Stay at home Parents

freestylTue 08/01/08 20:28

My situation is slightly different but I will get to that later.

What are our respective opinions on stay at home parents?

Does your opinion change if state benefits are involved?

I have been a stay at home parent since 1993, I have 4 children. Their mother all but dumped them when we divorced in 2000 but up until that point had been useless anyway so I'd had no choice but to take over and she refused to work. The difference in my case is that two of those children are mentally handicapped. The eldest boy is very severally disabled and also has diabetes (4 injections a day) and uncontrolled epilepsy along with being incontinent. He actually moved into a residential placement in March 2006 as I simply could not cope any longer and had a breakdown.

I still have my two daughters at home (16 & 14) though the eldest of those is another of the handicapped kids though not as severe as her brother. She is medically fine but just has a mental age of a 4 year old on a good day.

This thread was sparked by someone on another site referring to me and knowing my background as ... leading a life of Riley on state benefits which his taxation had paid for.

So, I guess this is almost borderline two threads, about stay at home parents in general and also about carers and whether carers should just get their collective butts out to work and leave the caring to the pros? With both of those, what part do benefits play in your opinion?

This may seem like a strange thread for a gay forum but many here have children and most of us probably had brothers and sisters, the vast majority would have had parents too so know their own experiences.

wemblystiggs2002Tue 08/01/08 20:39

I say that if you were just bringing up 4 kids with no disabilities, once the kids are in full time schooling you should go to work... however, you circumstances meant otherwise and I do not begrudge anyone who is a full time carer like yourself doing what you have done. it would cost a hell of a lot more for the state to put a carer in whilst you go to work... and you would not be able to afford a full time carer were the state not to pay!

I do believe that there are a lot of single mums and indeed dads who could work, even if it was during school time, but dont... this is wrong! however when someone has the sort of circumstances you have I think a little compassion needs to be shown and a helping hand given... be that in the form of benefits!

freestylTue 08/01/08 20:51

Where I have come into conflict and even from my own dad is just what I do with the money and, indeed, how much that money can end up being.

The argument used against me is that if I am on state benefits then I should get only the amount I need for essentials, there should be none left over for things like holidays to Florida, a nice car or anything like that. In short, I am meant to not 'live the life of Riley'. Obviously, as many will understand, spending money and doing nice things makes no compensation for just how tough life is anyway. The income I was getting with my son at home was somewhere around £25,000 each year tax free which seems like a hell of a lot even to me but it doesn't go far and the car was (is) essential as were the holidays even when the kids came along.

My view now, being way too late for me to have taken this course, is that no parents should have children unless they can afford for one of them to stay at home to care for them. That we have a responsibility to the kids we have to do the parenting job both financially but also in person. Actually, thinking about it, that is exactly how I went into parenting. I was married, my wife stayed at home and I earned our keep. It was only her being so useless that forced me onto benefits and then, of course, the eventual divorce.

I don't think it is right to have kids in the full knowledge that as soon as school starts they need to be cared for by a stranger.

tavdyTue 08/01/08 21:00

I would never judge a person who lives on state benefits because they are a carer. Many of them have to give up a lot to be able to do that, and the remuneration is often abysmal.

But I do have concerns about parents living on benefits, especially when their kids are of school age. Yes kids need parents to be around, but that's largely down to prioritising your kids when you have free time, and getting a good work/life balance in the first place - and that's perhaps the most important thing.

When I was a teenager, from 12 till 19, I never saw my dad except at weekends because he spent the weeks working away from home on various projects. The same was true of when I was younger, between 4 and 9 - he was a shadowy figure who would arrive at the end of the day, just as my brother and I were going to bed, and would be gone by the time we got up in the morning. And even at weekends we'd see little of him, because he'd often bring work back with him to do, and because a lot of the rest of his time was spent doing various DIY tasks around the house - from our perspective his entire life revolved around doing work. Back then I realised one thing: I did not want to spend my entire life working, therefore I didn't want a job when I grew up. All this because my dad's work/life balance was WAY out of kilter.

One of my neighbours has the opposite problem. She's originally from the north, and her father lost his job when she was young - and, like many others, never worked again. She never saw a good work/life balance either, never felt she could achieve anything as a result. She ended up with depression, started using drugs, and now has further mental health problems because of them.

In both cases we've lost out because we didn't have a good role-model, and so I do not think that, unless there are specific reasons for it (such as disability) a parent who doesn't work is typically not a good role-model, just as a parent who does nothing *but* work is a poor role-model.

freestylTue 08/01/08 21:12

Hmm, I'd not thought of it like that ... I think I had often thought that having just one parent who was always around was enough. Certainly my memories of dad parenting are minimal, normally related to punishment.

His opinion was always to work hard to support the family. My mum also went out to work for a while during which time my sister and me were looked after for the not at school hours by my grandmother.

Right now I have to say I really want to do something else with my life. If nothing else, the stability of knowing I can finish when I am finished would be a luxury to me! Thing is, even though my eldest doesn't live here any more, he cannot communicate so I have to be his voice which means loads of meetings and letter writing especially when things go wrong. Having had to give up work before because of needing to be at home, I feel I owe it to myself not to start a job unless I know I can make a go of it. Sadly, that means staying on benefits and I hate benefits! Nothing I ever do, no matter how amazing I could be will ever see me rewarded for it. I am never going to get promotion, on the contrary, each year out of work is a knife in the back of any possible carer.