Bringing up baby in a recession

With Ireland's birth rate the highest in Europe, four mothers trying to balance a larger family on ever tightening purse strings talk to Sheila Waymanin the second part of our series

IF YOU were to think about how much children were going to cost, you would never have them, says Ellen Doolan (31), who is expecting her second baby in November.

She and her husband, Neilus (30), are “just about managing” as it is with their daughter Aoife, who will be three next month. “We can pay our mortgage, we can pay our bills and we can put food in the fridge, but after that we have nothing.” But, she says, “once you have one [child] you couldn’t leave her on her own, it would not be fair”.

Doolan, a hotel receptionist in Waterford, had to change jobs so she could reduce her hours after Aoife’s birth. “You could not do full-time shift work with a child.” Neilus is a bar manager with long hours.

She usually works the two days he is off and then her father minds Aoife on the third day. “My mother works full-time – she went back to work just when I needed her,” she says with a laugh. “My dad does not follow any of my rules but his granddaughter adores him; there is a lot of fun.”

However, Doolan says they are “not going to be foisting a six-month-old baby on him” so she and Neilus might try to stagger their shifts. “I still have to wonder about the sense of having another child because the income is not going to go up. It is always on your mind; you are thinking if they put up just one more bill, or the interest rates go up, or they add on any more things in the Budget, we’re in deep trouble.”

Families everywhere will identify with that feeling of walking a budgetary tightrope. It may be a precarious time to decide to start or expand a family, but last year’s birth rate in Ireland was the highest recorded since 1896. The decision in last year’s Budget not to make the double social welfare payment at Christmas affected families badly, says Barnardos, the children’s charity. It also generated business for moneylenders.

“Around Christmas time and around back-to-school time, families are getting involved with moneylenders in a way that has not been prevalent for a few years,” says Norah Gibbons, director of advocacy and central services.

The kind of decisions the Government is currently making, with cuts to social welfare, health and education services instead of, say higher taxes, disproportionately affects the poor, she argues, whether they are on welfare or the working poor. The percentage of children living in consistent poverty went down during the economic boom but there are indications the trend is being reversed. “We see the unofficial rise of it but we can’t prove it until the figures come out,” adds Gibbons.

The Society of St Vincent de Paul has seen a big jump in the number of calls for assistance. In the first five months of this year, requests for help in Cork were up 53 per cent, in Galway city they were up 46 per cent and the Dublin region recorded an increase of 37 per cent.

Calls to the listening service Parentline also keep going up, says its manager Rita O’Reilly. “There is definitely stress out there as a result of the recession.” By the end of August, calls specifying financial problems were up 13 per cent on the whole of last year.

The Doolans had an unwelcome drop in income when Ellen had to go onto illness benefit last month, due to pregnancy-induced high blood pressure.

“It means the stuff we wanted to get for the new baby . . . we will just have to make do with what we have.”

She worries about how they are going to pay for Christmas. “I have started in a savings club in a department store and am putting money away in a money box at home for grocery shopping.”

Doolan still believes she and Neilus will be able to give their children a decent life: “At least there is some chance with just the two of them. We are definitely stopping at two – unless we win the Lotto, then we’ll have loads of children.”

CASE STUDY

‘I am going through the presses . . . There are no tins. Storage I had for back-up has gone; we literally have nothing now’

ALMOST THREE weeks out of four, Catherine and Robert have to borrow money – “usually from my poor mother and it is usually for food for the kids”.

They have four children, ranging in age from 15 to two years old, with a fifth on the way. Robert, a truck driver, was let go three years ago and has been unable to find work since. Catherine left her job as a restaurant manager in 2003 to stay at home.

Do the children ever go hungry? “On Wednesday, the day before the social welfare payment comes in, they might,” she says.

“I am going through the presses . . . There are no tins. Storage I had for back-up has gone; we literally have nothing now. We have gone through all our savings – we don’t have what we can’t borrow.”

Catherine hates asking her mother, who is working part-time and gives them what she can. “My brother still lives at home; he is working but mam has agreed not to take any money from him for a year because he is saving to move out. My granny lives with her, too.”

