Forum Topic

Controlling population growth

Adam says "Of course my preferred deterrent of controlling population growth is seen as blasphemy by many people, so in the meantime we'll have to do something a tad less extreme."What would be the reaction if the Government only applied benefits to the first child and refused to offer any assistance to subsequent children?   Would that make some families limit the size of their families.  Afterall, we don't need more children to help with milking the goats or ploughing a furrow.   I read somewhere that each child in this country costs thousands of £'s to rear.   It therefore behoves parents to reproduce a child only when they themselves can afford to pay for it.   Seems very draconian but how else?  We as a country ain't got much more room for any more people.

Jennifer Selig ● 2705d10 Comments

There was a very young sounding 105 year old talking on the radio yesterday about how she still drove her car.  She did say that most of her friends were no longer driving!The subject of forced euthanasia for the 80+ just as it is for very ill babies is very sensitive - and still has not been accepted by many although we have doctors refusing to treat and judges refusing to allow euthanasia when it is personally requested. Not to mention the restrictions of treatments and care that we already have in the NHS.Then in Ealing you can find people who think it their duty and OK to stand with a clipboard at the entrance gate to an abortion clinic and to display pictures of foetuses in the womb along the frontage to make even more painful the difficult visit that those seeking abortions have to make.  Nowadays surely we have plenty of information on the internet and available to those making this decision as they are only going to be within a certain age group.  It was not like that years ago and we do not want to go back to the days of back street abortions.  Teenage pregnancies have declined in number.

Philippa Bond ● 2703d

"We as a country ain't got much more room for any more people"What a load a nonsense.Only 6% of the UK is built on. (Although in Hounslow it is close to 70%). https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/faculty/social-sciences/news/new-uk-land-atlas-reveals-six-percent-uk-built-on-1.744121Also there seems to be some biggoted view that large families a) are soley a working class / benefit claiming phenomenon and b) people over the course of their life are net beneficiaries of income redistribution not contributors.A worker earning £18k a year will contribute around £2,500 a year in income taxes and national insurance (not to mention VAT and other excise duties). Over a working lifetime the overwhelming majority of people will put in more than they take out.(Side point: migrant workers who come over here to work don't cost money for the UK to educate and if they go back home to their families we don't need to care for them in their old age either.)The biggest population issue at the moment is baby-boomers retiring in their mid 60s and can expect to live between 10 and 30 years after that on a triple locked pension - which will be A LOT more than one gets in child benefit and their healthcare costs will be much much greater too.According to the ONS gross household incomes for the retired nearly tripled between 1977 and 2016, but only doubled for working households (Source, Guardian August 2017).The gall that someone who is looking to the state for a fixed income, care for their ever increasing health conditions and even a free bus-pass can claim that young families are living "on the house", is really astonishing.If we're going to talk about population control why not discuss forced euthanasia at 80+? I imagine this forum would have very strong feelings about that.

Christina Hill ● 2703d

I agree Adam, children are expensive (ludicrously so if you go for non-state education) and require a huge commitment to develop confidence, balanced attitudes and enough understanding of what the world actually is, how it works and where it might go, that they can make unbiased decisions and embark on their own lives.London has seen a significant rise in the age of first time parents, driven by an equal rise in the concerns and uncertainties you so accurately depict. Some, like myself, find luck riding on their shoulder for long enough to be comfortable going for a maximum commitment quite early, others less so.By and large though, all parents want the best for their children and will overcome countless difficulties and obstacles to get there.  Lack of home space is a problem that weekend football, toddler-ballet, cubs & guides, Watermans, activity parties and countless other activities can ease.  Just go to Kew Park Rangers on a Sunday morning and you’ll see a couple of hundred boys & girls from very young upwards running, laughing, sometimes cursing and fighting, competing and thoroughly enjoying themselves.  Backgrounds, homes, schools, nationality, race and religion don’t feature in who your child makes friends with, which means it equally doesn’t feature in who the frozen parent shivering near the touchline chats with to make arrangements for the kids to meet up outside of football, and long may that continue!I sympathise with the coffee shop problem you mention, but would point out that any parent with 4 children is going to be living at the edge of sanity most of the time and probably needs that coffee!  Interestingly, when my kids were very young we were routinely assigned seats at the back of planes, regardless of the ticket we’d bought because, ‘it’s policy so they don’t disturb our executive fliers’.  I hated that attitude and hate it in restaurants and hotels.I think today’s parents have a step-up in things they have to deal and cope with over their own parents’ generation, meaning attitudes and behaviours have evolved.  The world needs children and thanks to Brexit, Britain now needs quite a few more.

Lorne Gifford ● 2704d

When I've looked at families I've found very often that families with only one child would often have preferred to have had two.  The question why is just one most people would not dare to ask.  Interestingly families don't always seem continue a tradition of large families and one generation with larger families is often followed with the next with smaller families, and then the next with larger families again.  If we all looked back to our Victorian forefathers we'd probably find families of 10-14 children.  Now that would really be considered excessive in this day and age in the UK and I don't believe is that common here!I definitely agree about badly behaved children.  I don't think you should take your children out to public restaurants and cafes unless they behave well.  For us it would have been a treat and going would depend on good behaviour.There are problems in Japan with the elderly being left in the country whilst the youngsters have all moved to the cities to work and there being no-one to look after them at home in their old age.If we had happier and less stressed families then perhaps we would not have so many split families.  Although I don't see why anybody should rely on everyone else to bring up their children I believe that in a civilised society that there should be a safety net.

