he sounds like a dick. Do you think he would have resisted adoption when he was asking for that paternity test?
Then call them on it and see if your arguments for why women should be able to unilaterally abort is entirely consistent with forcing unwilling fathers to pay child support. because AFAICT, some of the arguments for abortion are not consistent with forcing child support.
I don’t think so either. What does that situation have to do with what we’re talking about?
The point is that if both parents don’t want a child, the child can be given up for adoption. If one parent does want the child and is unable or unwilling to support it entirely as a single parent, the other parent is obligated to pay child support. This is equally true no matter which gender parent falls into which category, so legal parental obligations and rights are not intrinsically unfair to men.
A number of posters have attempted to waffle around that fact by suggesting hypotheticals in which a mother can unilaterally relinquish an unwanted child by concealing the father’s identity, and arguing that that situation is unfair to men.
In practical terms, though, that argument is pretty much bullshit, because
(1) if the father doesn’t want paternal rights/responsibilities, then the mother’s doing him a favor by taking care of the situation without dragging him into it; and
(2) if the father does want paternal rights/responsibilities, it’s not very plausible that he would be having sex with women about whom he’s then content to remain completely ignorant for months thereafter, to the extent of not even being aware that such a woman has given birth to a child that might be his.
Just as I don’t have a lot of sympathy for sexually active women who completely ignore the possibility that they might get pregnant and completely disregard any potential symptoms of pregnancy, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for sexually active men who completely cut themselves off from knowledge of any potential consequences of their sexual encounters and then complain that their paternal rights are being disregarded.
Yes, I think it’s ethically obligatory for a woman who decides to have a child to let the child’s father know of its existence, if she can track him down (unless perhaps he’s her rapist or otherwise physically harmed her, in which case the first priority should be her safety and that of the child).
But it’s also a man’s ethical obligation to stay at least somewhat informed about the chances of whether such a child exists, if he has any interest in being a father to such a child.
Instead of going around complaining about the unfairness of life (seems to me most of the unfairness when it comes to unwanted pregnancies falls on the woman, but whatever), why don’t you men take action?
The real problem, well actually there are two: 1) an astonishing number of men seem to think birth control is 100% the woman’s responsibility, and 2) men don’t have any effective forms of contraception other than vasectomies. Condoms have such a high failure rate even when used correctly and consistently that I personally think any couple relying on nothing but condoms for contraception are out of touch with reality.
Why don’t men take responsibility for their own actions and lobby and push for research into better forms of contraception for men? All kinds of new and improved contraceptive options come out for women every year. Nada for men, probably because the pharmaceutical industry thinks men won’t be bothered to buy anything they put out. Why don’t you disabuse them of this notion?
If men have an effective form of contraception, they won’t be able to be “trapped” into fatherhood; they won’t end up having accidental pregnancies when condoms break or the woman forgets to take her pill. Plus, the rate of unintended pregnancies will drop dramatically if both members of a couple are using effective contraception. Odds are they won’t both suffer a failure at the same time.
All problems solved. Might even end the endless abortion debates because only rape victims will need abortions. And hopefully that problem will end too because rapists might actually be on the pill.
The thing about male contraception is…well, how to put this…if there are a thousand arrows aimed at a single target, it’s a whole lot easier to cover the target than to stop each and every arrow.
Anyway. As a male, I do not support the “opt out” system in the OP. The reality is, there are some of what I call “biological imperatives” that we just have to deal with, even if they aren’t 100% fair to everyone involved. This is one of them.
Condoms, when used correctly, have a very high success rate. The reason they have such poor reputation is that they are often used incorrectly. Of course this is a flaw in the product, if your product is so hard to use correctly then it’s a shitty product.
Except if you’re a man who really really doesn’t want to father a child, and hasn’t been surgically sterilized, you really can take the extra step of always using condoms correctly, in which case your odds of accidentally fathering a child is much lower than if you just use condoms in the lackadaisical way most people use them.
So for instance, one of the terrible ways that counts as condoms not working correctly is that people sometimes don’t bother using them. Yep, this counts as a failure. If you say that you use condoms to prevent pregnancy, but occasionally you don’t bother to put on a condom when you have vaginal intercourse, that counts as condom failure. Looked at one way this is ridiculous. Looked at another way it makes sense. It’s just like dieting to lose weight. A diet that you don’t follow will fail to make you lose weight, no matter how calorie restricted the diet is, if you don’t actually follow it it doesn’t do any good. So if condoms are such a hassle or so unpleasant that you don’t use them and have vaginal intercourse anyway then condoms didn’t work.
