Housing benefits may be axed for under 25s.

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.telegraph....t-from-under-25s.html

Is this a good idea or is it fraught with problems?

Would it also be a good idea to link benefit payments regionally – which would mean less money going to claimants who live in less-expensive parts of the country?

[tamborine]

It might cut down the number of unwed mothers.

[shaneystar2]

Unwed mothers have nothing to do with it tamborine .
There have been unwed mothers since the year dot .

[ummmm]

Or women having shotgun weddings and bringing children into awful enviroments.

[tamborine]

Unwed mothers in the 1960s put their babies into adoptions as they had no HB.

[EDDIE51]

Yes but now single motherhood is regarded as a good option, many girls actively seek to get pregnant as they know that they will automatically be given housing and it will be rent free . Even better if they have a child every year, preferably each fathered by a diffrent boy. Once you have 3 kids or more the cash just rolls in.

[Duncer]

I don't think anyone with any sense is attacking single mothers per se; they are having a go at the benefits culture that engenders young women with no ambition other than to pop a few sprogs and get themselves a house. If that is their idea of life then I can do nothing but mourn their paucity of ambition.

[tamborine]

Nowt wrong with shotgun weddings; more likely 'bad timing'. No marriage or partnership has a gurantee of bliss.

[ummmm]

EDDIE...where are you getting this info?? You don't get loads more benefits for having more children. You get enough to cover the minimum cost of that child. They are not cheap....

[shaneystar2]

I can assure you tamborine that unwed mothers put their children up for adoption much earlier than the sixties 'cos I'm one of those children ..you have no idea what you are talking about .
It was nothing to do with housing benefit ..more like social stigma at that time .

[starone]

My mother and father got married in April and I was born in July. To think I was nearly illegitimate! The shame of it (it was 1927).

[ummmm]

And how awful for them, Shaney. And you....

My Nan took regular beatings, as did her kids....because there was no escape. If their life happened now all the kids would have been taken into care.

You are talking nonsense Tambo.

[ummmm]

Star....My Mum was pregnant with my Sister when they got married. The wedding was already booked though....they had to bring it forward.

[starone]

Yes you are right ummmm - you couldn't leave because there was nowhere to go. When my grandmother was 77 and finally living with one of her daughters, the doctor remarked that she would have been far healthier if she had not been beaten so much when she was younger. She had 11 children, nine girls and 2 boys - where would she have gone with that lot? No benefits or free housing then.

[tamborine]

My sis was an unwed mother. Her baby was reared by our family while she went to work. Social stigma- the child was more important than the petty minded !

[ladyalex]

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have a supportive family.

[ummmm]

Lucky for her Tam....it often didn't happen though.

[tamborine]

ummm - didn't you say in Ireland there were large families in small 2bed houses ?

[starone]

I lived next door to an old lady when I was young who brought up her daughter's illegitimate child.This was in the late 1930's and he was mixed race (very rare in those days). She took him and got on with it and no-one ever mentioned it. Then when her oldest son parted with his wife she took the three children of the marriage and brought them up as well. Can't see much like that happening in these days. Looking back I realise how courageous she was.

[Duncer]

So is it fair to that say we have come a long way, but that perhaps we should be more stringent about how funds are applied to the truly in need?

[ladyalex]

And perhaps also more stringent in how we close the tax loopholes for the very rich.