I know that as a single male, I find this wealth redistribution from non-breeders to breeders highly offensive. It is their decision to have children, so why should I be financially supporting it? If folk can't afford a kid without government assistance, then they shouldn't be allowed to have the kid, just as I have to go without a flatscreen and a Rolls and lots of other things I'd like but can't afford without external help. And if they can afford a kid by themselves then they shouldn't be receiving any government assistance, even if it means mummy won't be able to afford as many cappuccinos when she takes time off work to care for her offspring.

I'm all for welfare to help the most desperate in our society, those who really need it. But it royally pisses me off that low income earners like myself (I'm a working student) should be made poorer at the expense of wealthy breeders, and that it is the Labor government redistributing wealth in such as grossly inequitable manner.

I realise that budgets are finite, but why is the commentary on parental leave lacking in the non-economic details: Parents (both father and mother) taking care of their newborn kids. Real family time.

If we want paid parental leave (whether maternal or paternal or both) then we should figure out how we are going to pay for it. And also, like any subsidy, it favours one group (new parents) over others (everyone else). Without a "real need" for it I would have to agree with Riz. Perhaps extra paid vacation leave for singles...?

http://currentglobalperceptions.blogspot.com/

"Paid Parental Leave" = failed socialism = 'when you finish spending everyone else's money... there's non left to spend...on anything.'

Socialist Welfare states utterly depend on the success of capilitalist businesses to generate value added income. Without that 'added value' a national economy will die. If you tax entrepreneurs too highly..they do what I DO..... get their stuff from China.

Just today I witnessed MASSIVE material arrival from China for a company I work with. One bloke is 'no longer needed'...others perhaps not far behind. The company is heading more and more towards only 'final assembly and testing' of product.. all the labor that can be outsourced to China IS....why? hmmmm well you could start with such idiotic brainless schemes such as 'PAID PARENTAL LEAVE'. Then you could go on to 'unsustainable wage/benefit' packages gouged out by socialist Unions who only care about crushing the econonomy so their 'master plan' can prevail (ie.. we are all equally broke..but HEY.. at least there will be 'equality' )

RIZ.. your post is easy to agree with. Why SHOULD you be a victim of socialist/progressive redistribution of income ? You can only 'redistribute' what's there..and what's there is due to capitalist enterprise, and that enterprise works because of incentive.

Sadly, the real estate robber barrons have jacked up the price of homes which can only be purchased by either bank robbers or DINKS.

In 1986 it was possible to get a home on ONE average income. (just)

1986 -3 b/r brick home $80,000
2010 Same suburb now... $400,000! ! !

JESSICA BROWN <let’s have a discussion about where the money should come from and what other spending we should cut to meet the cost, otherwise we risk ending up like Britian.>

The $12billion dollars in overseas aid sent to Indonesia every year might be one place to find extra money. How much more overseas aid do we send out of this country. If out mothers and children and carers of people with profound disabilities need that money here then that money should be used here. Look after your own people first.

Our children are the life’s blood of the European nations. WE need a tribe around us for protection or we would soon be overrun and dispossessed and this is happening already in most European nations because we are becoming a dying race

[Deleted for excessive use of capitals (yelling).]

ALGOREisRICH <If you Tax Entrepreneurs too highly they do what I do get their stuff from China>

Ah! The rise and rise of China. Why? because of all the BREEDERS who gave China their people power. They had to cut that population back for a time by contraceptive restrictions but they still have tremendous people power which makes them a force to be reckoned with and a virtual land of available labour and unlimited human resources and capabilities.

Just think of the wealth all those consumers could provide you with AL.
All those lovely customers provided by breeders.
As long as the breeders do it all for free using all their own labour and you don’t have to bear any of the cost of it AL, of course it’s a great deal, unlimited customers requiring no capital outlay. Also dirt cheap labour requiring not too much capital outlay, all the capital outlay has been put out by the breeders in providing you with the labour source, the fit capable human being.

Which leads us to the thousands and thousands of years of exploitation of the female half of the breeders who received $00.00 to call their own for providing whole societies and populations for countries. Had to ask their husband if they were allowed to spend a penny to go to the toilet. Needless to say they voted with their feet and walked out of the kitchen

An excellent piece that mirrors my own thoughts almost perfectly. Having children is a biological imperative - it's not a special service that women provide for the state as CHERFUL seems to think.

If a middle-class family cannot afford to provide for itself from its own resources than there is a big problem with the way that family has structures its finances. Of course, few middle-class families are in that position, which means that the enormous amount of taxpayer money that is redistributed to them each year is purely to support their lifestyle, not their needs.

As a child, I can recall being told "no, we can't afford it right now" on many occasions when I wanted something or other. My father was Managing Director of the local arm of a large Australian multi-national on an excellent income with housing etc all provided: of course my parents had the money, but they also had a budget and pririties, something that seems to have gone out of style in the modern "aspirational" middle class where "I want it all and I want it now" has become the standard.

The other point the author makes is one I've been banging on about for a while, which is that there is no "brake" on the process of buying votes with handouts or on the "lobbying" process which informs it. Any process that has no means to apply negative feedback is going to eventually fail catastrophically. Remove the governor on a steam engine, lock the throttle down and watch the fun if you don't believe me.

In today's Australia the bourgeois expect the state to pretend they're an underclass in need of assistance, which is obviously a recipe for disaster.

Why should we financially support parents? Because children cost money. In an urban society unless there are incentives, people stop having enough children to replace themselves.

In Australia our fertility rate is only 1.6 children for every two adults. We are suiciding, committing genocide against ourselves. Why do we have an aging population?

The problem is not an 'aging' population (which means we are living long healthy lives), it is that we are suiciding... failing to produce enough kids to replace ourselves.

Maternity leave is a nasty piece of feminism... it rewards only WORKING WOMEN. If you don't work, you don't get it.

The problem with our system is that everything is tied to certain behaviours.. it's about controlling our lives. You only get maternity leave if you work. You only get child-care benefit if you use accredited centres and not if you have a nanny. If Grandmum gives up work, there is no payment to compensate her loss of income. If wife gives up work after trheir second child there is no compensation for any further children. That's why we have such small families and are slowly suiciding. Especially the professional class, the people who will make the next generation a clever country are not being born.

Means-testing benefits mean that the lower your income, the more children you can afford.

Those on welfare are pumping out kids like there is no tomorrow because of the welfare bribes to have lots of kids. So single welfare mums are pressured into having more kids than they can look after.

Here we need to give tax reductions for kids so middle class parents can afford the kids we want.

Also making divorce fairer, because Australian men don't want to become dads... because they are afraid of having their kids stolen by divorce lawyers.

RIZ says :- < I know that as a single male, I find this wealth Distribution form Non-Breeder to Breeders highly offensive. If folk can’t afford a kid without Government Assistance then they shouldn’t be allowed to have a kid. Just as I have to go without a Flat Screen and a Rolls and lots of other things I like but can’t afford without Government help>

Riz If you can survive without the benefits of all the people in the society around you (provided by the breeders). The people who serve you every day, the teachers who teach you, the fit young soldiers that are there to defend you, the fit nurses who have the stamina to handle gruelling hospital shift and emergency work. The doctors who are not too old and doddery to operate on you should you need. The dentists, the tradesmen who keep your electricity running so you can enjoy a warm bath and lights. The farmers. The list of the benefits you derive from having a supportive and protective society around you (provided by the breeders) is incalculable if you tried to work it out in monetary terms. If you don’t think this is true then when you someday afford your flat screen and Rolls Royce or whatever, go and live by yourself in the desert or the jungle far removed from any kind of support base. Of course your flat screen won’t work without electricity and your Rolls Royce will need a constant supply of petrol and maintenance. Look beyond yourself and see the big picture. Without a supporting tribe around you your life would be very precarious. Having breeders around you is about survival.

