Disposable Dads?

If you're a regular reader of the Daily Mail, you will have read yesterday that more boys aged 15 have a smartphone than live with their father.

This is the latest report from the Centre for Social Justice, an independent think tank set up in 2004 by Iain Duncan Smith and Tim Montgomerie. It's safe to say they're right-leaning. 

Yesterday's report bemoaned a "growing culture of disposable dads" To me, this suggests a certain amount of prejudice, suggesting that women have gone out, found a man and got pregnant, and then disposed of the father. This bothers me for oh, so many reasons.

The report predicts that by 2015, there will be two million single parent families. Gingerbread quote that already one in four families is headed by a single parent - and that this figure has remained constant since the mid-1990s.

But where Gingerbread are all about supporting single parent families in whatever situation they find themselves, the CSJ seem to be all about "oh my gosh, what a terrible thought, let's do everything we can to avoid there being any more single parent families, ever." As if we are some blight to be eradicated, removed, stamped out of society.

The CSJ thinks the government should do things like scrapping fees for weddings in a registry office, replacing Sure Start Children's Centres with "Family Hubs" that provide "family support" and doubling the Transferable Tax Allowance. 

I agree with the CSJ that when parents go their separate ways, or have never been properly together, this can cause trauma for all concerned. An insecure family life can cause insecurities that carry on long into adulthood, and often then repeat themselves across generations. But an insecure family life can be just as traumatic if warring parents stay together "for the kids."

She seems pretty happy to me!

I disagree with the CSJ that single parent families are a terrible thing that should be prevented at all costs. For S and I, being a single parent family remains the only viable option. I am 100% sure that my child is happy, secure and developing well. I am also 100% sure that she would be none of these things, were her father on the scene.

Whilst it may well be true that half of the poorest children start school from "broken homes," as the report so delightfully put it, I see no benefit in separating single parent families from two-parent families when discussing poverty or anything else. We should be aiming to assist all parents, everyone struggling with poverty. Every child deserves the best possible start in life, regardless of whether they live with one parent or two, whether they live with a same-sex couple or in a foster home or with extended family or next door's dog. Every single child deserves the best start. That is what we should be focusing on. I see nothing to be gained from segregating children by how many parents there are at home. 

Yes, it is sad that one million children lose contact with their grandparents as a result of separation or divorce. What the CSJ fails to mention is that a lot of the time, this is down to the estranged grandparents not making an effort to maintain relations - or because the estranged parent doesn't bring the child to visit grandparents.

To me, the scandal is not that more children are being raised by single parents; it's that single parents are still being stigmatised and treated as second class citizens. It's that reports like this are still coming out, denigrating the effort that goes into being a single parent, talking about "disposable dads" as if single parents are a) all women, and b) using men only to get us pregnant and therefore secure us benefits and a council house.

The sad fact is that although more 15-year-olds have a smartphone than a father at home, for a lot of those kids, the smartphone is probably a lot more use to them than their father has been. This report makes it sound as if the estranged fathers of the world are all sitting there quietly, excluded from their children's lives by evil harridan women who put their own desire to be rid of their ex ahead of their child's need for a father. The fact is many men get a woman pregnant and run. Many men disappear from their children's lives, and make little or no effort to remain a father figure once the relationship with the mother has dissolved. I would put more money on there being more of these, than the quiet, hard-done-by man who has done nothing wrong but is kept away from his child. Let's not forget, after all, this is the line S's father is still peddling.

And what does all this discussion of "good" and "bad" parents get us? Precisely nothing.

We can talk about all of the possible different scenarios until the cows come home, analysing all of the different ways a child might end up the product of a "broken home" (God, how I hate that term), and we would still have all of the same statistics at the end of it.

What we should be doing is ploughing all of the time, energy and money that goes into the CSJ's prejudiced reports, into helping all parents and all children to have better lives.

By all means, scrap registry office fees for marriage; but scrap fees for divorce too. And fees for family counselling. Let's make it so that cost is never going to be a factor in whether a couple stays together, and so that whether they remain a couple or split, the child is hurt as little as possible, and all are supported to the best possible outcome. 

What do you think? I would love to hear your opinion on this.

The Childcare Issue

I was on LBC this morning talking about childcare costs; a new report has come out showing that childcare costs have rocketed by almost 80% in the last ten years and people are outraged.

Actually, the figure they quote as an average (and are clearly outraged by) is about £50 a week less than what I pay.

