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A boy can make 'em but a man can raise one
If you did it admit it and stick with it
Don't say it ain't yours 'cause all women are not whores
Ninety percent represent a woman that is faithful
Ladies can I hear it? Thank you.
When a girl gets pregnant her man is gonna run around
Dissin' her for nine months when it's born he wants to come around
Talking that I'm sorry for what I did
And all of a sudden he wants to see his kid
She had to bear it by herself and take care of it by herself
And givin' her money for milk won't really help
Half of the fathers with sons and daughters don't even wanna take 'em
But it's so easy for them to make 'em
It's true, if it weren't for you then the child wouldn't exist
After a skeeze, there's responsibilities so don't resist
Be a father to your child
You see, I hate when a brother makes a child and then denies it
Thinking that money is the answer so he buys it
A whole bunch of gifts and a lot of presents
It's not the presents, it;s your presence and essence
Of being there and showing the baby that you care
Stop sittin' like a chair and having your baby wonder where you are
Or who you are----fool, you are his daddy
Dib;t act like you ain't cause that really makes me mad, G.
To see a mother and a baby suffer
I've had enough of brothers who don't love the
Fact that a baby brings joy into your life
You could still be called daddy if the mother's not your wife
Don't be scared, be prepared 'cause love is gonna getcha
It will always be your child even if she ain't witcha
So don't front on your child when it's your own
'Cause if you front now, then you'll regret it when it's grown
Be a father to your child
Put yourself in his position and see what you're done
But just keep in mind that you're somebody;s son
How would you like it if your father was a stranger
And then tried to come into your life and tried to change
The way your mother raised ya----now, wouldn't that amaze ya?
To be or not to be, that is the question
When you're wrong, you're wrong, it's time to make a correction
Harassin' the mother for being with another man
But if the brother man can do it better than you can,
let him. Don't sweat him, duke
Let him do the job that you couldn't do.
You're claimin you was there, but not when she needed you
And now you wanna come around for a day or two?
It's never too late to correct your mistake
So get yourself together for your child's sake
And be a father to your child
(That's an issue of morality. Some people think free sex is irredeemable selfishness. Some people think getting an abortion is irredeemable selfishness. Some people think being able to enter into a gay marriage is irredeemable selfishness. Or flag-burning or burning your draft card. It's not my place or your place or anybody's place to punish the morality of others.
And *that's* why I call you a puritan. You're denying sexual freedom to others based on your personal definition of morality, which you wish to force on others. In the realm of how one can refer to a person who wishes deny sexual freedom to others because they wish to impose their own personal morality on them, puritan's just about the nicest one. Certainly a lot nicer than the suggestions of misogyny, a far more serious insult that was among the first to be tossed out.
I consider and have always considered BTF political threads as "what happens in BTF political threads stays in political threads." But you want to use the Dutch uncle ad hominem to stifle the conversation and extend it beyond. I've enjoyed conversing with you over the last decade, but if you insist on doling out respect based on agreeing with you, well, that's a battle I was inevitably going to lose. We can't choose all the people we associate with on our lives, but we can certainly choose some of them. If this is how you feel, it's regretful, but there's literally no crucial reason for us to know or care about the existence of or have anything to do with each other.
But Dan, nobody is denying anyone sexual freedom. A guy can have any kind of sex with whomever he likes, the only catch is if a baby results, it's his to support, not the rest of society.
To make an economic analogy, a person's freedom to start a business doesn't mean he's free to walk away from debts he incurs at any point. If you borrow $100K against your house to open a business, and it fails, you don't say "well, we can't make you pay back that loan b/c it violates your economic freedom to start a business."
Well, we've already established that you think a zygote is a baby.
To make an economic analogy, a person's freedom to start a business doesn't mean he's free to walk away from debts he incurs at any point.
Correct. The male is responsible for his half of the pregnancy (the zygote) until such time that the other party makes an intervening, sole decision that he has no part of.
Abortion should be safe, legal, and common.
Doesn't matter what you think. Child support only comes into play once the baby is born. There is indisputably a baby in every child support case.
Correct. The male is responsible for his half of the pregnancy (the zygote) until such time that the other party makes an intervening, sole decision that he has no part of.
Non-sensical. A person's inaction, when they have no duty to act, can't incur additional liability. Your construct creates a duty to abort on the woman's part.
Abortion should be safe, legal, and common.
Horrible.
And you're absolutely free to feel that. And you can believe that masturbation is a sin. Or that two gay guys having sex or not taking communion sends those people to the fiery pits of hell. Or that the whole holy ghost thing wasn't written when the writers of the bible had some serious writers bloc and had a little too much arak.
Let's at least call it what it is: "Support for a woman's solo decision to have a child".
Another way to put it is, in the examples under discussion, "there is indisputably a woman, deciding by herself to have a child, in every case that turns into a legal dispute over child support".
I very rarely agree with him but DJS is correct, above. The amount of vitriol for hundreds of posts also came entirely from the PIVs side. The side backing mens' civil rights have been largely restrained.
