Child Support

The logical implication of your argument, Francesca, is that a drunken hump at any age does not carry parental responsibilities if the ensuing pregnancy is unwelcome to the male partner.

I am not sure how we distinguish between kinds of "relationships" either.  What about a friends with benefits situation?

Laws around child support are made precisely to avoid these sorts of factual determinations.  The universality of application is precisely the benefit.

An example of a young woman turning down child support - my niece.  They were young, it was a fling, she got pregnant.  She moved in with her parents, and they decided that the support would not be worth having his involvement in his son's life, given his poor reaction to impending parenthood.

So it does happen.  Perhaps not often.  But it does.

It is about responsibility and accountability. Being drunk does not excuse bad behaviour. If you voluntarily have sex at any age you are responsible for the results. Each party has to be responsible for their own birth control always. Further considering that a drink teenager who drives drunk is responsible for the damage they create both in terms of criminal law and insurance why would we absolve the same drunk teen from the results of u protected sex. Yes, the young woman can chose unilaterally to end the pregnancy; so can any woman. The unilateral right to control her own body is a very basic protection from patriarchal control. That does not change the most basic ethical observation that drunkenness does not absolve anyone of the responsibility for action...including In the automaton cases.

Francesca, you’re clearly upset at the reaction you’ve gotten to your posts on this thread. And I certainly reacted (as did others) because of the content of the things you are posting. I wonder if to some extent you feel as though you’re being backed into a corner? But I took a few minutes and pulled out some of the things you've said, and I hope you can see that for someone reading them, they do come across very similarly to the sorts of arguments that are used by some of those men’s rights activists that I think both of us have a big problem with.

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And, while we're on the subject (sort of), why does mum almost always get the kid?

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He sees it as an 18 year financial sentence and I'm inclined to agree.

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But what about if the girl lies and says she's on the pill? Please answer this one; I'm dying to know what you think. [multiple times]

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But it does seem clear that a guy who wants his drunken screw buddy to abort and leave him alone, this same guy isn't going to see the unwanted (by him) baby and 18 years of child support as a blessing.

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But men do have rights. And one of them should be to decide, for example, to work hard to support his family without being slaughtered in court if the marriage disintegrates.

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Where did this appalling sense of entitlement come from? While most women are clamouring for subsidized daycare, I think it would be a better idea to have that money available to all parents, whether they want to use it for daycare or use it to enable one or both of them to work part-time. There are too many exhausted parents coming home from work plunking Junior in front of the TV and feeding him the quickest, easiest and therefore least nutritious dinner. There's not a lot of time or energy for their kid. I actually think the ADHD explosion is partially a result of this type of background.

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And, although both are obviously 50% responsibility for a pregnancy, I disagee that the girl's sole decision to have the baby entitles her to force him to pay, just as though he had decided that too. I think that's terribly unfair: to have no say whatsoever in the ultimate outcome but be forced to pay 18 years of child support. This hypothetical girl should take responsibility for her decision to have the baby.

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Mum takes one-year mat leave and then throws her baby into daycare.

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Women are "clamoring" for subsidized daycare? How incredibly dismissive.

Really? Any more than referring to men talking about their court orders as "whining"? And yes, they are clamoring for subsidized daycare. Because they don't want the inconvenience of child rearing hampering their chasing the golden buck.

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And I don't know why that [child support] subsidy isn't available to everybody. We could afford it if we spent tax money effectively. Why should we encourage creating children?

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We don't need a health "bonus." We just need to stop being taxed death for a bunch of crap we don't need. And I'm afraid encouraging single teenagers to become mothers falls into this category.

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But he's not going to feel guilty. He's not going to feel anything. He's going to look back at it as what it was, a drunken tumble.

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Back to this issue, though, what if the guy made a recording on his cell phone of the girl claiming she was safe? What about if she signed an agreement to that effect? Do you think that would have any weight?

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Even if they were tricked into their obligation? Doesn't the mother bear some responsibility for her deceit?

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Who said he was trying to "pressure" her? He merely said that's what he wanted and that, if she proceeded with the pregnancy, he wanted nothing to do with her or the child. Why there's this need to make this poor sap out to be some kind of bad guy by posters in this thread is beyond me. Oh, I know: It's because he's male.

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And usually, as I'm sure you know, custody of the children defaults to the mother. She'd pretty much have to be a junkie or something before dad gets custody.

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Again with the comparison of unsafe sex to criminal activity!

Except that throughout this thread you’ve been referring to men being “sentenced” to child support and at one point (quoted below) you refer to it being treated like a capital crime.

