Actually, my rebuttal would be that your sample was too small. Anecdote =/= data, and all that.
You’re assuming that the baby needs two incomes (or aid from the government.) That’s not true. If the baby needed that and the mother couldn’t provide it, then the mother would choose to not have the baby.
Either the baby does have all it needs to be raised properly or there never will be a baby at all. Forcing the father (or the government) to pay extra doesn’t create a better life for the baby, it just creates more babies.
Yeah but the issue is that even before getting to the Reply, we had already met the fallacy of a false assumption.
It’s a tough situation. He feels very strongly about not having an illegitimate child, and an accident happened. You’re now pregnant, and, to avoid having an illegitimate child, he offers you the two most practical options that would not violate his own belief that no child should be illegitimate. You’ve decided that abortion is not for you and that you’re not willing to work things out and get married for the sake of the child. You’ve more or less decided that his values don’t count because they don’t match yours, but you still want him to cooperate. Apparently there isn’t enough room to compromise on this situation for either of you.
I don’t know about that. That’s not what I thought of at all.
You can be an involved parent without seeing your child nor contributing money. How? Regular contact. Phone, letters, email, whatever. Keep up to date on the child’s progress and (as the child gets older) communicate with the child directly. Let them know they have a father who loves them and thinks of them frequently. Come visit when you can afford to, or have them come visit you.
That’s how I interpreted it. Not regular financial child support - but the emotional kind of child support that can be invaluable in making sure a child feels loved and wanted by both parents.
You might want to double-check the regulations on this. My cousin moved to America to marry an American, and, while I don’t think her marriage lasted 5 years, she is still in the US as a legal resident alien, at least as far as I know.
As for the current problem, you’ve said having an abortion isn’t an option. Fair enough, and I’m glad of it. Still, I wish you’d seriously consider adoption. Taking care of a child is a big responsibility and it isn’t one I’d want to undertake without a willing partner. While I’m sure you’d do the best you can by this child, please consider what the best possible life for your child would be.
By the way, you said earlier that no one thinks or talks about what would happen if they become pregnant. As far as I’m concerned, taking responsibility for my actions includes talking to any gentleman I’m considering having sex with and deciding what happens if birth control fails and I become pregnant. It may not be the sexiest or most romantic thing, but I’d rather find out early on that I’d be on my own.
Good luck, and, once the anger settles down, please do take a long hard look at thing. For better or worse, three lives are going to be affected by this.
I have my doubts about whether that would be enough for the child or the mother in this situation. The closest equivalent I could think to this situation would be if the father were in jail for a long term and “kept in contact” via mail and phone calls. Would the child feel resentful toward the father for not being able to be there for him /her outside of phone calls and letters? Hearing someone tell you they love you when you never get to see them and see whether their actions follow their words does weigh heavily on an individual. Honestly, I don’t know if a kid would be more resentful at a father who made no effort at contact or one that kept contact but in a severely limited sense.
It seems a little strange to me that you were planning on the future and both wanted the baby, but you were completely surprised when he proposed marriage? I’m not saying you have to get married. It just seems a little odd that it’s entirely out of the question.
I’d dispute this. In my college relationship, we both talked about what would happen if I got pregnant. Predictably, we eventually decided that, despite whatever our feelings on the morality or lack of it were, that I’d abort due to where we were in our lives. I haven’t had this discussion with anyone else, so I’d agree that in one night stand type deals, most people don’t have long discussions about what they’d do if pregnancy resulted. But I don’t think it’s so bizarre to have that talk if you’re in a long term sexual relationship.
If that were the case, married couples in poverty wouldn’t choose to have children because they couldn’t care for them without assistance, which isn’t how it turns out. Poor women under our current system wouldn’t choose to have children if they knew they were never going to get a penny of support out of the father, which obviously isn’t the case. To use another example, if not being able to care for your dependents were a factor, fathers would get vasectomies, wear ten condoms at a time, and quit getting women pregnant after they already had five or six child support obligations to five or six different women that they couldn’t make. Strangely enough, even though doing so would be in their rational self interest, they quite often don’t do so, and continue to impregnate half the town.
If you’re legislating under the assumption that women will make cool and logical decisions to have abortions if they cannot rationally plan for the support of a child, you’re making a losing bet. A not insubstantial segment of the population that doesn’t see it your way will choose to have the child and hope for the best, trust in the Lord, or whatever their personal creed is. If she has the child anyway and can’t pay for its support herself, either the father will, or you will.
To return to my question, since I didn’t understand your response to it, let me put it this way: a woman has chosen to have a child. She chose not to have an abortion or to put the child up for adoption, and no law could make her. The biological father does not want to assume the social or financial role of a father. Which is a more important consideration: being fair to the father, or seeing that the needs of the child are met?