CHERFUL, what do you think your uterus is worth? I think we need to start setting benchmarks if we're going to start applying the service delivery model of maternity that you are advocating. In order to do that we need to establish

Part time parent, the "middle class" is by definition the average. If average people cannot afford to have children without subsidies, then we have a major problem in our society. The reality is that such people can very well afford to do so, but they don't want to sacrifice any part of their lifestyle or financial resources to do so. hence we have all sorts of handouts to allow them to pretend that such trade-offs are unnecessary.

Damn, hit return by mistake.

ChERFUL, what I started to say was that to move to your service delivery model we need to establish values for the services to be provided. So, what is the value of the use of a uterus for 9 months? Ditto, what is the value of donating sperm so the uterus can be used?

The animal husbandry indutries have worked this out, so it shouldn't be too hard for you to do the same. Get back to us with your findings. won't you?

Antiseptic, I tend to support your argument on this one. Given the growth of the middle class it has always bemused me as to why critical support to those with legitimate needs are given short shrift while middle class welfare grows.

It came about I think, due to the greater influence of the middle class purely by its expansion and an expectation of more in return for the tax dollar. The short electoral cycle and popululist politics adds to the pork barrelling and both parties do it shamelessly.

It would be better to reduce taxes than merely redistribute tax already paid to schemes that serve no real purpose and let people decide how they wish to use these 'windfalls'. The inflationary aspect of middle class welfare is often forgotten and there is no courage of committment when discussion of tax cuts surface to making savings on paternity leave, child care rebates, baby bonuses etal. Family welfare should not be the burden of business but a personal choice.

If we have an economic system that can no longer ensure an average single income can raise a family at home even for the short term, then something is wrong. There is a lot of lip service by pollies of all persuasions about family values, the importance of children but little in the way of real reforms that don't disadvantage families who don't buy into the two income, wealth aspirational, consumerist mindset. Nothing wrong with that if you can pay for it but not when you expect others to support that lifestyle. And we are talking about lifestyle not hardship or disadvantage.

I do not begrudge my daughter-in-law being paid to stay at home after my grandson was born. I think it is wonderful that her teaching career does not have to go to waste simply because they choose to "breed". They have a mortgage - not a HUGE home - they do not spend willy nilly. The baby bonus and payments go on necessities.

I do agree there are those that "breed" simply to "have money", but these are the ones that usually dont work or contribute to society.

So, what can we give up to provide for the breeders?

Perhaps Govt grants for the arty farty types - those such as the artist that was given $75000 to put a hole in a well known art centre, in which he placed a camera - then he did the same thing on the Isle of Guernsay (I think it was) so people to look at each other on the other side of the world....I thought thats what we had cheap web cams for on our computers.

Or as my partner likes to put it "grants for research into left footed, one armed female surfers"!!

Antiseptic:
"Part time parent, the "middle class" is by definition the average. If average people cannot afford to have children without subsidies, then we have a major problem in our society."

Yes we DO HAVE A MAJOR PROBLEM... Every 2 adults are only producing 1.8 children... we are dying out!

Now please note carefully... the next thing I am going to say is ON AVERAGE, ACROSS THE POPULATION, TYPICALLY... THere are many exceptions, but in general...

The worst aspect is that the higher your IQ, the higher your income, the more affluent postcode you live in, the higher your education, the more professsional your career... the fewer children you have. We are breeding a shrinking society of imbeciles!

At the end of the day, tall parents have tall kids, olive-skinned parents have olive skinned children and smart parents have smart kids. Sorry if the truth hurts, but it's genetic. Not only that, but
they tend to bring them up better too.

Without enough high IQ people (or highly educated, high earning, professioanls etc etc) the social contract breaks down. the rich get richer and rarer and the poor get porrer and more numerous. More cops, more survelance, bigger prisons, less welfare safety net. Initially more like USA, and then more like some third-world strife-riven country.

We need the smart to have kids. We need to make kids reduce tax. We need to stop bribing the stupid to become baby-factories - which damns them to live of strugglre with too many kids

Re Anitceptic...
And we all know that in sociology, "middle-class" means "Professional". In their view (since they are all marxists) there is a working class, a middle class and an aristocracy.

Since the 'aristocracy' is pretty-much defunct these days, the term "middle Class" means anybody higher than "working class". Or in general terms "Professional"

"Having breeders around you is about survival."
-CHERFUL

Right up until the planet chokes on it's own population, of course. Look, the maths is simple: the planet is finite. It has finite resources. Infinite growth vs. finite resources simply does not work, unless you've found a clever way to circumvent physics and logic. Something has to give. I'm hoping and praying that it's the growth before it's the resources.

"I do not begrudge my daughter-in-law being paid to stay at home after my grandson was born."
-searching

Presumably 'coz it isn't at your expense. How much tax do you pay?

"I think it is wonderful that her teaching career does not have to go to waste simply because they choose to "breed"."
-searching

I hate to rain on your parade, but breeding will not necessarily cause a teaching career to 'go to waste', maternity leave or no maternity leave. Her teaching career was never, is not, and never will be under any threat from going to waste through breeding. Just who are you trying to fool here?

"They have a mortgage - not a HUGE home - they do not spend willy nilly. The baby bonus and payments go on necessities."
-searching

Yeah, I bet they're doing it heaps tough (sarcasm). Mum has a well-paying job (and don't try that old line about teachers being underpaid - many of my friends are teachers, and I know that they're paid quite well); your son presumably has some sort of paying job. Between one and two decent incomes - possibly more - for the one household. Yeah, my heart bleeds for the poor poverty-stricken wretches (sarcasm).

"So, what can we give up to provide for the breeders?"
-searching

How about nothing? How about the breeders learn to carry their own sorry arses through this life, without expecting a handout from other people? How about the breeders provide for themselves, as the rest of are expected to do betwixt childhood and senility?

Part-time parent, I'm afraid you have a poor grasp of genetics. Moreover, I'm in favour of a reduced birth rate - the planet demands it and this nation doesn't need a population any bigger than it already has. It most certainly doesn;t need to be paying people to have children who are already highly paid through their employment.

Just to make it clear, I have 2 children. I have never received a cent from the Government to support those kids, in fact I've been pursued to pay for my ex-wife's lifestyle decisions while she was supported to go to Court to seek to get even more. My taxable income was about $35000 last year and the gross turnover of my business was about $120000. It's not a company, I'm a sole trader, so I can't redistribute through a company or trust, although I'd quite like to.

For some considerable time I have lived in accommodation I improvised at my business premises to save money. I choose to do this in order to have more money to do other things, including to spend on the children. This is known as taking personal responsibility and I have nothing but contempt for those on incomes double or triple mine who demand that my taxes should be used to make them more comfortable in their over-priced Mcmansion whether they're professionally qualified or not.

Their Mcmansions would all be much more reasonably priced if they'd had to actually save to be able to buy them instead of using free "first home owners grant" money paid for by my tax. Apart from anything else, they might actually have valued the effort it took to save the deposit and so have been much less willing to pay over the odds.

Searching, if middle-class, professional people like your son and daughter-in-law cannot manage their own finances to allow them to afford children they should not have them.

