And women should keep their legs closed. Where have we heard that before?
The bank has a right to get their loan paid back. That money has to come from somewhere. If I don’t have the money to pay it, we can just force someone else to pay, right?
How about the salesman at the dealership? Sure, I made the final decision when I signed the papers, but if not for him, I never would’ve been in a position to make that decision. If he didn’t want to make my payments, he never should’ve tried to sell me that car. He should’ve kept that brochure in his pants.
you with the face and MaddyStrut seem to care, because they’re saying the discrimination is biological, not legal.
Well, if someone else was co-signer of the loan, absolutely. If you and your wife both sign a mortage, you’re both on the hook. Your legal obligations are your legal obligations, and when a child is born, both parents have a legal obligation to support it.
Who cares?
It’s very simple; **children have a right to support from their parents. ** You seem very bitter about your car payments, but it’s a stupid comparison. Children have rights, and support responsibilities stem from those rights.
Sorry I couldn’t get back to you earlier. This is why I rarely post in GD: I can’t get on the boards often enough to repond to replies. Anyway…
No one should be forced to be a parent against their will, but these people are parents once a child is born.
Society helps out when those reponsible for the child can’t. I have no problem with that. I do have a problem supporting the child of someone who just doesn’t want to. We obviously disagree, but I find it difficult to approve of hard working individuals and families supporting, for example, the child of a rich guy who knocked up a waitress and doesn’t want to pay child support.
Secondary to what? To trying to fix the inherent inequalities of biology (more on that later)? I probably phrased it badly earlier, but those were just examples of the complications that could arise. As I mentioned before, these people are parents. They can’t pretend not to be, and all the legal maneuvering in the world won’t change that. The fact that they are parents means that some twists, complications, and unforeseen circumstances will arise. I don’t care so much about tricky laws. I care more about the fact that one parent opting out may hurt the child.
You’re right that biology doesn’t force anyone to pay anything, but I don’t think that’s what people are saying. It’s certainly not what I’m saying.
Biology dictates that men have one chance to avoid being a parent: at the point they have sex with the woman. The woman gets one more chance should she become pregnant. That’s the unfairness–men get one chance while women get two.
Once a child is born, the child’s rights trump those of either parent. That’s when the law comes in and forces those responsible for a child to pay for that child. That’s in the child’s interest–not that of the parents. The child’s interest comes first, and that’s how it should be.
My interest in this topic is that I want children to be taken care of in the best way possible. Allowing one parent to opt out of their obligations can only hurt the child, and I think the child’s needs are more important.
Indeed: a mortgage is a contract that you sign agreeing to make payments. If a man agrees to support a child, then certainly he should be held to that.
Again, I see no reason to believe they have a right to support from those specific people. What’s wrong with letting someone else provide it?
I think that’s more acceptable than a hard working guy having to support the child of a woman who thinks her own desire for children is more important than anything else. He has to bear that burden on his own, but if the burden were spread out over thousands of taxpayers, the cost for each person would be pretty small.
As far as I’m concerned, if the woman knows that the man doesn’t want a child, and she still decides to have one anyway, she’s the only one responsible for it. She’s making that choice on her own.
I don’t think it necessarily will hurt the child. There is an alternative way for the child’s needs to be met. Furthermore, if women knew that they wouldn’t be able to force anyone else to pay for the children they choose to have, it’s reasonable to expect that they’d make the unilateral choice to have children less often, and therefore there would be fewer children whose parents want to opt out in the first place.
You are implicitly agreeing to support a child, if one is indeed born as a result of tyhe sex you have, once you have sex.
There’s nothing wrong with that if parental rights are voluntarily transferred. If, for example, Parent A wants to put their kid up for adoption and Parent B agrees to adopt the kid, then so be it. The biological parents have at least discharged their responsibility by finding someone else willing to accept it.
Abandonment, however, is quite a different matter.
But the mother is also responsible - well, assuming she doesn’t die or something - so no, he does not “have to bear the burden on his own.”
As to what the mother’s desires allegedly are, that’s irrelevant. The child has a right to its parents’ support. What you claim some woman did or didn’t want is not relevant.
Legal child abandonment = a massive increase in child abandonment.
The hell it would. Because you’d have thousands upon thousand of scumbags dumping their kids off on the state - thousands and thousands more than now, anyway - and the taxpayer would be doubly fucked, once by having thousands of children to suppoort and twice because there’d be additional social ills to pay for.
I mean, Christ, man, think of what you’re saying. Gosh, it’s so easy for the taxpayer to pay for one kid. Well, why shouldn’t the taxpayer also pay for me to sit on my ass and not work? In fact, they should pay me $300,000 a year so I can live the sweet life. Divided by 32,000,000 people in my country that’s a mere cent per person. I mean, no chance the Sit On Your Ass For $100,000 program might balloon to have about, oh, 32,000,000 applicants, is there?