DJS: in 1076 I mentioned a six year compromise. I think it's more practical than it is principled, because men either don't surrender their civil rights with ejaculation, or they do. I don't see any rights theory here that leaves a man partly responsible wrt a decision he has no say in. Any thoughts?
It is a theory of conflicting rights, which cannot all be addressed concurrently. The potential father has a right to his earnings, the potential mother has a right to biological autonomy (which includes the freedom NOT to have an abortion), the actual child (whenever you may believe it arrives) has a right to proper care, and the individual members of society have a right to their own earnings.
How about we call it walking away rights? If proposed, walking away rights should apply to both men and women. As proposed, both men and women should be able to walk away from their financial responsibilities and leave the other biological parent to raise the child alone or give it up for adoption.
Abortion only affects the unborn baby, while walking away primarily affects already born children. There is no reason to restrict the important right to walk away to a single gender.
Also, given that walking away rights are now severed from their questionable association with abortion, there's no particular reason to restrict them to a particular window as abortion is. Children from prior relationships inhibit sexual freedom. They require care, which can interrupt sex, and may make people less desirable as partners. So don't parents need to be able to walk away at any time?
And I'm absolutely free to use my morality as a basis for societal organization and laws, just like your are doing.
What you won't accept is that you are imposing your morality just as much as the "puritan's" you denounce.
In your moral view, the right of a man to have consequence free sex outweighs the right of a child to support from his father, and the right of society not to have to support that child when the man is perfectly able to. So, own it. Own your preferences. Don't couch it behind declarations of liberty.
Your speech is not free of consequences (you can be fired or shunned for your views), your practice of religion is not free of consequences (you can't be an Orthodox Jew and eat bacon-double-cheeseburgers) , even your citizenship itself is not free of consequences (taxes, jury duty, the draft). No liberty is free of consequences.
Frankly, I think it's assinine to single out the realm of sex as so uniquely important, that people must be absolved of all responsibility for their choices and actions. You've created your own "god", that demands absolute privelege.
It's no different that saying that the freedom to choose your career is impinged by the poor earnings of some careers. So, society must equalize the pay of all professions so that all are "free to choose" their career.
Exactly. All we are doing is arguing who absorbs the costs.
I have no qualms saying that based on my morality, the parents should absorb all the costs they are possibly capable of bearing, since their actions caused the situation, before you pass the costs on to the child, or taxpayers who are completely innocent in the situation.
It's a preference. The other side prefers the deadbeat to have unfettered use of his money.
The bolded part by snapper is to me a somewhat compelling argument, but then I go back to something Dan or Ray said about breaking someone's window. The owner of the house with the broken window is under no duty to act to replace the window. Should the breaker then be under obligation to at least share in the ongoing cost of cleanup to the interior of the house due to water and other environmental damage because the window wasn't replaced?
I accidentally break your arm swinging a baseball bat. I should be under some obligation to pay for your medical bills due to the accident. Should you not seek treatment, as you are under no duty to, should I be responsible for your financial support because you lost your job as a professional musician because your arm no longer functions because you did not seek treatment?
Pregnancy is not an incorrect, unnatural state. It is pretty much the opposite.
Actually, it's not a theory of conflicting rights. I put forward the idea of support for six years simply as a practical matter, not really as an attempt to resolve a conflict between rights--I'll be surprised if it does. I do think there can be value in putting forward ideas that might lie somewhere between extreme positions. I also think the idea of stretching a sperm donor's support for a woman's decision to have a child to 21 years is absurd on its face. We don't demand that husbands with intact families send their children to college, and indeed most 19 year olds don't go to college. Most states extending misnamed 'child support' awards until an adult is 21 also force the sperm donor to contribute to college costs.
It's not a theory of conflicting rights as the woman has no right to claim support for her decision to being a zygote to term. To address your four claims to rights,
1) the potential father does have a right to his earnings but, infinitely more importantly, has the right to choose with whom he is going to have a family. For the sake of argument I'm assuming unless otherwise specified birth control was properly, carefully used, and simply failed, and that the woman was aware of the man's disinterest in fathering a child with her. It's worth being clear, and I don't think nearly enough has been made by the pro-rights crowd of the extraordinary betrayal involved when a condom was properly used, the woman knew of the man's disinterest, and she went ahead anyway and brought the zygote to term. It's an extraordinary abuse of trust and of one's autonomy.
2) the potential mother has a right to biological autonomy, but unless she's getting sperm from a willing donor, she doesn't have the right to violate a man's biological autonomy, which includes the right to fertilize the eggs of his choosing with the woman's consent. The woman can't abrogate to herself more rights than the Catholic Church abrogates to itself. She can't decide on Monday that abortion's fine and dandy, but on Tuesday that ejaculation = a child. The mother does indeed have a right to biological autonomy, along with an obligation to accept the financial (and other) consequences that come with exercising that autonomy.
