‘Tax cuts for mums’ won’t work – who can afford children anyway?

A basic tenet of the sort of British social conservatism that holds the Conservative Party in power is the belief that a person should seek to acquire enough wealth to look after themselves – and that the state shouldn’t do anything to get in the way of that.

For decades, politicians have talked about how families shouldn’t have children that they can’t afford to pay for themselves. In recent years, Conservatives have even used social policy as an attempted “nudge” towards financial independence for large families: an end to universal child benefit for wealthier families – and for the poorer, a punitive two-child limit on household benefit claims.

The British population has absorbed this economically libertarian moralising. They feel in their bones that they shouldn’t bring children into a financially insecure environment; they have heard about the long-term damage wrought upon a child brought up in poverty or instability.