Child Support and the "male abortion"

Great Debates
1

A spinoff of the other active abortion-related thread, though mine has more to do with the function of child support.

To summarize the slightly off-topic issue from the other thread: If a woman finds herself pregnant and wishes to eliminate her financially demanding and time-consuming role as a future parent, she has an option. Abortion. Putting aside whether it’s right or wrong, she has the option. A man has no option. If the woman chooses to have the child, the man has to pay for it either as a married partner or a child-support checkbook. Couldn’t we have a “male abortion” in which the father abdicates all rights and privileges of fatherhood and is absolved from child support payments?

The hang-up seems to be the “interests of the child” factor. This is where the real nature of child support needs discussion.

Child support is not designed simply to provide for the needs of the child. It is designed to give the child the upbringing he would have had if the parents had been married. My good friend Mike works as a child support enforcement officer for the DFS here in Missouri, he’s explained the system and formula.

Suppose the mother makes $50,000 per year and the father makes $100,000 per year. The formula presumes a household income of $150,000 had they been married. It takes a certain percentage of that income and supposes that it would have gone to supporting the child. This percentage is flat, supposing that the same percentage of income would be used to support the child in a household of $30,000 income as in a household of $150,000 income. So in this example, a number would be calculated as a percent of the $150,000. Since the father makes 2/3 of this hypothetical household’s income, he would pay for 2/3 of the total yearly amount calculated. This payment is child support, enforced by the state.

When the income figures go high enough, they clearly go beyond what it actually takes to support a child. Children are in fact supported all the time on single-parent incomes of $30,000 and lower when the biological father/mother is deceased, AWOL, or unemployed. Yeah, they have to shop for the kid’s clothes at K-Mart instead of Dillard’s and maybe he/she is going to community college instead of the state university. Point is, supporting a child can be done far less expensively, and still be more than adequate. The custodial parent could easily take the payments and support the child with extra money to spare.

So a system allowing fathers to opt out of child support doesn’t really require the state to then support these children. Anecdotally we all know the stories about children for whom it would be disastrous if child support wasn’t coming, but there are many cases in which the custodial parent could adequately support the child with ease.

Why not allow the “male abortion” in such cases? If the woman is a successful attorney with a six-figure salary, and could easily support the child, is there really any harm in allowing the father to opt out of his obligations and privileges of fatherhood? At this point of the scale, we are no longer talking about putting food on the table. We’re talking about whether or not the kid gets a Camaro on his 16th birthday.

To summarize, it seems unfair that women can eliminate their financial responsibility for a child with an inexpensive procedure and men have no such choice. In lower income brackets, the policy of looking towards the child’s best interest seems reasonable because it otherwise becomes a state expense. At higher income brackets, it seems as if the unfairness can be righted without any real harm to the child. At the very least, the state should alter its formula to reflect what adequately providing for a child really costs…as in food, clothing, school supplies, day care, and moderately priced recreation, making that a fixed amount. If the custodial parent can meet that financial obligation with ease, why not allow a non-custodial parent to walk away?

2

Ah… reliving the magic of my old “Abortion for Men” thread, are we? Enjoy!

3

Hmm. Men can sort of do this already.

I don’t know how it is in all states, but if a man in the state of Kentucky does not show any interest in his child for 2 years (no calls, no visits, etc.), the mom can terminate his parental rights. It forever releases him from child support, but it makes sure that he can’t get custody of the kid if Mom dies.

I know because my mom terminated my dad’s rights.

4

WV, you are still talking about the many ways in which WOMEN get to make the reproductive decisions for MEN.

What if the mother in Kentucky doesn’t want to terminate his rights? Can he terminate them himself?

5

And from the opposite end of the spectrum:

If the woman gets pregnant, and the man wants to have and raise the baby but the woman doesn’t, she and only she gets to decide whether or not to get an abortion. Even if she’s married to the biological father. Right?

6

Stoid, he technically terminated them himself when he didn’t show up for the hearing.

He knew he hadta be there and what would happen if he didn’t show. I guess he had better things to do.

7

Right, tracer, that’s what I’m proposing. The actual abortion procedure, that would be done or not according to the mother’s wish, as it generally is now. (Once again, putting aside what I personally think about abortion…that issue is pointless to debate any time or any place.) The other thread addressed that issue primarily. I meant for this thread to address the issue of “Father doesn’t want the baby, momma does.” I found this side of the issue more intriguing and with greater possibilities for different opinions that don’t go emotional and get locked up.

Should the father, in the specific sort of instance in which I described (or in any instance you care to discuss) be able to terminate both fiscal responsibility and fatherhood privileges?

Honestly, I’d love to learn what men and women think about this. Is there a gender gap on such an idea, is the world really the gender-lined power struggle my postmodernist history professors claimed it is, or is there common ground apart from the interests of each gender?

8

I think WV_WOman’s example would be an odd sort of joint decision by default for the guy.

