Benefit Frauds

Is nothing sacred any more?

According to the newspaper a women told her young son that he had terminal cancer so that she could claim a bomb load in benefits.  Besides the fraud, it's the total breach of trust between a parent and child that horrifies me.  This is a child who has gone through years of the fear of waiting to die only to find that his mother, the caring parent who has lavished so much care and attention on him, lied through her teeth to him.

In fact, come to think of it, does this sound like a raging case of Munchhausen By Proxy?

It seems to me that over the years the Western World has gradually lost it's reverence for that which is sacred.  Churches have been robbed, graveyards desecrated and the oath upon the Bible has become pretty much meaningless for many.  However, I would have thought that the bond between parent and child would remain sacred even when all else is devalued.  Children are the immortality of the parents, they are the future of their families and their people.  Without the care and nurture of children we would cease to be civilised human beings.

So how come it seems be that in the so called civilised Western World that children are no longer valued?  Parents no longer take the time to earn the respect of their children by making them behave.  Instead they are pushed off to family members or child minders so that both parents can go out to work.  In that light why do people wonder that families are breaking down?

So having a mother who stays at home and does her job of raising her children means that the family might have to stay in a rented home instead of buying their own?  So what?  Is having happy, well balanced children not worth more than owning a house?  Let's put it this way, when my father first left us my mother sat down with me and my sister and  put it to us like this "I can go out to work and we can have our own house or I can stay at home and you will continue to be my career but that means that we will have to stay in rented accommodation.  Which would you rather?"  (Bare in mind that at this time I was eleven and my sister eight years old so we were both old enough to understand the pros and cons of both options, due to the time and effort Mother had put into us because she stayed at home and made us her job.)  Having discussed the value of both possibilities between us, my sister and I said that we would rather stay poor and still have a mum.

How many other children would make the same choice if they were given the chance?  I don't know but I do know one thing - my sister and I went through Hell at school because we had a Mum who loved us unconditionally and the other kids didn't and they knew it.