Their children are going to grow up hating pasta and rice, she says. “It is the only thing we can afford. I did not get meat this week; I got potatoes, pasta, bread, milk, cereal – that is what my shopping is usually, just the basics. I make as much bread as I can but I can’t do sandwiches with it so I get sliced pans too.”

She avails of Aldi special offers for fruit and vegetables, or buys them discounted in Tesco when they have reached their sell-by-date.

This summer Catherine and Robert left west Dublin to start a new life in Co Clare, under the Rural Resettlement Ireland programme. “We made the move purely for the kids because of where we were living,” says Catherine. “It was a bad area and it was not fair on the kids. They were not able to go out and play, and be kids basically.”

Although they received moving expenses, their fuel budget took a “huge hit” because they had to do so many trips up and down. “It was tight before then and now we are trying to get back on track.” They arrived too late in the year to grow fruit and vegetables beside their new home but they plan to do that next year, to help with the food bills.

All she has bought for the baby, who is due later this month, is one bag of nappies. She is hoping her mother is going to be able to fund a set of reusable nappies. “It will be cheaper and I won’t have to worry about money for nappies every week.”

After child number four they had decided their family was complete and Catherine gave away the cot and the buggy. She packaged up the baby clothes for another pregnant woman who, luckily, never collected them.

This pregnancy, she says, “was a bit of a shock but we are happy now. It will be a little boy for our youngest son to play with.”

CASE STUDY

‘We are watching the pennies now. Five or six years ago we were all grand and happy and did not have to think about these things’

A FAMILY OF four children was always Fiona’s ideal and she achieved that three months ago with the arrival of a baby girl.

“Now that I have four, four does seem a lot!” she says. Her last pregnancy was a bit of a surprise and it came at a time when she and her husband Brian were “absolutely crucified” by two mortgages. “If we had thought about having another child, maybe we would have decided not to, but things happen.”

They moved house in Co Wexford four years ago – just at the wrong time, as it turned out – and have not been able to sell their former home. “We are watching the pennies now. Five or six years ago we were all grand and happy and did not have to think about these things.”

Fiona knows they are lucky Brian has a job, in the pharmaceutical industry. She worked full-time herself until 2006 and then did part-time work but that was hit by the recession. Now she is looking after the children, aged six years to three months, full-time. “Once you go beyond the two kids, you are working to pay for the childcare.”

She reckons they should be okay when the property market gets going again and they are able to sell their former home. “Obviously we are never going to sell it for as much as we thought we would, so we are going to end up with a much bigger mortgage on this house than we had planned.”

Meanwhile, she tries not to fret. “I am a bury-my-head in the sand type while my husband worries all the time about getting the money together to pay the bills. He thinks I don’t take it seriously but I just worry in a different way.”

She acknowledges the situation is partly of their making. “We took a chance and things did not pan out due to circumstances beyond our control. There is nothing you can do – hindsight and all that.” However, she is annoyed at the way they are being treated by the banks, which have themselves been bailed out at huge cost to the taxpayer.

“We are obviously juggling everything with the mortgages and the banks are just messing us around. We are doing our best to manage the situation.”

CASE STUDY

‘We never considered money when we were planning our family . . we never thought that we would have money worries. No way could we afford childcare’

MÁIRE NEVER thought she would have to even consider going back to her job in the public service after the birth of her fifth child later this year.

“Now it looks like returning full-time is the only option we have,” she says. Her husband, an accountant, is part-owner of a business in Cork which is not doing well and they have various properties which have plummeted in value.

“We need the security, such that there is, of my job,” Máire says.

They are managing at the moment with the help of Máire’s mother-in-law, who comes to their house to mind the children, who range in age from eight years to 20 months. “No way could we afford childcare.”

It was not always like this. “We never considered money when we were planning our family. We have had periods of great prosperity. When my husband bought into his current business and things were going great we never thought that we would have money worries,” she says.

“We have short-term finances under control and are aiming for long-term security, which is much harder to see at the moment,” according to Máire.

“I never really wanted children at all, if you can believe that,” she says, “but my husband did. I would have been happy with the first two, but he wanted more and we agreed to have more. We’re definitely finished now with number five.”

It is difficult being a full-time working mother with so many children, she adds. “I am constantly torn in two, never feeling either role is fulfilled adequately, but we do our best and I don’t think our children miss out on anything except our time.”

Some names have been changed