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This vindictive need to punish is a disgrace. You know how everybody says that if men got pregnant, there'd be no abortion debate? Well, I think if we were discussing here whether or not a woman should be forced into unwanted motherhood, there'd be no debate either.

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A 14 year old girl who gets herself pregnant is behaving very irresponsibly yet she is still entitled to "her body, her choice," a very important decision that requires careful thought. The reality is that girls get pregnant. If she wants to avoid that, she better make damn sure she's covered. If she wants to rope some sap into paying for both parties' indiscretion, then she won't get any support from me. If she wants to abort, great, that's probably the best solution all around.

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I think the insistence in this thread that the boy has to be saddled with the burden (and, despite the weird example upthread of $100 child support per month, it is in fact almost always an onerous burden) is entirely based in our tendency to hate and blame males for every wrong in our society.

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If I were the teenage boy in this hypothetical, I would change my name and move to another country before I ever paid a cent. Drunken sex shouldn't be a capital crime.

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By suggesting that he was asked to "carry the weight of society," I was responding (I thought) to the rage towards males apparent in this thread.

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Yes, he is paying for a mistake. Paying very harshly for quite a minor crime. … I think most irate posters here aren't concerned about [the state paying], they're more interested in punishing a male.

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I think it's fair to note that those posters most offended by what could have been a rational debate did start ranting about how men are evil scumbags that never pull their weight and that anybody that doesn't agree with these posters is a pro-life, stone age ratbag (okay, I'm paraphasing a bit).

You’re complaining all through this thread about people’s reactions who disagree with you. And yet, you’re posting extremely provocative statements, and in a number of cases responding – to put it diplomatically – strongly, using forceful language about other posters, and making heavy assumptions about what they're saying.

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Really, what about cco's example above where the boy was raped? Should he still pay child support?

This one, twice directed at me, was actually hurtful, although perhaps you didn’t mean it to be. I am a fierce advocate, both in person and online, for survivors of sexual abuse, and that includes boys.

Okay. You’ve asked for responses to one specific hypothetical, although it’s since veered all over the place. A teenage boy and teenage girl get drunk and have sex. She gets pregnant and decides not to have an abortion (assuming one is available). He is liable for child support. I’m not going into what if "she lied about being on the pill," because I frankly think that’s a red herring; how often is this actually a problem? And how many teenage girls would lie about this in order to trap a guy into pregnancy? And even if this (remote) hypothetical happened, where would she get the idea that this was a good idea?

What do I think?

a)      I would like there to be extensive sex-positive education about safer sex, birth control, and sexual consent that starts when children are just that, children. Before sex is a gleam in their eye. Age-appropriate, and continuous. Note that I included sexual consent because if they’re so drunk they forgot about birth control, there may indeed be consent problems as well.

b)      I would like birth control/STD prevention to be widely available to all teenagers, free, easy to access. Condom dispensers in junior high school bathrooms. I would like it to be automatic that young people would think of birth control/STD prevention any time they thought of having heterosexual intercourse, and STD prevention any time they thought about sex, and that birth control was no longer seen as primarily the woman’s responsibility.

c)      I would like parenting skills to be taught in schools. Used to be kids would take care of other kids, not so much anymore.

d)     I would like there to be more birth control options available to men. We’re still waiting.

e)      I would like abortion to be universally available, payment-free, and judgement-free to anyone who gets pregnant and doesn’t want to remain so. We have a long way to go, in Canada as well as elsewhere, before we can say this is the case. I am opposed to parental notification laws.

f)       I would like society in general to change the way we talk to and about boys/young men; they are harmed by the far-too-common assumptions that they are incapable of responsibility, that intellectualism is somehow not appropriate for boys, that empathy, emotional expressiveness, and maturity are not masculine.

Of course, if all of the above were proposed, plenty of people's heads would explode!

So, about your specific hypothetical case of the two drunk teenagers. You cited young offenders laws. If they are under 18, then sure, maybe it should be handled differently. I am not a lawyer so I don’t know if and to what extent boys under 18 even ARE personally liable for child support. You were opposed to parents being held responsible, and yet there is plenty of legal precedent for parents having to pay damages incurred by their underage children, so should they not be involved if appropriate?

I do feel strongly that we need to maintain universal child support requirements; there are far too many examples of women trying to raise children without it. I’m not opposed to considerably better state support (including daycare!) for any single parent; it’s in the child’s and in society’s best interests. You have suggested state support several times as a replacement for the teenage boy being held financially responsible, although I'm still not sure how you feel about social programs in general as you seem critical of a number of them. However, I disagree that the teenage father should be given this as an automatic out.

