Just because people have options doesn’t mean they’ll avail themselves of it.
Or are you telling me that you’ve never had sex just for fun?
This is more or less the way I saw it as well. He offered marriage after it happened, you spurned him, and now that he doesn’t want the same level of commitment that you want, you’re going to go as far as you can to punish him for not agreeing with you.
I’m having a very difficult time interpreting this as anything other than “I hate his guts, but the monetary involvement would be nice.” If you want him involved, he has to be present. If he’s “involved” and not present, then he’s giving you money. Not to police your emotions, but the way you’re representing yourself, regardless of circumstances, isn’t doing you any favors.
You’re advocating a position that emphasizes fairness to the biological parents and assigns culpability for the child’s being here, rather than what’s best for the child. The save time and quote myself from another of the many many threads on the matter:
“The inevitable argument (and trust me, it’s inevitable, I hear it at least once a week) that an imposition of child support on one party or another is fair or unfair in varying degrees is missing a fundamental point about the purpose of child support, namely, that it’s child support, not parent punishment. To put it bluntly, the state doesn’t care about fairness, because it’s not assigning culpability for the birth of the child. A judge doesn’t say “Man used condom, but woman didn’t use spermicidal lubricant, so let’s go 35% and 65%, that sounds fair…uh oh, woman lied and said she’s had complete hysterectomy! We’ll say 95% and 5%, because he should have noticed she didn’t have a scar. That’s fair.” It doesn’t work that way. It may be true that the mother has more say as to whether the child is brought to term, but once the child is born the state doesn’t much care how it got there.”
The point being, once a child is born, the kid’s here and it’s needs have to be fulfilled, period. Since nobody can take parentage away from an unwilling father or mother, if one of the parents doesn’t do so you and I have to in the form of increased taxes for social services. Is it fair to make you and I pay more taxes because somebody felt like they should be able to have consequence free sex?
Less focus on my sex life and more on the question you omitted. What do we do about them once they’re here? Who should the responsibilities lie on after they’re born?
(snip)
That is the issue isn’t it? I have made the decision not to have children. I’m giving my mate until she is thirty to make up her mind on the issue. If she changes her mind, we would have to re-evaluate our entire relationship. It might even be a deal-breaker for us. I have the right to walk away from THAT relationship. I should have the same right in my choice of conception, and abortion.
The current system forces ONLY the male to provide for an unwanted child. A woman of course has the choice to abort or adopt. It places the male completely at the mercy of the woman.
If the mother thinks that it is safe to bring the child into the world without a second parent to help support it, it’s neither of our places to naysay that.
I’ll admit to not seeing what the point is in having a child if you’re not intending to start a family, but I don’t see the world ending either.
I’d ask if you’ve taken measures to be sure that happens (snip), but I’ve got a cousin who had a child after he’d had the vasectomy. (I, personally, got past a diaphragm, which was the most effective method all those years ago.)
If you’re having sex, you can decrease the odds of conception, but sometimes it’s: “Life will find a way.” And once it’s found a way, things get complicated.
That’s not correct. A woman has the sole option to abort due to constituional protection of her privacy (and the fact that only women bear children), but a woman does not have the option to place a child up for adoption over the objection of the father. That’s what I was talking about when I said both parents have rights and duties to the child that neither parent can divest the other of. If she doesn’t want the child, he can file for custody of it and she will have to make child support payments to him.
I’m not naysaying it, I’m asking you who the duty of support should be placed on once a child is born, and why. If it’s solely on the mother out of a sense of fairness to the unwilling father, why should fairness to one of the parents outweigh what’s best for the child?
This does not address the issue of the father who does not want a child. Because of her right to privacy, she can force the father to provide financial support regardless of his wishes in the matter at all. It is completely one sided, with no recourse for the male.
Sorry, both biology and the law presume that pregnancy is a natural consequnce of intercourse, but that’s beside the point. Child support is a duty owed to a child by both of its biological parents. I’ll ask you the same question I asked Sage Rat: why should the law favor fairness to the parent, who made a choice to risk a pregnancy and now doesn’t want to deal with the consequences, to what’s best for the child who made no choice at all? Why should my taxes go to the well being of children I didn’t have any part in the conception of out of “fairness” to one of the parents?
