Encouraging all mothers to have more children

A lot of what pass for comments on The Standard are ignorant insults. Psycho Milt has also blogged about this.

But here's one that is at least civil if not misguided. By someone called Alexandra:

Mothers who have a second child  whose older child is fourteen will be forced to be available for FULL TIME  WORK when their baby is ONE YEAR OLD.

No we should not be discouraging mothers to have more than one child by punishing the child and treating the child as a second class citizen.  In fact we need more children in our society as we do not have enough workers to support the increasingly elderly population.  Mothers are bringing up the future workers who create the value from which profits and taxes are taken. If these children would  not find work  when they grew up; that  would be  the fault of the failing capitalist economy,  the rip offs of the bankers and corpoations; not the fault of the  mothers or their children . It would also be  the fault of decades of financial and social deprivation- ie poverty and ill health caused by inadequate incomes, poor housing and health care; and the kind of prejudice and discrimination favoured by people like  Lindsay.

I had commented in support of National's policy to discourage beneficiaries adding children to their benefit by exempting the caregiver from part-time work-testing for only one additional year. That part-time work, if she can find a job, could constitute as little as 12 hours. Alexandra is correct to point out that if her next youngest child is already 14 she would be full-time work-tested (30 hours). But only 1 percent of MSD clients who added a subsequent child had a youngest child aged 14+.

And the argument she uses for encouraging women to have more children - whether on a benefit or not - "we do not have enough workers to support the increasingly elderly population" - can be used for increasing the workforce participation of working-age females. Often mothers.