The two-child limit punishes families

In this blog, I will share my view, as a parent who volunteers with others struggling to get by on a low income, discussing how the refusal of the government to reverse the two child limit is doing more harm than good towards the parents they are aimlessly punishing.

If I was able to re-imagine being a kid in a summer with fairly consistent weather in Britain like this year in 2024, my reflection would be quite joyful. Particularly, with 3 sporting events consequently; the Football Euros competition, tennis at Wimbledon and the World Olympics Championships in Paris, there was enough to inspire greatness in what one can become as one gets older.

In reality, for those children who through no fault of their own, or their parents, are in a household more than two siblings, the outside world’s celebrations, would have very little significance to cheer on, while helplessly having to watch your parents get by and worrying where the next money for a meal to put on the table is going to come from.

The two-child limit was implemented under the Conservative government when David Cameron was Prime Minister. To fully understand this policy, we need to consider the societal circumstances at the time of its introduction.

Coincidentally, this was the same year my first child was born and although it had been decided in 2015 and only came into force in 2017, as a parent who watches the news, I was none the wiser of this very restriction until during the pandemic, when I had my second child. I read the terms and conditions of child benefit for my second and last pregnancy, which I experienced during the pandemic, when I couldn't access any clothing shops because they were closed to enforce social distancing.

So why does the two child limit need to be scrapped?

Child poverty is rising and the new Labour government acknowledge that there needs to be Child Poverty Taskforce to investigate what can be done to reverse this problematic cycle.

In my experience, after volunteering in a summer holiday club for school children, it has been both a humbling and heartbreaking moment where kids have discussed amongst themselves, revealing how their teachers use their own money to buy art supplies for their lessons or guessing how much the other peer’s teacher is in debt.

Just as the idea for the sister project 'Covid Realities' was influenced by the start of Changing Realities, and similar to Marcus Rashford's 2022 summer campaign for 'Free School Meals' in the fight against socioeconomic inequality, we cannot delay reversing the 'two-child benefit cap'.

The newly elected Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s worst fear may have come to light last week on Tuesday 27th August, with a £20 billion ‘missing’ deficit which he cannot explain where it could have gone, from the previous government administration. But unlike his statement that it has to rain sometimes, as parents, we are looking for him to make right of the rose garden of promises that he made pre-election, about addressing the state child poverty first which he had agreed at the time was beyond an unimaginable number and out of control.

We need this government to act now as what is becoming more months of worry than money for us to take care of our children, let alone ourselves.