She cannot make that choice on behalf of another person. The CHILD has the right to parental support. The mother’s decision does not unilaterally revoke the child’s right to its father’s support.
That’s rich. “If I don’t do it, the government will!” Yeah, I guess that’s an alternative, in the sense that “alternative” means “a different way of doing something” And an alternative to driving with your eyes open is to drive with your eyes closed. Alternatives aren’t always equally merited.
That is entirely possible. However, it would still result in some children being abandoned by their fathers (and indeed, if some folks in this thread get their way, possibly their mothers) which is wholly unacceptable.
Parents who won’t support their kids are filth, the absolute scum of the universe. They’re worse than bank robbers. The government doesn’t pursue them nearly hard enough or punish them half as hard as they deserve. You’re suggesting legalizing means by which it will be easier for parents to abandon kids. It’s a social disaster waiting to happen.
Don’t want kids? Keep it in your pants… or keep your legs closed. Wanna get laid? Accept the possibility you’ll be a parent. That’s life and life can be tough.
well…children definitely have a right to food, an education, and health.
Where it gets rotten, is when children have all these things, plus all the toys and fun they need, and ON TOP OF ALL THAT, they get support payments, effectively giving them a financial surplus…which by and large ends up benefitting the custodial parent more than the child. If Puff daddy happens to make 100,000 per month by doing his trade, it should be HIS CHOICE to pay his kid 20,000 a month in support. Were I a mega billionaire, I would purposefully NOT give my children great gobs of cash, because that never does them any good.
Granted this isnt necessarily the case in all situations, but IMHO spending more than 500-1000 per month in TOTAL to support a child should not be a legal requirement. You can say kids need all that plastic crap and bling that all their friends have, but, in truth, they dont, and if you feel they do , thats your business, not the governments.
In addition to what RickJay said, that someone else may not be as good. I’ve had the good fortune never to be in a family relying on public assistance, but my impression is it’s not all that great. Certainly a child can do better, and the parents have a responsiblity to provide that.
RickJay, do you really believe that the only reason men are responsible parents is because we legally force them to? That’s the most horrible, misandrist thing I’ve seen in this thread, and that includes some choice words by me about the biofather of my kid.
I’m really surprised to be the non-cynical one in the thread. I think that, while there are always some deadbeats, the number of good fathers vastly outnumbers them, and isn’t so likely to change. Most men are honest, good, hardworking loving dads who would support their kids even if the courts never said a word about it. Most of the ones who are assholes are deadbeats already - why would they be more deadbeatish under another system?
I do suspect that the number of abortions might rise, but frankly, I don’t care. I think abortion can be a responsible response to an unwanted pregnancy.
Everything you write is about social construct and legal status, including your definition of “parent” as the two people genetically related to the child. It can all be changed, and has been different in different places and times in history.
mrrealtime, I’ve said it before in child support threads - the custodial parent should be keeping receipts and any extra money not spent directly on child care (percent of housing, food, clothing, school supplies, medical costs, etc. we can work in a line for “bling”, I suppose) should be put in a trust acount for the child and not touched by either parent.
No, and it’s preposterous of you to suggest I said that. For one thing, I didn’t say that, so save your venom. For another I’m a father, and a happy one at that. So why would I think that?
But there are millions and millions of people out there. What I ACTUALLY WROTE, as opposed to what you inexplicably think I wrote, was:
“Thousand” is less than “million.” If you think I said all fathers have to be legally forced to be fathers, you were reading something else and mistook it for my post. If you DON’T think at least a few thousand dirtbags would not take advantage of these laws, you need to spend more time in your local family court to see what they try to get away with now.
No, not really. No more than the Lexus salesman is implicitly agreeing to make my car payments once he convinces me to buy it.
Fair enough; he has to bear half of it on his own.
If the child has a right to be supported by any specific people, that only applies to people who made the choice to bring it into this world.
You keep saying children have a right to be supported. Are you now arguing that adults have a right to be supported too?
Correct, and no one else can make it on her behalf. She’s the one who chose to have a kid. If she wants a child, she can pay for it on her own, just like if I want a car, I can pay for the car on my own.
You’re presuming that there is such a right. That is the very subject of this debate.
Not always, but in this case, they are.
Possibly? Mothers already do have that option in much of the country, via “safe haven” laws.
And also harder for parents to choose to have kids that will end up being abandoned.
That’s not life, it’s just the law, and the law can be changed.
True. However, that someone else may be better. You can’t really generalize. Would you rather have been raised by a biological parent who resents your very existence, or a volunteer who doesn’t share any of your DNA but loves kids?
Parents who chose to have the child have that responsibility, sure.
Which would be the mother and the father, unless you’re presenting an example in which the father was raped or his sperm was stolen from him in some way, such as from a fertility clinic or some such thing.
