18 Oct 2012

"I didn't mean YOU!" Oh yes you did...

"I wish I could sit on my fat arse watching Jezza all day, like those benefit dossers"

"There is another feckless actor in this dysfunctional family drama — the mother, who may be having children by a series of different men." (Daily Mail, 20th June 2011)

"Get rid of benefits and make the lazy scum work"

"My taxes pay for you to sit on your arse"

"In 2009, 6.7 per cent of the households in Britain were led by single women with children under 15, or older children still at school or college." (Daily Mail)

"By conceiving, [young women] are willingly making themselves unemployable and should receive reduced benefits!" (Daily Mail reader)

"Although single mothers don’t automatically mean filthy ignorant feral underclass scum offspring, the vast majority of filthy ignorant feral underclass scum offspring spawn from single mothers."


These are some opinions I have found on the internet about those nasty, evil, benefit scroungers. There are millions of others, usually voiced on Facebook by people who are barely above the underclass they revile. "FUKIN DOLE DOSERS SHUD GET A JOB!" is the illiterate howl of those who consider facebook a valid place to voice prejudiced hate, regardless of who might be reading.
As a dreadful dole dosser, I take these frustrated cries of the overtaxed very personally, and respond, only to be told "Oh, we don't mean YOU. We know why YOU'RE on benefits and you're OK".

Why? I'm not some sort of special case. I had my children relatively young, getting pregnant at 23 and then again at 25. Not a teen mother by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly younger than many of my peer group. My children have the same father - my former husband - and have a good relationship with him. I didn't choose to be a single parent, I was abandoned. At no point did it occur to anyone involved that my ex should get custody of the children, because that is not the way society works. Neither do we have joint custody, because that wouldn't work either. So, I am literally left holding the baby. I gave up work because it wasn't financially viable, if I also wanted to look after my kids. Some women can do it, I'm not one of them.

It suits the government to push this image of the young woman, using her womb as a mealticket, but the truth is somewhat different. Most women become single parents through desertion or death: few indeed decide to simply BE a single mother.
For a start, having children is INTENSELY hard work, even more so as a single parent. The knowledge that if something goes wrong, you're on your own, is tremendous responsibility. The ultimate job of a parent is to keep the child alive until adulthood. If you begin to fail to do this, social services rightly take your child away. I miss work because it gave me an opportunity to get away from that ominous responsibility for a few hours a week, as well as be recognised as a person other than 'Mumma' and get some adult company. When my eldest had a vomiting bug early this year, I did not leave the house or see another adult for six days. Six. Days. Single parenthood is isolating, difficult and exhausting. It is not something vast amounts of young adults choose. It is certainly not something I would have chosen.

The single mum, in her free house, surrounded by a variety of children with different fathers persists as the default image of single motherhood. It's not true. For a start, getting a council house is a massive ballache, often involving periods of either living in an overcrowded house with extended family or living in a hostel until a house becomes free. In Peterborough, there are about 1000 council houses up for auction each year, but a waiting list of 3000. The alternative is private renting, but this is a headache too because landlord's HATE benefits claimants. Most letting adverts bear the ominious "NO DSS". I have no idea why they're allowed to be so prejudiced, but it is their fault that social housing is so in demand. I privately rent, because I got my house before I technically stopped work. If I'd waited til my maternity pay finished, I would have struggled.

That is the real core of living on benefits: everything is a struggle. Benefit provision is at subsistence level. They give you the minimum you need to live, according to their research. I have enough to live on, purely because I can't drive. I do not get enough money, even with child maintenance factored in, to run a car. Most people consider a car essential to maintain an average standard of living. Not I! Every purchase I make has to pass the 'do I really need this?" test. If the answer is no, and I haven't paid the rent yet, it doesn't get bought. This extends to things like repainting the living room, buying a hedge trimmer to sort my front garden out, and even buying clothes. If I splurge, I feel guilty. Food prices are soaring, and when a bunch of bananas costs almost as much as a Happy Meal, you can see why so many people on benefits have such a dreadful diet. The worst thing for expenditure is energy. I have a gascard meter. It costs me about a pound an hour to have the heating on, and if I run out of money in the night, the gas keeps running, putting me into debt. Since I moved into a dual-fuel house, my energy bills have tripled. The choice is to have cold kids and more money, or warm kids and less money. The gas meter wins, every time. Trying to achieve the basic trio of shelter, heat and food is not easy on a low income. I often hear people say they are too proud to be on benefits. When you have children to look after, there is no such thing as pride. If my pride had stopped me claiming benefits, I'd have been homeless two years ago, despite being in work.

When people assume that everyone on benefits is on the highway to luxury, it makes me angry. When people assume that everyone on benefits is a workshy, babyfactory, that makes me angry. And when people say "Oh, we don't mean YOU", I get REALLY angry. The stigma extended to those on benefits is universal, from the top down. I get blamed by the government for the deficit, I get patronised by the jobcentre, I get judged by my son's preschool (because he has subsidised lunches), and everytime someone bitches about dole dossers, I get insulted. 

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Now, you'll all be pleased to know that I've finished K101 and am now moving onto K203, which will doubtless mean less benefit-related bitching, and more perceptions of childbirth bitching.

1 comment:

  1. People would rather believe living on benefits is a choice than admit that through no fault of their own they could end up in the same position. Reminds me of the idea that if you get raped while wearing a short skirt you were asking for it...

    I'd rather live in a country with a benefits system than without. End of.

    ReplyDelete