3) "the actual child" is indeed a consequence of the mother's exercise of her biological autonomy, and therefore has a claim on all parties who exercise choice in that child's creation; in this case, there is one party fitting that description: the mother.
4) individual members of society do have a right to their own earnings, with a whole lot of stipulations, taxes, and so forth along the way. I don't know what true libertarians envision wrt child care in a society that does not violate men's civil and reproductive rights, and I won't presume to speak for them. I'm fine with excellent child care on demand.
The only way to remove the conflict is to recognize that because a man ejaculates does not mean he surrenders to a woman his reproductive rights. She does not get to violate his reproductive autonomy any more than society gets to violate her reproductive autonomy when her contraception fails, by compelling her to have a child.
Fwiw, I do think it's important to begin reframing the issue by ceasing to call it the misnamed 'child support', and instead call it what it really is: 'support for ('subsidizing' might be better) a woman's decision to have a child.
--It hasn't been raised, but I wonder if a discussion between the man and the woman in advance of sex, where a man asserts he doesn't want a child at this point in his life (or similarly) could be held to constitute a contract. Not that that has any practical value at this point...
The analogy is poor. There's nothing irrational about a baby being taken to term and parents raising the baby to adulthood. It's something many people pursue at some point in their lives. Leads to survival of the species.
A better analogy might be towards starting a business, where there's the possibility of enjoyment and profit, and also the possibility that you'll lose money or be sued for something the business does.
There is no child until a mother chooses to have a child. That. Is. The. Point.
I think this is the most accurate analogy to date, but it needs to account for an understanding in advance that procreation was not the aim, and was not desired. Not quite sure yet how to work that in and, on re-reading, I'm not quite sure an accidental arm breaking is the best metaphor for condom failure.
There's a lot that's irrational about taking a zygote (it's not "a baby" if it has to be taken to term, as per the description) to term when a woman knows the sperm donor did not want a baby, when she knows the condom failed, and when she is unable to support her child without resorting to the scarcely veiled threat of imprisonment.***
Let's face it--any woman who brings a zygote to term, knowing full well the sperm donor had zero interest in fathering a child with her, zero interest in raising a child with her, and was careful in his choice of birth control consistent with that absence of interest, is irresponsible beyond measure to bring a child into the world under those circumstances, especially knowing full well she'll need to force the sperm donor under "child support" enforcement's threat of imprisonment to subsidize for 18 to 21 years her decision to have a child. If a sperm donor who cannot meet his imposed financial obligation is a "deadbeat dad", surely the woman who lets her child down in each of these essential regards is significantly worse. Let's call her, a "scumbag mom".
The issue needs to be completely reframed. The current language used to describe it is Orwellian.
McCoy is right, of course. The money is not for the house owner, or the musician, or even the child, as there is no child. The money goes to subsidize a woman's decision to have a child. There is no child to whom a parent owes responsibility. Analogies without a child in them are precisely to the point. Analogies with a child in them miss the point entirely.
It would be a hell of a lot more interesting if even one of the Children First crowd would risk the hide of their sacred cow and talk about the extent of a child's rights. Also, since we're talking zygotes--who have no inalienable rights in their schema; in fact, they have rights only as the woman chooses to confer those rights--what about all the children men want to have and don't because once they ejaculate they apparently surrender all reproductive rights to a woman, even a woman they've taken precations with; even a woman with whom they've agreed neither wants a child?
Questions for a stats guy: how many pregnancies can we expect in the U.S., assuming the proper use of condoms? I'm interested in broadening a discussion that went stale in some regards, and it would be interesting to know how many pregnancies at the extreme end (complete male contraceptive responsibility, full disclosure of disinterest, condom failure) we're talking about.
***On any given day, 50,000 people are in jail for not being able to continuously for two decades subsidize a woman's decision to have a child (thought that's admittedly overbroad. Some are surely in prison despite having wholeheartedly wanted the pregnancy to continue, and could not pay, and could not navigate labyrinthine support hearings necessary to the modification of an award). And, no, this is not at all comparable to the claim that taxes are collected at gunpoint. The assumption of the duties and rights of citizenship that are held to occur at birth are not the equivalent of an ejaculation causing the surrender of a man's financial and reproductive rights.
Why do we grant a given woman more power than the Catholic Church wants for itself, anyway?
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf
If anyone has a link to an unobstructed copy, by all means add it here.
To clarify, at what point during the pregnancy did the fetus become a chld? I've also never heard the phrase, a "moral option to end the pregnancy before the child is born..." Does that originate with you?
It's clearly sometimes considered a child, e.g. when a woman miscarries, or when an assailant causes the death of an unborn child.
To continue the tradition of outrageously humorous analogies, it's like when a seed from a tree on your property is blown onto your neighbor's property. The neighbor can uproot the resulting sapling or not, and solely at her will; you have nothing to say about that, and you cannot trespass onto that neighbor's property to commandeer the resulting sapling, or even care for it without the neighbor's okay: the care and feeding and grooming of that tree is entirely the neighbor's responsibility--in fact, her power over that tree is plenary. Now, under existing law, you and that neighbor can come to arrangements, before, during, or after the "birth" of the tree, but duties can not be imposed unilaterally on you without your consent.
