Young mums reckon having a baby will let them escape a drudery of taking a low paid job. It will give them a home of their own and they can collect generous state benefits and enjoy a better life.

Well, that's what they think. Are they right?

We get a house, it's also fully kitted out for us top to bottom

A "fully kitted out" council house means intact windows - back in the real world, that's the best you're going to get. Turn it down, and you'd better have somewhere else to live, bcos it takes a year to get anywhere else.

and with two kids you can rack in at least 200.00 pounds for yourself after all the bills are paid, it's great.

This sounds like some teenager who's yet to find out how much things cost. £200 a month ain't too bad for providing food and clothing for a mother and two babies. For providing food and clothing for a mother and two school-age kids, it's pretty damn short.

And I'd like to know where the £200 figure came from. If it's from getting a second job whilst also claiming benefits - well, you can get away with it for a bit, but these days it's all computerised and they'll catch up with you eventually, and the result is often jail time.

Researchers spoke to young mums and dads aged 13 to 22 living in Britain and found the vast majority did not regret having a child.

And what were people expecting? That they'd say, "I hate having a child", in the presence of people who are recording what they're saying and could pass the results on to the welfare services? Even then, the basic fact of parenthood is that no matter how horrible their kids are, there's very few parents who regret having them, bcos it's too deeply embedded in the animal fact of parenthood.

Also remember that they're young. There's plenty of people who get the midlife crisis thing of reaching 35-40 and realising that they're working themselves to death for no benefit to themselves. If they're going to, *that's* where these girls are likely to regret it, not when they're 15-20 and it still looks like a big game.

Graham.