Men, what *would* be a fair solution for unwanted child support?

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

Another spinoff from the deadbeat dead - thread. So men, what would be a fair solution to the problem of unwanted chlidren being born and the non consenting dad having to pay child support for eightteen years?

I can tell you what the Dutch solution is.
For starters, we have a more practical educational approach to the use of contraceptives. Children are taught that of course they can have sex, and they are even welcome to stay over at their parents house to do it.
“Mom, can my boyfriend sleep over?” is a common question by a sixteen or seventeen old, and will usually be answered with an " of course, nice to meet him, but sweetie, you will be sensible and here are some condoms and it’s a good thing I took you to the doctor to go on the pill six months ago" To which the teenager will often roll her eyes and go: “Moom! We just cuddle!”

We often have a less " hot and steamy taboo"- attitude to sex. Kids can do it, or not, it is not a big deal either way and not something they are judged by their peers for. If anything, having travelled on your own abroad is a bigger source of peer envy then having done “it”.

These attitudes, combined with the readily available birth control, results in an average age of first sex that is very comparable to the US (both 18 years old) but it results in a far, far, lower rate of teenage pregnancies. Average 7 promille in the Netherlands, 55 promille in the US.
Our abortion rate, therefore, is also low: 4 promille against the US 30 promille.

So, I would say that the cultural values over here would make the problem of unwanted births a LOT smaller.

Now suppose a child IS born to a woman where the man did not consent to that happening. In most cases, when the woman earns enough or has enough support of her family not to go be on welfare, they mostly choose to let the man go. There is no law that requires the woman to go after child support.
When the woman is on social assistance, the county will try to extract a part of that from the man. But that happens rarely.

This model could work in the USA, but it would require quite a change in cultural values.

#2

It’s fascinating how some cultures are able to handle social problems with ease, while others struggle mightily. Cultures are hard to change though and it tends to happen by an organic process that can’t be controlled.

I suppose the Dutch could help us out by every single one of them emigrating to the US and giving the Netherlands back to Spain, but there might not be enough of you.

#3

You thread title and your post doesn’t mesh well.

You’re talking about an unexpected pregnancy. From what you posted, I’d be right on board with adopting the Dutch policy.
To me, when you say “Unwanted child support”, to my American ears, that basically translates to a mother not wanting financial aid from the father so she can feel justified denying him his rights to see the child. (Of course genders could be switched here but the norm is usually the one I described.)
Personally, I think child visitation is something that the courts should decide and NOT some disgruntled mother (or father) to decide.

#4

Do some countries have laws requiring that custodial parents go after child support? I guess I can see how it could be considered the child’s birthright and not up to anyone else to choose to refuse it, but I had not heard of this if it is so.
Here in the U.S., the state will insist on pursuing it if someone applies for public aid, but otherwise, there is no such obligation.
I think abortion should be state-funded, and men should have the option to permanently refuse all parental privilege and obligation prior to the birth of the child, within a limited time frame of learning of the pregnancy. Women have the option of relieving themselves of the responsibility through abortion or adoption, so it seems only fair that men be given the choice to opt out.
I know you want male opinions though, which mine is not.

#5

We would also need to have quite a change in social assistance. The most fervid politicians in this country want to cut all forms of assistance–and sex education beyond “abstinence only.” They also want to shut down Planned Parenthood & other (mostly) women’s clinics, making contraception harder & abortion (they wish) impossible.

You paint a picture of early & serious use of contraception. I won’t stay around to argue with the guys who want to have unrestricted unsafe sex–then tell the chick to fuck off & abort. But I wonder how many men abandon their bastards when they are still embryos–and how many wait until they’re messy, crying little babies. Most relationships I know about that led to child support didn’t end so quickly. And many of he guys who left still wanted to have some relationship with their children…

Just my opinion. This isn’t Great Debates.

#6

Yes, I meant support of unwanted children, not unwanted financial support.

That surprises me. I thought the court always ordered this for the benefit of the child. Well then, the Us situation is similar to the Netherlands in this regard.
I guess this means that in the cases the mom does go after the dads finacial support, they both are poor, and the child support will be a big finacial strain on the dad. While a middle class mom may let middle class dad off the hook.

#7

I’m sorry but, unwanted or not, having an child is a pretty obvious risk when you sleep with another person. Both people should be responsible for the child. I don’t think that a man should be able to say “Well I didn’t want it, so I shouldn’t have to pay anything”. That’s just ridiculous. If you don’t want to risk having a kid and raising/financially supporting it, wrap your junk up or zip it up. Goes both ways of course, just with different wordings. Unless, of course, I completely misunderstood the OP.

#8

A woman cannot surrender a child for adoption without the father’s consent.

#9

Assuming she acknowledges that she knows who the father is. Regardless, the father’s lack of consent will not force her to keep the child herself. Perhaps in theory it could make her liable for child support, but I have never heard of this happening. Here in the US, I think it varies by state, as termination of parental rights is different from state to state.

#10

This is why as a hetero man I kind of wish I was gay.

If I was gay I could have hedonistic sex every day and not risk becoming the financial slave of a zygote whose propagation I didn’t ever want or approve of for nigh on twenty years.

