It’s fair to a child, though, which is the most important issue. Once born, the child has a moral and legal right to parental support.
The OP is about whether men should have the right to sire a child and then just walk away, with no further obligations whatsoever. This topic has come up here in GD a LOT, every couple of months it seems, and there are always plenty of men who jump in to say that they do indeed believe that they should have the right to totally abandon any children they don’t want.
I wonder if maybe, just maybe, this sort of attitude might contribute to a certain judicial reluctance to grant men full custody of their children?
I don’t think that decent, responsible fathers should be judged based on the behavior of deadbeats, but I really cannot understand complaining both that men cannot more easily gain custody of their children AND that they cannot more easily abandon all responsibility for their children.
That’s the problem with these debates. It starts out as “woman’s body, her choice.” You point out some inequalities then the fallback is “think of the child!” Which is it? The woman’s body, or the child?
Well, who was it that brought the child into the world? It was the woman’s body. The woman’s rights over which, society considers sacrosanct. When we protect women’s bodies we end up with kids to pay for. Who should pay? The willing parents, or, the society that believes in a women’s right to control life.
Sounds fine. Sometimes that’s the better choice for the child as well.
At any point?
Yes there’s a disparity of choice which is based on the disparity of real life biology.
Women take precautions and still get pregnant as well. Then they have to deal with real life choices based on their morals, beliefs, and many other considerations. Abortion, adoption, a commitment to a child, aren’t casual choices for most people. If she keeps the child she has to accept the possibility that she may well be taking care of this child on her own.
The man has moral choices to make as well. He can decide to be a part of the child’s life or not. He can decide to go for custody if she decides to put the child up for adoption. He can decide to pay a portion of support without being a part of the child’s life emotionally. IMO What he shouldn’t be able to do without repercussions , is decide he wants the fun of having sex while sharing none of the responsibility of what he knows is possible.
I’m suggesting that “wanting both genders to be morally responsible” might cost us more than it benefits us. Our concern is that women bear too much cost in raising children. Going after fathers is just one way of dealing with that problem. I am 99% sure it is not a good way even though, after all, I desire that men should be responsible for their actions.
The increase in taxation that will have to pay for the system she may use to pursue a deadbeat dad.
There aren’t enough children in the world, yes.
We agree on this point exactly.
And my point is if there is a burden over their heads, it will change the point at which they will choose to do this, which does affect all of society. We’ve increased his cost of reentering society at a level which utilizes his abilities best.
More people are a benefit, not a cost. More people are good for a country. Maybe some day in the distant future we will have population growth that strains our resources, but we’re nowhere near that level and there is a possibility that it will never happen because more people drive more innovation in things like resource use. In short: more people are good for pretty much everyone. It sucks for the family that suddenly has to cut way back on spending to support a child (but it’s great to have a child you want, which is why people have children at all). So society expects to reap all the rewards of an extra body running around inventing things and paying taxes and making other people happy through friendship and romance, but only the mother and, maybe hopefully if we spend enough money, the father, will pay that cost? This would not help me sleep at night, regardless of my feelings on deadbeat dads.
These laws are needed to pacify people’s questionable desire to align law with morality.
I already mentioned it, but I’ll rephrase it. Australia had a good one, I don’t know if it is still in practice because I don’t normally pay attention to such things, but it was brought to my attention in a book. Pay mothers to have their first child. If they want a second child, and the second child is close enough to the first, go ahead and pay them for that, too. For those fathers who stick around, this helps. For those fathers that don’t, well, this helps, too.
I doubt that’s the case. Men have their wages garnished for non payment of support.
In some states they will pull driver’s license and professional license for non payment. Men are sued for non support on a pretty regular basis. That usually means they didn’t pay voluntarily. In some cases the state is supporting the child and then goes after the Dad to be reimbursed.
To those that argue men should have no say because of the inherent biology even though it isn’t completely fair, would you also support allowing discrimination against woman in employment and pay? Woman take and need more time off because of biology and their inherent need to take lengthy time off for pregnancy.
To me it’s a similar idea. Men get no say after the deed is done about whether to keep the child or not even if the child is not yours. Woman get all the power. And it’s all about the inherent biology “it’s her body, etc.”
But couldn’t companies argue that due to biology women are higher risk? You would hate to put a woman in a position of power only to have her need months or years off to have and raise children. Seems one could argue that “it’s biology, baby” and not hire the woman or keep her “low level”.
So far I haven’t heard about a better solution.
Isn’t our court system there to serve the law, and the public. Won’t she be paying taxes to support that system whether she uses it or not? Is it possible the dead beat might have to pay court costs as well as support?
Hmmm I’m not sure this opinion has much place in this discussion. There are certainly far too many unwanted and uncared for children. It’s bad enough when parents are doing all they can and it’s barely enough. It’s worse when one parent actively avoids support they can afford.
How much support they pay is based on their income. It will become significant if they actively avoid paying and let it accumulate. It’s not meant to discourage them from working and contributing. Responsible men have paid it for years and still been a valuable part of society.