It's different with the human baby (and the fetus it was), though, and the woman (neighbor's) rights. But not as to the male neighbor. Why? Because we apply a regime of law under a host of cultural assumptions about clearly outmoded takes on institutions and relationships one new way as to mothers and their issue but the same old way when it comes to males now left neutered as to authority but responsible as to obligations. We have changed in our attitudes about fetuses, babies, and mothers. As to fathers, though, it's the same old conventions, the same old slamming and slandering.
No one is slamming or slandering fathers; just those fathers that abandon their children.
You're making it sound like "bringing a zygote to term" is some sort of positive act. She's choosing not to undergo a medical procedure, a procedure that offers the risk of societal, physical, and emotional consequences. I'm pretty solidly pro-choice, but abortion isn't the excision of a tumor. It doesn't have to be an actual child to represent an undesirable goal; a potential child has value even if it does not rise to the value that demands protection over the woman's bodily autonomy.
I do not think it is morally appropriate for a woman to compel a man to provide economic or emotional support to a child that he clearly did not want, but I also do not think it is morally appropriate for a man to resist providing economic and emotional support to a child that is biologically his. The law shouldn't be about doing the right thing by either parent, but about doing what is right for the child, since the child cannot care for itself and without parental support, will become the responsibility of society. Once the child is born, the rights available to the parents in the past no longer apply in the same way: the child changes the moral framework.
I don't believe in jail time for unpaid support for the same reason that I don't believe in debtor's prisons generally. A bankruptcy-free draw on one's income until the debt and reasonable interest is paid is sufficient; if someone manages to escape obligation even with this, society picks up the slack.
Yes you are when you assume the old paradigm still applies, and still only applies, to him. Everything always changes--except for the rule that no matter what a man is always responsible, and cannot eschew that responsibility, not even when his role is not only gutted and made all but perfunctory.
And the mother can't eschew her responsibility either. If she abandons her child she is subject to exactly the same child support laws, and societal disapproval as the man.
The reality is, however, relatively few women abandon their children, awhile many, many men seek to.
Same to you, vagina. The means to not get impregnated, or once impregnated, to terminate that pregnancy, are manifold. It's your vagina. Own it. Assume responsibility for what can happen to your body through your voluntary actions and take all precautions and avail yourself of all remedies you think it advisable. It's your body. It happened to your body. You now have ways to deal with it.
Now, where does that leave us? Oh, I know, it's still his fault. Because way back there he could have simply refrained from sex. For how many thousands, millions if we count non-human ancestors, has that been a non-starter? Curbing the sexual urge is not one of the technological advances. Birth control and abortion are.
This is absurd, and offensive.
The exact same thing can and is said about pregnancy itself, especially in the case (w/r/t the "societal and emotional consequences") of having children outside of wedlock.
A distant uncle passed away and left me quite a batch
And yes I was livin' high until that fatal day
A lawyer proved I wasn't born
I was only hatched
Correct. Which is why the decision of pregnancy or abortion, the consequences of which are borne almost entirely by the woman, should remain the sole prerogative of the woman.
Two main issues are being discussed here: the woman's right to bodily autonomy when the potential child is a part of her body, and the child's right to support from its biological parents (or a reasonable proxy) once it is an independent entity. The decision of whether or not to abort is solely the woman's decision because it is solely the woman's bodily autonomy in question (assuming one accepts a fetus as non-viable, of course). The decision of how to allocate support (and custody) for the child really should have very little to do with the woman's desire and very much to do with ensuring the proper support.
There is a third issue where there's really significant room for agreement on both sides here. The man should have no say in the woman's ultimate decision because it is not his bodily autonomy that is impinged upon by abortion or carrying a pregnancy to term. However, once a child is born, both parents should have precisely equivalent rights and responsibilities in terms of custody and the child's economic welfare.
Which is a horrifically unjust law. Even Western European countries impose restrictions that the US doesn't.
I'm not going to give you a tutorial in biology. This is the internet. You can find out.
And I don't hate women. I love women. I hate this idea of women this society fosters. And I can't really blame them, though, for gaming the system. I blame those like you who don't protest--until the day they come for you, when it'll be too late.
If the combination of contempt and censure were applied to many another disfavored class, we’d be outraged. We never have sympathy for this powerless, disempowered class. We just keep piling out the burdens and we’re proud of ourselves for being so sensitive to a class that incurs nothing like those burdens—nothing that she couldn’t remedy.
And you notice, I'm sure, how your compatriots on this one issue, would be at odds with you on the abortion--all on the merest gossamer-like distinctions, the most artificial and arbitrary definitional niceties.
Or this: "You know, the more I see of women, the more I think that there ought to be a law. Something has got to done about this sex, or the whole fabric of society will collapse, and then what silly asses we shall all look." The Code of the Woosters.