My daughter goes to a fantastic nursery. I know she is safe and well cared for there, and she has fun. She is happy there. I can leave her there in the morning knowing that she will play happily with her friends, learn about the world, do painting, drawing, make collages, play outside in the playground. At lunch time, the cook prepares a fabulous meal that they all eat together; S often has double helpings. If her nose runs, someone will wipe it. If she falls down, someone will pick her up and give her a cuddle. She usually comes home wearing her spare change of clothes, covered in sand and paint and glitter and food - and a great big grin. I am happy to pay what some might think is an extortionate amount on childcare because I know every penny of it is money well spent.

Let's look at the options parents have here:

1. One parent stays home and looks after the child(ren) while the other goes out to work. One income (unless it's fairly substantial) will not go terribly far and unless the stay at home parent is Mum/Dad of the Year, there is likely to be a fair bit of down time during the day while the parent does things like cleaning, washing, preparing lunch and so on. Yes, they can go out to toddler groups and meet friends at the park, but there is also likely to be a fair amount of time spent watching CBeebies (there was when I was a SAHM any way). Doing things outside of the house costs money, and if your partner is not bringing home the big bucks, you can't always afford an educational trip to the zoo or whatever.

2. Both parents work, and the child or children go to nursery or stay with a relative. It's hard enough to pay for a nursery place for one child, but if you have two nursery age children, at what point do you decide that actually, the second parent going to work is costing you money?

Childcare seems to have become this problem to solve: find someone to watch the children and make sure they don't break any bones while you go and sit at a desk doing a job you hate and resent because it's keeping you away from your child. The media, and the government, seem to have forgotten that actually, many of us don't want cheap-as-chips nursery places. If my nursery put its prices down, I would wonder what the hell they were scrimping on. I want to pay good money, knowing that my child is happy and safe and secure, and that the staff are not spending their time at work preoccupied with how they will make ends meet this month. I don't want to pay peanuts to just shove my child somewhere to keep her out of harm's way. No job is worth that.

My personal opinion is that nurseries should receive massive subsidies from the government. In the same way that schools receive funding per pupil for the academic year, nurseries should receive the same - with a token amount of top-up from the parents.

I fully respect parents who choose to stay home with their children until they're of school age. I know a lot of women who do this, and they do a fantastic job. I know that I could not do such a great job; I know that on a day-to-day basis, my daughter has more fun at nursery than she does stuck at home with me. And I am a better Mummy for the time I get to spend working and chatting to adults about things that don't involve nappies and CBeebies.

So what do we do? The other caller on the show today was a lady called Claire Paye from a campaign group called Mothers At Home Matter. She quite rightly said that funding seems to be skewed in favour of families where the parents work; families where a parent stays home to care for the children receive no funding. Incidentally, it's the same if you decide to home school your child: pack your child off to a crowded, dirty school that's more about crowd control and exams than actual enrichment of life, and that school get a set amount of funding per head. Decide to home school your child... you don't even get a free exercise book.

Claire says:

Mothers at Home Matters believes that mothers are the most important person in a child's life. However, this Government is spending £4.5bn on childcare and what it calls early intervention whilst charging families with a mother at home at least 54% more tax than families where both parents work.  So they are subsidising childcare and penalising mothercare.  Mothers at Home Matter is campaigning for a level playing field where families can make a genuine choice as to whether to look after their babies and children entirely themselves or for both parents to work to whatever extent suits the family.  The only 'choice' the Government offers families is for both parents to work, ideally for as many hours as possible, outsourcing childcare to paid, detached professionals.  

The phrase Claire used on air was a "level playing field." I think she's right to be honest. I really believe that being a parent is the most important job there is. As parents we are responsible for raising the next generation. If we do a bad job, who will pick up the pieces? If we can't afford to do enriching, educating activities with our children, if we can't afford to take them places, to feed them nice and varied foods... what happens then? What happens when that child grows up into an adult who has never seen a pineapple, or hasn't learned how to tell the time? Or something more serious?

Which brings me onto my next point.

I've written before about the change to Universal Credit, and how I'm not the biggest fan. The latest revelations have left me gobsmacked though!

With the proposed changes, families claiming what are currently known as tax credits and earning above the income tax threshold - due to rise to £10,000 this April - will be able to reclaim up to 85% of their childcare costs (at the moment it's 70%). Sounds good, right?

Except that those earning below the income tax threshold will only be able to claim up to 70% of their childcare costs. According to Gingerbread, this means families on lower incomes will effectively be paying double for their childcare. How is that in any way right?