#11

If she lies, that’s fraud. A man doesn’t lack a father’s rights because someone can defraud him of them, any more than I lack property rights to my car because someone can steal it from me.

If the mother doesn’t want to keep the child, and the father does, the father gets the child (unless he is ragingly unfit). IME, child support will be assigned. However, it rarely comes down to that because the social pressure on women to keep their children is unreal: if a man says 'the baby is staying with his mama: that seems best for now, with my crazy work schedule. I will have one night a week and Sundays", no one bats an eye. A woman saying that will get serious stinkeye if not out-right condemnation. So few women will seek that option.

I would love to see a cite for a state where the state will approve an adoption by a third party when the biological father is fit and actively opposing the adoption.

#12

Get a vasectomy if you don’t want to risk having a child.

#13

Can’t you just… you know… talk to the women you’re fucking about their views on having kids before you have sex? I mean, my SO has lots and lots of hedonistic sex all the time without ever worrying about becoming a slave. Actually, all the guys I know do that. It’s really common.

#14

I believe you’re thinking of couple of slightly different things - in the US, courts will not enforce an agreement not to seek support. If the mother and rather agree, in writing even, that she will have custody and not seek support a court will not enforce the agreement if she later seeks support because she doesn’t have the right to waive it on behalf of the child. Same thing when a married couple divorces.There will always be a support order. But those are separate issues from whether the custodial parent must enforce the order - there’s no law saying the custodial parent must try to collect the support except in public assistance cases.

#15

And when he was involved with the child/opposing the adoption reasonably soon after birth and didn’t come out of the woodwork months or years after the adoption process started.

#16

I don’t like the inherent negativity in the child-as-burden viewpoint. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If a child is born into a situation where no one wishes to pay for his or her food, shelter, or clothing, and all society does is focus on making a parent pay against their will, that child is a lot less likely to grow up to be a contributing member of society. Being a child is not a permanent condition and no one asks to be born, let alone born against a parent’s desires. Children are abused, murdered, neglected, and resented when people are forced to take care of them. I don’t want that for any child and if we all have to pay a bit extra so those children have as good a chance as we can give them to grow up and contribute, it’s to our advantage as well as theirs.

#17

My husband and I have one son, whom we love very much. We’ve restricted ourselves to that one child because we want to provide him with a solid financial future, and we know that to add a second would be to put ourselves in serious financial peril: just the six weeks of unpaid leave is not really a reasonable burden, and we can’t accept the risk that it would be more than that, were there complications.

If my taxes were to jump to cover the support of unwanted children fathered by men who had thirty, forty, fifty kids they disavowed because, what the fuck ever, the state pays for them, I might not have even been able to afford my one son. How the fuck is a horde of fatherless, rejected children growing up in borderline poverty (because how generous do you expect this state support to be?) an improvement over this? Not only that, I would be BLIND WITH RAGE over the fact that I – like many middle-middle class Americans–can barely afford to responsibly have kids at all, but guys who just don’t like to wrap their junk can father them all over the place and move on.

#18

I didn’t ask for child support from my daughter’s father, and it wasn’t because I was a bitter, disgruntled woman. I just know him and his family, and didn’t want his trashy life to have an impact on my daughter’s life.

We were super broke for a few years, but so what. I was also able to raise my daughter in a normal household, with excellent male role models. I never took any government assistance. And it turned out fine - my husband and I have been together for 15 years, he has legally adopted mt daughter, and we make good money. All of that would have been far more complex if her bio dad had been around all that time, taking her for the weekend, and exposing her to white trash bullshit. It wasn’t worth the $75 dollars a week or whatever it would have been.

And I don’t care that he has a daughter out there he doesn’t know - IMO, far, far too much is made of biological relationships at the expense of actual loving and rational relationships. Ask almost any adopted child. And when I see the women who trundle back and forth to court, and bitch and complain and get bitter and angry about that money, I just shake my head. You could take all of that negative energy and all of that time spent, and go to school, and get a job that won’t put you at the mercy of some deadbeat that corrupts your home and doesn’t pay his support. I mean, what are they doing all of that for? How much is a calm and happy life worth?

#19

I’m not so sure that financial penalty is what is holding most men back from siring dozens of unwanted children unchecked.

#20

Utah has become a magnet for birth mothers to give up their baby for adoption without the biological father’s consent or knowledge.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home2/52433534-183/utah-law-court-adoption.html.csp

Robert Manzanares

Cody O’Dea

Jake Strickland

Terry Archane

Terry Achane was active military. He had attended his wive’s prenatal appointments as well as paid their bills. This case was truly disturbing – the adoptive family just felt they could provide a better home and therefore Terry’s parental rights were moot in the ‘best interest of the child’ – despite the fraud.

What if a two parent adoptive family had more resources than you? Should your daughter have been placed with them because they could provide more of an emotionally and financially stable environment? I don’t think it’s fair to automatically discount biological father’s rights, just because. If a stable environment is what’s best for children then ALL parents’ with less than ideal circumstances should lose their parental rights – not just biological fathers.

I’m not saying biological rights trump all, but there is a gray area between what’s ‘best the child’ and peoples’ rights to their own biological children when they have done nothing to prove themselves unfit.