I accept the premis of your post, that of there should be help available for those unfortunate enough to fall on hard times. I do not begrudge help for those people. However, the opening paragraph of your post is completely nonsensical to me... How can it be ridiculous for prospective parents to consider whether they can afford children before conceiving??? Surely everyone has a responsibility to be reasonably certain that they can afford to feed, clothe and shelter a new life before creating it?
What I was trying to say in that opening paragraph (obviously badly), is that a sensible couple, who have always worked hard, paid their way/taxes etc.
would make sure they could afford to have a baby first! It’s the ones who have other, ulterior motives for having one or more babies, the government has had to crack down on, and rightly so!
One other thing that has popped into my head, as I was typing my reply (and this feeds into our discussion as to the real reasons a couple wants to have a child), and it’s this: when childless couples want to adopt a child, or older couples want to foster a child, they are subjected to a barrage of questions about themselves, their backgrounds (criminal or not), their financial status and their suitability as to whether they can/should be able to adopt or foster the child in question.
Yet, when a couple decides to
conceive a baby, the ‘authorities‘ leave them alone to get on with it, so any irresponsible Wayne & Waynetta Slob can have a child, treat It badly and neglect it, but nothing gets done about that until somebody reports the parents to the Social, or worse, fails to and, well, we all know what usually happens then.....
What a crazy, fucked up world we live in, eh?
