^ That argument could be used to argue for a federal ban on abortion.
“If you don’t want to parent, fine, you can put the child up for adoption and pay for their care by the state for 18 years”.
Antigua was not a hague convention on child abduction signatory but I bet there is a bit more to the story.
Who left the country with the children, are they both here in the US? did he file for custody here?
Was he unable to pay or did he refuse to pay out of spite?
Did he hire a lawyer or did he try to represent himself in the separation?
Who is this addressed to?
Look, it’s perfectly simple.
We, as a society, don’t want to have to take care of random babies.
So, if there’s a random baby out there, we have decided that the parents are obligated to take care of the baby.
Now, who are the parents? The parents are the legal parents. But the legal parents do not have to be the biological or genetic parents. They usually are, often are not.
Both legal parents are equally obligated to care for a child, and are equally obligated to either pay child support or have physical custody of the child. The gender of the legal parents is irrelevant.
So, what situations create legal parenthood?
If you gestate a baby in your womb, then you’re the legal mother of the child. If you provide the sperm that concieved the baby, then you’re the legal father of the child.
However, DNA testing of newborn babies to establish paternity is not routine. In most cases, the father of the newborn baby is simply asserted–the mother states that Bob is the father, Bob states that he is the father, and that makes Bob the legal father.
The only time this is not good enough is when there is a dispute about paternity. In most cases, simply being married to a woman who gives birth is enough to make you the putative legal father of that child, no matter who the genetic father is. In the old days before DNA testing, this was done as a matter of course, unless the father could somehow prove that he wasn’t the father. But this was pretty difficult to do. Nowadays in most places the husband of a woman who gives birth must dispute paternity within some time frame (such as, a year after birth), and if he doesn’t, then a later paternity test doesn’t change his legal parenthood.
And this makes sense. Because legal parenthood is not the same thing as biological parenthood.
That baby at birth can be given up for adoption by the birth parents. But both parents must agree, if either refuses then the baby cannot be adopted.
Or, the father could be unknown. This happens, because babies gestate in the wombs of mothers. And if a mother gives birth, and claims to not know who the father is, we don’t put her in prison. We don’t take away her baby, because we don’t want to have to raise the baby as taxpayers. Instead, we let her keep the baby. But if she ever tries to get government support to help her raise the baby, then we as taxpayers will try to find out who the father is, so we can get back some of our money.
And if that long lost father gets upset, well, he could keep track of the women he sleeps with and if any of them give birth he can demand a paternity test to see if he’s the father. Of course most men don’t do this. And so, a couple years later they get a bill from the taxpayers for child support. And then they get mad. Except, why should the taxpayers, who are not the father of the child, have to pay more than the actual father?
Of course, if someone else is willing to take over responsibility for this child, and adopt the child, then the father is off the hook, and so are we.
And that’s because you owe child support, not to the mother, but to the child. If you think it’s unfair that the mother has physical custody of the child, well, you’re free to go to court and try to get custody of the baby. But custody is awarded according to the best interests, not of the parents, but of the child. So if you haven’t seen this child for years, you’re not likely to get awarded custody just because it’s unfair that you have to pay child support for a kid you haven’t seen in years.
You have to pay child support because the child need support, and we’d rather force you to pay it than pay it ourselves. It may be a bit unfair to make you pay, but how is it fair to make us pay?
Single parenthood can happen if one parent goes missing and we can’t find them, or if one parent dies, or if one parent is so horrible that their parental rights are severed. Or sometimes a parent doesn’t want to be involved and the custodial parent doesn’t do anything to make him be involved. And we don’t force fathers to pay child support in those cases unless someone acting on behalf of the child raises the issue. This could be the state, if the child isn’t being taken care of, or the parent wants social services that we taxpayers have to pay for. Or it could be the mother, who decides the kid needs the money after all.
But, if nobody with an interest in the child raises the issue, then the other parent can simply walk away. Unless something changes, like the custodial parent dies, or needs social services, or the child turns 18 and can sue the other parent for child support on their own behalf.