I never said they weren't wrong on that issue. When I think people are right I'll agree with, even if I think they're wrong on 99% of everything else.
There ought to be a law
criminal
There ought to be a whole lot more
you get money for nothing
tell me who can you trust
we got what you want
and you got the lust
The stats I've seen have the theoretical failure rate for condoms at 2%. In practice, the failure rate was much higher. There was one study that tracked heterosexual couples who were well educated and highly motivated to avoid pregnancy, and the failure rate was roughly 4%. That's 4 pregnancies out of 100 couples over the course of a year. (The failure rates are much higher among other demographics.)
Other studies I've seen have the failure rate at closer to the theoretical failure rate of 1-2% among a similar group of people (1-2 couples out of 100 per year).
Once you start doing some multiplication (e.g. 10 year period with 4% failure rate...) things start looking pretty dicey. It probably goes without saying, but common sense (and math) dictates that if a couple doesn't want to get pregnant they need to be using multiple methods of birth control.
All of which is to say, no person can handle the job of contraception alone, unless they are 'handling' the 'job' alone.
Is this a condom failure rate or a "pregnancy occurs = failure" rate? Because if it's the former it is flat wrong at the very start as it turns every condom failure into an immediate pregnancy, which simply isn't happening.
It probably goes without saying, but common sense (and math) dictates that if a couple doesn't want to get pregnant they need to be using multiple methods of birth control.
This doesn't seem particularly sound either. Or me and a lot of people using only one form of birth control who've never had a pregnancy problem are really very lucky.
I mean, sample size and everything, but I'd love to see these studies and figures.
It's pregnancy = failure.
You make a fine point. I'll have to check into those studies directly. I was just going off generalizations I'd read of the state of the studies from others (as regards the %'s).
Using multiple forms of birth control has pretty much been the general advice for a while now. Obviously if you're only using one form of birth control, condoms are among the least reliable.
Reliability of pregnancy prevention, however, isn't the only criteria at work here. The other (superior) methods involve surgery and/or potentially harmful medication. And, of course, they provide no protection from STDs.
Not at all. It reveals a hierarchy of rights. Bodily autonomy trumps right to potential life and economic autonomy. A dependent child's right to support trumps its parents' economic autonomy. It certainly has nothing to do with valuing women more than men.
The being inside of her is nothing, until instantaneously it becomes everything
Some people may have this position, but I'm not one of them. The developing life, prior to viability, is something. It's not yet a person, and so it has none of the individual rights that only apply to people. Post-viability, it is something more, yet still not possessing the full set of rights as a born person (since we'd allow the mother to abort if her own life were at risk at pretty much any moment up until birth). Post-birth, it is a full person.
She has the entire weight of society’s concern and sympathy always.
To the extent that this is true, it's not a reasonable thing. Post-birth, the woman deserves no more consideration than the man as it regards the child. Between conception and birth, the woman has more choices because she bears the overwhelming majority of the burden of those choices.
Are you sure? A 4% pregnancy rate with condoms would mean that the condom is breaking/failing like 20% of the time, which simply isn't happening.
Positive. At least, I'm sure that's what the studies are saying. Check the study I linked above. (Also, it's over the course of a year. The failure rate = the number of women out of 100 that can expect to become pregnant over a year of use. So in the case of condoms, that's 2 in 100 over the course of a year assuming theoretically perfect use. Over 10 years of use, it would be like 18% or so (1 - .98^10))
"Failure rates" with contraception are almost entirely failures of use. Oral contraceptives are like 99.8% effective when used assiduously and correctly, but if you've ever had a regimen of taking a pill a day before, you know how easy it is to miss a day or two. The pill fails with some regularity because a large percentage of women don't take it perfectly. The same mutatis mutandis is true with condoms - used correctly, the failure rate is very small, but a lot of people aren't careful enough putting them on or taking them off, or about throwing out old ones, or about selecting lube.
These failures of use are common, but couples that see no failures over years are not exactly outliers - it's more likely that these are couples who do a better job being precise and careful in contraception use.
For myself, in high-leverage situations, I've always tried to look at myself like a statistic, rather than like an ideal human being who doesn't make the mistakes statistical humans do. So I am very much a believer in the double-barrier, pill plus condom theory of contraception.
That number simply seems high. I suppose I am just Jeter-great-fieldering it.
Although, as you mention, it notes a failure in humans, not much of anything else. In such case the number when accepting THAT seems crazy low I suppose.
(Though, thinking about it more, the scientists who study the issue are capable of recognizing that tendency, too. So perhaps the statistics are already accounting for that bias.)
But even non-dumbasses are very much capable of screwing up contraception. Happens all the time. Use two methods, people!
Morty, do you know of any cases, other than a sperm donation in a regulated setting under the indirect supervision of an M.D., where any contractual obligation agreed to by the woman that limits the rights of the zygote/fetus/child was held to be valid?