Just sit and have a think for a moment about this. Single parents returning to work invariably end up in low-paid, menial jobs - because that's what's available to fit around everything else. Mums in general end up mostly on the checkouts at Tesco or in cleaning jobs because of a lack of flexibility in their original jobs. How many of those jobs do you think will pay more than £10,000 a year? Bearing in mind, of course, that the person in question might only be doing 18 hours a week.

I understand the idea that "if you're not paying tax, you can't claim it back" but really that puts lower income families in a really tricky position. What do they do? I claim tax credits to pay for S's nursery. If my funding suddenly dropped to 70% I'd have to find that shortfall from somewhere. I'm trying to think of where I'd find it... It would undoubtedly be the money spent on day trips, bus rides, supplies for messy play, colouring pens. Or I would have to stop work and go onto Income Support. How is forcing someone who wants to work to go back to life on benefits helping anyone?

I don't understand what they want us to do. They seem to be putting low income families in a position where they have zero chance of things getting any better. No chance of moving to a nicer area, affording a car so that they can get to a better job a little further afield. No light at the end of the tunnel. The attitude seems to be well, you had the kid; you look after it and don't come begging to us for help. Fabulous. But however you penalise my child for existing today, tomorrow, this year, next year - at some point she will grow up and become a member of society like you and I. And with more children being pushed below the poverty line, their parents not given the chance to set them a good example, what will society look like in 20, 30, 40 years?

And I know this is the point where all the people who aren't entitled to claim any form of tax relief or benefit pipe up and say "well I don't get any help; why should you?" I think the question there really should be "why shouldn't I  be entitled?" I think all families, regardless of background or income or anything else, deserve a level playing field. This is not a numbers game; it's not an experiment; it's not a joke. This is the wellbeing of our children we are talking about here. How are we to know that the cure for Cancer is not currently inside the brain of a little boy who lives on a rough council estate, already written off by the government as not being worth their effort?

Everyone deserves the chance to have the very best start in life. I believe the parent knows their child best, and therefore it's their decision what the best start will be. For some, that is going to work - and they should be able to go to work in a fulfilling job, without worrying about who is taking care of their child. For others, it's staying home and taking care of the child themselves - and these people should be given just as much help and support to do that. Because if we don't... well, who will be in charge of the pensions by the time we hit pension age?

Gingerbread and Absent Fathers

I've written posts about Gingerbread before. They are an organisation that provides advice and support for single parents. I think they're great, and do a lot to help fight the stigma often thrust upon us.

They are currently campaigning against the government's plans to charge people to use the Child Support Agency.

For those lucky enough to have never had dealings with the CSA, this is what happens: you fill in a form and send it to them. They contact the other parent and ask how much they earn. Then they decide how much of those earnings you should get. The absent parent either agrees to send them the money directly, or it can be done through the person's work as an attachment of earnings - meaning the payroll department just take that money out before it's paid, and sends it to the CSA.

The absent parent has until the 21st of the month to get the money to the CSA. They then wait for the money to clear before sending it back out. I think they quote a turnaround of "up to 5 working days" for this. So basically, the absent parent gets paid on the 1st of the month, and you might not see your child's share of that until the end of the month. If the absent parent or their employer doesn't send the money to the CSA, from my experience the CSA doesn't do much about it. They have the power to take people and their employers to court, but they rarely seem to get around to it.

They want to charge for this service.

The proposal is to charge a one-off £20 fee for setting everything up, and then an ongoing 4% of everything going through them.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that sounds an awful lot like penalising a parent who has already been very much left holding the baby?

You may notice that I titled this post "Gingerbread and Absent Fathers." This is not because I am stupid enough to think it's only the fathers who are absent, but because of a study that was reported yesterday regarding absent fathers.

Apparently there is an issue with fathers losing contact with their children once they have entered a new relationship and had more children. I think the figure was 21% of fathers with children in a subsequent relationship never see the children from their previous relationship.

The Mail (God love 'em) referred to these men as "serial fathers."

So here we have two related stories; one of them is being reported, the other not. 

To me, they seem interlinked. On the one hand, you have these men going around fathering children, then running off and setting up another family and forgetting about the first. They lose contact with their first family. And now the government is effectively saying to the mothers of those children, "yes, that's a perfectly acceptable thing for him to do. And if you want us to help you get any maintenance out of him, you can pay us for it."

Nobody chooses to use the CSA; they are pretty rubbish at what they do. You use the CSA when you have no other way of getting money out of an absent parent - mother or father, it makes no difference. I went to the CSA when I realised that monthly payments from S's father would be used as another way of controlling me - you can only have this much money this month because I only saw her this many times. My health visitor practically ordered me to use them rather than have monthly contact with someone who had already done so much damage to both of our lives.