Anyway, my point is, just use condoms correctly every time you have vaginal intercourse and you’ve dramatically reduced your risk of being asked to fork over 25% of your paycheck for the next 18 years. Not perfectly, but dramatically. It all depends on which is more important to you: avoiding getting your partner pregnant, or how good it feels to fuck her without a condom. I can understand if you decide on the second option, because it really is better, but then don’t complain about having to pay child support later.
http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/unintendedpregnancy/contraception.htm
Actually “breach of Promise” suits were only successful if the a) the woman could establish that when the couple initially bedded down their initiation was that they would eventually marry and b) most important she had not been sexually active with other men.
Let’ don’t use 8-10, lets use 3 (which is how many I have)
I can unequivocally say that the cost to feed, cloth, and house them is roughly $300/month. They are all out of diapers and in school (5, 7, 14)
Day care is expensive but even when i had 2 in it was never more than about $1600/month YMMV according to where you live of course.
But the man should not be under the sole burden of providing said day care.
Another thing I believe should be but is/was not taken into consideration is both parent’s income as well as who should be the primary care giver, I was but I certainly wasn’t awarded that status in Texas. I had to spend roughly 75k to even get the courts to a 50-50 arrangement. Had my ex wife fought it harder, I doubt that would have succeeded.
The court system in regards to child support is stuck back in the 50’s where only one parent(the father) was working, that needs to change.
The USDA thrifty food plan (the cheapest plan) shows a cost of ~$400 for your kids.
Average excess health insurance premium for family plan vs individual plan, for the lucky ones who have employer-sponsored coverage, is about $300 a month. This is not including deductibles and copays.
You can possibly use your teen as a afterschool/school holiday babysitter. But for those who did not have kids aged far apart (or live in certain states where this will get you arrested), this is not feasible and average (say) IL before/after school care is $200-250 a month per kid. And then there is the pesky problem that a school year is 36 weeks vs a work year being 48 weeks. That adds up to another $110-130 a month per kid (for IL, same cite above).
So not even including housing (how much for an extra bedroom or two?) or utilities or toys or activities yet, and we’re looking at $1600 a month for three kids. “A couple hundred” is a absurd estimate for the cost of a kid for a single working parent.
This post has been on my mind. Thought about and wrote (and rewrote) several responses. Ultimately I feel the following best responds to the matter without setting anything in stone as far as my personal stance…
This matter is something to be settled in Sweden by its people.
Regardless belief or moral value no person outside the rule of any country has legal validity. It is argued that alternatives like adoption are sometimes best. However, adoption is not seemingly easy in my experience (observing friends who are adopted and friends who have had to give up their child). Deciding whether or not the child should know their situation and how best to prepare them for their future is better, ultimately. As a “plan b” (poorly put) “life plans” are offered by organizations and charitable foundations - maybe this could be considered.
I agree. And to everyone who is saying it’s a non-issue in pregnancy and only becomes one at birth, I have a question.
If the male opt-out agreement was contingent upon the male party paying all associated costs of abortion, would you change your opinion?
First of all, you are correct that women do not have exclusive control over reproductive choices. However, they do have exclusive control between conception and birth, which is pretty much what The Plutonium Kid said. The issue is about pregnancy, not parenthood.
Secondly, abortion rights are not about forgiving a woman for her abortion, pardoning her sin or withholding criminal sentence. They are about granting a woman the right to control her reproductive choices, even after she lets someone inject his sperm into her. Ideally, both parties agreed to the penis in vagina activity. Ostensibly, we are talking about the conception of a fetus that was unintended by both parties. So, the debate becomes about the rights of both parties, after conception and before a potential child is born.
There is no question that under current US legislation (and presumably Sweden as well) the choice is entirely within the control of the woman carrying the fetus. The woman can, without consent of the man involved, abort the pregnancy (with varying degrees of difficulty depending on her location) and end (or not) her relationship with the man who impregnated her, entirely within her discretion.
The same woman can also give birth to a child and change the course of the father’s life. Certainly financially, but most likely this will affect his life choices from that point on. She holds the power of a life altering decision herself, that will affect her partner and unborn fetus. It’s a massive power imbalance that’s worthy of debate, in my opinion. Dismissing one side of the argument by saying “don’t fuck anyone you’re not prepared to produce a child with and deal with for the next two decades” isn’t really a productive argument.
Only women can choose to terminate pregnancy. That’s why “pregnancy vs. parenthood” absolutely IS NOT the issue here. Pregnancy is the issue, not parenthood. There is an imbalance. Gender imbalances are not uncommon but if you dismiss this one as trivial, why should anyone listen to your complaint of gender inequality, if or when you have one?
I’m obviously very late to this thread, which pretty much seems over. I just wanted to add my opinion after reading the whole thing.
