Parents must face up to their responsibility
AT a time when we are all trying to balance our spending and looking forward to an ever-uncertain future we have a scheme where all new babies will be “given” a welcome pack in the shape of a “Baby Box”.
When will it all end? Every week there seems to be a new scheme to help new parents “cope” with their newborns, their pre-school toddlers, their school-age children and their youngsters in further education.
We are constantly having so-called “child poverty” thrust down our throats at every given opportunity. Perhaps these same people should look around the globe and see what real child poverty is and not put that same label on children who live in a country where all levels of education are free, healthcare is free, their parents are helped out with tax credits, child allowances, maternity leave (mother and father), housing provided by the state if needed and a country where food and drink are readily available in myriad forms and funded by the Government if required.
I have yet to see in this country a child struggling 25 miles to a school (if there is one available) in ragged clothes and no footwear. I have yet to see in this country children who are so poorly fed they are constantly crying with hunger or drinking from filthy wells.
Poverty does not consist of not being able to have the latest phone, tablet or games console, nor does it mean that because Mummy and Daddy haven’t got a 52-inch surround-sound television with satellite and smart technology or the latest model of whatever car they prefer that they are poor, and the rest of the population has to somehow address that unfortunate state of affairs.
Would it not be better to encourage new parents to attend cookery classes so that they can provide decent, healthy, and above all cost-effective meals rather than a constant diet of expensive, fattening takeaways and snacks?
It is now time for parents to face up to that old-fashioned concept of “responsibility” as it is their lifestyle choice to have children and it is therefore their responsibility and not the state’s or anyone else’s to look after their child.
There was a billboard campaign in the United States I saw in the early ’80s while on holiday there, a simple message that proclaimed to all “Can’t Feed? Don’t Breed!” – a message which I and probably many others are growing to endorse more and more.