The classic Marxist expression of the socialist ideal is "from each according to ability, to each according to need". You'll note the use of the word "need", not "want".

Oh poor poor Riz... jealousy is a curse isnt it?

Ok, so you dont want your taxes to go to people who breed.

I dont believe in war, so why should my hard earned taxes go to the army?

I dont drink and drive, so why should my taxes go to pay for hospital care for those who have accidents and end up a burdon on society because of their injuries? Surely they should have had x amount of insurances - just in case.

For those who dont own cars, why should their taxes pay for the roads? They dont drive on them?

Why should my taxes pay for essential services who have to look for lost bush walkers?

Why should my taxes have to pay for those who cant (or dont want to) work....after all, I work even tho I would much prefer not to.

I could go on and on......

We pay for a lot of things in life which may not necessarily appear "fair and right"..... get over it....thats life....thats called living in a mutualistic symbiotic society.

searching
It would be impossible for any government to achieve consensus on all aspects of government spending but that does not mean when there is an inequity (perceived or otherwise) there should not be debate. That is what democracies are all about.

If we take the 'get over it' approach we give governments a blank cheque without any accountability.

The fact is while we continue to throw cash at 'wants' rather than 'needs' as Antiseptic described, other areas of disadvantage are left wanting through lack of funding.

Mental health, homelessness, care of the aged and adequate city infrastructures are just a few areas where the effects of lack of funding have greater impacts.

While I can see the arguments for a paternity leave type arrangement I believe the current policy, and certainly Abbott's proposal, are too generous and it is not about transitioning from work to home but about blatant pork barrelling. People are not economic assets or human capital, but human beings of which one natural aspiration for many (not all) is to raise a family. We should be putting forward policies that make it possible to transition from home to work for either partner with ease, or make it possible to stay at home to raise children for a time but without an exhorbitant cost to taxpayers and/or business.

Many women in my generation who stayed at home without the luxury of maternity leave went back to work with little fuss and ado, even in the teaching field. I found no problem finding work when returning to the workforce even if it meant being realistic about starting near the bottom again. Hard work and competency brings it own rewards.

Antiseptic
"I'm afraid you have a poor grasp of genetics."
Quite the opposite. In general, tall parents have tall kids and smart parents have smart kids. That's why public schools in wealthy (i.e. smart) suburbs get great school results, despite having the same resource as other public scholls.

Intelligence is highly inherited - it IS genetic. The power of political correctness in dening the truth is amazing!

Antiseptic
"Moreover, I'm in favour of a reduced birth rate - the planet demands it and this nation doesn't need a population any bigger than it already has."
I am im favour of reduced birth-rate too, for your reasons and because it is the wrong people having kids. Sure the poor in Africa have a small carbon footprint, but they still are deforesting and overgrazing and depleating the soils and eroding the soil of the land. Because there are more people than the land can support.

Now the only argument that says they can have 6 children per two adults and yet that 1.8 children for us is too much is racist against us. Either because you believe they are better than us (i.e. you are racist) or becaue you demand that they remain living in low-carbon footprint squalor, and believe that only we are allowed the comforts of a safe and clean lifestyle (i.e. you are racist again).

Part time parent, there is no evidence that intelligence is correlated with income, or with educational attainment. Some of the smartest people are poor pupils, but excellent problem-solvers, for example.

In my own case, without bragging I can say that I have a high intelligence. However, I have a relatively low income. I achieved only average results at school because I was bored rigid a large part of the time, but I am able to support myself without recourse to the support of the state in any way, while people on much higher incomes and educational attainment are apparently unable to do so without thousands of dollars of other people's money being spent on them.

As for the idea that public school students in wealthy areas achieve more highly due to innate intelligence - I'm sorry, but that's the silliest thing I've ever heard. Families in well-to-do areas may have a stronger work ethic, they may have a higher level of regard for education as a means to improving income, they may be simply more able to afford tutoring for their kids. It may be that they're simply more likely to be an intact family, a situation which is highly correlated with high-income suburbs.

Yes, things like physical stature and intelligence may be somewhat heritable, but they're also highly dependent on environment. Tall parents won't produce an extra tall child if there isn't much food for the child to eat while growing, while the average height in Western countries has shot up since the Green Revolution of the sixties. There's a lot more to it than you might think.

Antiseptic
"there is no evidence that intelligence is correlated with income, or with educational attainment. Some of the smartest people are..."

Actuall intelligence is one of the most 'heiratible' charactoristics. On average, your IQ is closet to your parents than you height or build, for example.

But you must believe in the science of this stuff, the large population statistics. Sure in any population there are exceptions to the rule, that doesn't mean that the rule is wrong, just that it is an average, a typical result, a trend, by-and-large, what you would expect. THe fact that you believe that you are one of these outliers, doesn't invalidate the trend.

You should have studied some maths at some time. Do you know what average is? Let alone other measures of trends such median, collrelation, r-squared values etc.
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Put simply IQ as measured by IQ tests are the 'best' way of predicting a persons' financial success. The best, not perfect, obviously with exceptions etc..
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As with most inherited things, you can damage an individual by, for example starvation, resulting in them not reaching their GENETIC potential. But you can't push them above their potential. If you stave a child, they will not be as tall as they could have been. But the reverse is not true. Force-feeding children will not make them taller than their potential.

"school students in wealthy areas achieve more highly due to innate intelligence - I'm sorry, but that's the silliest thing I've ever heard. Families in well-to-do areas may have a stronger work ethic..."

Yes, as I said earlier, smart parents produce smart kids and they bring them up well too. On average, typically, by-and-large, etc etc.

partTimeParent,

I disagree that intelligence is correlated by income....only that "potential" may be realised from a certain way of upbringing. Children from more affluent homes may be the recipients of a wider scope of views and information. My own view is that many of these children are exposed to and seek learning outside of their "schooling" experience - whereas the lower socio-economic idea seems to be that you can only "learn" in school.
If I was to point out that the languages spoken by tribal people throughout the world are every bit as sophisticated as your own, you probably wouldn't believe me...as humans, we all have the same potential.
My own children have been raised in modest financial circumstances, yet they both display a questioning nature and an enhanced intellect.

Antiseptic “What do you think your uterus is worth. I think we need to start setting benchmarks if we’re going to start applying the service delivery model of maternity that you are advocating in order to do that we need to establish values for the services to be provided. What is the value of the use of a uterus for nine months ? Ditto what is the value of donating sperm so the uterus can be used.

To deal frankly with the above question it is interesting to look at the dynamics of a harem.

If you have 1.000men(sperm) in the harem but only one woman(uterus)you can only produce one baby a year. That makes 999men basically ineffective. It is not very hard to donate sperm it only takes about five minutes.

Whereas it is usually the mother who does the lion’s share of the childcare in life, that is not to say that in today’s modern world the men don’t help more than they did in the past. And of course there will always be the case where the father is the primary carer but that is a minimum percentage. Women talk about the second shift, that is they work and they come home and put in another five hours work with the children at home, more if they have to get up to a young child in the night.

If you have a camp of thousands of men, you do not have a society, that is why men will go and kidnap women as they need women to create society. On the other hand I doubt whether women would go out of their way to bother about kidnapping men because they are nurtured and given more compaionship by other women. All they would need are jars of sperm in a sperm bank. What a peaceful world it would be for women with no men around to spoil their walks by the the river by jumping out of the bushes to flash at them or attack them when they are jogging or strolling through the park. Blissful.