As I pointed out before, the real imbalance is that men don’t have any effective reversible birth control options. Which is most probably due to the fact that men don’t actually have any interest in birth control. They want to dump all of the responsibility, side effects, pain, and effort on women and then complain when it doesn’t turn out the way they want it to.
Agreed.
Disagree, adamantly. The problem is on the supply side, not the demand side. Female anatomy regulates one egg per cycle, controlled by natural hormone production. Female birth control works by mimicking the hormonal switch. Male anatomy produces countless sperm cells per day. Male hormones do not have an off switch. I’m pretty sure that a safe and effective male birth control pill would be a massive, enormous financial success.
Given the option to get in on early investment on an FDA approved male birth control pill (not that such a thing is possible for plebes like me) I would invest every dollar in my retirement accounts on it.
No, the right to abortion enables a woman to control what happens to her body. Period. Reproduction is intertwined with this, but only incidentally.
I’ve always found this topic bizarre, but it seems extra bizarre now that I’m pregnant. It’s hard for me to take seriously any complaints about how massively unfair it is that women have so much power.
Only women experience pregnancy; the imbalance you decry is put there by biology not man.
You know what’s another example of “imbalance” based on biology? Men are significantly stronger than women due to the effects of testosterone. Wah, how unfair is this shit? Life long exposure to the feminizing effects of estrogen means my upper body strength is so pitiful the average man could strangle me with no problem. Men have an natural advantage for jobs that are physically demanding. They can play in the NFL and make millions of dollars chucking balls in the air. Women are cut off from these lucrative opportunities due to biology, but you want to talk about fairness? Ok, so what policy could be created to level this massively unfair playing field? How can we make it so that the men aren’t advantaged with strength that women don’t have? If this sounds stupid to you, great. This is exactly how your argument sounds to me.
It’s not about gender equality. It’s about common fucking sense. If you absolutely don’t want to be on the hook for an unwanted child, then the only thing you can do is make absolutely sure your semen stays out of a fertile woman’s reproductive tract. It’s not that difficult if you are truly concerned about not being a father.
Reproductive rights are fundamental to the right to abortion. What happens to a woman’s body, absent abnormal medical risk, has happened to literally billions of other women. What are you referring to when you say “what happens to her body”? I’m not playing a false naivety card here. I honestly don’t know what your intention is with this statement.
Also, I’m not sure how you mangled a quote as quoted words shouldn’t be altered, but for the record:
Is a very ugly mashup of two related concepts that I was putting forth.
Number 1:
Number 2:
And I stand by both or those statements.
Well its pretty clear that you aren’t a parent. If you were you would realize that just not wanting to be involved in your child’s life is only a feeling the most callous and irresponsible people in society can feel.
Unless the father was raped then he made a conscious decision to engage in activities that could result in the birth of a child did he not?
It seems to me there is an obvious solution. Have men who refuse to take responsibility for their actions buy insurance against unwanted pregnancy. This insurance would be cover the costs of raising a child for at least 18 years. No doubt they would qualify for discounts if they do things like always using birth control. These men would be required to register their DNA so that claims could be made against them even if they don’t know they’ve become a father. Obviously they would need to renounce any claim to the child for the mother to receive payment.
Btw if you do this you’re still a bastard, the father not the child, because a child needs a lot more than money from their father and children without their biological fathers do significantly worse than those who are raised by them. So again you’re still a bastard but at least a somewhat responsible bastard.
You are framing abortion in terms of reproductive rights and choices. While I frame it in terms of bodily autonomy, i.e, the freedom to not have another entity exploit your body without your explicit permission. Both men and women have this right. No one can force us to be organ donors, for instance. It just so happens that only women are in the position to have their autonomy infringed upon by a fetus, which makes abortion an option for them.
This matters because it squashes the idea that this has anything to do with gender inequality. Men might be at an disadvantage when it comes to controlling an unwanted pregnancy, but women are greatly disadvantaged by carrying one. Whether a woman gets an abortion or carries to term, she is destined to no small amount of pain, discomfort, stress, and sacrifice.
I’m sorry, but a man complaining about how unfair it is women have reproductive choices he doesn’t have really is a special kind of fool. And I’m perfectly fine blaming the harshness of this particular opinion on my raging pregnancy hormones and the fact that I haven’t had a nice stiff drink in 4 months.
Was the idea or act of having kids an idea or concept adequately discussed ahead of time? If there is deception here then I would think that entitlement shows the weakness and victimization of a certain coward. A father “aborting” his title ad father is the dumbest metaphor Ive heard in my life. And I barely know what a metaphor is.
Aside the prolonged testimony this woman REMARRIED. This child has a dad. How selfish to ask for such an obscene amount (or rather deem “owed”) of money to take care of this child. WINNER HERE