Runaway parents must be tackled

by class spy Sat Jan 12, 2008 13:38

Well-off people can afford to dump their kids on minimum-wage-slaves and go enjoy their freedom without censure. "It's the rich wot gets the pleasure, it's the poor wot gets the blame, it's the same the whole world over, ain't it just a bleeding shame". Poor parenting isn't confined to poor people.

by lulu Thu Jan 10, 2008 19:06

Comments regarding 'feckless' (as opposed to feckful?) parents are pointing a finger of blame at some of the people with the lowest social status in the land; a mother or father whose partner deserts the family is not necessarily culpable.
Open access to free family planning & abortion on request would be helpful. Aflfuent women have always been able to get 'decent' child care for their money; child care for those parents stigmatised as 'feckless' will require an army of low-paid creche workers. I believe it will take more than a training course to make truly feckless people feel responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

by libertaria Wed Jan 09, 2008 21:50

The issue for society is not whether it costs the exchequer money. The issue is the demoralizing and debilitating effects on the parents and children of feckless parenting.

It is not a valid option to bring children into this world without caring for the consequences - and expecting other people to pay for raising such children.

However, it is not an option in a liberal democracy to deprive the innocent child of social welfare support just because its parents didn't give a damn as to how the child might be provided for. Neither is it an option to force feckless fathers to be physically present to raise their offspring.

What is possible is what is being proposed. That is, to require unemployed teenage mothers to undertake training and education in return for their welfare once their child is old enough for the creche, and to pursue the absent daddys to recover the social welfare expended in raising their offspring. This will probably result in a net loss to the public purse. The benefit to society will more than outweigh the cost by inculcating a sense of consequences for actions on these parents, and the benefits to the children of being raised by parents who provide the example of working for a living.

By the way, single women who can support their children are none of my business because they are not asking me to support their offspring. More power to them.

by lulu Wed Jan 09, 2008 21:00

Well, not all lone parents are mothers! They can be fathers sometime.But a parent's 1st duty needs to be to their child, & this can clash with the demands of work. As for making absent parents pay, nice idea, but it was tried in the UK - the scheme cost the taxpayer a lot more than was ever recovered for the children, & penalised 2nd wives, who had their income taken away!

by hilly Mon Jan 07, 2008 20:14

sure its immoral of rsf to expect that young lone mothers who are in dire circumstances might need help. are you sure youre not just attacking the source, a problem rsf seems to face, rather than the actual content?

i have never read of anyone associated with rsf beeing arrested for any of the things you mention above.or maybe youre just mixing full stop.

by lucidia Mon Jan 07, 2008 19:12

This proposed scheme is an extremely good idea. To say that it should be opposed because it sends "the one role model" of the children of single parents to work outside the home is sheer rubbish. Both "role models" of children in "conventional" families frequently have to work to pay the mortgage and to enable the children to enjoy such life-enriching things as music lessons, expensive leisure activities and foreign holidays. There is no evidence whatsoever that having parents, both of whom work outside the home, is a disadvantage to children. There is overwhelming evidence that it is deeply harmful for children to get the impression that living on welfare financed by the working population is a valid lifestyle-option. Honest work, no matter how humble, is enriching. Feckless parenting is not good parenting, and is worse example. I may add that there is no evidence either that the children of a single working parent do any worse than the children of two co-habiting parents, one or both of whom is working.

If the RSF wish to add to the quality of life of the nation they should get out of the drug-dealing, protection-rackets, and armed robberies. Their grasp of social policy is on a par with their grasp of morality generally.