Boy this is a tough one ! My only contribution to this 'debate' is from another angle ? Many of these single parent families, where it's usually just mum, and five or six little kiddies. As they slowly grow, and mum for one reason or another loses control, or can't inculcate any discipline into the family unit, the more rebellious kids, tend to turn their hand to crime ?

Furthermore as it often happens, the lady may've had three or four different fathers of her children. Some of the fathers, you'd not even feed ! Themselves, products of similar unstable homelives ? So again it's left to police to initially, attempt to broker some degree of peace into the waring home, or alternatively try to bring some order into the equation ? And so the whole mess just goes around, and around, and yet, around again !

Snake you seem to be any one with sence, taxpayer funded handouts to not moral men and women does not bring up ideal children, one woman and partner sentenced in court recently could not wait to get back to her drug and drunk behaviour even before the baby was one hour old, it was not wanted,and three years later died, responsibility comes with children, lacking in today's society, let's get all the taxpayers money we can get, if you F.... around with different men and have many babies from them, then that is your responsibility and the men involved, not the taxpayer, if you want to F... around then get sterilised, go for it, then babies are not brought into an unloved world by selfish people who only think of who can lay me next and have more babies for the taxpayer to keep.

You'll have to excuse me, but this topic is just begging for this...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

A Modest Proposal.

or...

"A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick"

Satire; it most definitely isn't POIROT ! We're talking about young human lives, most born into a situation where welfare is the accepted source of normal income. The poor little beggars have no chance of extricating themselves from an environment not of their making.

Most are taught, as they're growing up, to follow the same path of the parent ? To leave or be expelled from school as soon as possible, then down to the nearest CentreLink Office, and after a series of false starts, with potential employers, enter into a life of being assessed as unemployable !

How can this be you may well enquire ? Because most lack even the very basic of life skills. The necessity of regular personal hygiene, the basic requirement of not using foul or intemperate language while in mixed company at work, to wear modest and appropriate (taxpayer funded) clothing. Desist from engaging in unacceptable and offensive nasal or ear cleaning practices, while in the workplace. All behaviour(s) calculated to earn a very quick dismissal, and to be regarded as socially, highly unacceptable moreover, unemployable.

Generally speaking these poor kids become regular clients of CentreLink, and can look forward to an eternity on welfare ? And if not a life of regular welfare dependence, something else far more gloomy that'll guarantee to lead them straight into gaol. Not wonderful prospects for many of these disadvantaged kids eh POIROT ?

o sung wu,

Are you attempting to upbraid me because I introduced Swift's satire (and I have never understood why you feel it necessary to address the poster's name in capitals)

The condition of Ireland's poor was no more a joke than the situation of the poor Gary Johns is addressing.

Why did Swift resort to satire on the subject?

"George Wittkowsky argued that Swift’s main target in A Modest Proposal was not the conditions in Ireland, but rather the can-do spirit of the times that led people to devise a number of illogical schemes that would purportedly solve social and economic ills. Swift was especially insulted by projects that tried to fix population and labour issues with a simple cure-all solution."

Ditto....

Around half of all US states have implemented policies similar to what Gary Johns is proposing, although the details vary from state to state. Under Family Cap policies, there is generally no additional funding for children born after the mother has been on welfare for more than 10 months, even though am existing large family that fell on hard times and ended up on welfare would get benefits related to the size of the family. The view is that the right to have a large family is not the same as the right to force other people to subsidise it.

http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/welfare-reform-family-cap-policies.aspx