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They Fuck You Up, Your Mum & Dad

What? Was she saying that childless people aren't allowed time off?
I think she looked down on childless people .. as for other experiences I've had working instead in the hospitality industry, when it's a given that someone has to cover shifts, for example, Christmas day or Boxing Day, staff with kids are normally given those days off and I've had to work them (because we haven't got any kids that will be upset if we're not there) ... I remember one Christmas day working on a hospital ward when it was only me and a gay charge nurse (Steve) .. just two of us because we didn't have any kids (so we made it fun, he sneaked his boyfriend onto the ward, the three of us had a brilliant chat about the haunting of Borley Rectory, we slipped sherry to the old dears who it was safe to give to so they had a good time as well and had a NHS turkey Christmas dinner with the whole cheesy paper crowns and corny jokes :)) .. I'm normally given New Years Eve's off instead, presumably because being childless, I'm supposed to prefer to go out and get drunk instead.

Me and the Mrs way prefer Halloween .. nobody ever wants that off so we always get it ..
 
I'm loath to bring it up, but also don't forget that in the UK at least, lots of children = benefits scrounger.
Somebody needed to say that .. it's unpopular to say it out loud ..
 
There's no rule, of course, and I'm all in favour of deviation from norms, but I think three children is viewed as the current social limit for offspring in middle-class UK. More than that and the parents might start feel (unnecessarily) that explanations are required and the net curtains could twitch.

I have one child on a reasonably healthy but single-earning-parent family. Two would be economically possible owing to economies of scale with siblings, but I can't conceive of having three or more and still being able to afford all the things we want for our child (and hypothetical children). At three, I think the capacity to save and travel for leisure would probably evaporate but we'd all eat; at four and they may not be wearing shoes!

Caveat that as an expat, I find that childhood is generally more expensive in my current neck o' the woods.
 
At three, I think the capacity to save and travel for leisure would probably evaporate but we'd all eat
I can confirm, as genial patriarch of a two-child peripatetic family, that travel costs are not to be under-estimated, especially as the children grow. My 8 year-old is not much cheaper to buy a plane ticket for than I am. We've just bought return flights to the UK for the four of us, so I'm hoping that limb regeneration therapy is soon to be widely available.
 
I can confirm, as genial patriarch of a two-child peripatetic family, that travel costs are not to be under-estimated, especially as the children grow. My 8 year-old is not much cheaper to buy a plane ticket for than I am. We've just bought return flights to the UK for the four of us, so I'm hoping that limb regeneration therapy is soon to be widely available.

Yeah, its a shame we only get issued the two kidneys.
 
Having a large family will by definition deny the eldest children things that other kids get. Got eight kids (as a relative of mine has)
  • Forget time with your friends, you're Mum's unpaid assistant
  • Forget holidays, travel is impossible
  • Forget ever going out as a family as you can't afford a mini bus and there is always so many really young ones it's just too much of a chore
  • Forget anything you wan't to do, there's always a baby taking precedence.
  • Forget anything nice, or fashionable - it's probably a hand me down
And so on and so on

Positives are claimed by the parents but if they took time to talk with their kids (which they don't) they would see some resentment.

Don't get me wrong they love their kids but it's spread thin at times and the youngest are barely going to know the eldest, so it's not like it's going to be that closely knit a unit.
 
I guess that's why five kids is pretty much optimal - you can have a seven seater car and travel about!

I brought mine up as a single parent, incidentally, after the breakdown of my marriage. I guess some people cynically don't want more children than they think they could cope with single handed. Also, no benefits now for more than two children in this country, since about two years ago, so that might be putting people off.

My theory was just a very generalised one, based on people I know. The only children I know (I mean, only as in single) have had more than one child. Children of large families (ie, more than four) have tended to have one or two. But maybe my socio-economic and geographical position is out of the norm?
 
Having a large family will by definition deny the eldest children things that other kids get. Got eight kids (as a relative of mine has)
  • Forget time with your friends, you're Mum's unpaid assistant
  • Forget holidays, travel is impossible
  • Forget ever going out as a family as you can't afford a mini bus and there is always so many really young ones it's just too much of a chore
  • Forget anything you wan't to do, there's always a baby taking precedence.
  • Forget anything nice, or fashionable - it's probably a hand me down
And so on and so on

Positives are claimed by the parents but if they took time to talk with their kids (which they don't) they would see some resentment.

Don't get me wrong they love their kids but it's spread thin at times and the youngest are barely going to know the eldest, so it's not like it's going to be that closely knit a unit.

That all rings true - my mother was the youngest of 13, and often said she never had much of a childhood/adolescence as her time was split between helping her parents around the house/farm (and, by her late teens, often looking after her ailing mother), and being forced to play "lookout" for older siblings while they had a cheeky smoke. Of course everything was hand-me-downs, and I don't think she'd have ever had anything like a holiday - the fact that they lived on a farm only added to it, as her dad was always working and couldn't take time off, not even on Christmas day. She got married very young, as it was really the only way she could get out of the family home without ruffling feathers.

I was one of 4 - two half-brothers, and a twin brother, with my half-brothers being ten and thirteen years older than me. I had a lot of hand-me-downs from them (and some of those since handed down to their kids!), and one of them was often drafted in for babysitting duty. Holidays were rarely anything more than a day trip, though occasionally there would be a long weekend, though never abroad until the half-brothers had both grown up and moved out.

The half-brother that normally did all the babysitting now has 4 kids of his own, ranging from 13 to 4, and has confided in me a few times about how difficult it is to find things to do for all of them when the age range is taken into account.