As long as we’re throwing fallacies around, responding to an argument that hasn’t been made is a strawman fallacy. If you’re characterizing my argument as “every child in America raised by a single mother must have child support or it will meet with catastrophe,” you’re dramatically misstating the premise. I haven’t made that argument, nor has any sane person ever, because it’s ridiculous.
I agree, but as said, that’s not a decision that you or I can make for them. Punishing men because the girl they had sex with was too stupid to consider her financial position in the world rationally doesn’t make sense (or the reverse, of course.) I don’t think that the baby should have to suffer because it’s mom is stupid, but that doesn’t mean that the government or someone should be obligated to pay aid for the baby.
Aid is paid to single parent families and dual parent families alike when they actually need it. It’s paid when the father fled to Japan, when he dies, or when he was a turkey baster to start with–but only when the family needs it. So no, I don’t think that the government should pay aid to single mothers whose partner skipped town. I think it should be paid to people who need it and not to people who don’t, which is entirely separate from the issue of single parenting.
They’re separate issues. You should be fair to the father, and you should support families who need aid. You should never give aid to a mother wholely because there’s no father giving support.
And at a biological level, both parents are equally responsible for the child. So it’s just as fair for the person calling for an abortion to have his way as the one calling for going through with it. For an impartial body like the government, it makes a lot more sense to side with the person who wants to abort, as this does solve all problems. So again it makes a lot more sense to treat the father as fairly as can be if you’re not going to side with him on abortion–his side has a lot more to back it.
Hmmm… OK, so I see on the one hand that initially the two parties were “happy about the Baby and making plans” but at the same time, there was a concern on Carnivore’s part that they would end up in an unhappy, fighting marriage. Kinda confusing, you must admit. Though the latter part maybe explains in part the odd turn of phrase “involved but not present”, and why it was not a realistic alternative.
Carnivore, this situation absolutely bites. But as you have noticed from the discussion, we have a scenario in which each of the parties “knew” what were the “right” answers while oblivious to the notion that the other’s answer could be the opposite. You are trying to do the right thing by the lights of your feelings and reason, and under the circumstances I can only wish you success.
It IS sad that someone’s value-set is such that he’d prefer his offspring think him dead than know he was unable to agree on what was the right thing to do. That suggests what a loss of face he considers having failed to convince you to see things his way, and yet at the same time a conditioning that leaves him entirely unable to get over it. He is between the rock and the hard place. His offer of marriage is not a satisfactory answer to you; you want him in your child’s life but not in yours. That, which to a modern westerner seems unremarkable, just blew his mind. Meanwhile, taking on the “modern-American” role of long-distance unwed “baby-daddy”, is not satisfactory to *his * family nor to the social structure in which he expects to carry out his life; it would blow their minds.
(One aspect where I do not even pretend to respect his cultural POV, though, is that it is better to not be born than be a “bastard”. IMO one of the best samples of progress in **our ** culture [dons flamesuit] is the fading away, and I hope the eventual total disappearance and oblivion, of the notion of bastardy/illegitimacy as some sort of stain upon the individual child.)
I think you did the right thing. The two-parent model doesn’t always work so great, even if it’s our cultural standard. In my opinion, being raised by one awesome parent is a lot better than growing up in a house with two fighting parents who resent each other, even if they’re millionaires. You’re not being selfish by raising this kid on your own, you’re being courageous. And while I’d understand people telling you to put the kid up for adoption if you were a teenager, you’re obviously settled, stable, and want to have this baby – so there’s no reason your kid would be more disadvantaged than anyone else.
pravnik brings in some legal points which had not been part of the original issue. carnivore had not asked about these points, and one hope that both parties consult legal counsel.
However, while IANAL, in the almost 20 years I’ve been in Japan, and I’ve seen and read about many cases that involve families, divorce, children etc., between Japanese and non-Japanese parties.
carnivore could take him to court, but if he were to return to Japan before a judgment against him, it’s not going to be the slam dunk which pravnik talks about.
carnivore could not succeed in a court in Japan, a fact lamented by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations.
Carnivore wants to have Ken to retain involvement in the baby’s life, but legal action, while certainly within her right, will be a further cultural barrier to that goal, with seemingly negligible change of any financial benefits. That must be taken into consideration on any proceedings. Making a criminal complain, if she is in a state which allows this, would most certainly sever any communications. Since Ken has the option to not return to the States, it must be assumed he would do so if he were to face criminal action.
Personally, I believe fathers should be forced to pay for child support. While the system may not be perfect, once a child is born, the baby came because of two people and both should need to share the responsibility. Unfortunately, this is not the case in Japan; and consequently there doesn’t seem a way of forcing this obligation on him in these circumstances.
Oh, I don’t know…
Paul is from Spain. He has double degrees is Tourism and Business Management; he’s the night shift manager in a hotel. While working there he meets Tanya, a German. After several months in his job, the hotel’s manager retires; Paul had been promised this promotion, but it goes instead to the nephew of one of the hotel’s owners, who didn’t even finish junior high. Paul is irritated to say the least. Tanya asks him to go to Germany with her; he does.
