On rereading, I realize that I left out an implied ‘that doesn’t’. That was not an imperative statement. Sorry for any confusion.
I’m horribly confused. Robertliguori are you saying that all a parent has to do is declare they don’t want to be parents anymore and should be able to completely walk away from their children no strings attached?
Parents do this all the time, it’s called adoption. And I suggested this in the case of my child, but was blocked by the (now disappeared) mother. So I get to raise my child all alone.
I’m not bitter. 
I understand that parents place children for adoption. But in that instance the parent is doing everything in their power to see that the child is placed somewhere where their needs will be taken care of.
What I am questioning is the premise that a parent can walk away from a child and leave them in a position where their basic needs are not being met without even a backwards glance.
Hypothetical SAHM with two kids. Hubby is sole provider for family. Hubby comes home one day and divorces wife and declares he does not want custody and that since he is not involved in raising the children he shouldn’t have to pay into their upbringing. This would be the way it would work in Robertliguori’s world?
That’s my question…
Well, yes. It’s (usually) a horrible thing to do, but as I have said, the morality of things is not determined by their horror. (Unless we have a system of morality based soley on whether or not we consider something horrible. Which I don’t.) If I decided that I wanted to burn all of my money rather than giving it to someone who would die without it, I would be an utter bastard, but ignoring federal regulations on the defacement of currency, I wouldn’t be doing anything to violate anyone’s rights by not giving them something.
robertliguori, you seem unduly interested in the rights of the parents, so I’m curious – what rights do you suppose a child has to be well-supported by both of the people responsible for his existence and his life circumstance? If Dad, by virtue of his higher income, was contributing 75% of a kid’s support before Dad & Mom split up, doesn’t the child have the right to expect that Dad will continue to offer that same level of support, since the child had nothing to do with the divorce? The father is still responsible for the child, the relationship between the father and child has not changed, so why should the father be able to walk away, decide that he’s not interested in coughing up any cash? Don’t the child’s needs trump the Dad’s desires to be uninvolved?
Very few, actually. I do not posit the right of anyone to be supported by anyone. The government has generously agreed to pick up the slack WRT adoption and such things, but individuals shouldn’t have their rights taken away for any but the most important reasons. I’m afraid that I don’t see children starving as one of these reasons.
Re: example: It depends. If the father is paying as a parent, he should have the full rights of a parent with regards to visitation and such things. However, if Dad doesn’t want to be a parent, forcing him to pay as if he were one is wrong. It may be for the best of everyone to require deadbeat parents to pay for their children, but bad things lie down the road of forcing individuals to pay for other individuals, and that is more important to me than almost any number of children who need money.
So if we take our hypothetical family. Dad decides he no longer wants to be a parent. Mom can’t afford to raise two children alone as she has been out of the workforce for a few years and the economy is awful anyway.
You’re suggesting she put the children up for adoption instead of making the father fulfill the obligations he took on when the children were made?
Wouldn’t this force the mother to give up her parenting rights simply because the father no longer wanted his?
Children are unable to support themselves. Obviously toddlers and small kids can’t work. Even older children are unable to get jobs. Teenagers can work part time depending on the laws of your state but that would still not be enough to support themselves.
When someone brings a person into the world that does bear a bit more responsibility than buying a piece of furniture. What do you feel people’s reproductive rights/responsibilities should be? Shall we go to the government mandated birth control suggested above?
The mother isn’t being forced to give up any rights in this scenario; she simply can’t pay for them.
Also, if a father has stopped being a father, for whatever reason, he doesn’t have whatever obligations may have existed while he was one.
Morally, I agree. However, I feel that this should be moral, not legal, responsibility. It is my established opinion that people should be able to do what they want as long as they aren’t violating someone else’s rights, and that letting someone starve isn’t a violation of that person’s rights.
So far the argument has seemed to center on one parent unilaterally deciding to terminate parental rights and responsibilities without State interference. Why not both parents simultaneously?
Dad: This parenting thing bites. I’m hereby not Timmy’s parent anymore.
Mom: Well, I’m not going to be if you’re not. Should we call someone to come get him or something?
Dad: Why should we? We’re not his parents anymore. We don’t have any obligations to him. Let him starve.
Mom and Dad can explain their unique take on relinquishment of parental rights to the police, the district attorney, and all their new neighbors at the state pen they’ll be serving life sentences at. You don’t get to unilaterally relinquish parental rights without permission from the State. The State protects a right of support in the child from all parents whose rights have not been legally terminated, and protects rights and imposes obligations of parenthood on those same parents. Just because you don’t wish to claim parental rights doesn’t mean you get a free pass on your parental obligations, any more than an atheist gets a break on their income tax because he hasn’t claimed the right to freely exercise a religion.