A friend's sister recently had triplets, having already got two young children - end result being that she has five kids, all of them under five years old. Oldest child is in a very posh, very expensive public school - but there's no way they can keep that up and afford it for the triplets.
 
Somebody needed to say that .. it's unpopular to say it out loud ..

I should point out it's not my opinion, but if you touch Channel 5 with the proverbial bargepole that's the impression you're going to come away with.
 
I should point out it's not my opinion, but if you touch Channel 5 with the proverbial bargepole that's the impression you're going to come away with.
I'm in two minds about the point: breeding shouldn't become an exclusive privilege of the rich because the gene pool would become stagnant and also because many great things have been achieved by the working class who've shaped the world we live in .. but then you get the 17 year old girls who've never worked with boyfriends who also don't work creating kids fully aware that the tax paying state will sponsor them.
 
Watch Idiocracy...
 
My Dad used to do this to me :) (he still can and he's 72) ... brown trousers when he's on a race track in his Lotus Super 7 though ..


My Mum's poorly in hospital at the moment ... before that, this is how he'd give her a laugh when he brought her breakfast in bed .. my Dad's a bastard sometimes :cool:

adad'sbaconsandwich.jpg
 
Looks precarious!
 
er, how does he make the shapes in the bread...?
It's an in joke between my parents that it's off putting when someone makes you a sandwich and they leave thumb prints on the bread .. so my Dad did it to wind my Mum up (he probably swapped the bread before she ate it, I hope so anyway) ..
 
It's an in joke between my parents that it's off putting when someone makes you a sandwich and they leave thumb prints on the bread .. so my Dad did it to wind my Mum up (he probably swapped the bread before she ate it, I hope so anyway) ..

I'M SURE THAT'S WHAT WE WERE ALL THINKING.
 
Orwell describes his horror of a Wigan feast, when he was served a plate of tripe, fresh from the cool coal-hole, imprinted with sooty fingerprints! :puke2:
Coal won't kill you if you swallow it.
 
It's an in joke between my parents that it's off putting when someone makes you a sandwich and they leave thumb prints on the bread .. so my Dad did it to wind my Mum up (he probably swapped the bread before she ate it, I hope so anyway) ..

If I made sarnies or toast for the ex I'd always bite the corner off a slice, can't remember why. Summat about mice.
 
No, but tripe will.

I was going to wittily post an amusing jokey competition poster - 'Win your baby's weight in tripe!' and searched for the image, only to find an even funnier back story about it.

Seems it is indeed a mock-vintage poster but was used by the Tripe Marketing Board as if it was real.

Or else the Tripe Marketing Board's blog is also a joke and I'm about to disappear deservedly down a rabbit hole of my own insolent curiosity.

Tripe Marketing Board
 
I was going to wittily post an amusing jokey competition poster - 'Win your baby's weight in tripe!' and searched for the image, only to find an even funnier back story about it.

Seems it is indeed a mock-vintage poster but was used by the Tripe Marketing Board as if it was real.

Or else the Tripe Marketing Board's blog is also a joke and I'm about to disappear deservedly down a rabbit hole of my own insolent curiosity.

Tripe Marketing Board

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripe_Marketing_Board
 
Death by religion again.

A Michigan couple who told cops they declined to get medical help for their sick baby partly over “religious reasons” are now facing charges of felony murder and first-degree child abuse for the child’s death.

Seth Welch’s jaw dropped open during his arraignment in Kent County on Monday, as a judge informed him that the charges carried a potential life sentence. Beside him, his wife, Tatiana Fusari, wept openly.

The Christian couple’s 10-month-old daughter, Mary Welch, was found dead in her crib in the couple’s Solon Township home on Aug. 2. The police officer who responded to Welch’s emergency call noted in his report that Mary’s cheeks and eyes were “sunken into her head,” according to local ABC affiliate WZZM.

An autopsy later determined that the child died from malnutrition and dehydration “due to neglect by adult care givers,” a press release from the Kent County Sherriff’s Office states. The sheriff’s office ruled the death a homicide, and the parents were arrested on Aug. 3. The couple, both 27 years old, remain in jail without bond.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...pmgnews__TheMorningEmail__081018&guccounter=1
 
Death by religion again.

A Michigan couple who told cops they declined to get medical help for their sick baby partly over “religious reasons” are now facing charges of felony murder and first-degree child abuse for the child’s death.

Seth Welch’s jaw dropped open during his arraignment in Kent County on Monday, as a judge informed him that the charges carried a potential life sentence. Beside him, his wife, Tatiana Fusari, wept openly.

The Christian couple’s 10-month-old daughter, Mary Welch, was found dead in her crib in the couple’s Solon Township home on Aug. 2. The police officer who responded to Welch’s emergency call noted in his report that Mary’s cheeks and eyes were “sunken into her head,” according to local ABC affiliate WZZM.

An autopsy later determined that the child died from malnutrition and dehydration “due to neglect by adult care givers,” a press release from the Kent County Sherriff’s Office states. The sheriff’s office ruled the death a homicide, and the parents were arrested on Aug. 3. The couple, both 27 years old, remain in jail without bond.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/parents-charged-with-murder-after-refusing-to-get-medical-help-for-baby_us_5b6c5f2ee4b0530743c7d512?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=__TheMorningEmail__081018&utm_content=__TheMorningEmail__081018 CID_43162b8f0fc8073983b008919fd31394&utm_source=Email marketing software&utm_term=HuffPost&ncid=newsltushpmgnews__TheMorningEmail__081018&guccounter=1

This was in the Times I think earlier this week. It's a power thing. Some parents think they own their children.
 
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