Dickens-Style Poverty or Just Bad Parents?

This morning I read an article on the Sky News Website, Kids Still Living In Dickens-Style Poverty.

I'm just not getting it. Not from a money angle, anyway.

When it comes to money, I'm just about the poorest of the poor. My sole income at the moment is from state benefits.

But really, what direct connection is there between parents' income and children's toilet training?
I really can't understand why being poor means that kids can only eat with a spoon.
Nor how it affects whether or not they know who the "father-figure" is at home from one month to the next.

That's got nothing to do with money. That's just the result of bad parenting.


I am pleased, however, to see that  Leslie Ward of the Association of Teacher and Lecturers can see beyond the money aspects:

"The best way to raise achievement in schools is to get rid of poverty - not just financial but aspirational and emotional,"

She has hit the nail on the head. The problems children are most likely to face are, as she says, aspirational and emotional poverty. It's a culture. The root of all evil is not money. It's bad parenting.

Broken Families; Broken Britain. Part 3: Treading Water

To be honest,I can't be bothered to fill in the gaps between graduating and now. Suffice to say that my daughter got to school age. I was utterly broke - no, in debt, by the time I left university (who, but the very fortunate, isn't?) and I was finding it nigh on impossible to get a job which was term-time only, school hours only and with a company that would be reasonable and understanding about my single-parenthood-related lack of punctuality and unavoidable days off.

I went for a handful of interviews. Shop jobs, reception work, that type of thing.  I had a hard time trying to convince the interviewers that I wanted to work in e.g. a shop (I didn't). Why I particularly wanted to work for that company (I didn't). How, after doing a degree and a Master's, I would keep myself from being bored in this new job (I wouldn't be able to). Oh, I know that of course you have to give all the "right" answers and look genuinely keen and interested. But however convincing I thought I'd been, I didn't get any of the jobs.

I live in a small town. There are no opportunities here for me to use my degree. And for reasons I haven't got time to go into right now, I can't move out of the area. I really hadn't realised how hard it would be to find a job with hours I could actually work. And please, do not even utter that T word to me.  Some people are meant to be teachers. I am not one of them. There are 2 things I really struggle with more than the average person. 1. Customer service. 2. Kids.   
Yes, I know, how can I say that I struggle with kids when I'm a parent myself? The difference between my kid and other people's kids is that I love mine. There are a lot of great children around. I am very fond of some of them. But some kids are just plain horrible. More to the point (and probably the main reason), the parents are awful. And it makes me so angry when kids turn out bad because of rotten parenting. It makes me angry but equally, it saddens and frustrates me. I won't go on, but just accept that teaching and I would not mix well.

So, right now, I'm treading water. I'm going nowhere. Just struggling to stay afloat. It's not easy. It's not the way I intended my life to be. I'm skint. I'm totally socially isolated. I don't have a social life of any description. But my daughter is a happy, well-behaved, polite, kind and caring girl. She's clever, funny and (of course) beautiful.

I might not be employed. I know I'm costing the tax-payer money - I'm sorry to all you people who do go to work and do pay your taxes. I know that I'm now a financial burden on society. But just remember one thing. I am working so hard on bringing my daughter up to have consideration for others, to be a responsible, law-respecting, kind person. (And believe me, she's very smart with it). Surely that counts for something? Doesn't that equate to some sort of investment?

Broken Families; Broken Britain. Part 2: Swimming Against The Tide

For a year, I continued working and looking after my baby on my own. It was tough as hell. I was getting up continuously throughout the night. I got virtually no sleep - a fragmented couple of hours if I was lucky. I was forever having to call in to work, apologising that I couldn't make my shift because my daughter was e.g. teething/had a temperature/upset tummy and I couldn't take her to the creche. The company I worked for were very good, I have to say. They often allowed me to make up the time, by working through my breaks and starting earlier or finishing later. On the odd occasion that I could get a babysitter at the weekend, I went in to work to catch up on missed hours or days. 

My one-bedroomed flat was very cramped. I hadn't realised just how much space a baby could take up, with all the necessary paraphenalia. On my salary, I had no chance of being able to afford anywhere bigger. I was getting into debt already. I was also very stressed and very, very tired.