9

The asymmetry stems from the fact that, when a woman “eliminates her financial responsibility,” there is no child anymore. It ceases to exist. In that case neither parent has to pay anything anymore.

In the other case, the woman continues to bear the entire burden – financial, emotional, and otherwise – while the man “eliminates his financial responsibility” by being an irresponsible schmuck. The child exists, but does not get the upbringing it would have had if its male parent had been more responsible.

If men want to ejaculate without fear of raising children, either a) masturbate, b) visit hookers, or c) only put your penis into people you intend to have children with. Or have a vasectomy. If you’re that terrified of getting “roped in” (:rolleyes:) to paying to raise children that you created, then take full responsbility for all birth control. It’s really that simple.

Tell me, oh you honorable men who want to impregnate women with impunity: Some day, maybe as early as age 6 or 7, maybe later, the child is going to want to know who its father is. What do suggest the mother tell the child?

“Your father died long before you were born.”
“Your father is a schmuck who decided he was too good to pay for your upbringing. Here’s his name and last address.”
“Your father, bless his heart, managed to right the fundamental biological imbalance in the universe by avoiding child support.”

Puh-leeze. The only way I can see this being even remotely practiceable is by allowing men to opt out of child support payments only with the written, witnessed and notarized consent of the woman. Even then, I think it’s pretty shitty.

10

One problem is that, in general, men and women in a relationship are in a similar income bracket. So in your examples, a poor woman who would not be able to support her child alone would be able to oblige the father to pay, whereas a rich woman with a rich former partner would not be able to oblige him to pay. So the only ones that would be able to user this get-out clause are rich people who can afford to pay, but just don’t want to.

If the woman were poor and the man were rich, presumably he wouldn’t be able to use this ‘male abortion’, but that would give the advantage to ‘gold-diggers’ and women who do get intentionally pregnant by rich men.

If the father’s get-out clause depends on his and the mother’s income, that has another probelm, because the income levels change over time. What if the rich lawyer mother has to stop work for some reason? She would then need extra support for the child, and if the father is not paying child support, then the state would end up paying.

I see your point in some ways. I’m sure there are some cases where even a man who has been careful to use contraception ends up becoming a father against his will. Those cases are complicated, and the father should be able to argue in court that, if the mother can afford to support the child, then he shouldn’t be forced to contribute. I know that in England this already happens. But there should not be some legal get-out clause extending ad infinitum.

11

Aren’t we overlooking the fact that child support from one parent is not the entitlement of the other parent, but the entitlement of the child?

Once the child exists (i.e. has not been aborted) he or she is entitled to support from both parents. Not minimal support necessary to keep the child in baked beans and underwear, but the level of support that the child of these parents with these means can expect.

The child is too young to waive his or her entitlement, and I think it is wrong in principle that either parent should be able to waive it on his behalf.

12

Men should not bear any legal responsibility for children they don’t want. Men should be able to terminate their parental rights and responsibilities. (Or rather, they shouldn’t be assumed to have any until and unless they and the mother sign some sort of agreement.) I know my views on this are strange, but it seems to me that children are women’s “property”.

pldennison, do you think that women who have abortions are irresponsible schmucks as well? Are parents who give children up for adoption irresponsible?

UDS, what level of support can such a child expect? Does every child with parents of a given income recieve the same level of support? If not, then who is to say what the “right” amount is?

As to it being “wrong in principle that either parent should be able to waive” the right of the child to entitlement - are you opposed to putting children up for adoption? This is a form of waiving parental rights and responsibilities.

13

Problem is, it’s damn near impossible to financially separate the parent from the child. In the case of the well to do single mother, is the child support helping pay the costs of raising the child, or helping pay for an annual trip to Hawaii for mom and her boyfriend? Arguments have been made that child support prevents kids from being supported by the government. If the child can be reasonably cared for with the single parent’s income, why do you need to suck money from the absentee parent?

It is no longer for the welfare of the child, because the child’s welfare is not in question. What purpose does it serve other than to punish the father and benefit the mother?

14

Hi BlackKnight

I don’t think there’s a precise correct answer to this one. My point is that my right to support from my parent depends not just on my most basic needs but also on their means. Probably some fairly crude rule of thumb is going to be applied and it can always be criticised, but the basic point is that the means of the parents are a factor which should properly be taken into account in determining what the amount of child support should be. I don’t suggest that the child of millionaires is “entitled” to a Mercedes-Benz on his sixteenth birthday, but the child of well-off parents is entitled to be clothed, fed and furnished with books, toys, activities, etc to the minimal standards which society expects of parents who can afford such things.

A fair point. I see adoption as an exeptional case. The natural parents’ obligations are extinguished only after a rigorous process which involves finding adoptive parents who will, as fully as is possible, undertake those obligations - not merely financial obligations, but social, emotional, and so forth.