I think regulated sperm donation gives us a useful model from which to work. Here's one: is the zygote entitled to its sperm donor's medical history? It makes sense that it is, but I haven't done any thinking on the rights aspect. Does the zygote have preferred status, such that it gains the right to breach the customary shield of privacy wrt medical records? If yes, does that preferred status extend into other areas? I'm asking you specifically because the other side will simply repeat some variation of, 'when he sticks it in, he cannot win'.
And in that range of risk and consequences, it differs from remaining pregnant and giving birth how, exactly? Abottion is safer than going to term, it is less physically dangerous, there are serious societal consequences to single motherhood, and as any single mom will tell you, trying to find a partner while raising a small child is much more difficult. In short, to paraphrase, she is choosing to undergo a process, a process that guarantees an increased risk of societal, physical, and emotional consequences. Follow up studies show that very, very few women have the sort of severe regret after abortion that you're implying.
@1126:
Sensible. You may know that child support, or subsidizing a woman's decision to have a child, is called 'the last debtors' prison', and that the vast majority of unpaid child support follows from depleted circumstances (illness, unemployment in a bad economy, disability) rather than abandonment. Attorney friends who practice in family court (I used to play poker with a couple, so sss and all that) tell me appeals of awards based on changed circumstances are routinely turned down in order to spur the appellant to 'get a job', or 'get healthy'. Indigent defendants are often unable to figure out the arcane rules involved in appealing, cannot afford legal assistance, and this is not the kind of thing free legal services ever help with. Further, the Supreme Court has ruled there's no right to counsel for defendants facing prison as a result of overdue support; instead, the Court has chosen to entrust individual states to look after defendents' rights. Good thing they didn't take the same approach during the civil rights era.
Lastly, to show how bizarre enforcement has gotten, the first recourses for states for falling behind in support payments are suspension of drivers' licenses and professional licenses.
@1141: brilliant.
Steve--thanks for looking into the numbers. Any idea how many pregnancies, total, annually, are the result of condom failure, or how that might be calculated?
--------------------------
@1138: Dunno, Jay: Why do you have sex with women, when you clearly hate them so much, what with having so much contempt for their ability to make critical decisions and take responsibility for those decisions?
snaps, when you get nasty, do you prefer being told to fuck off directly, or would you rather something more evocative, but no less offensive than the cheap, unjustified shot you took, like "regardless of how much you suck up to women here, they're still not going to have sex with you, loser"?
In short, tone it down, guys. It should be possible on a baseball stats site to have a reasoned discussion even of an issue such as this one.
I know of very few instances of likely sabotage of birth control, but I've been shocked over the years by how many woman have admitted to me that they stopped taking birth control with the specific aim of getting pregnant, and did so either without consulting with their partners, or with the full knowledge their partners would have vehemnently disagreed.
Hypothetical: Five years from now a condom is invented that a man can use that is indistinguishable from a conventional condom. It allows him to painlessly extract an egg during intercourse from the woman. The man fertilizes the egg and with his Grow-A-Kid Kit brings the fetus to term. He then goes to court and wins weekly child support for this child, good for the next twenty-one years and including partial college tuition, and any and all unusual medical care.
Okay, or not?
In your honest opinion, how many?
I mean, it's just an odd statement. I'm not paramoid, but I think that statement of yours goes past remotely and into certainly.
I took 100% responsibility for any sex acts I participated in. For me, that meant I really held back until I was sure I could deal with the worst case scenarios. Sex acts are 100% the responsibility of both partners. In your world the consequences of sex acts are 100% on the female and 0% on the male. In your world, the male has no incentive to wear a condom. Or if he wears one, he can tamper with it if he wants to spread his seed since he faces no financial repercussions.
Wouldn't such a system be a boon for low-status males?
hundreds and hundreds of posts and the other side still doesn't understand what they are arguing against.
Anyway, as the data shows the majority of unpaid child support comes from "deadbeat dads" who simply don't have the money to give to the child or who don't care about the consequences of not paying child support. So it is beyond silly to think that child support truly is an incentive to wear a condom. If you want to talk about the real world then let's talk about reality.
Fine. Then view it as a punishment for anti-social behavior.
Punishment for whom? Taxpayers?
What's her incentive to work if day care costs more than what she's making on her job?
Punishment for conceiving a child you plan to abandon.
Child support is rarely sufficient to run a household. Typically the custodial parent is paying rent/utilities etc. for the home the child is raised in. That's very significant support.
But not unique to raising a child. The mother would have to pay that regardless of whether or not she had a child.
What's her incentive to work if day care costs more than what she's making on her job?
So she gets to be a deadbeat mom because the system is gamed in her favor?
If a custodial parent neglects to provide nutrition, shelter, supervision, or emotional support to the child, that's a very serious crime with significant jail time that can result.
So if a mother does not work and cannot afford to take care of her child she'll go to jail just like a man does if he does not contribute child support?
It has nothing to do with whether custodial parents work or not. If they fail to provide for the child's needs, they are committing a crime of child neglect.
The idea that it's a larger imposition on one's life to have to pay X% of your salary for child support than to have an actual child to care for day to day simply boggles the mind.