When rumours starting to filter through the company grapevine that a relocation was on the cards, I wasn't too concerned. I didn't mind my job, but it wasn't what I wanted to do with my life. It was a stop-gap; something I just "fell into". It wasn't the career I'd always dreamed of and imagined I would have. So I decided that it was "now or never" and, against the wishes and advice of everyone who cared to voice their opinion, I resigned from my job and went to university, full time. I thought this was the way forward. I thought that if I got a degree, I'd get a better paid and more interesting job.
 
To fund myself and pay for childcare, I sold my property and moved into a rented place.
University was a real eye opener. Yes, academically I gained valuable knowledge and skills. (Well, the value of those skills has in fact become rather questionable).  But I was also educated in the politics of academia. University life. The nuts and bolts of higher education. I didn't like what I encountered.  But I worked hard. I studied whenever my daughter was sleeping and hardly ever slept myself. My studies were ultimately successful and I graduated with a 1st class Hons degree. Fantastic. Soon, I thought, I would be able to get a decent job, another mortgage, a place with 2 bedrooms. Life would be better for my daughter. I would be able to provide for her as well as love her.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Broken Families; Broken Britain. Part 1: How I Became a Single Parent

Once again, the "Single Mother" debate has hit the headlines, with the release of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) report on children. The report seems to suggest that children of broken families and single parents are bound to do less well in life and are far more likely to have behavioural problems than children with two parents in the family unit.

One comment in response to Mark Easton's blog on the subject, suggests that there are 3 categories of single Mother:

1) families that split up, 2) working single mothers, and 3) mothers who make a living off their children in a life of benefits.

The writer, "AdamOpines", goes on to say that those in groups 1 and 2 are a more "life effective" than those in group 3.

Another comment, this time written by "CommunityCriminal" starts,

I dont think its so called single parents that you can blame as most have well extended familys and friends tha[t] help out with life

Well, let me now put my tuppence-worth in.

This is my story of single parenthood, in 3 parts.

Part 1: How I Became a Single Parent (below)
Part 2: Swimming Against the Current
Part 3: Treading Water


10 years ago, I was working full time, as I had done since leaving school. In fact, for most of those years I'd been working a part-time job in the evenings as well as doing my full-time day job. I had a mortgage on my one-bedroomed flat then and bills to pay.

I didn't intend to start a family at that point in my life. I'd always been career-minded and I had ambitions that I hadn't even started working on. But I fell pregnant and assumed I would cope. I was in my late twenties, after all, not a teenager. I was in a relationship. I didn't know anyone else with children and don't recall ever having held a baby before mine was born. But bringing up a child couldn't be that hard, could it? I mean, people did it all the time. If they could do it, I could do it. I wouldn't be the end of the World, it wouldn't stop me achieving my goals, would it? I was so naiive.

After the birth of our child, my partner of 3 years decided he couldn't cope with responsibility and literally left me holding the 4-month-old baby. I was devastated. Other than the heartbreak of a failed relationship, I had a very colicky newborn to deal with whilst trying to hold down a full time job. I'd gone back to work when she was 11 weeks old. I had to. My maternity leave had run out and I had a mortgage to pay. The thought of being a single parent absolutely horrified me. It's not the way I would have wanted to bring a child into the world.

Suddenly, all those great friends of mine who'd given me such words of support when I'd discovered I was pregnant were nowhere to be seen. The ones who'd said, "You'll be fine! I'll be there to help you. I'll babysit for you. You won't be on your own," (there were a few of them) , were strangely elusive. I didn't see them for dust once the baby was born. And as for the well-extended families that help out, well, I don't happen to have one of those. I don't have much of a family at all. Those I do have are very distant and tied up with their own busy lives. Three of my grandparents were dead before I was a teenager and my fourth I only saw every few years anyway. So you see, I was a lone parent all right. A very alone parent.

The full-time creche fees took up a huge chunk of my salary. I was struggling. I asked the local council for financial help, but because I was working and had a mortgage on my home, as opposed to renting, I wasn't entitled to any, I was told. I never went out any more. I had no money, no energy and no babysitter. I'd obviously had to give up my evening job.

So, that's how I became a single parent.