I dislike government handouts, but if you’re going to pay parents to have children maybe you ought to focus on the first few years?
New mothers should get a quarter of all their child’s benefits in just the first two years of a baby’s life to reduce the pressure on them to go back to work, it has been suggested.
The move for bringing forward the payments and letting mothers stay at home and let them bond more easily with their babies, according to the Government’s poverty adviser.
Currently, poorer parents are eligible to be paid as much as £100,000 in benefits and tax credits in equal instaments over the first 19 years of a child’s life, if he or she stays still in full time education.
However, Frank Field, the Labour MP for Birkenhead, suggested the Government should tailor the system of child benefits so that it better suited parents’ lives.
This could see a quarter of this total – £25,000 – paid out in just the first two years of a child’s life, to take the financial pressure off young mothers to go back to work and encourage them to spend more time with their babies.
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