Now you’re making stuff up. More people are not automatically a benefit. To many people who can’t or don’t support themselves creates a burden on those that have to support them. I don’t mind my taxes going to provide some support to those truly in need but I’m not crazy about paying the bills when a father is out there and able to pay his share but simply avoiding it.
You might want to look at some of the stats on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadbeat_dads
before you declare it a waste of time and money.
yeah! Laws, who needs em anyway?
I’d have to see that in context to understand why they did that. I don’t see any reason to think that would be a good idea here in the states. We don’t have a population problem here that I know of.
If a government agent has to track down a deadbeat dad, that agent can’t be doing something else. If we have no available agents to track deadbeat dads, we have to get more. In either case we are bearing additional costs. I am being charitable and assuming that you’re not suggesting we should drop everything to chase deadbeat dads, and that we’ll hire new people to go get 'em. Contrary to common jokes, government workers aren’t just sitting around waiting for more laws to be passed so they can earn their paycheck. So, yeah, everyone is paying a little to chase down this dad, including the mother, for whom I’m hoping to decrease costs, not increase them.
Then you shouldn’t have asked, I guess.
I’m not going to go through another point-by-point. It’s clear that your main concern is getting fathers to pay whatever they can. My main concern is helping mothers pay for their children. We will almost surely never see eye to eye, coming from two entirely different goals.
Agreed on all of this. But, if we want to keep giving the woman the full, complete, and 100% of the choice, then it is only fair that if she seeks no input or is held to no legal standard in this decision making process, then she shouldn’t be able to turn around and expect money from the father.
With freedom comes responsibility…
The woman is legally entitled to a mulligan. The man is not.
The system in place is what is best for the child. It is not a fair system, but sometimes the good of the innocent overrides what is fair.
I used to work with two guys who had zipper issues - one had THREE children with three different women he had nothing to do with - and held a job and paid child support and lived with his mother. Miserable existence since there was NO chance for him to get ahead, nor on his income split four ways were any of those children getting supported in a decent fashion.
The other one had a girlfriend and they were in LURVE…and she got pregnant - and he discovered it was a case of “accidentally on purpose” - and broke up with her - trust had been broken (as it should have been). He made the difficult decision not to have anything to do with the child as she then moved out of state and was discovered to be a raving loony bitch (in his opinion, I never met her) - but sent child support every month.
There are guys out there performing their obligations as - not sperm donor, those get off the hook for child support - sperm provider.
If women had to take a fertility pill (and have sex) in order to get pregnant, rather than a birth-control pill not to, would unwilling fathers still be on the hook for child support?
Would the babies still need food & clothing & diapers?
The child’s need to be supported trumps the mom’s or dad’s desire not to spend money.
If the woman doesn’t want the baby, but the man wants it, she could go through pregnancy, have the baby and give it to the dad to raise it (with him being fully financially responsible for it).
So, she would give up 9 months of being pregnant and not 18 years + 9 months.
The flip side, if the woman wants the baby, but the man doesn’t want it, she could have the baby, and raise it herself (with her being fully financially responsible for it).
In the above two cases, if either the man or the woman can’t raise the kid while being fully financially responsible for it, with no outside help imposed by the courts, then they shouldn’t have the baby.
why can’t the man give the child up for adoption to another father?
I was reading a recent interview with Gore Vidal in which he was asked about a rumored daughter- a 60-ish woman living in Florida conceived shortly after WW2 when Vidal was in Germany. He stated that he’s aware of her but has never met her, that he honestly doesn’t know if she’s his or not, that he was involved with her mother but so was at least one other man, and that on the chance the child was his he sent the mother money to have an abortion. The mother instead used the money to come to America where she married and had more kids. (Vidal as usual comes across as an emotion free narcissistic old bitch.)
Anyway, raises an interesting twist to this: if a man in this situation paid for and had reason to believe the child had been aborted, would the mother’s acceptance of the money for an abortion represent a contract? Should he have to pay child support, or supposing it’s a year or two before she tells him the child was born, should he have to pay back child support?
It does?
Fathers have a responsibility towards children they sired, even though they want nothing to do with it, and have expressed this from the start, and took precautions to prevent pregnancy. If they don’t pay their child support, then they are stigmatized socially, and suffer legal penalties. Ok, fine.
But why is it ok for a single mother to completely abandon their child to foster care, and let the state take care of it? Do we call these mothers deadbeat moms and stigmatize them, fining them, sending them to jail?(I say mother because I’m sure this case is far more likely for a woman to find herself in)
So if there is only one parent, they can just toss it aside, SEP. If there are two, and the mother chooses to have the kid, all of the sudden, responsibility pops into existence out of nowhere.
Fuzzy logic.
Without a “farther”. My kid had one of those, too. Farther away from his responsibilities than anyone thought possible.
You pretty much just made this up. That’s where the fuzzy logic comes in. Women whose children are in foster care also get charged (and garnished) for child support.