which means the scope for grandparents offering free childcare to the working is much reduced. And yet the government's broad family policy takes for granted that there is a reciprocity of care in family units. The idea that Mummy and Daddy have two children, Daddy goes to work, Mummy looks after the kids until they are a set age then finds a job for 'pin money', while Granny picks up the children for her and then, later, Mummy uses the first years of her retirement to look after Granny and Grandad and Granny and Grandad in law is still very much the typical scenario visualised. If informal care was taken out of the equation, the cost to social services would be astronomical.

Take, for example, my mum. Mum has been eligible for hospice care now since approximately 1st September (probably a little longer than that). Instead, my wonderful dad has taken a sabbatical from work and is looking after her himself. If we children were older and had less tiny children, we would be doing more to help. Inpatient hospice care costs £446 per day, on average. That's almost £20000 my parents have saved the government simply by coping. The hospice care provided at home costs approximately £20 a day, a very different price indeed.
When older people go to nursing homes, they now usually have to sell their homes to fund their care (approximately £2000 a month, depending on care home). Those who have never owned homes have their care entirely funded by the government. It is much cheaper for the government to rely on familial care, and people staying in their own homes: the population of older people in nursing homes is around 295000 out of a potential population of eleven million.

The tradition of intergenerational caring is as old as humanity, but is rapidly being outpaced by modern life. Since the 1970s, the average age of childbearing has increased as women pursue careers and, indeed, are expected to pursue careers. My mother had me at 23, which was about the average at the time. I had my eldest at 23, but I am a young mother among most of my peers. I cannot care for my dying mother because I am tied to very small children, a thing that would have been less of a concern if my mum had developed this illness in ten years time. My mother, still working until her bowel exploded, has never been able to offer free childcare because of her own career.

But back to my original point. I had forgotten about tax credit changes, but was reminded last night of it by this article in the Independent. Women who have their children as a result of rape will be exempt from the two-children rule. That is the right thing to do, but it very much frames the idea that poor people have children for benefits at the feet of...women. What of men? Take, for example, my middle son. Conceived within a marriage where both parents worked and barely qualified for tax credits (NEWSFLASH: the vast majority of families claiming tax credits are working), yet born into a single parent, workless family. It's not his fault that things changed so quickly. It's not my fault things changed so quickly. It certainly wasn't something I anticipated when I got pregnant with him, although he wasn't conceived in abuse. I don't know whether I should have aborted him, as to not to cost the taxpayer money. It is women who will continue to suffer the brunt of these cuts. The woman happily married with three children until her husband leaves, or dies, and suddenly only two of her children are acknowledged by the state as actually costing money to raise. The woman whose contraception fails her, but can't bear to have a termination. The woman who loses her job.

The proposal that women who have more than two children and claim tax credits ARE EVIL unless they are RAPED is so offensive to me. I don't understand why more people aren't talking about this.