Philippa Bond ● 2704d

Personally I don't associate having a large family with the working classes, I've never thought of it that way.  Many of my friends and acquaintances have large families, and they come from all 'classes' of society.I know that some people perceive me as being in some way anti-child, which simply isn't true, but generally speaking looking back to my own childhood I very much knew my place.  Nowadays I generally think that people think it's fine to take their 4 kids out to a coffee shop and if their kids scream and yell the place down it's in some way highly amusing, whereas when I was a kid if I stepped slightly out of line in a public place my Dad would drag me out and stick me in the car.  And I didn't misbehave again and I was genuinely scared (in a healthy way I'd add) of my Dad.Saying that I was very surprised recently when my parents admitted they would have liked another child, as I'd always joked that my parents had me and found it such a nightmare that they'd always stuck with dogs after that !.I can see the arguments in favour of each to their own (something I'm usually a strong believer in), and the benefits of having kids to be comfortable in your retirement (although then again children cost alot of money in your middle age).I don't live in the same fantasy world that my other half lives in which is that she only wants kids when we have the big house with the big garden outside London, but equally I do think many parts of London are hardly an ideal environment for a child to grow up in, e.g your new 2 bed flat with its only amenity space being a balcony 10 storeys up, roads all clogged up etc.

Adam Beamish ● 2704d

As a country transitions from rural to non-rural and then from low to generally middle income, its population growth follows a standard model.  Different counties transition at different times so overall world population will increase until all have been through the process.  Final number is predicted as 11 billion (or thereabouts as I’m writing from memory rather than number checking).Early transition countries have reached their stable number level and are now in the middle of the transition from small numbers of old people to much larger numbers.  This means the smaller proportion of the population that is actually working has to pay substantially larger associated costs.  An older person will claim they paid their ‘stamp’ and therefore are entitled to it, and being a moral and just society, our governments quite naturally honour those promises.The best way of softening the increasing burden on working people is to artificially increase your working population by importing large numbers of people at an age when they can be productive workers and who handily have a tendency to disappear back where they came from when they’ve made enough.  Ideal really, no education costs and similarly low costs when they’re old.  They’re also sufficiently motivated that they’re willing to move country to make money.But then some idiot country decided to stop immigration because ‘the country is full and they’re taking my benefits’ and nicely put a kibosh on the whole scheme.So, I think a large family is far from socially irresponsible, and China’s 1-child policy (which was recently cancelled) may well change to a 3-child policy in due course.I also think any talk about working class families being anything other than completely equal and justified in having as many children as they like is horrendous.  Sure, you can pull off a few examples to make any point you like, but that’s from a very small minority. The country needs children if you want to be comfortable in your retirement.

Lorne Gifford ● 2704d

It's hardly a responsible thing nowadays to have a huge family. In the past there was good reason, the mortality rate was very high in families rich or poor and greater amongst the poor.This simply attenuated the poverty and the survival of the fittest.That is no longer the case.  But the culture of having a large family "On the House' is not really acceptable as the rest of us are paying for it and we already cannot accommodate those in old age or those who are infirm and a whole lot of other social issues ongoing in life.But it it is not so much overpopulation although we could be seeing the realities of Brexit leading to food,fuel and water shortages and high costs if we are unable to return to a greater percentage of self sufficiency.It is over concentration and overdensification without enough to accommodate it that is the problem It is being encouraged rather than discouraged and it is all too easy.  There is no foresight apart from those who see ££££ signs from it.

Raymond Havelock ● 2704d

I have only this contribution - Jacob Rees-Mogg - what an example. If that doesn't put people off - nothing will!

Vanessa Smith ● 2705d

Who will care for you in your old age?Should those innocent children be punished because they are not the first one?  See what happened in China.Did you read this story and the linked ones?http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-43420678There already are limits on children.  Families though are complicated and there are an awful lot of people in work but not earning enough to live on.  In Finland and Scotland they are trialling Universal Basic Income.  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/31/finland-universal-basic-incomehttps://www.gov.uk/guidance/claiming-benefits-for-2-or-more-childrenInteresting to hear today that it is estimated that 90% of those eligible to claim a benefit for looking after a grandchild while the parent goes to work don't. This would pay their NI.The same goes for those looking after elderly relations.

Philippa Bond ● 2705d

Sounds good in theory doesn't it?  Fewer people on benefits having to be kept by the taxpayer equals even more wealth for the few at the top of the ladder. Unfortunately it is predicated on a false notion, viz. that the working classes are all feckless scroungers who do nothing but lounge around all day smoking, taking drugs and gorging themselves on takeaway pizza while watching (or participating in) the Jeremy Kyle Show.The reality is that most of those in poverty today are actually working.  The benefits they are forced to claim are in fact a subsidy from the taxpayer to their employers who underpay them in the knowledge that the state will pick up the tab.  More to the point, they are both producers and consumers - they make the goods and provide the services that their employers sell on for a profit, and they purchase them too.  Cut their numbers and the wealthy will take the hit.Or to put it another way, so-called "wealth creators" need an underclass to keep them in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.  That they could not continue to prosper in a society which did not have sufficient number of workers and consumers "under" them is a simple economic reality.There may well be a moral case for taking a holistic approach to population reduction.  But those who look upon it as an opportunity to effect a cull of the working classes really ought to be careful what they wish for.

Phil Andrews ● 2705d