Eternal damnation isn't punishment enough?
Everything these idiots say boggle the mind. They live in a philosophical construct, not the real world. They think that having an abortion is equivalent to having a hangnail treated. They are either full time trolls or morally deficient to the point of sociopathology or too stupid to be worth talking to.
If the father can't meet his child support payments . . . .
Women with child get assistance--from the father (and some that supposed child support is camouflage alimony, that is support for the mother) and from the state if necessary, and she'll have a child that she usually wants and can raise freely without the interference of a father present.
Usually, it's deemed by courtt to be in the best interest that the mother gets domiciliary custody. (And even when the father has domiciliary custody, often the mother doesn't pay child support--the real threat of the mother of asking for custody has a chilling effect here, when one knows how prejudiced the courts in awarding it to mothers.) That means that the father has to contribute to maintaining two household and often two families (of course, he should suppress his urges). And of course he has to hassle with visitation, which mothers often see as largesse that they confer at will and whim.
Child support is rarely sufficient to run a household. Typically the custodial parent is paying rent/utilities etc. for the home the child is raised in. That's very significant support.
Luckily, those expenses don't exist for the father, right?
A custodial parent, male or female, can be eligible for government assistance under certain circumstances. A non-custodial parent in turn will usually be bound to provide child support.
Of course. Parody often is.
But while we'e here, what do you find absurd? What do you find offensive?
When comparable claims are directed against men, do you object? Men who fall behind in child support payments are inevitably called 'deadbeat dads', despite the fact that most men who fall behind do so as a result of hardship. We extend a lot of sympathy to men who are bankrupted by health care crises, but when these same men, bankrupted, can't meet the obligations of support awards, he hang prison over them.
What do you consider offensive--the description of women who bring zygotes to term knowing full well they can't support children as "irresponsible"? How is that offensive?
We certainly don't jail women in these situations, even when they become lifelong welfare recipients. To some degree we do though, broadly, condemn these women. These are the Welfare Queens of the Reagan era, but they face none of the punitive sanctions men face. There are good and bad reasons for women to fail to contribute to their chidren financially, just as their are good and bad reasons why men fail to contribute. Your implication, though, that we disincentive work for women is spot on--it's a widespread problem.
The purpose of my parody of the attitude we take towards men is meant to expose the absurdity both of the presumption of guilt, a system that criminalizes far too many people, but also to note that women's culpability, in bringing children into the world they cannot support, especially when knowing full well the sperm donor had no interest in a child, is substantial, and probably significantly exceeds the culpability of men in these situations, what with women being the original fomentors of the problem.
It's part of the problem that is hopelessly underdiscussed. As long as it is, we'll be falling down in our responsibility to educate young women wrt their role in all of this.
Typical Matt sliming and smearing. You don't have an argument to make, so you resort to personal attack, just like those threads where I have the gall to note an accusation doesn't equal a conviction. I'll add only I find your contempt for women revolting, your inability to argue coherently laughable, and your resort to the personal all to typical of your approach to ideas. I understand you don't have the intellectual stones to win the argument, but at least go for a walk until you're able to grasp that my case treats women as moral, responsible agents, and yours treats them with utter contempt. You wussy little prude. It's hard to imagine you even know what it is you're so angry about.
Incidentally, when you become abusive like you just did, can we reply that we find your irresponsible and cavalier attitude towards children ultimately abusive? You're obviously indifferent to the well-being of children, and have no qualms at all about irresponsible women who can't support their children bringing them into the world at will.
More intellectually dishonest twaddle. Moms who can't meet their obligations are never jailed unless the abuse is physical, ongoing, and obvious, while our default position wrt men who can't meet their support aware obligations are that a willful failure to pay has occurred. Once four months in back support are due we call parents in, assume their guilt, hang prison sentences over them, but deny the indigent a right to an attorney.
As for your hilarious claim (seriously--it's the funniest thing I've read, 'unintentional' category, in a month) that women go to prison for 'failure to provide emotional support to a child', please listen to yourself some time.
A custodial parent, male or female, can be eligible for government assistance under certain circumstances. A non-custodial parent in turn will usually be bound to provide child support.
I think the point is that if the father can't come up with the money he goes to jail. If the mother can't come up with the money and she has the kid she gets pity and support. The system is setup in such a way that the male is forced to come up with the money or else while the female gets help.
It has nothing to do with whether custodial parents work or not. If they fail to provide for the child's needs, they are committing a crime of child neglect.
That's great. Now what does that mean in the real world? What happens if a mother is unemployed, has no money, and has no real potential to get money any time soon? Does she get treated like a man who cannot afford child support because he is unemployed, has no money, and has no real potential to get money any time soon?
Are people arguing that it is larger or are we simply creating strawmans?
Whatever the gender of the custodial and non-custodial parents, this still applies. The focus of the system is the good of the child.
Okay, and how does the system decide who gets the kid? You can't really act like the law doesn't look at gender when deciding custody of the kid.