That said, as with any legal issue, context also should be taken into account. Nobody’s suggested mediation yet. How about sitting down the teenagers, and their parents if appropriate, and working out solutions both in the short term, and in the long term? The teenage boy would be involved in the decision-making, would take responsibility, but his circumstances would also be considered. If there was a way to make sure that this was done in the child’s best interests as well as the parents’, then this could be an option as it is in other disputes such as custody arrangements.

This is more directed at cco and your concerns about language echoing anti-choice arguments. There is a biological difference between men and women, of course, and I don’t think that there is a fair equivalency to be made between being forced to bear a child against your will, and being held financially responsible for a mistake you’ve made that has predictable consequences.

These are not anti-male arguments. I’ve said elsewhere with respect to the men’s rightists that I find it baffling (although not surprising) that they are so virulantly opposed to feminism, because so many of the issues they’re concerned about are related to the patriarchy and the roles that are assigned to men and women. Similarly, I’d ask you, Francesca, to take a step back and think about how much of the issue you’re raising has to do with those socially-enforced roles, versus the impression that you’re giving, that you think men (boys?) are being oppressed by women/girls in these hypothetical situations.

[quote=Tehanu]So, about your specific hypothetical case of the two drunk teenagers. You cited young offenders laws. If they are under 18, then sure, maybe it should be handled differently. I am not a lawyer so I don’t know if and to what extent boys under 18 even ARE personally liable for child support. You were opposed to parents being held responsible, and yet there is plenty of legal precedent for parents having to pay damages incurred by their underage children, so should they not be involved if appropriate?[quote]

Young offenders laws are irrelevant, because fathering a child is not a crime, and child support is not punishment.

A parent (father or mother) is responsible for paying child support according to the guideline table amount for their income, which for a young person is likely too low for any child support to be payable, but when the income is high enough, he or she will have to pay child support to whoever then has the child (which might be two of the grandparents).

I have never heard of a grandparent being sued for failing to ensure their son wore a condom. But I haven't researched it. Anyone can be sued for anything, but whether a judge would find liability, I cannot see.

Tehanu, thank you for your well-thought-out and non-hostile response. Generally I try to avoid even getting involved in these kinds of threads, because emotions run hot very quickly and it's too easy to make assumptions about the motivation and mentality of other posters. I'll let Francesca speak for herself, but to address the parts directed at me:

Tehanu wrote:

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Really, what about cco's example above where the boy was raped? Should he still pay child support?

This one, twice directed at me, was actually hurtful, although perhaps you didn’t mean it to be. I am a fierce advocate, both in person and online, for survivors of sexual abuse, and that includes boys.

I, for one, certainly didn't intend my example to be hurtful, and I wholeheartedly apologize to you, Tehanu.

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I’m not going into what if "she lied about being on the pill," because I frankly think that’s a red herring; how often is this actually a problem? And how many teenage girls would lie about this in order to trap a guy into pregnancy? And even if this (remote) hypothetical happened, where would she get the idea that this was a good idea?

I am not an MRA of any flavour, and I don't think that "trapping" men for child support is an actual thing that happens often enough to be anything more than an occasional horror story. The stories about contraception lies seem to come far more often in the context of couples in relatively stable relationships who disagree about having children (and yes, there are stories of men who poke holes in condoms too). But there's not enough data on this sort of thing (just the odd dubious Daily Mail article) for me to offer a remotely informed opinion.

Far more common than this paranoid hypothesis, in the experiences of my friends (male and female alike), are cases where both partners are irresponsible, or a condom breaks, or a woman (I'm going to use "woman" from here on out, because I think the talk about teenagers obscures the issue) who's been told she's infertile turns out not to be. She gets pregnant, unexpectedly, and for whatever reason makes the choice (and it should ALWAYS be *her* choice) to proceed with the pregnancy. The man disagrees, whether because he's young, terrified, poor, hates children, hates the woman, has a new partner, has an old partner, or whatever. We don't (or shouldn't) judge such factors when women decide to abort or to surrender for adoption, because we recognize it's her choice, regardless of her motivation. To do otherwise would be to open a very ugly can of worms.

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This is more directed at cco and your concerns about language echoing anti-choice arguments. There is a biological difference between men and women, of course, and I don’t think that there is a fair equivalency to be made between being forced to bear a child against your will, and being held financially responsible for a mistake you’ve made that has predictable consequences.

Equivalent? Certainly not. Analogous? I'd say so. There are many logical arguments for the current system of child support, whether or not I find all of them entirely convincing. And as I said upthread, the economic ones hit me the hardest -- I doubt I'd cast a vote in Parliament that would throw millions of women into even deeper poverty for the sake of intellectual consistency.