So where does the government's new proposal put me? Over the Summer I was receiving £2 every two weeks from the CSA. Taking 4% of that probably costs more in administration than they would be making out of it.

And what will we get for our 4%? Will they suddenly begin chasing late payments? Making thorough checks of absent parents' income figures to ensure they are telling the truth? Will they investigate whether the absent parent is perhaps doing a bit of work "off the books" so as to avoid paying maintenance?

I don't claim maintenance through the CSA because it is of any use to me. In all honesty, I would rather not be taking anything from that man. My health visitor tells me we should take the money, because when you father a child you are responsible for that life forever. That is what being a parent means. 

What the government are planning to do seems to me to be removing that responsibility. They are saying to people: go out, get pregnant/get someone pregnant. Run off and leave the child. It's fine. You won't be held responsible.

Gingerbread: Make it Work for Single Parents.

A while back I wrote a post called The Benefits Trap, with the idea of showing people how difficult it can be to get off benefits and back into work. It seemed to be well received; people seemed to appreciate what I was saying. And then someone commented on another post I'd written that showed an example of someone trying to get off benefits. They seemed angry with me, accusing me of promoting being on benefits, and telling me "everything you own has been paid for by me..."

Leaving aside the fact this person was incorrect in most of what they were saying (they were clearly unaware, for example, that until my breakdown I was in a reasonably well-paid job, and that I do in fact have a job now as well), what was said bothered me because it seems that these things are what a lot of people think. 

They see me: single mother, lives in a council flat, walking around with a buggy in the middle of the day (I only work 3 days a week), and they think: benefits scrounger. Lives the high life with a flatscreen telly while I work my fingers to the bone to pay for it.

The fact of the matter is: yes, I do claim benefits. My childcare bill swallows my monthly income whole, and if I want any chance of surviving, I need to accept help from the state. That doesn't mean I'm happy about it, or that I'm not doing what I can to get myself into a position where I don't need to do it for the rest of my life.

There is also an issue here that's not often discussed when the media bangs on about feckless single parents living off the government. How easy do you think it is for a single parent to find a job? How easily did you find your job? I was very lucky in that when I returned to work, my boss allowed me to tell him which days and hours I would work. How many employers do you think are like that? 

If you don't have a child, and you want a job, you can look in the local paper, send your CV out, whatever. You can arrange an interview for whenever is convenient, and wander off on your merry way to impress them with your mad skillz in whatever it is you are interviewing for.

Imagine being a single parent looking for work. You need to find a part-time job that pays more than minimum wage. It needs to be (for argument's sake) only from 9-3 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays because you've already spoken to the nursery, and those are the only days they have available. You can't work weekends, because nurseries don't open on weekends and you don't have family locally with whom you could leave your child every single weekend for a whole day while you go to work. When you've found this Holy Grail of jobs that fits in with your childcare arrangements, you have to think about what you'll do when your child is ill. It's a well-known fact that when a child starts nursery, whatever age they are, they will catch every bug and cold and ear infection under the sun. In my first month back at work, I spent more time at home with a poorly S than I did at my desk. How do you think a new employer will view that situation? Do you think you will last out your probation period if you're never at work because your child has caught yet another bug?

And does any of this mean you are stupid, incapable of work? Does it mean your degree, your professional qualifications, your on-job training, your years of knowledge and experience are somehow null and void? Does being a single parent automatically mean you are only capable of menial, low-paid jobs? No. Does it mean that's all that's on offer to you? Usually, yes.

Gingerbread currently have a campaign running called Make it Work for Single Parents. Their goal is to get 250,000 more single parents into work before 2020, and they have been campaigning for changes that will allow that to happen.

Contrary to the picture the media portrays, and to what a lot of people seem to think, the majority of single parents are not sitting at home in their grubby dressing gowns, smoking fags and watching Jeremy Kyle. 

The majority of single parents are scouring the jobs pages of the local paper, looking for that mythical job that will help them get back into working life again. 

The majority of single parents hate to be seen as spongers living off other people's taxes. 

The majority of single parents want to claim benefits as a hand up, not a hand out. 

Have You Heard of Gingerbread?

When I was pregnant, and it became apparently I was going to be a single parent, I began Googling to see what resources were out there for single parents. 

It wasn't long before I stumbled across Gingerbread.

