Not really. The people (men and women) who want casual sex will be just fine. Individuals who want to use casual sex as a way to trap someone else into paying for their reproductive choices will be out of luck and as the larger society has to bear the cost of their bag judgment will hopefully become the pariahs they deserve to be (not for having sex, but for being stupid about it). The “casual sex spigot” in the past tended to “dry up” because of lack of birth control or access to abortion. We have reliable birth control and safe forms of abortion now if only people will stand up for their rights.
Our current child support determinations were based on the model of what should be awarded in the case of a divorce with the idea being that the child should not suffer economic reduction in their standard of living because the parents are no longer married. It does not take into account situations where the parents were never married or never intended to marry. Prior to the late twentieth century in the West it was a gentlemen’s custom that a man would provide for any illegitimate offspring, but not in the same manner as his legitimate family as that would be an egregious insult to his wife, her family, and his legitimate heirs.
The average cost of raising a child is a quarter million dollars. Just full time childcare is $1000 a month on average, and for school aged kids before/after school care is a couple hundred a month or more. And then there is food, utilities, clothes, healthcare, education, enrichment/entertainment. Not to mention the sleepless nights and endless emotional and physical work.
The ones who pay child support already get off very easy in terms of raising a child.
We’re talking about inadvertent pregnancy here right? ISTM that if you are going through all that shit to get pregnant, you have already had your opportunity to opt out of that child.
Once again, really hard to have an accidental pregnancy that way. I mean that IS what we are talking about here right? Not abandonment by a spouse or someone who otherwise actively agreed to have a child, right?
If the your argument is that biological fathers that agreed to have the baby are financially responsible for that baby, I don’t think the swedes would disagree with you.
Wait. Have you ever heard of “giving up your baby for adoption”? that’s sounds sort of like the hypothetical renouncement of parenthood that you are talking about.
Mostly because the assumption underlying all these laws is that you were married. If you need an argument why your child born in wedlock deserves more than the bare necessities of life if the father is wealthy, then I think we need another thread.
What utter nonsense. Men don’t pay fetus support. They pay child support. Claiming that the child isn’t a party because they are still a fetus at the time the decision would be made is not remotely defensible because a fetus doesn’t receive financial support. If the fetus doesn’t survive the pregnancy then the father has no support to pay. There is no eroding of abortion rights; once a child exists, it is entitled to the support of its parents. The major difference between abortion and abdication of parental right is that the fetus is not destroyed in the later and will usually eventually turn into a human being. As things stand, our society believes the parents of that child have a legal obligation to provide for it from the time of its birth, and therefore you can’t escape that obligation by unilaterally renouncing it before the child even exists.
If anyone is considering implementing fetal support payments then I’ll join you on the protest march.
Which makes no sense, because before birth the man doesn’t have any responsibility.
A woman is responsible for bearing the burdens of pregnancy, since it happens in her own body, and consequently she also has the right to terminate the pregnancy if she chooses.
You’re demanding for men the unique privilege that they be allowed to pre-emptively abdicate responsibility for a putative child that doesn’t even exist yet and may never exist. Pregnant women have no such privilege: their rights and their responsibilities pertain strictly to their existing pregnancy.
If that’s the kind of special treatment you think men are entitled to, I’m wondering why you bothered to stop there. Why not demand instead that men should be granted the pre-emptive right to abdicate responsibility to all potential children even before having sex or meeting a potential sex partner?
Why not just allow men to apply for default official “Non-Father Status” that will apply automatically to all potential children that may result from any of their potential sexual encounters, until and unless they voluntarily choose to discontinue their “Non-Father Status” enrollment?
It would be fundamentally no different from what you’re proposing here: i.e., that men should have access to an ironclad guarantee that they will never be held responsible in any way for any unintended consequences of their voluntary sexual activity.
I’m fine with that. I assume I’m being compensated for the labor that I am providing and you aren’t. After all, I am legally compelled to provide that supervision for my kids.
Nannies around here run about $16 an hour, plus them and a half after 8 hours. So half of that is $94,440 a year. Plus a couple hundred a month for diapers and formula. Sounds good?
(In all seriousness, daycare for an infant alone is $2k a month here. Another room in an apartment is $500, at least. I wish it cost a couple hundred a month to have a kid, I’d be rich!)
He’s not suggesting equal treatment only equality of choice. Both genders should have the right within a certain period of time to choose whether or not they will be a parent. Requiring the man to make this decision while the brat is still gestating places the allowable time frame at equal starting points.
First off, plenty of people raise children on a couple of hundred or less a month. I know for a fact, the living expenses for all of the kids living under my roof (8 to 10 depending on the time of year) are only a few hundred dollars a month because I oversee and balance the budget. All it requires is planning and responsibility. Furthermore, if the custodial parent is so overburdened with supervising the children they have chosen to have they have the option of giving them to the state. Trust me the non-custodial parents will usually enthusiastically sign away their rights. They’ve probably been dreaming of it for years.
There’s no logical or ethical reason why a man should have the special privilege of using a woman’s pregnancy, of which he bears exactly zero of the physical and financial burdens, as a no-cost “grace period” for his own personal decisions about parenthood.
Men (at present) cannot get pregnant, which spares them a hell of a lot of negative health impacts and other risks. That does not entitle them to the further privilege of a legal fiction of “pseudo-pregnancy” whose sole purpose is to mimic having control over the outcome of a pregnancy without having to bear any of its burdens.
The ethical reason is quite clear. No one should be forced to be a parent, physically or financially. It is not a special privilege to be able to have sex without being forced to become a parent. It is merely extending the “privilege” safe legal abortion has (hallelujah) given women. It’s not a “grace period” or a "pseudo pregnancy), it’s informing a woman of all relative information while she still has the all the options to end the pregnancy. You would prefer giving the guy a few week after the child is born, perhaps? Women (at present in the United States) are able to terminate an unwanted pregnancy which spares them a hell of a lot of negative health and economic impacts along with other risks (like supporting at complete expense of their own life, health, and dreams, a kid they hate and never wanted for 18 years).
So because women have the option of abortion (in places it’s actually an option), men should be able to opt out of parental responsibilty? So the default is men have no responsibility towards their children unless the chose to have it. This is somehow more fair?
Women on the other hand are default responsible for thier own pregnancies and abortions and should the carry at pregnancy to term at thier own expense they will be solely responsible for the child if the father opted out. And people think that’s perfectly fair?
What we really need is to make things easier for men? As a man I guess that’s great for me.
The default should be both parties should have the option to not be parents. Abortion should certainly be more easy to obtain (heck, I think it should be free with a guaranteed day paid day off from work) and women should be applauded for using this option if they find themselves in a bad idea pregnancy.
What we really need is contraception that works backwards to the current types. Namely, you can only get pregnant if both parties consent. Currently it’s kind of the opposite-you have to take action to stop pregnancies, and even then it only works some of the time.
So if women have readily available oportunity to abortion, men should only have parental responsibilty if they choose it. Children of mothers who opt not to have abortions should only be supported by tax payers and/or mothers, the father’s of those children can go about thier lives unburdenend, creating more such children because it’s not thier problem, bareback is more pleasurable so why the fuck not.