Part time parent, yes I do understand statistics and I have a fair grasp of genetics, which is why I took you up on this. You may be correct if there had ever been a specific policy among "professionals" to only breed with other "professionals", but there hasn't. The people living in the wealthier areas may have a Mum from one of the poorest, or a Dad who's just a tradesman, not a professional. The fact is that there is no correlation of the sort you're talking about at all, sorry.

Poirot has it right.

Cherful, yes, it only takes one male to fertilise lots of women. Why don't you feminists just work out which one you want, force him to donate and leave the rest of us alone? Of course, you'd need to remove any of his sperm carrying a Y chromosome, which is a tad more difficult than simply slicing off one of his testicles, so you might have some troubles there.

You could all whinge at each other endlessly about who has next go with the turkey baster and who gets up more frequently during the night and no one important would have to hear any of it while we get on with the real work of living our lives as men and women - part of the one species.

Without the rather creepily unnatural feminists around, natural and normal divisions of labour and differences that complement rather than clash would once again become the order of the day. We men could go back to adoring our women as we have done for millennia, doing our best to make their lives as comfortable as we can, and they could go back to doing the same, each gender contributing to the good of the species as fitted by nature.

Of course, I'm not sure the plumbing would be much chop in "Grrlworld" and there wouldn't be too many cars running after a short while. Perhaps you could pay some of the men in the real world to come and do the dirty work for you?

Cherful,

No wonder men like Antiseptic end up despairing of "feminists" if that is your attitude.
The problem with the "second shift" in an industrialised first world country is that our society, compartmentalised as it is, is not set up to accommodate the human condition - to enable women to comfortably have their cake and eat it too.
Women have always "worked" and many in developing countries still do as they've always done - working in the fields or in home industries and gardens. In their small communities, everyone is responsible for keeping an eye on the children who are usually close by. In our western paradigm, all is warped, so that women, identifying with a notion of "independence and autonomy", take their place willingly among the "workforce" while their children are young and then bash the menfolk on the head with complaints of having to undertake a "second shift".
Seems a strange way for a species to behave.

Pelican, of course I agree that people need to debate issues that effect the community as a whole. I wish more people would become involved in community issues.

My issue was with those who say that because they dont think it's a good idea, then its absolutely wrong without actually coming up with any ideas on how to fix the problem - other than "just scrap it cause I don't like it."

I work in aged care and see the short fall in funding everyday and see providers of aged care also wasting money. I am now on a committee that is going to campaign for greater funding for aged care.

I am also over those who say "In my day, I walked to school 8 miles in blinding snow with the soles out of my shoes and it didn't hurt me." Surely we can get past that sort of arguement. The good ol' days werent always that good, if you look at the "wrongs" of that era too.

There is always going to be a cost - monetary or otherwise - with decisions and policies.

I still maintain that so called "arts grants" need to be looked at. Have you looked at the grants that "artists" get? Have you looked at other grants that the govt give for some quite - I consider - rediculous things.

Why shouldnt we try to improve things for the next generation. I dont begrudge my children for wanting the best for themselves and their children. They work and give back to society in taxes too - for future generations.

Poirot “Women have always “worked”and many in developing countries still do as they have always done working in the fields and home industries and gardens. In their small communities everyone is responsible for keeping an eye on the children who are usually close by.

Exactly! They have the village childcare that women in the West had to fight the male politicians for. We still don't have work-site child care though, so they are ahead of us there

It was the patriarchal System of marriage foisted on us by the male dominated fundamentalist Christian religions in earlier times that decreed that women were basically goods and chattels owned by their husbands and that their brains were inferior to a mans and therefore they weren’t capable of working outside the home. It was only as short a time as 70years ago that women were not allowed to have a job once they got married.

Eventually women did gain the right to work after they were married until they had children and then right up until the late 1970’s they were fired from their jobs as soon as they had a baby. That’s when they began the fight for childcare and won the right to keep working after they had children. I remember that the Male heads of BHP refused to keep new mother’s on and their was a big story and furore in the press about it.

All along it was about male control and power over women. Women had to take whatever their husbands dished out because with no financial means of support (there was no social security for women back then)they were literally on the street if they left.
When you state that women choose to work and then complain about the second shift you should examine the thinking of the fundamentalist Christian Male church hierarchy that set up the marriage constraints around women that caused the problems in the first place.
Constructing a system of male dominance that separated them from the extended family help they needed with the second shift after work. Isolating them in marriage.

Antiseptic

I think they either do have the means to determine the sex of children already or they are very close to it. Anyway we could always send the boy children off to Mars to be looked after by their fathers.

Suddenly you have gone all cute and cuddly about adoring women and working together as one species, strange when compared to your usual anti-female sentiments. Does the thought that women could actually survive without you cause you to once again put on your sheep’s clothing to charm the ladies into staying. An oft’ used male ruse when the dominating tactics are found to be not working.

Some men don’t have much more technique than a sterile turkey baster, I’m sure there are many women who could testify to that. I myself am not one of them having always had a wonderful love life and no it is not a lesbian love life.

This is really not solving the problem of where the money to pay for maternity leave is going to come from. However this is still one of the richest countries in the world and I bet the government will find the money with no trouble at all. It’s amazing how they cry poor when it doesn’t fit in with some belief system and then suddenly find all the money in the world when it suits their purposes.

Anyway does anyone know who really owns the banks? Are there shadowy figures lurking in the background pulling all the strings? I read that, that is how governments rule without revolution, they first convince the public that it is tough but it is has to be done for the good of the country.

If you think the all girl world might invite you over to look at their plumbing I wouldn’t get my hopes up Antiseptic but if you bring your turkey baster over they might be persuaded.

CHERFUL:"
Suddenly you have gone all cute and cuddly about adoring women and working together as one species, strange when compared to your usual anti-female sentiments"

I don't make anti-femalre statements, I make anti-feminist ones. Of course, most feminists would like to pretend those two statements are identical, but then, many feminists would like to pretend they're women...

Isn't it great that men invented turkey basters just in time for you?

searching, the point is that maternity leave is not any kind of a necessity for people in middle class families. If they feel that it constitutes a need they're either extremely poor at managing their personal finances or they're quite simple greedy - probably both. On the other hand, a working woman in a low-income family may be making the difference between that family doing OK and doing poorly, so it makes sense to compensate the family for losing her income.

Why do so many middle-class women seem to think that they require compensation and special assistance for every normal and natural aspect of their humanity while men are expected to be in rigid control of every aspect of theirs?

My theory is that you all grew up expecting to find a bloke to pay your way and thanks to feminism that's become largely a thing of the past, so you blame men and demand that the State fulfils your golden princess fantasy. Weak as a very weak thing indeed.

CHEWRFULS blithe "the county's got lots of money, I want some of it cos I'm a woman" is typical of the handout mentality that seems so prevalent among the ethically-challenged feministas.

My advice is to grow up and start behaving like adults instead of spoilt children.

Cherful,

Whether one agrees with it or not, men and women tend to get together so that they can reproduce. In whatever form this arrangement presents itself, the women in most societies are usually going to provide the primary hands-on nurturing during the child's infancy.
The problem that Western women have forged for themselves is that they haven't been able to discard their maternal obligations as easily as they have their aprons. As a consequence they are harried and harnessed by their new found "freedom" to such an extent that it ceases to be a freedom at all in the real sense.
You say: "That's when they began the fight for childcare and won the right to keep working after they had children."....or one could look at it another way and come to the realisation that that's when they won the right to institutionalise infants en masse. Childcare in a village is organic and naturally interwoven with the industry of its inhabitants.