I’m sure you’re kidding. Do you also think Johnathan Swift really advocated eating babies?
If a woman can somehow conceive a child without benefit of having sex with a man, such as through some sort of immaculate conception or internal mitosis, then that would certainly be the case.
However, in normal, human terms, a man is involved. He chose to have sex, so it’s his responsibility. That’s all there is to it. Suck it up, buttercup.
There is such a right, in pretty much every civilized nation on earth. That’s why we have legal structures to mandate support payments. Unless you’re denying that child support payments do in fact take place, what the hell’s your counterargument?
As to whether or not there SHOULD be such a right, I would suggest that at some point we do have to come to agreement on what the purpose of having civilized nations with decent laws are. If you want to start arguing over fundamental rights, why should you even have the right to live? Why should I not be allowed to kill you, or anyone else? Why should people have any rights at all? Where do they derive from?
We establish the right to live in our laws because it’s necessary for society to function; without respect for human life we’d be surrounded with brutality. The right of a child to be supported by its parents is a critical right because if it doesn’t exist there will be a much greater number of children who do not have parental support and are deprived of the necessities of life and/or the family support central to becoming a healthy and productive member of society.
Becoming a parent is wholly voluntary - if you don’t want to run the risk of becoming a father, keep your cock in your pants. If you want to take a risk but reduce it to the minimum, use condoms and choose your partners wisely. If it happens anyway, you have a responsibility as a man to take care of your kid. (It works for mothers too but that’s not the OP’s subject of choice.) On the one in a zillion case that a father’s sperm is stolen from him I’d agree he has a civil case there somewhere, but come on, how often does that happen?
As has already been pointed out, you are misrepresenting the scope and purpose of such laws.
I suppose we could also change the law that makes it illegal for me to break into your house and steal your belongings, but that would be stupid, too.
It’s the law. It’s also what’s moral and right. Be a man, for Christ’s sake.
No, it’d just be the mother. The unwilling father doesn’t make the final choice.
You might argue that the pregnancy couldn’t have happened without his choice to have sex, but then you’d also have to admit that it couldn’t have happened without his parents’ choice to have sex decades earlier, or the radio DJ’s choice to play Barry White at the right moment, etc., and then you’d have to explain why those people aren’t responsible too.
You wrote “Well, why shouldn’t the taxpayer also pay for me to sit on my ass and not work?” The reason is that you don’t have the right to be supported. That analogy makes no sense unless you’re somehow claiming you have as much right to financial support as a child does.
Uh huh. Just like when you buy a car, a salesman is involved. There can be no sale without a salesman, and he chose to sell you the car, so it’s his responsibility to make your payments. If he doesn’t want to do that, he shouldn’t have sold you the car in the first place. He can just suck that up, right?
I’m not convinced that support from an unwilling parent is any better than support from someone else.
Wrong. When someone else has the power to decide whether or not you’ll become a parent, it isn’t voluntary.
You might as well say getting run over by a drunk driver is “voluntary”, because you can’t get run over if you just stay away from streets and sidewalks. You’re completely ignoring the fact that someone else has a greater say than you do, and at a later point in the process. The drunk driver’s choice directly causes you to get run over; the woman’s choice directly causes you to become a parent. Anything before that is of secondary importance.
One person being able to force an 18 year obligation on someone else is neither moral nor right. You’re not a man if that happens to you, you’re just an unfortunate sucker.
Wow, that’s almost as practical and sensible as my plan to stop pedestrians from being killed by drunk drivers. In fact, if we can just get everyone to stop leaving their homes so they aren’t “voluntarily” run over, the sex thing will probably take care of itself.
I don’t agree - not in this case anyway. Where abortion is legal and the woman decides to have the child despite the wishes of the father, then she should not look to the father for support. Her decision, her responsibility, her cost. Equally, should the father want her to carry the child to term when she wants an abortion, she should have the option of doing so instead of an abortion, but the father should then bear the entire cost of bringing up the child.
The olnly unwilling party is the child. Again, unless the man is raped, he chose to have sex.
Get over this “unwilling” crap.
I was illustrating the stupidity of your idea that the government can just willy-nilly support every kid a deadbeat abandons without consequence to the taxpayer.
Irrelevant. Cars are not humans, they do not have rights. Your car analogy is stupid.
“Better” in what sense? It’s certainly better in the sense that the person responsible for the child’s existence is the one paying, as opposed to someone who is not. Why should I have to pay for your responsibilities? Be a man.
Once again; if you choose to have sex, that’s a voluntary choice. Tough shit. There’s nothing involuntary about it.
You had less choice in deciding to have sex than the woman does? How stupid. Do men not have free will? Are men incapable of controlling themswelves?
That’s just the sort of language losers and deadbeats use to run out on their debts and their obligations. “Sucker” is what a broke loser calls people with money and responsibilities.
