Having children is a "SIW" (self inflicted wound) and should be treated like what it is. No one is forced to have children. You make the decision yourself and you used to make it based on your own ability to provide for the children.
Today the decision is based on how much support you get from the taxpayer who has no say in your decision. Fair go mater.
If you have to have two incomes it is because you are living above your means. Come back to reality. My taxes were meant to support me in my old age now they support you in you child productive years. Fair go mate.

chrisgaff1000, how true is that.

When I was a kid, my parents only finacial support was then known as child endownment.

These days, if one becomes well educated, or well skilled and, pulls a great job as a result, they get told, sorry, you earn too much.

Meanwhile, people have worked out that if they work the minimum during their family raising years, they get all the finacial aid under the sun.

My parents couldn't afford more kids than the three of us, but now, they don't even need a job to have as many kids as they choose.

Not content with being supported by the worker, they now want to be paid to stay home and have kids as well.

And the powers to be sit there and wonder why their grand scheme is hurting women in the workplace.

What a joke!

Chrisgaff said;
If you have to have two incomes it is because you are living above your means.

Not necessarily true.
The price of housing presumes that two incomes are being used to
finance the purchase of a house.
This is the result of the government insisting that two incomes are
considered by the lending source.

Another Canberra disaster.

People forget the facts of life, now & back in the bad old days.

When I was a kid the cost of housing to rent was 30% of the award wage for an average worker. Buying an average house was no more than 4 times that annual wage. The cost of transport was minimal, Ryde was the sticks, but still only a 17 minute tram ride from Sydney city, mum made all the furnishings, most of the clothes, & would you believe actually shelled fresh peas.

In fact women saved as much as they keep of their earnings today, by making much themselves.

We had none of todays essentials like TV, mobile phones, I pads freezers, & I can still remember our first fridge, & the fact mum could now make ice cream. Yes make it, who could afford to buy it.

A single light, hanging from the ceiling did the job of 6 down lights today, & the switch beside it was operated by pulling a cord. Copper was expensive & in short supply, few could afford extra wire to a switch on the wall, by the door.

Yes mum could stay home & be a house wife, but she was busy being just that, & making most of what we needed, no Days of Our lives to watch, & who would have had time if there was.

God I & my generation were lucky to be born in the bad old days.

Hasbeen

And she never complained and in most cases loved it. I know married women around here in Cairns that can neither cook or do housework because they grew up in a single parent disjoint home where socialistic voice proscribed "rights" and privilege and responsibility were replaced with need and dependance.
Bazz

I said 'Living above your means" that was wrong of course what I should have said was "living with expectations way above you station in life".
The privileges of life, apart from birthright, come from hard work and realistic expectations and the are earned. They do not come from taking advantage of every taxpayer handout and socialistic state funded "helping handout" that vote seeking governments put in place as the "carrots" to power.
How immoral is it to have a partner who is a "tradie" with his boat, and trail bike and his quad bike and taxpayer funded v8 4x$ that pulls the trailer on the weekend recreational activities and the wife running her own small business with her own "business vehicle", cash out of the till for expenses and at the same time accepting child care subsidies just because they are there.
Not everyone true...but most. Have a look around you.
Fair go mate.

The other thing about the bad old days, it developed an "us against the nasty world" approach to things. Life was a bit of a struggle, & achieving something together was what made the glue that stuck couples together.

I remember my parents buying & recovering an old lounge. It was a hell of a job sewing all that heavy material on an old treadle Singer machine, but mum managed it.

They had no real idea of how they should do things, but muddled through. Hand sewing the last seam on cushions made of springs & horse hair, with no zip, took weeks of nights, but their satisfaction of having that lounge was a triumph shared, & great glue.

Some how walking around a furniture store, & deciding which lounge to buy, on no deposit & no repayments for 2 years just doesn't produce that glue.