Hi Aidan,

Not sure what the connection is. Still, okay, I'll give it a go.

* A flat baby bonus (say, $ 5,000 for the first, $ 7,500 for the second, $ 10,000 for the third) to women who have to take time off work, AND their jobs held open for them whenever they wish to return to work.

* Standard fortnightly payments to all mothers, those with a work history and those without, until the child is sixteen or whatever it is these days.

* Free TAFE or university study for mothers without any work history, AND free child care while (but only while) they are studying, and for the first two years once they find employment.

That might work :)

Joe

Suzeonline:

Pensions and assistance with medical expenses are genuine welfare. Assisting people to have children is not welfare it is a gift from the government to assist certain lifestyle choices. You need money if you are old and cannot work and you need money if you are sick – these should be available in any civilised society. You do not need children.

Whilst children who already exist may need their parents to be assisted it does not follow that governments should guarantee that such assistance will be given to parents in the future. It might be compassionate to care for children but compassion and justice are not the same thing. To just be compassionate and never deal with the injustice which contributes to the situation which calls upon compassion is to bury one’s head in the sand.

If that government assistance did not exist then there may be a lot less need to call upon compassion. You have to value both compassion and justice but you will never begin to deal with the injustice until you acknowledge that it exists.

Aiden, historically people had large families, when they had sex on a regular basis, as is common. Ask those large Irish families of 12-14 kids as to why and you will soon be told. Given a choice, we know that even in the third world, family planning is what they choose. The Guttmacher Institute have published data on this, all about unmet needs for birth control in the third world.

So how many kids would any of you have had, if it were not for family planning which we in the West now take for granted? Just look at history.

Phanto, I beg to differ.
This government is trying very hard to up the age we can get an aged pension...if we get one at all. The same is happening with people on disability benefits.
What makes you think that parents will be the only ones targeted for their welfare payments?

Do you believe in involuntary euthanasia? The government would if it would save them money. paying welfare money for the aged, mentally or chronically ill people.

In your make-believe world where the Government will only pay for a certain number of kids on welfare, what happens if a 'mistake' happens and a 'surplus' pregnancy occurs?

Will we drag them off for an abortion, like they do in China?
Or will we wait until it is born, then take the baby away forcefully to be put out for adoption or to be raised by the state?
Or will we leave it with their naughty unemployed mother and just let them sink or swim with no financial support?

Suzeonline:

The issue I am trying to raise is whether or not the government should, as a principle, give assistance to all parents as it more or less does now. I am not talking about genuine cases of welfare and need. So many people would not be able to afford to have children if it were not for this assistance and I think that is fair enough since it is not a need to become a parent.

You talk about what would be exceptions to that principle. What principle do you think should be the case? If you are trying to mount an argument for certain action you have to begin with some principle whether you acknowledge it or not. It seems to me you agree with the government that all parents should be given assistance simply because they have made a lifestyle choice to become parents. This would then cover the cases of genuine welfare but it also means that non-parents are treated unjustly by the government.

Questions about pensions and euthanasia are irrelevant since they are based on different principles. No one is denying that genuine welfare should be given but the overwhelming majority of people do not need assistance because they do not need to be parents.

If you stop giving assistance for the wrong reasons it may solve the problem of having to give so much welfare.

Well that didn't take long. Next article, those wanting trains to run on time will be compared to the Nazi's, with their well organised train schedules.

1. The World has too many people now, we will have even more by 2050.

If you do agree with that statement then having more children won't help. If you don't agree, stop reading now.

"In fact, the whole idea that ''it is not a human right to raise a family at someone else's expense'', if applied would lead to the end of a whole range of measures designed to assist women who have children, ranging from maternity leave to subsidised childcare"

The purpose of taxation should be to modify behaviour eg high taxes on cigs referring to 1., Encouraging more births is the antithesis of what we need to do, ipso facto modifying tax policy to make it more difficult is a GOOD thing, not something to be scoffed at.

Once a child is born we need to look after it, but lets discourage them from being born. Unpaid maternity leave is a good start.

We should have free over the counter contraception, free vasectomies and encourage significantly reduced child breeding.

A whole slew of issues arise from having less children but that does not negate the point that having an infinite number of children makes any sense at all. Allegorically, whole slew of issues arose from giving up slavery, that doesn't mean we shouldn't do the right thing.