But she didn’t just bitch about her friend–she extended it to people that have child-support issues in general.
She made extremely callous comments not only about her “friend,” but about other posters who just happened to comment on the original Facebook page as well. And I put “friend” in quotes because with friends like her, who needs enemies? She seems pretty comfortable judging a whole lot of women who find themselves in the position of single parenthood, because the guys were “probably scumbags before they fathered children” and now the children are apparently not being “mothered by [people] with a sense of responsibility and good judgment” – as if trying to get child support from a “loser” isnt responsible, isn’t good judgment.
I have no problem with the OP’er as a general rule, but I think she’s coming off as rigid, heartless, and hugely judgmental in this particular thread. And that’s pretty much all I have to say about that; it’s not like I’m going to be able to argue her out of her position, or even care if I do. I just thing the OP is pretty damn cold.
You didn’t ask me, but I’ve never had sex with someone that I wasn’t planning on marrying.
Or if more women insisted on only receiving oral sex, and not agreeing on any other kind of sex (including giving oral sex) this would be a far smaller problem, too. I can play your logic game, too.
I didn’t take it to be such a large brush, but I’m not willing to say for sure without going back through the entire thread. You may be correct, but I took the OP to mean “people with child-support issues that are similar in circumstance to my facebook friend’s”.
Again, I’m not 100% willing to stand by that interpretation. It’s just what I picked up from the first reading.
Hmm, thank you for taking my post and twisting it. My original quote was
"The thing is, I don’t self identify as “a model for decent and responsible behavior”. I self identify as a single mom who hooked up with a person who already showed signs of being unstable and irresponsible. It got worse, but he wasn’t Mr MBA from Queens University when we met. "
I was/am a single mom because Mr Potential was pretty much at a crossroads when I got involved with him. I had known him for 10 years, and he seemed to be getting his life together… acting, writing, assistant manager at --yes a gas station-- when we got involved. He had a penchant for beer then, and an unfortunate chip on his shoulder, but we all know creative types, and not all of them are raving drunks, prone to violence and vagrantism, and possibly (although I would never presume to diagnose) mental illness. However the “getting his life together” part seemed to be less and less of a reality as time went by. Sadly I married him, before I realized he had drifted from his earlier potential and we were heading for the falls. I was contemplating divorce when I got pregnant. We were already basically separated but living in the same apartment at the time. (Sounds odd, but I could name the exact day and time my son was concieved. It was the first time we’d had sex in 4 months)
At first it was, oh his failed play, oh it was his fathers illness, and then fathers death. Finally I stopped being an enabler, woke up the the reality that I couldn’t change him, and got out. My first post in this thread details it. I still think dating/marrying him, and yes ultimately was not wrong, based on what I knew then. He was smart, creative and funny. He accepted me and helped me stand up for my self when I was a lot less confident.
I choose to see the good in people, and just because he didn’t have a 100K a year income when I married him, I really don’t think all is lost. I made choice that turned out poorly, but sometimes you make the best possible decision at the time, and it doesn’t go exactly as planned. I wasn’t raised to believe in divorce, or childbearing out of wedlock, or for that matter pre marital sex. I have a failed marriage, and shhhhh, I wasn’t a virgin on my wedding night. But a beautiful CHILD came out of this marriage.
For three months between when my maternity benefits ran out and I got a new job as a nurse, I collected social assistance. But you bet I signed up for every single work force entry program I could. I volunteered, so I could qualify for a transportation allowance… I walked instead and used the money for record checks, professional licenses and diapers. I resumed every place that hired nurses, to show I was looking for work. (I had a worker tell me I didn’t HAVE to look for work until my son was 5. I said "Yes, I do HAVE to work. I have student loans to pay off, and also I will quadruple my income by working). But I was a mom who was on welfare with a small baby. Should I have given him up?
I made a choice to marry, a choice to procreate and then I chose to leave the marriage. I never get the free weekend some divorced moms get, I never get child support. I don’t complain loudly or often because the value of having my ex out of my life far outweighs the dollar figure of child support. But I also know that the 70 or 100 or 200 a month can mean a great deal to someone just barely surviving. Its not something they are whining for, it is OWED. To the child. Usually by court order.
