Gfactor: If a custodial parent works, that parent (in every state that I know about) will get her childcare subsidized (by an adjustment in support). States make the adjustments in different ways, but the financial burdens of childcare at least vis a vis work, are shared. (Of course, this assumes that the other parent is known, under order, and working). Does this change your argument at all?
To a certain extent, but not very much. When I talked of “the burdens of childcare”, I didn’t mean the burden of paying for professional daycare or babysitting services. I meant the day-in-and-day-out tasks of caring for and supervising a child who lives with you, dealing with their meals and baths and temper tantrums and laundry and transportation and accidents and acting up and illnesses and everything else.
Yes, if professional daycare providers look after the child during the working day—and especially if the other parent pays for all or most of the daycare fees—that does ease that burden somewhat. But there’s still an awful lot of work to be done by the custodial parent in the remaining hours of the day and night taking care of the rest of the child’s needs, and trying to combine it with the parent’s own job commitments on top of that.
So ISTM that even with a double income and paid childcare, the custody situation is still generally putting an unfair drain on the time and energy of the custodial parent and an unfair drain on the finances of the non-custodial one.
And a hell of a drain it can be, too, in both cases. I support divorce rights and blended families and all that, but from a purely logistical standpoint, it seems pretty undeniable that the most efficient way to cope with the huge task of childrearing is when the parents work as a team within a united family and pool their resources. (Actually, probably the most efficient way to cope is some kind of commune/joint-family/kibbutz model where a larger pool of adults shares the childrearing burdens, but that’s not socially feasible for most American families. More’s the pity, because it would probably ease the impacts of divorce too.)
However, I think you’re right that we aren’t actually disagreeing that much on what the problems are.
(And I do think that both custodial and non-custodial parents should be allowed to diminish their support somewhat—not much, and not below a generous baseline level, but somewhat—if they have, say, one or two additional kids with a new partner. After all, it’s just a fact of life that older kids get a somewhat smaller share of parental attention and money when younger kids arrive. If the divorced parents had stayed together, the existing kids would have had to accept that change if more babies were born, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t be expected to accept it if the parents are divorced. The point is supposed to be that the benefits of having siblings compensate for having to share with them the parental care and spending that used to be devoted solely to you, and I think that argument should hold for half-siblings too.)