Because child support is for the child, even if a custodial parent doesn’t pursue child support it doesn’t matter. The other parent can be sued years later. And the gender of the custodial parent and the absent parent is irrelevant. Yes, in most cases the custodial parent turns out to be the mother. So what?
Of course, if there’s an abortion, then there’s no child, and no one has to pay. As for why mothers can decided to have an abortion and fathers can’t, that’s because of the way mammals reproduce. Babies grow in their mommy’s tummy. And so, we don’t allow the father to either demand the mother get an abortion, or prevent her from getting an abortion. He has no choice because the baby isn’t growing in his body. Pretty simple.
That’s an awfully long post for something so simple. 
A child cannot be given up for adoption over the objections of the father (or the mother). If you have a lot of concerns in terms of your potential children, it’s smart to keep in touch with people you’ve potentially impregnated. Both men and women are capable of pulling a cut and run. Just like if I want to collect child support, I need to keep track of the men who could have potentially impregnated me. Having anonymous sex with people you’ll never see again pretty much limits how involved the other partner is going to be capable of being- and that goes for men and women.
Again, both men and women have the same options, except for abortion, which is a different story all together.
It could be if abortion rights were about having/supporting a child. But it’s not, so it’s a pretty pointless argument. Abortion rights are about to have a medical procedure that my doctor and I have agreed is appropriate. The larger consequences of that medical procedure have nothing to do with the reason why it’s my right to have one.
Yet the larger consequences of consensual sex should always fall on the father’s shoulders?
Awesome post Lemur866. I think we can pretty much close the thread now. And in a month when someone opens the same thread again (because we do this every 4-8 weeks, it seems) we can just direct them to your post again.
Seriously, though, you nailed it. Awesome job.
How is BEING PREGNANT FOR NINE MONTHS, GIVING BIRTH, AND RAISING A CHILD TO ADULTHOOD WITH PRIMARY CUSTODY NOT the “larger consequence of consensual sex”?! You;re complaining about cutting a damn check!
Get serious. :dubious::rolleyes:
This almost makes sense.
The state/society shouldn’t have to pay, if it can get the parents to pay instead.
The thing is though…the state/society doesn’t actually have to pay: If a single parent does not have the resources to take care of a baby, then that baby can be adopted by a family that does have those resources.
I’m starting to believe that putting a baby up for adoption is better than having a single-parent support the child with the financial assistance of a 2nd parent that never consented to having the child in the first place.
Won’t this cost more?
Also, the argument strikes me as analogous to the argument against abortion. To paraphrase: “If you don’t want to deal with the consequences, don’t have unprotected sex”. Except in the hypothetical given, a claim to using birth control isn’t even a bar to bearing the consequences. If a woman decides the child is financially inconvenient, she can abort or pass the child to the father. The father has no say in whether the mother has an abortion. He bears the costs unless the mother agrees to put it up for adoption.
Edit:
I never stated it wasn’t. I was implying that the mother has another option to avoiding the larger consequences which the father has no say in.
Double edit: Why is it inconsiderate to ask women to undergo a fairly uncomplicated medical procedure without any serious long term consequences* in order to save money?
- Fewer than pregnancy, at least.
I am 100% in support of pre-sex contracts where both parties agree on how a resulting child will be supported.
Pulling the “What? I never wanted a baby” thing after the baby is made, is a cop out. Either you do what is takes to cover your bases, or you accept that your bases aren’t covered.
And no, I’m not too worked up that admitting to a woman you want to sleep with that you’d abandon your own child may make her reconsider sleeping with you. Boo hoo.
This is the precise analogue to slutshaming.
“You’re surprised people won’t sleep with you because you’d rather vacuum a foetus from your womb than put it through school? Boo hoo.”
Because we don’t terminate legal parenthood unless a parent is an unfit parent. And demanding child support from the non-custodial other parent doesn’t make the custodial parent an unfit parent.
You’re arguing that merely asking for child support makes someone an unfit parent, and that’s just nonsense.