Again, I think some people in this thread want to see only people who can pass a means test be allowed to have children. Shades of The Handmaid’s Tale?
And only one person has told me he/she has helped someone in this situation. Sorry it turned out badly. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it even backfires. But I am extremely sick of people on their high horse not doing anything except complaining about welfare moms. Especially the ones who won’t vote for a pro-choice candidate. Sit and be smug. But realize that its a pretty large brush to paint every single mom with…calling us stupid for our choices.
For the record, my rant did not extend to all single parents, only ones like in the OP. Picking a person to father or mother your children is a very important choice that should be made with great care. If you need financial support to raise your child, then you should probably pick a guy who has some earning potential. It doesn’t mean you need to be able to see the future to determine this. Just use some basic observational skills. If you pick a guy who, 13 years down the line is only making enough to give you $10, then I’m inclined to think there may have been clues about him before you made a baby. Maybe I am wrong - maybe he was a bona fide Mr. Perfect and something changed later on, and if so, I apologize to my Facebook friend. But sadly, I have noticed this type of thing as a trend amongst women my age - making very poor choices about sex partners and having kids out of wedlock and not being able to support them sufficiently. And I am not living in some inner city - I live in one of the most affluent areas in the US - the DC Metro area. It baffles me.
I don’t think of myself as heartless. Actually I am a pretty kind-hearted person overall; I admit to spicing up my post with some extra vitriol since it’s the pit and that makes for better reading. But I do admit to being judgmental, because people like this are making careless choices with innocent new human being’s lives! Do what you want with your own life, but don’t fuck things up for an innocent child! Yes I am judgmental when it comes to stupid people and kids, I admit it.
In the OP you mention 3 scenarios, 3 women with children with non-paying fathers.
You criticize them for being surprised at the lack of child support. I see no evidence that any of the three of them are surprised.
You criticize them for complaining about it, because in your eyes they brought it on themselves. But even if that IS true, if they went into the situation knowing full well that the bio dad was a loser, they (and the child) still have a right to child support, and a right to complain about not getting it.
You intimate that as mothers they don’t have a sense of responsibility and good judgement. Yet all three of them are presumably being a single parent 24/7, and are solely financially responsible for the kid.
It strikes me as very sanctimonious to have the attitude of “you could have chosen to abort (or not have sex/use better birth contro/etc), so I don’t want to hear you complain”
Isn’t the OP of this thread someone who has complained rather strongly in the past about how her man had babies with a crazy woman?
If I’m thinking of the right person, OP why are you exempt from the expectation that if you choose a bed you have to lie in it?
Personally, I’m with Vihaga. I can offer sympathy even when people make choices I wouldn’t have made. And I can want sympathy even when I make choices others wouldn’t have made.
Good memory! You’re right. My SO has children with a less-than-ideal person. I think he made a very bad choice, and so does he. My SO is a great father who pays his child support - his ex-wife made a very good choice when choosing him to father her kids; even when they had their first kid at age 19, it was very obvious he had a lot of potential and a promising career and she saw that clearly. She made a good choice because he is a very good financial provider for their children.
What I was complaining about is that my SO’s ex-wife’s new husband (his kids’ stepfather, who they live with) was arrested on child molestation charges, and is going to trial in mid-April. The ex-wife thought this was not a problem at all. My SO thought that it was a huge problem for his kids to be living with a possible child molester. So yes I did post about that. I complained because I was appalled at the poor decisions this woman was making regarding her and my SO’s children. Like I said before, I do tend to be critical of people doing stupid things with regards to their children.
I never said I was exempt from any expectations… I lie in my bed just fine. With regards to the bringing of children into the world, I don’t think I have made any poor choices in that regards. I took my lumps when I made my mistakes.
(By the way Jodi, Im surprised you have slipped under my radar until now. You are one of my favourite posters as of today. And I read here a whole lot more than I post, I know most of the names in this thread from reading them on and off for years… not enough always to know… poster X worships the flying spaghetti monster, or Q-tips are a hot button issue for poster Y , and poster w is always arguing with X that its not a flying spaghetti monster, its actually a creeping elbow macaroni monster and the world was made in 7 courses, not including coffee… but enough to know who is around, who is literate and who is kind and who is snide. I also looked up an old thread of mine again on the single moms topic and found you had some supportive but also well reasoned posts. So… hello, thank you, and um… way cool, you…)
You picked him so you aren’t allowed to complain about him or his dramas. Sorry. Those are the rules. You had choices.