Basically, there are two options. Parents pay for their children’s needs, or the State does, which means my taxes, and I’m not about to pay for anybody’s children because they don’t think they should have to. “Letting children starve” just ain’t gonna happen. It just isn’t. Aside from the many moral qualms society may have about allowing wholesale starvation, there are massive practical considerations of preventing poverty, crime, disease, etc. that are going to effectively prevent such a thing from ever happening. The politician running on the starve the children platform isn’t going to get elected.
True. And people who don’t drive shouldn’t have to pay for highways. But they do. It’s not right though.
And this is why I support child support, welfare, medicare, and any number of services that I disagree with philosophically. The government sucks at philosophy. Practically, it’s better to take money from some people to keep most from starving.
Also, your dialogue is something of a strawman. Being able to terminate one’s parental rights voluntarily does not imply being able to terminate them verbally and without notifying the appropriate agencies (whomever they may be).
(emphasis mine)
Whoa, whoa, WHOA. Wait a minute. Let’s go back to that Declaration of Independence you’re so fond of.
You’re saying that any person can go around generating babies with no thought whatsoever as to their welfare and upkeep and that letting the children starve is NOT a violation of those childrens’ right?
From Dictionary.com:
So…you’re saying that YOUR right to “liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is more important than those childrens’ right to LIFE? If you remember, all THREE are in the Declaration.
You think it’s just fine for you to say, “Hey, you can just starve to death because keeping you alive interfers with my plans to get a snowmobile and a Jet-ski, and go to the Bahamas this year.”
Please tell me you’re not saying that.
Yes, I am. A right to life means that people can’t kill you. It doesn’t mean that people can’t let you die.
It’s not nice or practical or useful, but it’s right.
There is no general duty to prevent harm, including knowingly allowing somebody to die, unless otherwise imposed by law or a special relationship exists between the parties. The parent-child relationship is the epitome of the special relationship. A child has an absolute right of support from the parent. This relationship can’t be disclaimed unilaterally by the parent, it has to be dissolved by the court. In deciding whether to do so, the court doesn’t take into account the best interest of the parent, but the best interest of the child, because the child has a much greater chance to be negatively impacted, and the possibility of a negative impact to the child is a greater detriment to society as a whole than a mere loss of income to the parent.
This is why it’s “right”. You haven’t advanced any theory of why this situation is not “right” other than it imposes an obligation someone has voluntarily assumed but doesn’t want, something the law does every day.
A: Just because the law does it does not make it right. Just because I support it as a matter of practicality does not make it right. What is right does not necessarily equal the greater good for all or even any of mankind. (This is if you have a rights-based morality as I do.)
B: Parenthood is not necessarily voluntary.
C: Why should children have an absolute right of support? Surely it is in the best interest of society and the species and all that, but so are a number of activites we frown on as moral issues.
Of course, you’re free not to embrace a rights-based morality.
You still haven’t identified why your idea of what is “right” is right, and not why the idea of “right” grounded in equity, law, and logic is wrong, other than you personally don’t think it’s right. I can argue until I’m blue in the face that city fire ordinances infringe on my Inviolable Right to Grill in My Backyard, but if I can’t say anything about from whence this right flows or why it should be recognized beyond “It’s my right!”, I’m not going to get far.
Look in the reporters of pretty much every state in the Union and you will find a paraphrase of the following: “the average person is assumed to understand that pregnancy is a possible consequence of intercourse.” The person who voluntarily ran the risk, voluntarily assumed the obligation.
C: Why should children have an absolute right of support? Surely it is in the best interest of society and the species and all that, but so are a number of activites we frown on as moral issues.**
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Given that you and I have both identified good reasons why children should have a right of support, the burden of proof here is misplaced.
That’s like saying a person who breaks his leg skiing has voluntarily assumed the obligation of walking around on one leg for the rest of his life.
Yes, if you engage in a high risk sport you assume the risk of catastrophic injury. How is that relevant to the conversation?
Good reasons do not morality make. I can give good reasons why a doctor should cull patients with unhealthy lifestyles and give their organs to dying people. Look, I’m advancing the position that taking money from deadbeat dads to feed children is immoral. I’m not saying we should do it. If you’re arguing against its immorality, make a moral argument.
I fear putting words into someone’s mouth, so I’ll use a counterexample: does walking around outside imply an assumption of the risk of being mugged?
If you’re curious, the answer is, ‘Yes, it does, and this has nothing to do with anything’.
The moral argument is that the father or mother does not have a right to walk away because, except in the cases of unconsenting intercourse, he or she has voluntarily become a parent. Deciding a year, two years, or 15 years down the line that you don’t want to become a parent doesn’t change the fact that you already accepted responsibilities and obligations by having sex and possibly becoming a parent.
That’s pretty straightforward, and I haven’t actually seen a coherent argument why you think it is immoral to deny a parent’s release from the obligation. That person chose to risk becoming a parent in all cases of consensual sex.
Perhaps by your logic, murderers should be allowed to walk away without punishment. After all, I may have murdered someone a couple years ago but I just decided that I no longer want to be a murderer so it is infringing on my rights to treat me as a murderer now that I’m not one, correct?