Of course it is true that a custodial parent can, if the other parent also agrees, put a child up for adoption, and then, if the child is adopted then neither biological parent owes anything, and all responsibility to care for the child is on the new legal parents of the child.
Except the child actually has to be adopted before responsibility for child support ends. So you don’t get out of child support by saying “Hey, I don’t want this kid, put it up for adoption.” You only get out of child support when the child is actually adopted.
In many situation it is true that the parents don’t have much money in the first place, or they only deal in cash, so it becomes extremely difficult to enforce child support payments. The fact that it is sometimes difficult to track down and seize money from deadbeat parents doesn’t mean they aren’t obligated to pay. But neither does being broke and unable or unwilling to pay child support automatically make someone an unfit parent. They may very well be an unfit parent, but being a deadbeat isn’t enough to get someone’s parental rights terminated, because then you could get out of paying child support by not paying child support.
And yes, it sometimes takes taxpayer money to track down deadbeat parents, but it also costs money to pay for social services for the children of deadbeat parents. Social services has a budget for tracking down deadbeats and they do their best within that budget. The budget certaintly isn’t larger than the amount they recoup from the deadbeat parents. The IRS has an enforcement budget too, they spend less on enforcement than they generate through enforcement.
Anti abortion men should defiantly ask their partners view on abortion! There is nothing wrong with a pro-life person avoiding sex with pro-choice partners. It’s a smart thing to do.
I’d make the contract post-sex or post-conception.
- If a woman get’s pregnant (or thinks she might get pregnant), she should be required to notify the biological father.
- The biological father should then be required to respond with whether or not he is willing to be the legal father of this child or not.
- Based on that response, the woman can then decide if she wants to raise the child or not.
- After this contract is complete, the legal father (if he chose to be such) would then be unable to surrender his paternal obligations without consent from both the mother and the state. (To ensure that the child’s best interests are maintained.)
This would be perfectly fair, and everyone’s rights would be fully respected.
If he wants the child and gets custody, then the mother is required to pay child support. After the baby is born both parents are in the exact same legal situation: they must both consent to adoption, and if one parent wants the baby but the other doesn’t then the other parent must pay child support to the custodial parent.
The only time the parents don’t have an equal say is when the baby is physically implanted in the mother. You’re perfectly free to abort any babies growing in your body, it just so happens that never happens to you if you’re a man. Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina. It wasn’t the radical man-hating feminists who decided that men can’t get pregnant.
You don’t have to have sex with a psycho bitch who would abort a baby you would want to keep. You don’t have to have sex with a psycho bitch who would keep a baby you would want to abort. But if you do have sex with a psycho bitch, and if the psycho bitch does get pregnant, then you have to wait until after the baby is born to get a say in what happens to the psycho bitches womb. She gets to control what goes into her vagina, but you get to control what you stick in people’s vaginas. If you don’t want a psycho bitch making decisions about whether you become a parent or not, don’t put your penis in a psycho bitch’s vagina, even just a little.
So, you want to have the sex, *then *think about the consequenses.
I’d like my car insurance premiums to be adjusted to the responsibility I’m willing to accept *after *the accident.
Don’t think it can happen in either case.
What about the child’s rights? A mother cannot sign away her child’s right to child support from the child’s father, neither can a father sign away his child’s right to child support from the child’s mother. Parents generally have wide lattitude to act in the interest of their child, but we as a society have decided that a parent can’t sign away child support.
A parent is certainly free to not seek child support from a non-custodial parent who doesn’t want to be a parent. And we as taxpayers don’t care if this happens, unless the custodial parent comes to us and wants us to help support the child. Then we ignore the custodial parent’s decision to not involve the other parent, because it’s our money. We aren’t going to let the kid starve, but neither are we going to foot the whole bill ourselves unless there’s no other option.
Of course you would.
How is this better than pre-sex? That puts both partners on equal ground before the problem even comes up, and without the intrusiveness of legally requiring women to disclose their sex lives. No need for any unexpected babies or abortions or demands.