Great Expectations - revisited

Last week, I posted about a sense of entitlement some parents have. There was some back and forth in the comments with a friend and fellow blogger of mine, and I wanted to give her voice the spotlight and respond to her comments rather than let the conversation fall into a comment thread that may have less attention. So Felicia, this one is all about you :)

I won't rehash the comments, I invite everyone to go read them to establish context before I respond to Felicia's points.

So in most cases, it's not exactly free money, it's tax credits we didn't get (that your parents got)

I over simplified the section about government benefits in my previous post, mainly because I didn't want to bore people with the semantics of it. I may have misrepresented the situation somewhat. For that, I apologize. It is not a matter of the government cramming money into parents' hands every month. There are tax benefits (started at the same time as income taxes themselves, during the time of the Second World War). Those are income dependent. There are other benefits that vary based on a multitude of factors. Flat payments aren't really the norm (I can think of one off the top of my head, but that's not the point). I will be the first to admit I'm not the most well versed in this particular type of government benefit because it doesn't affect me, the point of my statement was that taxation and benefits can be very different for parents vs. the childfree, and in some cases that has led to what I consider to be an over-dependence.

Otherwise, I agree. People are way too self entitled. And that has much to do with how they were raised.

I agree, 100%. This is a symptom exhibited by society at large. I'm just looking at one particular slice of humanity.

I love the way you say "the choice they made". While I don't begrudge you not wanting kids, someone has to ensure that there will be a next generation

Strictly speaking no, someone doesn't. There are very few things that humans absolutely must do. Consume food and water in sufficient amounts, expel waste, breathe, and take sufficient shelter from the elements. That's it. From a strictly biological standpoint, that's all that's required. Having or not having children has zero impact on those necessities of life. Bear in mind that I'm looking at this from a scientific point of view. I'm not talking about a comfortable life, or a happy one. I'm talking about life in the strictest biological sense. That same biology, over millennia of evolution, has instilled most humans with a drive, a desire to procreate to ensure propagation of the species. A great number of people follow through with that powerful instinctual drive. Others just want to have a legacy. I fully admit that if everyone stopped reproducing and no one ever started up again, we would disappear as a species in a very short time. But we could. We do have that option. It may seem unpalatable or even unfathomable to some, but it is absolutely possible (in theory, at any rate). And so if people are having children out of some sense of obligation that the propagation of the species is required, that's still a choice. One that is made because all other options are summarily rejected out of hand, but a choice nonetheless.

The human race is a few thousand years old. Our planet precedes us by 4 billion years, and the rest of the universe is almost 10 billion years older than that. We have no idea what was or wasn't before that. The necessity of the human race to survive is relevant only when observed through the lens of our collective arrogance.

If it weren't for some services or courtesies, as you put it, no one could afford to have kids

I honestly had no facts to back up a response to this one, so I crunched a few numbers. Let's take a family with 2 parents and 2 children with no special needs, living in my hometown. No fancy tax loopholes or any other complications.We'll only consider the 2 main federal benefits, the Canada Child Tax Benefit (CCTB), and the Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB).

According to Statistics Canada, the average family income after taxes in 2010 was $88,900 for a household with 2 working parents with children. (Source)

Given their tax bracket, this family is taxed at a rate of roughly 47% (Source). That means that their UCCB would be $530 a year after taxes. or $44.16 a month.

According to the Canada Revenue Agency, this family would get a CCTB of $84.19 a month (Source), for a total income of $90,440.28, or $7,536.69 a month

The only data I could find on the cost of raising children (something that can vary greatly) was from Manitoba Agriculture, which is far from where my imaginary family is living (Source). Still, better than no numbers at all. They estimate the cost of raising a child to the age of 18 to be roughly $166,760.50 (boys are a bit pricier than girls, this is an average). That breaks down to roughly $772 a month.

This leaves the family with $6,764.69 a month for the parents food, monthly bills, and miscellany. Without the government benefits, they would have $6,636.33. Is that enough? To me, it seems like it would be, but I don't have any first hand experience to say for sure. There are so many variables, and my example situation is very simplified. Still, these numbers were pulled from the middle of the field, the average wherever possible. That means that half of Canada's families have more money than this. Benefits increase as income goes down, so if the statement had been "no one <below income amount X> could afford to have kids", then it would be 100% correct (though I don't know exactly where that line would be). Those are the people I had mentioned in my previous post, the ones who have that expectation of government support for something that was, as previously mentioned, their choice.

And then who would work at McDonalds in 20 years?

You got me there. I do love my McNuggets!

Anyone is welcome to add to this be it corrected math, facts I missed, etc. All I ask is that all parties keep it civil regardless of whom or what you agree with. If you'd like to read more from Felicia's own blog, you can do so here. Very insightful, and far less rant-filled than The UnParent!