Suffice it to say, I'm not in any way advocating for someone determining whether people can or can't have kids. That's very much a personal decision. Equally, I don't doubt whatsoever that stressful circumstances prompt us to make bad decisions in life. It just gets on my nuts the amount of times the wife comes home and says she's working with a family (or often a single parent) with awful housing, no money, and a generally terrible situation, and they choose to bring a child into that. That they often explain their situation as being one of getting pregnant "by accident" is a common excuse. It's a Daily Mail wet dream.
Contrast that with another couple and the dad was diagnosed with a terminal illness about a month after she got pregnant. He died soon after the child was born. I don't think anyone would begrudge her support in such circumstances, but I don't believe welfare should be a permanent excuse for bad decision after bad decision. Like you say, it's often not about money. Many immigrant families in our neighbourhood are no recourse to public funds and yet have their shizz together and get by pretty well. Others have all the help imaginable and still balls things up.
Heaven knows this government does a bloody lot wrong, but equally, we have to accept that they're not here to run our lives for us nor clean up after every mess of our own making. There are times when we need to take responsibility for our own lives.
