Sorry in advance for my Rant

MsPudding

See i was a teen parent, and yes i did get a house, but that was due to overcrowding at my mum & dads house, as for extremely generous welfare... sorry but this made me laugh...

When i had my daughter i had to come out of work for 6 months due to being a c-section, id previously done 2years working for an agency, as we all should know, most agencys dont offer maternity leave and holiday pay (i know i didnt get it 14years ago thats for sure) so i had to claim income support, yes my rent and council tax was payed, but i had to live on £30 a week as i was under 18 and it was then called a 'bridging allowance' £30 per week when you have to feed/clothe yourself and a baby isnt 'generous' its crap and hard going, i was with my daughters father, but we wernt living together. I had to make the decision to move him in, which then resulted in the rent and council tax not being payed and my 'bridging allowance' being stoped. We had to manage on his minimum wage for 6 months until i could return to work.

Unless your dishonest, you get diddly squat.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here - it may have been hard when you were a teen mum but look at the facts now.

Below is the results of me inputting details at entitledto.co.uk which is a benefits calculator. I said that I was 18, with one child aged between 2-9 and not working. This is what I would get a week:



£312.87 a week at aged 18 and out of work. If you were being paid £312.87 for a standard 35 hour working week, want to know what your hourly rate of pay would be? £8.94. What's the national minimum wage for an 18 year old? £4.98. It doesn't take a lot to work out the Math on that one does it - you're £3.96 an hour better off at age 18 not working and having a baby than you are getting off your backside and getting a job. In fact, that £8.94 the teen mum is earning on benefits is £2.75 an hour more than adult minimum wage which is £6.19.

I'm sure at this point the Americans have got their eyes out on stalks....

Sorry, but it seems to me that if you've got an unskilled/uneducated teen girl, facing leaving school at 16 for a minimum wage job and having to continue living at home...getting pregnant and being able to rent her own 2-bedroom flat, with more money in her pocket than if she were working would be a pretty attractive option if you didn't know what else you wanted to do with your life.

cherryd69

See i was a teen parent, and yes i did get a house, but that was due to overcrowding at my mum & dads house, as for extremely generous welfare... sorry but this made me laugh...

When i had my daughter i had to come out of work for 6 months due to being a c-section, id previously done 2years working for an agency, as we all should know, most agencys dont offer maternity leave and holiday pay (i know i didnt get it 14years ago thats for sure) so i had to claim income support, yes my rent and council tax was payed, but i had to live on £30 a week as i was under 18 and it was then called a 'bridging allowance' £30 per week when you have to feed/clothe yourself and a baby isnt 'generous' its crap and hard going, i was with my daughters father, but we wernt living together. I had to make the decision to move him in, which then resulted in the rent and council tax not being payed and my 'bridging allowance' being stoped. We had to manage on his minimum wage for 6 months until i could return to work.

Unless your dishonest, you get diddly squat.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here - it may have been hard when you were a teen mum but look at the facts now.

Below is the results of me inputting details at entitledto.co.uk which is a benefits calculator. I said that I was 18, with one child aged between 2-9 and not working. This is what I would get a week:



£312.87 a week at aged 18 and out of work. If you were being paid £312.87 for a standard 35 hour working week, want to know what your hourly rate of pay would be? £8.94. What's the national minimum wage for an 18 year old? £4.98. It doesn't take a lot to work out the Math on that one does it - you're £3.96 an hour better off at age 18 not working and having a baby than you are getting off your backside and getting a job. In fact, that £8.94 the teen mum is earning on benefits is £2.75 an hour more than adult minimum wage which is £6.19.

I'm sure at this point the Americans have got their eyes out on stalks....

Sorry, but it seems to me that if you've got an unskilled/uneducated teen girl, facing leaving school at 16 for a minimum wage job and having to continue living at home...getting pregnant and being able to rent her own 2-bedroom flat, with more money in her pocket than if she were working would be a pretty attractive option if you didn't know what else you wanted to do with your life.

JESUS times have changed, better whip out this coil an crack on with another kid... :drinker:

hookilau

I wonder if anyone considered that the OP seemed 'too long' to read because at least for me, when I heard my parental units start harping on stuff, I tuned them out :smokin: Really though, after the first few sentences, you get the point.

I was also a teen parent, ahem, I say AGAIN, it's wise to choose your battles. :drinker:

djshari

haha I was just saying that people that wear clothes that are too small is my biggest pet peeve. I haven't noticed it more in any certain age group though.

dunlunicor

To the OP, I agree whole-heartedly. That said, every generation of kids is stupid. It's what being a kid is. There is always some stupid fad, some major social dysfunction, and lackluster parenting exists in all times and places. We can't see it as kids, because kids are stupid, so the best we can do is get the stupid out of our own kids as fast as possible before they move out and have to be accountable for their own stupid, to society and possibly to the law.

This is hogwash and totally disrespectful to youth IMO.

Way to miss the point. Teens are suggestible and automatically perceive even the most minor situations - especially social situations - as life and death. That sort of thinking in an adult would be unacceptable and stupid. But what I'm saying is that teens are NOT adults and cannot be judged by adult standards. It doesn't matter what a teen's IQ is, they are going to make stupid decisions (especially concerning appearances and fitting into their social circle) as a natural part of the trial-and-error process of becoming an adult, It's a temporary sort of stupid, if you like, that passes as that life-or-death suggestibility goes away. The second part of my point was that it has always been this way, and that this particular generation is no different from any other.

My new point is that any young person who wants an adult's respect ought to at least be able to demonstrate that they know how pants work. I think that's a pretty fair trade. Honestly, when (not if, mind) I see an adult - say, a thirty-something woman - in pants so tight that the waistband is buried under muffin-top or - for a man of the same age - pants with a full view of whatever is under them, I lose a lot more respect for them than I do for a teen. And just so I don't get accused of sexism, I'd be equally repulsed at muffin-top on a man and sagging pants on a woman. I just haven't encountered those yet.