Being paid for having a baby
I’ve spent the afternoon today with my two nephews. They are gorgeous - J and C. J is 18 months old I think, and C is just less than 4 weeks and gorgeous as a button. J has trisomy and has such a gorgeous personality that I usually forget he’s not the normal template of a growing boy. I love them both dearly, even as I’m sitting here smelling of breast milk. C had the hiccups for a while today while his mum (my boyf’s sister) was collecting the washing outside and it was hysterically gorgeously funny!!! And yet slightly distressing to not be able to get him to hold his breath or drink from a cup to fix them!
So there are babies in my life and it got me thinking about the baby bonus. It’s currently $4k for having a baby and some changes have been announced today about the bonus.
Not changes made to encourage more women to have births out of hospital. Not to give babies a head start with the best care money could buy. Not to allow fathers to take more time off work. Not to give the family a little start on a savings bond for the bub’s future. But to assuage community concern that teenagers have having children because they want the money.
An opinion piece from when the baby bonus started caught my eye the other day as well. I remember going to a party in 2004 where a 10 day old baby attended, and he had just missed the bonus cut off. His parents were furious and had signed a petition about the whole thing. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing - instead of being delighted with the new baby, they were bemoaning the $3k they missed out on because they wanted to redo the bathroom.
If you choose to have your baby through the public system and only stay in a public room, in theory the birth will cost you $5 (for the tv in your room). But having a baby is not an illness. For the majority of women, it does not require obstetric supervision, or a c-section, or anything like that. It can be done alone, or may require a midwife and a support person, and perhaps some equipment like a pool to labour/birth in. These costs however are not covered by the system nor by health insurance. So if you choose to take this track, and have what I think is a safer less medicalised birth, you’ll probably need the baby bonus to pay for the "honour". So the baby bonus is a moot point. Will the baby bonus encourage people to minimise the cost of the birth? I doubt it. I don’t think any parents-to-be would consider the whole process in those terms… for the first one. Perhaps for the second one they might though 
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All this announcement does is side step the politically incorrect statement that teenagers get pregnant to get welfare. If they are indeed getting pregnant to get a new tv or buy a games console, having installments paid to them will be better, because most places selling these things sell them that way anyway. And Isn’t a regular income for several months better than a lump sum anyway?
