Child benefit must be limited to two
GOING forth and multiplying is fantastic, up to a point. Replicate yourself. Replicate your partner. That’s one child each.
Any more offspring and you’ve entered the realm of luxury.
Of course we were all raised on TV’s The Waltons. naturally we all cherish idyllic notions about the thrills and spills of life in a large family.
What proud mother hasn’t envied the old lady who lived in a shoe and had so many children she didn’t know what to do?
Day dreaming aside, however, rambling, scrambling families of more than two children, like garages teeming with cars, rolling acres of lawn and lavish holiday homes dotted all over Europe are an expensive indulgence.
if you want more than two children, by all means procreate to your heart’s content but just don’t ask the rest of us to pick up the tab for them.
Tory backbencher and member of the number 10 policy board Nadhim Zahawi says child benefit and child tax credits should be paid for a family’s first two children only.
He says capping benefits at just two children would save billions and help the next generation “think more carefully about its relationship with the welfare state”.
He’s absolutely right.
No one is entitled to bring children they can’t afford to support into the world.
While prudent parents are carefully confining themselves to one or two children because they fear not being able to provide a bigger brood with quality of life it’s appalling to expect them to subsidise less careful folk who churn out children willy-nilly without the means to keep them in nappies.
No one wants a Chinese style ban on big families. That would be hideous. What we do want are families who cut their coats according to their cloth, parents who are accountable and books that balance.
if that means couples stopping at two children because they can’t afford to nurture and sustain any more without benefit so be it.
Mr Zahawi has dared to say what others feared to express. By all means promote the gentleman, applaud his common sense and bring it on.