The arguments I find genuinely horrifying, though, are the ones that sound photocopied from the anti-sex forced-birther manual. "Children are a blessing, whether you know it or not." "One day you'll grow up." "You should've abstained if you didn't want to be a parent." Accidents happen, irresponsibility happens, and life is seldom as simple as "you play, you pay".

That's why we have choice rights to begin with. Obviously, women can bear children and men can't. Obviously, a fetus is not the same thing as a born human being. But some of the arguments (not yours, Tehanu) in this thread make me wonder:

How do people feel about "safe haven" laws, AKA "baby boxes", where new mothers can give their children over to social services without fear of prosecution and without being hit up for child support? Every state in America has these, but upon doing a little Googling, it seems only two Canadian provinces do. Nebraska infamously briefly failed to specify an age limit for these, which led to an avalanche of parents from across the country dropping off children of all ages. (An out-of-context quote from the former governor: "Please don't bring your teenager to Nebraska," Gov. Dave Heineman said. "Think of what you are saying. You are saying you no longer support them. You no longer love them." I'm sure the tourism board loved that one.)

In a flagrantly hypothetical world where mothers could receive equal payments from the state to whatever the father would have given them, how many people here would still demand the father, however uninvolved, pay up?

Pregnancy can be very dangerous, and there's no male equivalent to being forced to grow a parasite within your womb for 9 months. But given the existence of safe haven laws and the possibility of adoption, the pro-choice argument is only partially (though an important part) about being forced to bear a fetus against your will. It's also about being forced to support a child against your will after birth. Pro-choice people like myself think it's obscene to interrogate a pregnant woman about her reasons for not wanting to be a parent. But don't many of those reasons apply to men as well?

I'm an adopted child myself (and one who's been voluntarily sterilized). In Louisiana in the 1980s, my parents had to fight hard against anti-adoption prejudice from people who felt not only that anyone meant to have children wouldnt've been made infertile by Jesus, but (more prominently) that they were somehow unfairly relieving a teenage girl of the consequences of her choice to spread her legs. I'm intimately familiar with the logic of anti-choicers when it comes to sex and consequences. To see people here flip the switch so abruptly from sympathy for horny and irresponsible women to bible-thumping condemnation for horny and irresponsible men is something I find difficult to reconcile.

Timebandit wrote:

Maybe not absolutely fair in the strictest sense, but as fair as it can be in present circumstances.

Not to mention how many times that doesn't get pressed to the Nth degree, or the fact that it's pretty damned hard to enforce, or when it is in place (and sometimes not) there are guys who lord it over their exes and act like they get to call the shots and criticize how they live their lives.

It may be an exception, but there are enough guys who - if they are so inclined - twist it to their advantage anyway.

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I don't understand this debate. The law is very clear.

 

[quote=Francesca Allan]Yes, I know the law is clear. The question and my (misguided) reason for starting this thread was to discuss whether this should be the law in each and every case.

to which Caissa answers "yes, it should be."

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I don't think morally, however, she can hound the bio-dad.

 

And if the bio-dad was in possession of any kind of morality, she wouldn't have to.

Ah, but you see Shartal, according to Francesca the money is "really" going to the woman, NOT the child, because cheques are made out to her.  Which she then, presumably, proceeds to spend on beer, popcorn and highlights.

Fucking Christ.

Well, I tried, as did others, but clearly this trainwreck of a thread clearly isn't getting better. One point to address before completely bowing out, because it's been raised AGAIN and that's frankly very disturbing.

I don't think ANYONE, including me, has said that a survivor of a rape should be financially liable, and to accuse me and Caissa (and maybe others, haven't checked) of endorsing that is disgusting. I didn't answer the question? Fuck that shit. Asking me that question -- especially the second time after having been called on it -- is offensive.

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Really, what about cco's example above where the boy was raped? Should he still pay child support?

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This one, twice directed at me, was actually hurtful, although perhaps you didn’t mean it to be. I am a fierce advocate, both in person and online, for survivors of sexual abuse, and that includes boys.

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Didn't mean to hurt you and I'm sorry but you never answered the question. If you're a fierce advocate for sexual abuse survivors, then I would hope that child support wouldn't be payable here (ideally).

And again to Caissa:

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Okay, then. So if a boy is raped by his babysitter, then he's responsible (and I do believe female-on-male rape is underreported).

Accusing people of taking sides with rapists is appalling behaviour.

Do you have links to the courts final judgements in these cases?