How welfare has managed to take 'work' out of working class

Sandra Parsons 

Daily Mail
8:41 AM on 30th June 2010

Generous benefits: Frank Field, poverty adviser to David Cameron, says many men are better off staying out of work. 

What has happened to a significant number of Britain's working-class men? Well, as Frank Field, the Labour MP who has been made a poverty adviser by David Cameron, has pointed out, for too many of them, the adjective 'working' no longer applies. 

Thanks to a generous welfare system, many of them have calculated that they are better off staying at home than they would be doing anything so proletarian as a hard day's work. 

According to Field, many young men today feel that jobs paying less than $300 a week are not worth their while. 

I know it's unfashionable to say it, but anyone can find work if they really want to. When we were first married, my husband, as a non-EU doctor, was not allowed to practise until he had passed exams proving both his English and his medical competency. 

I was working full-time, so he could have stayed at home. Instead, he found a job as a cook in a wine bar. He had no experience, but reasoned that anyone could grill a burger and throw together a salad. Soon, he was working double shifts and earning more than he subsequently did in his first year as a junior doctor. 

But instead of finding whatever work they can, too many of Britain's poorest young men choose to stay at home, easily able to afford the satellite television and cans of strong beer that all too often fuel their day. 

Unsurprisingly, they feel useless and frustrated - emotions that too many are unable to analyse, but which explode into aggression, violence and crime, together with a terrifyingly feckless attitude to procreating with different women. 

I say procreating because their loveless actions have nothing to do with fathering. For any child, the lack of a strong, responsible father figure is a tragedy. 

Despite what our politicians think, most single mothers do not want to go out to work, at least until their children are older. 

What they, and their children, want is a man to fulfil a role that used to be taken for granted and which these days seems almost quaint: that of provider. 

If a young boy does not see his father getting up and going to work every day, why should he go to school - still less aspire to a job afterwards? 

And why should he treat women with respect if that role model doesn't? Thus our disastrous welfare system creates a cycle of dependency. 

Yesterday the Government announced its new Work Programme, under which millions on benefits will be forced to make daily efforts to find a job - and those who refuse will have their benefits curtailed. 

The inspiration for this reform has come from the U.S., where it's claimed similar welfare reforms introduced by Bill Clinton saw dole queues fall by as much as 80 per cent in some states. 

And what happens when a man goes out to work is this: he starts to believe in himself and find some self-respect. And then he finds those around him start to believe in him and respect him, too. 

'Why can't a woman be more like a man?' asked Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady as he tried to transform recalcitrant <snip>ney Eliza Doolittle into a lady. 

The question Professor Higgins might ask these days of a boozed-up man with several children by different mothers is: 'Why can't a man be more like a man?'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1290752/How-welfare-managed-work-working-class.html#ixzz0sKhwHdZl