Quote TrinityIHC="TrinityIHC"It's not a life of luxury - would you fancy bringing up 11 kids? (and a horse) I know I wouldn't, so I don't envy her. The point is that everyone else has to foot the bill for her choice of lifestyle.
If the overly generous welfare state we have didn't exist, would she have had 11 kids? Of course not, she's taking the mickey imo.
It may be only 190 families that have that number of kids, but how many have say 6 or 8?
I like the mooted idea of child related payments being limited to 2 children.'"
Your first two paragraphs seem to contradict each other imo. if it isnt a life of luxury, if it isnt an envious lifestyle, how is she taking the by having it? If it isnt an envious lifestyle or a life of luxury, how is the welfare state overly generous?
There seems to be a conflation in the reporting and understanding of these cases between the individual/couple who are the head of the family, the children themselves, and the family unit.
It gets sold as a workshy scrounger getting a free 6 bedroom house, whereas other people who work hard dont get a free 6 bedroom house. The obvious reason for that is that the people who are working hard, and in fact most scroungers, dont get a 6 bedroom house because realistically they have no need for it. If they did they would get help towards it.
It gets sold as this workshy baby machine getting tons of cash in benefits, when for the most part its the money needed to bring up children.
as for your point about child payments and the welfare state needing a limit for people like this, it wont make a difference, my grandma had 13 brothers and sisters when she was born back in the 1920's when there was next to nothing from the government for families like hers. Still families had lots of kids. We arent going to stop that happening, so the question we need to ask ourselves is whether we want to give her kids a good start in life, or we want them brought up in the conditions kids were years ago.