I never complained about him. I complained about his kids’ mother, who is married to a man who is about to go on trial for child molestation and thinks it’s not a problem at all to have this man living with her and her six children (3 of them are my SO’s). I care about these children. It’s a completely different scenario than the one in the OP, and you know it.
How is it different? You picked a man. He has dramas. You complain where I have to hear you. You make a stupid choice for getting involved with a stupid person (remember, he reproduced with someone you don’t approve of!), so you have zero right to complain about it. Suck it up, princess.
Oh, wait. The “rules” don’t apply to you! You really care about these children. It’s completely different. Why? Because it’s you.
Well, as far as I’m concerned you have less cause to complain. You can walk your ass away at any time, but the women you’re bitching about can’t. They have responsibilities. You’re just whining about a situation you can end your involvement in at any fucking time.
As tu quoques go, this is pretty feeble. She isn’t complaining about the consequences of any choices that SHE made, and she isn’t complaining about her husband. You misunderstand the “rules.”
Of course, tu quoques are fallacious anyway.
What’s interesting to me about all this is that I heard this kind of complaining from men all the time, about their “crazy ex” and how she’s messing with their kids, demanding more money, is a total monster, etc. Now, couldn’t you have known that she was an impossible psycho bitch BEFORE you stuck your unwrapped dick in her and made babies?
If there’s no excuse for a woman having babies with loser men, there’s no excuse for men having babies with psycho women. I’m not sure why there’s a difference. Women who believe their man that his ex is a psycho worthy only of contempt are ignoring the important fact that their man CHOSE to reproduce with this woman, so he is just as culpable for the situation.
Not sure why the OP is drawing a distinction here, since I think it’s the same situation with the genders reversed.
You’ll have to show me where she ever complained about a single one of her choices. You’re grasping at straws here. Try something else. Even if you were posing an ACCURATE tu quoque, it would still be irrelevant.
I already explained how it’s different. When you think about it, I’m actually being pretty consistent in my complaining: I have complained about stupid people doing stupid things regarding kids. I commented on my Facebook friend being stupid, my SO’s ex-wife being stupid, and I have even commented on my SO’s poor choice of a mate. If he were to ever complain about having to pay child support, I’d tell him not to complain - he chose to stick his dick in this woman and ejaculate, so deal with it. But when his kids’ mother condones or ignores her new husband’s (alleged) child molesting, that takes it to a whole different level, as I am sure you can agree. It is so beyond the norm that I don’t think anyone could have foreseen that level of stupidity.
You mean she’s forced to shack up with a man who had numerous babies they couldn’t afford, who then left the state (I think) leaving the babies behind with the crazy ex-wife, etc.? She had no choices?
It’s only the women who have children who are responsible?
I said the same thing way back upthread. It’s not a gender specific complaint. Guys who complain about their exes or baby mamas being “cunts,” “crazy bitches,” etc. get no sympathy from me.
Has the OP drawn that distinction? I haven’t seen it?
Oh because they are your SO’s kids, and you care about them, their lot in life is to be considered. Lucky they belong to him, otherwise they would have been aborted or adopted out. What about their half-siblings, who don’t have such an upstanding man as their father… should they have been flushed?
What about the fact their relationship broke up, the children are from a “broken home?” You knew he had kids with a less than ideal mother when you met him. You chose to be involved.
I agree by the rules you set out, you have no right to complain.
Do you really believe that the bad choices of the parents should be heaped upon the children?
(On a total side note… its horrid about the kids. I feel for them too, and I only know of them through the post of a person on a message board, about another poster who happens to be involved with their biological father. However, I have compassion for people. Not just people its in my self interest to care about. And nyctea scandiaca you in particular are one Im waiting to hear from… what have you done about the poor single moms out there… have you volunteered, helped any personally improve their lot in life, etc etc…because you seem to know what everyone else should or shouldnt do… again I challenge…What have you, personally done to reduce the number of single needy mothers in society?