The rise of the working woman was undertaken as a tacit agreement between the two genders in the service of consumer society. Isolation of women follows on from the breakdown of local communinity - something that goes hand in hand with our culture of growth.
Whether you like it or not, isolation is not so much a gender issue as a cultural one - born of late twentieth century capitalism and one to which the more radical aspects of feminist ideology has in no small part contributed

Poirot
You write some inciteful stuff. Your ability to cut through the spiel to the chase is admirable.

searching
We could both probably come up with a list of the effects of underfunding in some sectors and the gross overfunding of sport and art which are not essential. Art and music (and sport to some extent) is an important part of culture but individuals have been contributing in those fields for some time without government funding. It is something the private sector and individual endeavour could service quite well without the government other than a national gallery and one for each state. Some of the purchases could be sponsored or subsidised more via private means.

Paternity leave is in the 'wants' category rather than needs. There are already tax concessions for families which I think are worthwhile but adding more taxpayer money to the mix in the form of subsidised childcare (while its workers earn one of the lowest wages) and paternity leave overcommit funding to the middle class.

Why not a re-think of our values. Such as some questioning of the values inherent in seeing human beings only as economic units or looking differently at issues of overt consumerism and growth.

It would be great if we could go back to the "good old days" when women stayed home and looked after the little tykes and let hubby be the bread winner.

Well, times have changed and we must change with them.

Values were re-thought at one stage - the value of women in the workforce and society - thats why women can now have an education.

I think its wonderful that a women can contribute to the value of the family by an income and to her own self asteem at the same time. Because a women decides to have children and work, does not make her any less of a mother.

There are plenty of mothers who dont work (on welfare) who arent necessarily good parents because they stay home.

Its wonderful that a mother/father can have bonding time with their child in those first months.

Ok...then lets have it means tested. Set a limit. Those on incomes over a certain amount who are planning a family can take out an insurance plan that would cover all or a large percentage of the time they wish to take off after the baby arrives.

We continually look to the past and say "oh how wonderful it was". The past is only ever good looked at from the future.

I have heard people say - "look at the poor countries - they value families because they dont have anything else" - well, then why are they risking life and limb to get to this country if its sooo wonderful in their own country..

Poirot--You mention the part where I said that women fought for and won the right to childcare but you conveniently forgot to mention what I said about the injustice to women before that, being under the total financial dominance of men. You forget also that women had to fight for the vote. It was the fact that they did have the vote that made the male politicians eventually agree to what women wanted because they wanted to win elections.

As you say even in todays society most women are still the major hands-on carers for their children and they quickly realise once they have children in a marriage that the men are not bound by the rules of motherhood and can have a lot more freedom to come and go as they choose too. Like telling their wife they have to work back or having a drink at the pub on the way home while their wife rushes home to deal with the tiring,noisy,stressful evening chaos involved with the needs of children.

Consumerism is only part of the reason women work it also stems from women realising that men had the much better deal in marriage then they did. To the woman without children who still has her false romantic notions about the equality of marriage you'll learn if ever you do have children. This country as well as others owe women a whole heap of backpay for their unpaid labour which men exploited and took advantage of for centuries.

The least they can do now is pay them maternity leave and not just mothers who go out to work but all mothers.
I dislike it when all mothers don't support each other. The womens electoral lobby and a lot of feminists have been guilty of not supporting equal financial policies for women who choose to spend a few years at home looking after infant children, while claiming every sort of financial support for themselves. This denigrates motherhood as having no value.

ANTISEPTIC-- CHERFULS blithe--the country's got lots of money,I want some of it because I'm a woman is typical of the hand-out mentality that seems so prevalent among the ethically-challenged feministas.

I speak not for myself but for today's mothers,My children are grown and self-supporting with children of their own. I don't speak for any movement, and I have never identified with any movement feminist or otherwise, I just call it as I see it. My opinions may be the same as self-proclaimed feminists at times and at other times they may not be.

I'm looking more at how badly women,especially mothers have been treated by male dominated societies and still are in a lot of areas in the world. It's about time that was redressed. Society owes mothers big time and the least that can be done is to pay them maternity leave. All of them.

You men don't mind when they pay some thick skulled neanderthol footballer a million dollars to just kick a football around a field for a couple of hours. Hardly nation building.

CHERFUL, the fact that women have had it tough in the past does not justify handouts today. Men have also had it tough - frequently tougher than women, so the point is moot.

The fact of the matter today is that women have never had it so good and probably never will again, since the handout culture that has developed is simply unsustainable.

Once upon a time, my grandmother prided herself on being able to "make do", with the result that I developed a liking for tripe and tongue and so on, as they were the cheap meats that she had brought her own family up on and they had become a family tradition. She was not a middle-class princess, but the wife of a plumber who had been badly gassed in WW1 and was frequently ill as a result. I never once heard my Nan complain that she had to make do, she thought it was a very positive attribute. I do too.

Compare that with the pampered middle-class princesses of today who demand that someone else pay for their every cost of doing what comes naturally and that they regard as the ultimate expression of their femininity.

And you people wonder why I have no respect for you...

"I'm looking more at how badly women,especially mothers have been treated by male dominated societies"

That would explain terms like "women and children first" I guess.

Seriously CHERFUL so much of what you are writing is based on feminist interpretations of history which often is a gross misrepresentation of the reality of life.

They have cherry picked examples which suit the portrayal of interactions between the genders that they want to push regardless of how little relation it has to the realities of most of our lives.

I'd suggest a read of a book called "The Myth of Male Power", not perfect but worth reading because it provides a worthwhile counterpoint to much of what you might currently think about men and their lives.

Both genders have had their up's and down's. Sometimes great, sometimes horrible and often somewhere in the middle. The continual attacks on men and how good we have had it has got very old.

R0bert

Antiseptic,

Your description of your Nan and her attitude is eerily similar to the one my mum gives of her own mother - except I never got to meet my Nan as she died before I was born....she was also "the wife of a plumber who had been badly gassed during WWI"....and from what my mum tells me about her childhood, her parents shared a wonderful devoted life together.

"It would be great if we could go back to the "good old days" when women stayed home and looked after the little tykes and let hubby be the bread winner."

Who is saying that. Most contributors to OLO have talked in endless threads about more sharing of work/home roles even if at one time or another the mother/father is doing the lion's share of work/home. Unless one is a pedant, nothing can ever be absolutely equal.

I personally think our children are disadvantged by full-time child care from an early age but I don't expect everyone to share my views nor would I expect to 'force' people to raise their children solely in the home just because I did. However, as a SAHM I watched as we lived frugally on one income while working parents got a greater share of the welfare pie. There is something not quite right there - it is like the government paying parents to work for some greater economic agenda while those who stay at home are being punished for failing to live up to the standard 'working family'.

Don't get me wrong, as a SAHM myself I did not want nor ask for money from the government only that we all bear the brunt of our personal choices (there was a stage from memory where SAHPs got a $30/week parenting allowance).

Welfare is about supporting or giving a hand up for those in need. It is not about IMO, tax-payers funding for populist policies for an electoral agenda. We have to ask where the priorities are for government spending and policies that target disadvantage like housing affordability and increase in personal debt. That would go a lot farther and give more choices to men and women, than paid paternity leave.

Times do change but not always for the better. Sometimes change brings about improvements sometimes not - and can create more problems in our youth.

