Many working parents will need to place their child in childcare for the majority of the working week, with childcare fees reaching almost £1000 a month. This can leave a resentment towards parents on benefits who don’t work and get more help towards childcare costs – but not everyone can work.

During the facebook rant, the parents stated “on top of this we have to pay for breakfast club so we can drop our daughter off to school early so we can go to work, we pay for milk for her break and then if we want her to have school dinners we have to pay again.”

“All while the folk sitting at home pay for none of this and get it all for free, so we usually send our daughter with a packed lunch (I can guarantee at lunch time most kids with working parents will have a packed lunch as we simply cant afford to pay for school dinners on top of everything else).

He continued “if we had another child i would have to give up my job as its simply outrageous the amount we have to pay.”

The dad claimed to understand that some parents are unable to work and he admitted that the rant was in no way aimed at those parents, but in fact the ones who choose not to work and still claim free childcare whilst staying at home.

Under the current Nursery Education Funding system, all children in England aged 3-4 years old are entitled to 570 hours of free early education per year, which usually amounts to 15 hours per week, 38 weeks of the year. However children whose parents are in receipt of income support or jobseekers’ allowance are entitled to free childcare from the age of two.

The facebook post sparked a huge debate in the comments section, with parents arguing for both sides. Many parents claimed they were on his side, in the same situation spending hundreds on childcare every month and struggling to afford fees.

One parent wrote “well said i hope someone reads this and acts on it for it is a disgrace us working parents have to pay so much money and get nothing back basically we are paying for the lazy ones to sit on the dole more attention for working parents and disability and healthy services would be great but will it happen?”

On the other side of the debate, another parent added “ever thought that not every benefit parent can actually work for one reason or another?”

“It could be something that has happened to them since giving birth to their child, accident, illness, something worse.

The facebook post has been shared over and over across the social media site with hundreds of parents either agreeing with the dad or arguing against him.

You can read the whole post on the Facebook event page.