I think you misunderstand how Visas work. Especially a student Visa. His Visa is for one year and only one year. After a year he HAS to return to Japan. Hence my comment about him being as involved as possible without being here.
I fail to understand why child support and “duty owed” when one of the parents at least completely disagreed with the conception and subsequent delivery. If the woman chose to abort the pregnancy she could have done so without the consent of the father. Risking a pregnancy is undertaken by both patners, but only the woman has the choice whether to continue the term. :dubious: After the birth the father has some say in re: to adoption, but only in the sense of assuming parental care rather that giving it up.
I fail to see how anyone’s taxes would be paying for these children. Either they are given up for adoption, or the mother assumes care and all the responsibilities therein.
Honestly, I had forgotten that he was here on a student visa when I’d posted that. Either way, he did offer you something that’d keep him in the US to help you support the kid and you declined. It may not have been ideal, but he could have attained residency through this and you would have had some legal recourse in this situation if you two had married and then subsequently divorced. ::shrugs::
Best for the child would be being raised by a couple of billionaires who had had practice raising several children already all of whom ended up as honors students. If we have to ensure that every baby gets what is best for it, we’re going to have to start doing crime history checks, drug tests, psychological screenings, income limits, etc. on anyone planning to have a baby.
But no, it’s always assumed that the people who know whether they are going to bring a baby into the world are the judges of their own readiness (until such a time as it’s proven otherwise.)
While that’s not a perfect system, still most people are reasonable about their situation in life and it’s fine to trust to that. If a single woman is considering bringing a baby into the world, she’s going to base this on the realities of her situation. If the father is obligated to pay support more mothers will choose to go ahead, and if the father isn’t then fewer women will. In either case, you have to assume that the mother feels that the baby’s future is secure and that’s the reason she went ahead.
So again, who am I to decide against what the mother has decided? She feels that she doesn’t need the extra aid, and I just have to trust that she knows what she’s doing. She knows more about her situation and abilities than I do.
Forcing dads to help pay for the child doesn’t add anything to the world except for more children being raised by single moms who didn’t feel that they had a secure income. I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily better (nor worse) than the alternative.
Like I said, child support is a duty placed on biological parents for their children once they are born, a duty to the child, not the other parent. You don’t get an out because you didn’t want a child not because the law favors the mother, but because the law favors the child. It’s not about you, and it’s not about her. It’s about the fact that an infant with half your DNA exists now through actions you voluntarily undertook, and somebody has to come up with money to feed it and clothe it. If you conceived it in a tree trunk without a mother and a state foster home raised it, you’d owe the state child support. If you don’t pay, the kid him or herself can sue you for it when it grows up, because it’s due to him. You keep on repeating that it’s not fair to the father, and I keep on asking you why fairness to the father trumps the needs of the child. Why does it?
Because what you propose would place a very large number of women and children below the poverty line, which means you pick up the tab in increased social services instead of the father. For example, a child support obligation of $200 a month is ridiculously low, at or near minimum wage, but still represents $43,200 over the kid’s lifetime. If you take away that financial support from every child in your state, the money is going to come from somewhere else. More specifically, its going to come from you.
If you answered the question, I didn’t see where. Why is fairness to the father more important than the needs of the child, and why should I have to pay instead of him?
I would have had to stay married to him 5 years (or 7, can’t remember) in order for him to get his green card. With the amount of fighting we were doing, I did not want to put a child into an unhappy environment where the parents are constantly fighting. If I got divorced from him before the time period for a green card, he’d be sent back to Japan and I’d be in the same situation I am now, except with a child who had to endure years of hardship because dad insisted on getting married no matter what and mom wanted him to stay and take some responsibility.
I didn’t say you should pay, and I did answer the question.
You seem to have set up a No True Scotsman fallacy situation for yourself.
Argument: "Every baby needs two incomes to be properly raised."
Reply: "My sister raised hers without any other aid."
Rebuttal: "Aye, but her baby wasn't properly raised!"
You’re not seeing my answer because you’re running on a false assumption. My answer doesn’t jive with your assumption and thus you arent recognizing it as a viable answer.
Where? I didn’t see it.