Whoops, that last line should have read "for our youth" not "in".

Absolutely agree, Pelican,

This subject could probably do with a thread of its own.
In 2009 the Federal Government rolled out an $18.7 million mental health initiative under the banner "Kidsmatter"...an extended version of one already in place, but this time aimed at early childhood settings to address, amongst other things, depression in very young children.
Remember this:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/depression-program-to-focus-on-preschoolers-20091005-giv4.html

Seems a sad indictment of a society that puts consumer participation way above the psychological well-being of its very young.

"Put simply IQ as measured by IQ tests are the 'best' way of predicting a persons' financial success. The best, not perfect, obviously with exceptions etc.. "

PTP, can you cite your source for this assertion? Or can we assume that the members of Mensa are predominantly billionaires?

"Because children cost money. In an urban society unless there are incentives, people stop having enough children to replace themselves."

PTP, just because something "costs money" does not mean that it automatically attracts a subsidy.

"The worst aspect is that the higher your IQ, the higher your income, the more affluent postcode you live in, the higher your education, the more professsional your career... the fewer children you have. We are breeding a shrinking society of imbeciles!"

Hang on; so the wealthy are having less children, the poor have more. Can you run that bit past me again, yanno, the bit where you say "children cost money"?

"The people who serve you every day, the teachers who teach you, the fit young soldiers that are there to defend you, the fit nurses who have the stamina to handle gruelling hospital shift and emergency work... Having breeders around you is about survival."

Oh Cherful, not that old chestnut! Spare the faux altruism. You did not have children for the benefit of me or the nation. Indeed, the argument that parents ought to be incentivised with cash to breed ameliorates any spurious claim to some act of benevolence. By all means have kids, but do not expect me to embrace your fecundity as some kind of service for which I should be grateful.

"I'm all for welfare to help the most desperate in our society, those who really need it. But it royally pisses me off that low income earners like myself (I'm a working student) should be made poorer at the expense of wealthy breeders"

Too right Riz. Parenthood is a personal lifestyle choice, with costs and consequences, rewards and sacrifice. Provided fertility can be controlled, and abortion available where contraception fails, having a family is just as much a valid choice as not having one. Children are a private good and their benefits are enjoyed mostly by their parents.If a family is a personal choice, why should the childless face discrimination in favour of families? Why should the childless subsidise those who choose a different path?

Before the usual strawmen retorts are trotted out, I am not asking that children be made to starve in the streets. I strongly believe in hand-ups to address socio-economic disadvantage but I certainly oppose handouts to the wealthy. And I am not opposed to handouts merely because I am not getting one.

I not suggesting that parents ought to raise children with no support at all. Parents should be able to access social services aimed at making them better parents and I have no argument that social wealth is of long term benefit to me and society. Yet policy of today upholds that the *private* wealth of parents is "deserved" as a matter of course, this can be achieved through compensatory monetary arrangement and it is morally acceptable to penalise the childless to achieve this. It is wrong that working childless poor are facing the prospect of never owning a home of their own while they cross-subsidise middle class households with children.

Without a hint of irony, it seems the voices of those who argue against the notion that children are a private good and insist they are social goods are, incongruously, supporters of private welfare –- in the form of taxpayer-funded cash handouts -- for parents and they seem to revile social support such as government supplied services for mothers and their children.

Oh gee, here we go again - my grandmother brought up 24 children on a breath of air and a teaspoon of flour and never complained. She never complained, because those days womens roles were entirely different - they didnt have the chance of careers.

There was one time when our 3 children were underschool age - my husband was out of work and all we had in the fridge was half a loaf of bread, some butter and very little else - and no money. My husband had to get a handhout from centrelink until the next dole check. Fortunately the next week he found work.

This is why I do not begrudge my childrens good fortune to grow up in a time when they can be educated, buy a home and work for a better life than I had. My daughter-in-law is not a middle class princess expecting the world. They work hard. My grandson, even tho he spends a couple of days in childcare is well adjusted - havent seen any adverse effects of childcare on him.

Look at real government waste and not perceived waste.

Searching,

Government pork barrelling in the form of middle-class welfare is more than just a perception, whether one refers to it as a waste or a bribe - or both.

Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss put it very well in their book "Affluenza":
"The boom in middle-class welfare reflects a far reaching transformation of politics in Australia. It reveals how our national objectives have gradually moved away from providing and improving essential services and helping those most in need to bribing the well-off for their electoral support. The apparent lack of funds for health and education is not an unfortunate fact of modern life: it is the result of a deliberate political strategy, one with bipartisan support."

Anitseptic "yes I do understand statistics and I have a fair grasp of genetics, which is why I took you up on this. You may be correct if there had ever been a specific policy among "professionals" to only breed with other "professionals", but there hasn't..."

Actually, the research is quite clear on this, people marry partners who are quite close to their IQ. Of course there are exceptions, men marrying their secretary etc, but on average, typically, trend-wise, by-and-large, what you would expect.

In previous ages, powerfull (intelligent) men (such as male aristocrats) could inseminate many of their female serfs/slaves/servants. The real vistims of this were the many powerless men, who died as serfs, alone, childless, or the worst betrayal of all, abused as a cuckold.

In short, there is a very good correlation (in statistical, epidiological terms, in sociological, societal terms) to say that smart people: earn more, have higher education, marry other smart people, earn more, live in nice expensive suburbs... and sadly have dewer children than average, and many fewer children than the most stupid people.

This is true especially of men - smart women marry smart men and stop working seriously. But they still live in high income households in nice suburbs etc.

Smart people are becomming rarer. This is a problem. That's why we shouldn't hand out means-tested money for having kids... $5,000 is alot to a drug addict, but little to a professional couple. Instead children should reduce your tax.

searching, I was simply making the point that generations of people have done just fine with no handouts at all. I have 2 children and I don't receive a cent in handouts, nor do I want any. I can look at the things I own and know that I own them through my own efforts, not because I was given a handout like a 5 year old child when Grandma comes to visit.

Your children must be proud of their taxpayer-funded TVs and their taxpayer-supported mortgage, not to mention their taxpayer-funded children.

Part time parent, I agree with you that it would be far better to subsidise people through tax deductions than through direct handouts if you intend to subsidise at all, which I say is unecessary for middle-class people, professional or otherwise.

The idea of the populace being "dumbed down" through dilution of the gene pool is not new. Anybody familiar with the works of Cyril Kornbluth, Cliff Simak, Phillip Dick Brian Aldiss, Kurt Vonnegut etc, will have read such classics as "The Marching Morons" and "Harrison Bergeron".

The fact is that our society needs a very broad range of capacities in both temperament and aptitude. The qualities that make a person a good lawyer are not the same qualities that make a good mechanic, but we need both if we are to have a functional society. Arguably, we need fewer people of high intelligence in today's world, since a great deal of routine work is done by expert systems or at least guided by them, where once a capacity to solve problems was required.

Perhaps it's a good thing that the well-educated middle-class are having fewer kids?

Poirot. To be in government I am assuming you have to please some of the people, some of the time, because you cant please all of the people all of the time.

Perhaps, just perhaps, giving parents (of any income level) a chance to stay home and bond and recover from childbirth and pregnancy would mean they are more likely to return to work, thus saving the govt in years to come having to pay out pensions - because those people will have enough super to support themselves at the end of their working life.

By reducing a persons chance to "get ahead" you are creating a greater divide between the poor and the rich.

