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.