Their slogan says it all, really. Just lately there seems to be a new news story every day that affects single parents. Benefits, childcare costs, Universal Credit, jobs, the list goes on. Gingerbread stands up for single parents, because our families are just as important as the government's two-parent, white-picket-fence families.

Becoming a member of Gingerbread is free for single parents, and joining means you become part of a UK-wide network of over 40,000 single parents. As a member you can be involved in campaigns, take part in surveys, share stories or even become a media volunteer. By working together in this way, we can show the media and society in general that the received stereotype of the average single parent is wrong!

There's also an online forum which can offer no end of help, support and guidance - something that can be sorely lacking for single parents. You can find threads and groups of single parents in your area as well. It's a good place to go and hang out when you feel like your friends on Facebook/Twitter/at work just don't get what it's like to be a single parent.

There's a monthly e-newsletter, and lots of special offers and competitions to get involved in too.

Gingerbread is a massive organisation with influence in the media. By joining them you can become a part of their voice, and make yourself heard above the headlines. Details of how to join up are here.

June 2013: That Was The Month, That Was

This time last year, I was something of a jibbering wreck. I'd just left an abusive relationship, but was still in contact with S's father and taking her to see him on a regular basis. I was torn between my desperate wish for S to have a proper father, and the feeling in my gut that I needed to keep her safe from this man. And that was messing with my head a fair bit.

In September last year, I posted something I'd written about strength onto Facebook. People made positive comments, and one person asked me if I'd considered blogging. I have had a LiveJournal blog for years, periodically going back to it whenever the thought grabbed me, but really only ever used it as a sort of diary; never for actual structured, planned pieces. Since having S, I'd been reading parenting blogs from the States regarding Attachment Parenting; I honestly wasn't aware there were many parent bloggers in the UK (that thought seems unimaginable now - like I'd been standing with my back to a massive, noisy crowd and not even noticed!).

I started my blog without putting much thought into it. I already had a Google account, so I just set up a Blogger, and began writing. I would post links on my personal Facebook page, and harass all of my friends to read them. Occasionally I would join in a blog hop or a linky here and there, and then I would get a few more readers. The number of hits on the blog each month went up and down. Some months they went up, others they went down. Most days I was happy to get more than 100 hits.

Here we are, 9 months later. Although I've joined Tots100 and Brit Mums, and I've set up a Facebook page for the blog and been active on Twitter, I still didn't really think people other than my friends (who obviously felt obliged) were reading.

In the last couple of weeks, things have gone a big bonkers. People I don't know have emailed me and said they think the blog is good. Some people on Twitter have said so too. People have shared my posts with their friends. 

Two massive things happened this week though. Firstly, a lady I know only through Twitter, who I have not personally harassed to read my posts at all, told me she would like to sponsor me to attend Brit Mums Live next year. I thought she must have me confused with someone else, whose blog was good, until she commented on some posts and I realised she wasn't confused after all. Which meant she actually did think my blog was good, and she really did want to sponsor me to go to Brit Mums Live.

The second thing is a tiny bit epic, as far as I'm concerned. Gingerbread is a charity for single parents. Their website is an endless bank of resources I've been using since I got a few months into my pregnancy and realised I really should just consider myself to be a single mother. I think they're fantastic, and I liked the idea of maybe writing a couple of pieces about them. So I emailed them. When I got a response really quickly, I was surprised; charities like this don't usually have the resources to reply to emails quickly, they're busy fighting fires with budgets and helping people with real problems. The first paragraph of the email said:

Thanks very much for getting in touch. I’ve been dipping in and out of your blog for the last few weeks, so it’s great to hear from you directly!

At this point, I nearly fell over.

Turns out it's not just my friends and people I harangue on a daily basis who read my blog. So many people have re-tweeted my posts lately, or shared links with their friends. It's all quite overwhelming. I feel all warm inside!

At the start of June, I set myself a target to get more hits than in May. When I hit that target fairly early on, I set the target of getting to the next thousand. Then the next. And now, here I am with almost 5000 more hits on the blog this month than last. I cannot even compute that.

I've had people agreeing to send me products to review, people agree to have me guest post on their blog, and in some cases ask me to write something for their site. Not to mention the fact a BBC producer searched Google for single mother blogs and came up with little old me!

I am, frankly, gobsmacked. And completely at a loss as to how I will top this month in July. Thank you to everyone who has supported me, you've made me very happy!

In all seriousness, if you have an idea for a post, a certain aspect of my life you'd like to know more about, please do contact me.

Thank you for reading!