Choosing to have sex is not the same as choosing to become a parent. Similarly: choosing to ski is not choosing to break your leg, choosing to cross the street is not choosing to get run over by a drunk, etc.
Oh, then it’s a good thing I didn’t say there’d be no consequence to the taxpayer, huh? That’s your idea, not mine.
The analogy isn’t about the car’s rights (although the bank, which is the recipient of the monthly payments, does have rights). It’s about causality and responsibility for decisions. Either people whose choices indirectly led to the final outcome–like the car salesman, the father, the father’s parents, and the DJ who played Barry White during the conception–are responsible for that outcome, or they aren’t.
And once again, choosing to have sex is not choosing to have a child. Having a child is one potential outcome that may happen, depending on someone else’s actions as well as various biological factors.
Less choice in deciding to have a child. You know that.
And “be a man, suck it up” is what assholes say when they’re demonstrating their lack of respect for other people’s rights.
As I see it, we aren’t talking about dumping kids on the state. As far as I can tell there’s four situations: both want, neither want, only dad wants, and only mom wants. The proposed solution is when only mom wants the kid, then mom raises the kid without support. Any other case maintains the status quo of either abortion or both parents supporting the child.
I don’t support such a proposal because it puts a lot of pressure and an undue burden on pro life women. I’m pro choice, but only because it’s a choice. I think of it as a complex moral decision that is best left to the individual. Using it as a justification to let the father off the hook treats abortion as less of a choice and more of an assumption. I don’t think the government should treat abortion as if it were wrong, but I also don’t think it should assume it is right either. If the government starts treating abortion like it’s a valid play in all women’s playbooks, I beleive it is unfair to pro life women, and hurts the pro choice cause.
Well, I think the concern is, what happens when only mom wants a kid, but she doesn’t have the money to raise it on her own? The status quo is that she goes on welfare if there’s no father to bill.
I’ll admit that I don’t see it as a very complex moral decision, although I realize other people do. However, anyone who’s uncomfortable with abortion still has another choice: adoption. If you can’t afford to raise a child, give it up to someone who can. That might also be hard to do, but you have to do something.
Besides which, it is important to be consistent within your frameworks. If it logically follows that if abortion is legal, then women have to take the responsibility, pro-choicers should follow that reasoning. Political expediency, while important in implementation, should not influence what is right.
No, but they’re all foreseeable consequences. The inevitable argument (and trust me, it’s inevitable, I hear it at least once a week) that an imposition of child support on one party or another is fair or unfair in varying degrees is missing a fundamental point about the purpose of child support, namely, that it’s child support, not parent punishment. To put it bluntly, the state doesn’t care about fairness, because it’s not assigning culpability for the birth of the child. A judge doesn’t say “Man used condom, but woman didn’t use spermicidal lubricant, so let’s go 35% and 65%, that sounds fair…uh oh, woman lied and said she’s had complete hysterectomy! We’ll say 95% and 5%, because he should have noticed she didn’t have a scar. That’s fair.” It doesn’t work that way. It may be true that the mother has more say as to whether the child is brought to term, but once the child is born the state doesn’t much care how it got there.
Let’s say the mother completely lies to the father and says not only has she had her tubes tied and gone through menopause, but she has no uterus and used to be a man. She gives the father a condom which she has secretly perforated. The pregnancy is a much her “fault” as it can be. The judge he tells this sad story to will sympathize, but will assign the same rights and duties to him he would to a father who wanted a child. He may not have had as much of a say in whether the child was born than the mother did, but the child had no say at all. Since the child is the most vulnerable and helpless of the three, the law favors what is in the best interest of the child over equity to the parents. It will try to do what is fair for the parents, but the best interest of the child is paramount in the eyes of the law.
Moreover, there are more than these three to consider, there is everyone else, meaning you and me. What is not paid for by the parents is paid for by the state or by charity, meaning the rest of us would have to pay for a child we didn’t have a hand in conceiving. We have to put food in the mouths of a lot of children whose mothers and fathers can’t or won’t.
You may say “Well, why should should we feed anyone at all? Other people shouldn’t have to be concerned with it”, but that’s not a viable option. One, it’s just not going to happen. Society doesn’t like having starving people in its midst, and will always provide some measure of relief if possible. Secondly, even if it didn’t provide the relief, extreme poverty and starvation is more of a societal and economic drain than helping would be. Imposing a duty of support on the biological parents is the most equitable solution to all parties concerned.
And that’s worth repeating: the duty of support lies on both parents. If a father’s child support is not being used properly (say, going to the mom’s cocaine habit instead of formula), he can sue to take custody of the child by arguing that it would be in the child’s best interest and get her to pay him child support. If the state takes the child away and put it in a foster home, it can get child support from both parents.
