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Support grants should only cover first child

A reader airs her views on children's grants for young mothers.

EDITOR – Why are taxpayers paying for people to have more children than they themselves can afford (all over the world, we gather), judging by the number of children in children’s’ homes, on the streets and at schools where they have to be fed as they do not get adequate nutrition at home?

This is not to mention whether the country can afford to support them indefinitely. On the other hand, it is a bit heavy-handed for the government to restrict the actual number of children people are allowed to have, if they can afford them. There should be a policy whereby children are taught from an early age that every woman will be helped only once. School girls should be given contraceptives unless the parents sign to say they will take full responsibility for any offspring that arrive while the girl is still at school. They will know what the girl-child doesn’t always realise – that the grants are not enough to maintain the baby for any length of time.

The first baby can be helped by government funds as the mothers often need more help than for subsequent ones. Then the new mother must be taught that the next time she has a baby she must pay, even at the government hospitals, to indicate that she (and her man or family) can afford that next child and any subsequent ones. She should only get a child support grant for the first child, something that would reduce the cost of welfare grants.

And as for the “baby-faced schoolboys” who are often the fathers of the innocent babes in the prams, they also need to be taught that it is not a game to see how many children they can “sire” before they are even grown up and able to take responsibility for the children they so blithely produce!

I write as one who has attempted to mentor a girl child but has ended up supporting her three children as the fathers are busy with all the other girls!

Naomi Wakefield-Stapersma

Durban

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