Antiseptic. I was also pointing out that past generations will always have "done it tougher". I am sure your grandmothers generation did it tougher than your mothers, and we could continue back till time began. Does that mean, that future generations must stop in their tracks?

I am quite sure the next generations will be saying the same things to their children - "well, when I was your age".......

If we do have "middle class princesses"....whose fault is that..... could it be - oh no - dare I say - this generations fault ... well of course not .... we were perfect ... well ... at least I know I am !!

I dont know the answer - as every decision has its consequences - guess you just have to look at which is best and worst at any point in time.

As far needing more people with high I.Q has anyone read "The Wisom of Crowds" - Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few.

searching:"I am sure your grandmothers generation did it tougher than your mothers, and we could continue back till time began. "

I'm not sure of that at all. The 20th century was a highly anomalous period of rapid technological change, so it may be true to say that about my grandmother and mother, but I suspect that my grandmother grew up anticipating a life very much like her own mother's had been. To a very large degree that's what she had, although thanks to improved medical care she was less likely to die in childbirth and she lived much longer.

Our present middle-class welfare is simply unsustainable. It's a product of weak policies and a weak electorate and it is unaffordable.

If an average couple cannot afford to have children and support them from their own resources, we have a very dysfunctional society.

Do you think your daughters' daughters will have it as good as their mothers? I don't: the bills are already mounting up and soon some harsh decisions will be needed. I doubt that paying middle-class women to have children will be high on the list of essentials.

Searching,

"...giving parents (of any income level) a chance to stay at home and bond and recover from childbirth..."

I believe time should be taken to bond after childbirth and beyond.
Those on higher incomes, however, do not require assistance...except to maintain a particular "standard" of affluence.
The money they receive is to maintain this standard - not to ensure that they have adequate provision - which was always the original purpose of "welfare".

searching
It is all about how to split up the revenue pie.

Why is it more Okay to pay money in middle class welfare programs and not aged care or pensions?

Perhaps if we did not have so much government waste (coupled with population sustainability) aged pensions would not be held in so much disdain. The narky attitude towards aged pensioners is disgusting in this country especially considering many did not have the advantages of superannuation that we enjoy now. It is almost impossible to choose to raise a child at home now if the incentive is to breed, bond for a short bit, then back you go to the coal mines so you can save for your retirement. Surely the system should work for us not against us at the behest of some corporate interest groups.

It is not just about paternity leave but a whole raft of other issues and it is not good reducing these issues to "... that was luxury, I use't live in tin can" type anecdotes.

A book worth reading on inequality in society is "Spirit Level" by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket.

Read Monty Python's Flying Circus - "Four Yorkshiremen".

Pelican, I'm not the one trying to simplify this by reductionism. The fact is that humans have never had it so gothose women keep demanding ever more, pretending that they're badly off to do so. It's not an edifying sight.

searching, you still haven't made your case, I'm afraid. Why should my tax dollars be used to allow your middle-class daughter to be able to have children without having to sacrifice a day's shopping?

BTW, one of the features of the "four Yorkshiremen" is that the participants are all wealthy, self-made men trying to outdo each other about how far they've come. They're bragging about rising from the dirt to their present elevated status. "Oo'd 'ave thought, eh?" The humour is in the rich people pretending ever more extravagantly to have been victims.

Quite appropriate to the issue of middle-class welfare, although the four Yorkshiremen would never accept a handout.

I happen to have the whole collection of the Flying Circus. Brilliant social observation in some of it.

Erm... a small edit. The post above should read: "The fact is that humans have never had it so good, yet those middle-class women keep demanding ever more, pretending that they're badly off to do so. It's not an edifying sight."

Don't know what happened there.

Antiseptic
"The fact is that our society needs a very broad range of capacities in both temperament and aptitude. The qualities that make a person a good lawyer are not the same qualities that make a good mechanic, but we need both if we are to have a functional society."

It's really easy to get more people with limited ability if you want them. Just open the immigration floodgates. The immigration points system is sort-of an IQ test with pointys awarded for higher qualifications, english language (which means ability to learn a second language in most cases), business skills and money.

Let the floodgates open and see how quickly our relatively 'functional' and harmonious becomes riven by distrust and rising crime. Why do you think all the leftie-professionals choose to live in nice white anglo-celtic ghetto suburbs like Sydney's inner west? That way they can call for more immigration, and still avoid seeing the damage it does on society.

If you look at what makes countries wealthy an harmonious, you see a combination of high IQ and low diversity. Japan is one of the world's most racially pure nations and Japanese have slightly higher IQ than europeans. Despite being a tiny, overpopulated resource poor nation, they are the world's second largest economy. Europe was similar 20 years ago, but due to high birth-rates of immigrants is becomming less so.

The USA, despite huge population and amazing natural wealth, suffers from the handicap of high diversity, and isn't as powerful as it should be.

..."racial purity"

Should be some ground-breaking anthropology to be read here very soon.

Rusty

Part time parent, we've moved a long way from the discussion of parental leave.

I'm not sure how you link middle-class welfare to immigration, or to "racial purity" - these seem very different creatures.

Speaking for myself, I reckon that immigration of non-Anglo/Celtic peoples has been a positive for this country. I'd like to see it slowed, not because of the multi-cultural aspect, but because the country's holding capacity is limited.

Middle-class welfare is as unsustainable whether immigration exists or not.

Antiseptic I am not trying to reduce this argument to reductionism either (not sure where you got that from). The main premise of my stance is we are losing the rights to raise a family the 'old fashioned' way - as if a value about raising children can be categorised so easily.

Some people do believe raising a child goes beyond bonding with a baby for more than eight weeks. We only ask that the welfare agenda isn't skewed towards the middle classes to satisfy some long term economic agenda. This is morally bankrupt and just more of the government's social engineering of what is the'working family' norm that everyone has to buy into.

I am about choices but taking responsibility for choices rather than to the detriment of other more important infrastructure. This issue is far too important to be used in the gender agenda IMO.

Antiseptic and Pelican

Have a look at this map of world poverty... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate

Basically the more red, the more poverty... But the surprise is that it is a map of FERTILITY - how many children are being born. You are worried about our carrying capacity... Throughout Africa every two adults are having up to an average of 6 kids! No wonder the farmland is overgrazed, the trees are becomming rare due to over-harvesting for cooking fuel, the water is running out, the deserts are growing and the poor people faced with starvation, often choose to back a corrupt tribal leader who engages in tribal genocide.. as we saw in Rwanda.

We have the opposite problem in the west. We are aging because we are slowly suiciding. We are failing to replace ourselves as there are too few babies.

We need to give parents tax reductions, so they can afford the kids they want. That's called middle class welfare, but it's really an acknowledgement of the fact taht kids cost money, and without help, too many people choose the selfish route of childlessness.

Part time parent, the situation in many third world countries is very grim. People know that they will lose children as babies or in childhood at a high rate due to diseases like measles, whooping cough, etc that we in the West regard as things of the past.

As a result, and just as our ancestors did, they breed a lot. It has nothing to do with "intelligence" and everything to do with poverty and poor living conditions.

Pelican, you accused me of trying to reduce the discussion to "things were worse in my day". I simply pointed out that that particular piece of reductionism came from someone else.

Middle-class welfare is all about gender. Middle-class men do not receive the handouts that middle-class women do and do not receive any of the preferment that middle-class women demand. Feminist dogma underlies a great deal of the welfare state.

It's not admirable and it's not sustainable.

