$100 a month per child

[Riverwind]

Parents who can't earn as much as daycare fees are precisely the worst equiped people to raise kids.

Which means the state should not encourage them to have kids by subsidizing daycare. The state wants more educated mothers to have kids so the state should have programs that encourage these mothers to have children - that should include giving them the choice between daycare or staying at home and receiving the same subsidies.

[margrace]

Well I guess I am fortunate in my children but I never had the option of staying home with my older children. When my last child was born I was living in an area with few jobs so I got a part time job. The older ones had all left and were working or going to school on their own buck too.

But I raised my own meat, grew my own vegetables, made all my clothes and was told by a banker that he had never met anyone who could handle money as well as I could

Now my children pay my way to travel to see them, I am in ON. and most of them are in BC. They treat my like royalty. I am very proud of them.

How children turn out is usually the product of their upbringing.

[geoffrey]

Women who sacrifice their own financial security to stay at home with their children are not necessarily doing themselves a favour (actually most of them end up below poverty when their spouses pass away).

I really doubt you have anything but anecdotal evidence to back that up.

[Saturn]

Women who sacrifice their own financial security to stay at home with their children are not necessarily doing themselves a favour (actually most of them end up below poverty when their spouses pass away).

I really doubt you have anything but anecdotal evidence to back that up.

geoffrey, learn how to use a search engine, will ya? Widows in Canada end up with roughly half the income widowers do and are much more reliant on GIS than widowers and married seniors. If it wasn't for Canada's generous social security system for seniors, many of them would be living in cardboard boxes. Given that generous system, poverty among seniors is only about 3% - most of them, you guessed it - widows.

[Wilber]

geoffrey, learn how to use a search engine, will ya? Widows in Canada end up with roughly half the income widowers do and are much more reliant on GIS than widowers and married seniors. If it wasn't for Canada's generous social security system for seniors, many of them would be living in cardboard boxes. Given that generous system, poverty among seniors is only about 3% - most of them, you guessed it - widows.

I'm not sure why that should be and even if it is so, what makes you think all those poverty striken widows are women who stayed home with their kids?

[August1991]

Is having children worthy of destroying a successful career, losing an income while increasing costs, and reducing an individual to the level of a babysitter locked up at home and away from her peers while putting more stress on the other because the financial health of the whole family rests entirely with him?

Your rhetorical question amounts to what is called a false dichotomy. According to your logic, you can have children and be impoverished or avoid children and be successfull and rich. If life were so simple...

Look, I don't cart off my own garbage and my parents didn't teach me calculus. But my parents did give me baths when I was young.

I don't mean that the government should not be involved at all and I hope you don't mean that parents should send their babies to be raised in State-run orphanages.

[Saturn]

geoffrey, learn how to use a search engine, will ya? Widows in Canada end up with roughly half the income widowers do and are much more reliant on GIS than widowers and married seniors. If it wasn't for Canada's generous social security system for seniors, many of them would be living in cardboard boxes. Given that generous system, poverty among seniors is only about 3% - most of them, you guessed it - widows.

I'm not sure why that should be and even if it is so, what makes you think all those poverty striken widows are women who stayed home with their kids?

Because the #1 reason for drop in income after losing a spouse for women is loss of pension income and women without pensions are far more affected by it than those with pensions. For men, losing a spouse causes a much smaller drop in pension income. This reflects the fact that many women who are currently in their 70s, 80s and 90s stayed home.

[Wilber]

Because the #1 reason for drop in income after losing a spouse for women is loss of pension income and women without pensions are far more affected by it than those with pensions. For men, losing a spouse causes a much smaller drop in pension income. This reflects the fact that many women who are currently in their 70s, 80s and 90s stayed home.

Any RRSP funds will still be there if one spouse dies. By law, no benificiary can receive less than 60% of their spouses pension unless they sign it away and even then they cannot receive less than 50%. Most registered pension plans have an option of a 100% survivor benefit but of course the benefit is taken at a reduced level when the pensioner retires. The assumption being that the partner will live longer. That has nothing to do with whether the woman stayed home with the kids.

I really don't see why a persons income should be cut in half when their spouse dies unless it was because of poor planning.

[Saturn]

Any RRSP funds will still be there if one spouse dies. By law, no benificiary can receive less than 60% of their spouses pension unless they sign it away and even then they cannot receive less than 50%. Most registered pension plans have an option of a 100% survivor benefit but of course the benefit is taken at a reduced level when the pensioner retires. The assumption being that the partner will live longer. That has nothing to do with whether the woman stayed home with the kids.

I really don't see why a persons income should be cut in half when their spouse dies unless it was because of poor planning.

It has a lot to do with poor planning but it has even more to do with the fact that poverty levels are based on income relative to living expenses. The loss of a spouse can reduce living expenses by as little as 10-15%. Compared to that a 30-40% loss in income is very significant. This is why widowed women are more 5 times more likely and men are twice as likely to end up below poverty compared to senior couples. Again women who never worked are more affected than women who have their own pensions.

[margrace]

Most women of my age did not work outside the home. Generally there was enough to do at home. Raising children, keeping a garden, raising your own meat is a full time job or was in our area. Most people lived on farms and as the farm incomes dropped so did any way of having a future income.

It is a city thing to assume that anyone had access to a pension. No one I know had and since I worked part time for the municipality they did not think I needed one. My husband worked for a private company that had no pension either. Most small companies don't.

I think there is a very simpalistic and wrong view on here of how a lot of people lived who are of my generation. The generation after me has high wages and good jobs. Although in our area, other than the teachers, most people worked at little above minimum wage and a lot below it because at that time people were so desperate for a job they would not raise a fuss. There was always someone else looking for the little money the job provided.

[August1991]

Well, we've morphed from kids to seniors.

This is why widowed women are more 5 times more likely and men are twice as likely to end up below poverty compared to senior couples. Again women who never worked are more affected than women who have their own pensions.

You provide no link to this claim and I'm not even certain what your claim means. What is "below poverty"?

The single most significant investment of a couple is a house although a private pension plan is often large too. The house stays intact regardless of who dies. As to the pension, it depends on its conditions. A single income couple can easily plan around this.

When it comes to the poor in Canada, I would not start by looking at the elderly.

[Saturn]

When it comes to the poor in Canada, I would not start by looking at the elderly.

No, that's the last place to start looking. Thanks to extensive government transfers and series of tax credits for seniors that keep the low-income seniors above poverty and pad the incomes of seniors who earn more than the average working Canadian. Only OAS/GIS costs us $30B/yr (14% of the federal budget) and growing very quickly. In the meantime, less than 20% of RRSP room is used up - what's the point of saving for retirement when OAS/GIS will be there for you when you retire? But can you guarantee that it will be there 15-20 yrs down the line? I'm at all convinced it will. So stay home, don't earn, even if your husband dies in 30 years the government will ensure you'll have comfortable retirement income.