In Germany, Paul rents a bedroom from Tanya’s parents. Parents, Tanya, her sister, Paul and a dog, all in the same house. Tanya gets pregnant, something which is not communicated to Paul’s family beyond parents and brothers until baby Bea is born. Tanya declares that the baby’s father is unknown; not only does she not want to get married but she doesn’t want to have Bea carry Paul’s lastname - by declaring her baby “unknown father,” she gets better benefits. Of course she still wants Paul to help change diapers (he does).
Two years later, Tanya tells Paul to stop using condoms, she’s off the Pill as well. “Uh, but why?” “Oh, because I want to have another! That way I can get my benefits extended two more years, silly!” He was back in Spain within the month.
While carnivore isn’t the bitch on wheels that Tanya is, if that bitch had had the nerve to ask my cousin for money, she would have had to return the cost of all the benefits she got and would have faced prison for fraud. Talk about abusing the system; what kind of subhuman turd do you have to be to live off your children?
Yes - the 5 years (actually 3, if married to a citizen) is for eligibility for citizenship. A green card would take several months. One problem is that some classes of visa do not allow the holder to adjust status. This may or may not change with marriage to a USC, I’m not sure.
Still, I’m not sure that this is the biggest problem they face right now.
No, what she has done is fraud already, but this has nothing to do with a father’s basic responsibilites.
For the question of visas, when I was invloved with these things 20 years ago, students could get temporary green cards which would become permenent after a number of years. As noted above, that’s not going to be the issue here.
I asked my Tawanese wife about this. She works for a think tank and also teaches gender studies at a university. She’s a feminist, but took Ken’s side.
Like I said to Acid Lamp, viewing child support as punishing a man for somebody else’s decision is looking at it the wrong way. It’s not punishment, it’s support for an infant, and once the child is here the support is going to have to come from somewhere. The fact that one party is “more at fault” for the child’s birth is irrelevant to the fact that the child is here now and has needs that have to be met.
That doesn’t change the fact that if you eliminate child support, there are going to be more people who need aid across the board. A lot more.
If you live in the United States, right now your state and federal government spends millions of dollars a year on child support enforcement, employing small armies of lawyers, accountants, support personnel, paying for public service advertiusing, office space, etc., as well as invests a significant amount of its judicial resources, special master courts, and so on. If your state completely eliminated child support tommorrow, it could save millions of dollars a year. However, not one in fifty states have done so, not from the reddest of the red to the bluest of the blue. They all maintain an active and aggressive child support enforcement program, partly funded by the federal government. Why do they spend millions of our dollars doing so? They do so because the expenditure is far outweighed by the social costs of not having child support, most of which will be bourne by taxpayers.
As I said above, the problem is that without child support there are a whole lot more people who need the aid. Child support payments in the U.S. bring in over $20 billion a year, and if that money is removed from the economy, a not insubstantial portion of it is going to have to come from elsewhere. State goverments don’t have the luxury of view don’t have the luxury of viewing them as separate issues. They have to consider the best interest of the child first and foremost.
Again, it’s not about apportioning responsibility and choosing sides, it’s about support due to a child once it’s here. The state isn’t choosing the mother’s side, it’s choosing the child’s side. If biological parents are let off the hook because they want to opt out, the govenrnment has to step up in more than a few cases. That’s the whole reason that they use your and my tax dollars to enforce child support in the first place, so they don’t have to use even more of them to keep single parent families out of poverty.
By eliminating the male partner’s right to choose, and placing that decision fully in the court of the woman, the state has legally always chosen the woman’s rights as superior to the male’s. This is an uncomfortable position to be in, and along with the other moral implications is one of the lesser reasons that abortion remains a hot button issue. Our current system is left over from a social and cultural tradition of “manning up”; left over from time where abortions were considered the ultimate in depravity, and women’s rights were first being explored.
Modern society has given women the right to fully choose in regards to pregnancy options. By doing so they have supersceded the rights of the male. Child support isn’t about punishing the male, I agree, but in the situation of an unwanted pregnancy that the male partner firmly opposes; he ought to have some legal recourse or say in the matter. Laws change; just because the law is a certain way now does NOT make it fair, just or correct, It simply must be followed. Obviously, something would be needed to address the needs of children from unwated pregnancies, but the current system is blatantly unfair.
The law is apportioning equal resposibility for the pregnancy to the partners, and IS assigning them what it feels to be equal responsibility to the child. The problem is that very existence of the child is beholding to the sole delegation of a single partner in the relationship. THAT is what is wrong with the system.
Sure, but is that the fault of the law, or of biology for making women the only ones who can carry children? More importantly, is it the fault of the child that it exists and must be cared for? You say the father should have some legal recourse because he can’t choose to have an abortion like the female, but what alternative do you propose that will still adequately provide for the child?