Anti, I am at a loss to know to which comment you refer - please show me where I made that accusation. Methinks you confuse me with another. Anyway...

PPP
You cannot compare the Third World with the West in terms of birth rates only without looking at mortality rates and the bigger picture in relation to social and economic systems. Higher birth rates are inevitable with little access to birth control and the fear of not being cared for in old age. Very complicated issues and you cannot compare one with the other. Much more needs to be improved in the Third World to eliminate poverty but a high birth rate is part of the problem.

People who choose not to have children are not being selfish - it is a human right to make that choice for oneself. The problems with an ageing population are only going to be made worse if we keep perpetuating the problem by continually growing populations beyond resource capacity. Everyone ages so increasing the bottom end only means an increase at the top end eventually.

What is a "middle class princesses" income by the way...just to get a new perspective on things - perphaps I am coming at this from the wrong end of the stick!

Of course the Yorkshire men would not have asked for a handout, because when they were young - there were no handouts! And as they had made their fortune, they had lost track of modern times and exactly what it cost to raise a family.

I think it was in the film the Aviator that (cant think of who said what) someone said "the only people who say that money doesnt worry them are those that have money".

Oh dear! "Racial purity" and that old chestnut, "the selfish route of childlessness."

A bunch of lame cultural prejudices strung together into a non-argument by someone who clearly has no idea what they're talking about.

Somehow there’s this twisted perception among some child-makers that the childfree enjoy some kind of undeserved benefit and forcing the childless to make sacrifices in their own lives -- either fiscally or by denying flexible workplaces to the childfree -- is the best means to address this confected inequity.

"...the fact that kids cost money,"

Again PTP, that children *may* cost money is NOT a reason for others to cross-subsidise people's desires for child-making. It’s true that losing the income for a few months is difficult if one is used to a higher level of consumption, but the obvious solution is for the household to budget for that. Children are a private benefit. That is, they are mostly enjoyed by their parents. It is nonsensical that childfree adults' consumption habits are presented as the norm to which childed adults' ability to consume is then measured.

It doesn't take an advanced skill in deconstructing PTP's cryptic and often contradictory assertions to reveal that PTP feels taxpayers must compensate the "right" type of parents as they are owed some imagined right to a zero-sum impact on their post-natal lifestyle. The message is pretty clear: "hear that working scum! Take a tax hike to help your social betters. Those private school fees and luxury car payments aren’t going to pay for themselves. Give the rich a leg up, it’s all about choice..."

I will agree with you on one point PTP: Middle-class welfare it most certainly is – for the working rich – at the direct expense of the working poor. How disgusting and shameful. And yet, these wealthy people who feel hard done by seem to have no shame. That the advocates of breeding handouts tart themselves up as social justice victims is a slap in the face for those who are genuinely denied social justice.

The 18 week paid parental leave will be taxed, so it is NOT tax free. Also those accessing this do not receive the baby bonus.

Some people already have parental leave built into EBAs. The 18 week parental leave can be applied for on top of this, but that then puts them in a much higher tax bracket. In some cases they are actually no better off.

So actually the middle class (presumably those on somewhere between $50,000 and $90,000) are not necessarily better off.

The 18 week benefit is NOT tax free AND they lose the baby bonus.

As I said and will say again - why not look at other govt "handouts" - once again - arts grants - take a look at where that money goes - now most of that IS a waste.

Look at why Australia is 5th on the list of countries with the greatest divide between the rich and poor.

"Everyone ages so increasing the bottom end only means an increase at the top end eventually."

Thank you pelican. The current aging of the population is not just due to declining birth rates but also longevity and the bulge of baby boomers.

Creating another "bulge" is simply creating another large cohort in a few generations.

But that is too difficult for folk to comprehend. We are a materialist society and most people have consumerist lifestyles. It seems to me that too many of these people want to live beyond their means, have their baby and someone -- anyone but them -- must pay.

"...often choose to back a corrupt tribal leader "

*does double take* Surely I am the only one who cannot see how contradictory this statement is?

"...so why should my hard earned taxes go to the army?... why should my taxes go to pay for hospital care for those who have accidents..
For those who dont own cars, why should their taxes pay for the roads? They dont drive on them?"

False analogy. Taxes pay for social goods. I do not drive BUT I can choose to access a road in the future. But I and other taxpayers cannot access your children whenever I choose. Your children are your own private goods, your own personal pleasures, your benefit.

Ok...so my analogy of the car was a tad stretched...

Well, I hope that when you go to a resturant, Woollies, Big W, fast food outlet - see a teacher - a nurse etc etc, you refuse all service, because you are accessing "other" peoples children and enjoying the service they provide.

Those accessing paid parental leave on a low income, would not be able to either buy a home or pay rent if it wasnt for paid leave. For low income it becomes a catch 22.

As the divide between rich and poor becomes greater (on the premise that if you cant aford them, dont have them) the lower socio ecomonic will not have children. Unless of course that is what you are suggesting - breed out the low paid "workers" in society..... then who will do those menial low paid occupations.

As for the higher income earners, they are the teachers, nurses, solicitors, drs, professionals in our society.

Agreed, if they knew they wanted children, then they could have saved some for a rainy day or a "baby day".

But if we start stripping back hard fought changes in society when do we stop? At what point in time do we say "ok, thats enough, no more?

It seems that as each generation reaches a point in life, they become jealous of the advantages of those coming after them.

searching,

"AT what point in time do we say ök, that's enough, no more?"

At the point where we pay people to maintain their affluent lifestyle instead of reserving support for those who need assistance to make adequate provision for their families.
The idea of government support is to assist in making society a more level playing field, not to compensate the already well-off for their drop in disposable income.

Middle-class welfare began as an electoral bribe and has been rapidly assimilated as a perceived right by those advantaged by its largesse.

A good read is a Research Paper from the Parliamentary Library.

Money for Nothing? Australia in the global middle class welfare debate. 12May 2009.

"...(on the premise that if you cant aford them, dont have them) the lower socio ecomonic [sic] will not have children. Unless of course that is what you are suggesting..."

Strawman. There's no eugenics subtext in my comments. More the contrary, I find it appalling that the childless working poor and lower middle class are cross-subsiding wealthier households *just because* they have children. Indeed, your rhetoric "...who will do those menial low paid occupations..." inadvertently reveals your own prejudices about poor people and intelligence.

In earlier posts, I made it clear that that parents should be able to access social services aimed at making them better parents - such as quality ante-natal care, schools and health services for kids. I have no argument that social wealth is of long term benefit to me and society.

Again. Children are a private good. Parents do not have a reduced “expendable income”, as some argue, because they have spent it on a private benefit. Across this wide brown land, copulation is not driven by some benevolent gesture to make a future taxpayer or worker. Yet these greedy people assert that increasing the *private wealth* of parents is deserved without question, that it can only be reached through compensatory monetary arrangements and it is morally acceptable to penalise the childless to achieve this.

The real truth is that many people these days keep themselves dissatisfied by comparing themselves with people who have more, never with people who have less -- who they rarely see up close. Some child-burdened seem to expect to have a zero-sum impact after they have birthed; they want to continue living like DINKs and the working childless to pay for it.

Yet, despite all of the endless hand-wringing and angst, assistance isn’t being directed toward kids at the greatest risk. This is a greed-driven charade designed by and for the comfortably well-off middle-class child-makers who are irate at the financial impact that children have on them and who, after decades of funding welfare for the poor, no matter how parsimonious, are demanding theirs.