And I should add that I do not regard natural parents as having a right to place their children for adoption. Rather I regard the child has having a right to be adopted, if this is the best way to meet his or her needs, most often due to the inability or unwillingness of his natural parents to meet them. If natural parents offer their child for adoption but, for whatever reason, he is not adopted, the natural parents retain all their obligations to their child.

I do not criticise natural parents who place their child for adoption because they beleive that that is in the best interests of the child - that some other person will be better able to meet their child’s need than they are. I do not think their situation can be compared with an absent parent who refuses to pay child support because, basically, he would rather keep the money himself.

15

This is such a thorny issue. To be utterly fair, it seems to me, a father SHOULD be able to “abort” his responsibility. Yet to allow him to simply sign something away seems too easy. It’s a fair sight easier than what a mother has to go through when she elects to have an abortion.

This whole issue makes my brain hurt. But it bothers me that women have all the rights and responsibilities when it comes to pregnancy–both good and bad. In some ways they have more choice than men, and in other ways less. Perhaps one could argue that because the “choice” to go forward with the pregnancy involves a significant investment of time, money, risk, and lifestyle change, it only be fair that she also have the choice of NOT going through all that. While a man doesn’t have the same “choice” to end the pregnancy, his only legal obligation if the unwanted pregnancy does go forward will be money. Not his body, for example. (I realize that very notion is repuslive to the good fathers out there).

It’s a raw deal all around.

16

If a pregnant woman knows the father doesn’t want any parental rights and is unwilling to pay child support, and she decides to go forward and have a child anyway, she’s taking the financial responsibility into her own hands. Don’t you think many women would change their minds about continuing the pregnancy if they knew “dad” wouldn’t subsidize their desire to have a child, i.e., they only want a child because someone else will pay for it?

Yes, raising a child is expensive. The woman knows that, and it’s her choice whether to give birth or terminate the pregnancy. How can the father possibly be obligated to pay for her choices?

17

I’d like a cite suggesting that women only want to have a child because “someone else will pay for it,” please.

18

Suppose Doctor and Claire Huxtable had decided to shop for little Rudy’s clothes at K-Mart and make mostly bologna sandwiches and Kraft Mac’n’Cheese for the kids? In fact, on the show, they didn’t always give the kids alot of expensive things, they wanted to teach them fiscal discipline and the rewards of hard work. As a doctor and successful lawyer, surely they could have ran Theo an expense account at The Gap.

Do we tell the Huxtables they can’t raise their kids they way they want to? I suspect that as long as the kids aren’t underfed or sent to school in tattered t-shirts most people would be ok with however they decided to provide for the kids, what luxuries of wealth were and weren’t given to the kids. So it seems that we don’t really think kids are “entitled” to the benefits of having parents of means when the parents are married. So why say that those kids are thus entitled when the parents are divorced?

Myself, I just don’t see how the means of the parents should really be a factor past a certain level of income.

19

Mom and Dad want the child: No problem. Tie.

Neither Mom nor Dad want the child: Abortion or adoption. Tie.

Mom doesn’t want the child, Dad does: Dad’s screwed, unless Mom’s willing to carry the kid to term for him, and then sign away all rights and priviledges thereof. Mom can abort or put the child up for adoption, Dad can’t say jack. Point- Mom… she gets to make the decisions on the child, and Dad can only hope she sees things his way.

Mom wants the child, Dad doesn’t: Mom carries the child to term, Dad’s a father now for the rest of his life, of a kid he didn’t want. What’s more, he’s financially responsible 'til the kid’s 18 (or more, if kid wants to go to college). Point- Mom… she gets to decide whether the kid exists, and can legally force Dad to pay for her decision.

Under present situations, Mom wins 2-zip. Some may say that’s the prerogative of the person with the womb.

Why NOT allow the Dad to relinquish all rights and responsibilities? If Mom wants the kid and Dad doesn’t, she can either keep the child (and therefore be fully financially responsible for it) or put it up for adoption. Allowing her to keep the child AND force Dad to pay for it smacks of having your cake and eating it, too.

20

In the case of Dr. and Claire Huxtable, in a divorce, they will decide what the entitlement, per child, is equal to based on prior history. Claire cannot say that little Rudy needs outfits from Sak’s 5th Ave when Theo has been wearing Gap all his life. Same with school. If they can’t work it out between themselves, the lawyers will come in argue why each child needs x amount, and if it is greater than what happened with older children, they’ll need to convince a judge why.

In the case of a first child, the court does not have history to rely upon. Therefore, going simply based on (sometimes asinine, depending on jurisdiction) data on how much money on average is spent to raise a child, the court must determine what is fair and equitable for the child. While I grumble (sometimes too loudly) about being support for both mother and child, my only other option is to spend thousands upon thousands in a custody case I have little chance of winning. And I will not spite my child because of any differences his mother and I have. [rant]I wish that worked both ways[/rant]