Well as I mentioned earlier, if it's the child uber alles, why isn't the default to award custody to the highest wage earner. Unless there is a compelling argument against it, it should be assumed that the highest wage earner is most capable of providing the neccessary support for the child.
That would have the added benefit of getting lazy women out of the house to do some real productive work. Seriously, listening to these hens whine about sitting on their ass at home nursing and changing diapers like it was any sort of value to society has gone beyond nauseating.
Fight on beta males! Don't let those harpies push you around any more!
Are we talking about the Yankees or men here?
How many men are actually imprisoned for back child support? I think the number is so small as to be an irrelevancy.
Really? This is a mystery to you?
The child's welfare is paramount. The parent who is best able to care (that means more than money by the way) for the child gets the child (well of course it is my complex than this, with shared custody and all permutations). In theory, sadly it is not a perfect system. The other parent provides what they can.
The correct moral stand (both parent supporting the child) does not mean the system is perfect. However it is morally correct to mandate both parents support the child. I suspect a set of laws on the "dead beat dad" platform could also be poorly implemented, also be abused, also have flaws, and even worse I suspect.
Sorry about that. The site does something tricky. There should be a link that says "PDF Full Text." Click on that to take you to the full article. After you've visited the article once subsequent visits to the URL I linked go directly to the article in the same browser session, which is why I was tricked into thinking I had the right URL.
Well, one site suggests there are 3.1 million unintended pregnancies a year, and 10% of women (10% of all women, not just those using birth control) report relying on condoms as the primary birth control method (in cases of multiple birth control methods, they consider the method used to be the most effective method, which tends not to be condoms).
So that would suggest, with typical use, you get 310,000 unintended pregnancies. Now, if we go by the stats and figure typical condom use results in a failure rate that's 8-10 times higher (depending on what study you believe, I've seen typical use failure rates for condoms from 15-20%) than the theoretical failure rate, that number drops significantly down to about 35,000 a year.
I'd link the sites I'm using for data, but I fear that would only give you the impression that I have faith in these numbers. These are largely guesses upon estimates upon guesses.
Yep.
I didn't that a father who was a custodial parent wouldn't get aid (although it will be harder). I said he wouldn't get it, period, and by that I meant even if paying child support would otherwise make him meet the income/resource requirements.
If you think the system pursues the woman's obligations with anything like the ferocity it pursues the man's, I'll call shenanigans on that. All you have to do is check on which parent gets the child support (and sub rosa alimony), and which parent doesn't even if she doesn't have custody, and which parent gets state aid.
Bull. That applies with much more force, other things being equal, to men thant to women. ####, women can even make their children drug addicts in the womb (which is akin to forcing mainling on the fetus) and get away with it. Or got to "rehab" as punishment, which means she gets food, shelter, etc. Only extreme cases are dealt with, inadequately.
The only way the illusion of equality can be maintained is by gaming the system in her favor through a morass of cognitive dissonance. She can do whatever a man can, and if she can't it's only because of her innate goodness, so we have to give her a handicap. But men--that got to live with what they are, and that is mostly creature who have uses.
The 50,000 men sleeping on their prison cots tonight probably disagree.
There's a ton of interesting, sad, hard to find data of an underexamined situation, at
http://purplemotes.net/2011/03/22/persons-in-jail-for-child-support-debt/
The author, Douglas Galbi notes that 70% of those behind in subsidies for a woman's decision to have a child (aka 'child support') make less than $10,000 a year (a salary making any expenditures beyond food and rent impossible), which suggests we're simply jailing those men who are victims of our economic system's inevitable, structural unemployment.
Galbi, whom I had never heard of, does his homework, though he does call 'child support', 'sex payments', which I think is a misnomer, but he makes an interesting case. When a woman decides to have a child, 'subsidy for a woman's decision to have a child' is more accurate, imo.
He brings up a sadly not atypical case:
Liza Porteus reviews the data and notes that as a percentage women are more often 'deadbeats' than men. Custodial fathers also work harder than custodial mothers, while getting far less government help.
This despite the fact that:
It also seems to be the case that childhood poverty is overwhelmingly the result of women making poor choices. The NYTimes had an interesting article awhile back, titled "Two Classes, Divided by ‘I Do’ ".
The sad truth is that these women are doing their children a profound disservice, having them when they are underprepared to support them. At the same time, these disadvantaged, single parent families come at an additonal cost, draining the resources of men who did not want them, and hindering or crippling those men in their attempts to have families of their choosing.
Anyone arguing that the millions of women having children knowing their fathers did not want them--and without themselves possessing the education or skills necessary to supporting those children much above subsistence level--aren't hugely irresponsible is being disingenuous, willfully blind, or merely political. The problem is almost entirely self-inflicted, and the problem does not arise from men making poor choices, or walking away in droves from obligations that can be met.
I never said money was should be the only factor. I said it should be the default, unless there is a compelling argument otherwise. Are you really arguing that's the case?
The system is based primarily on the theory, as Andy painted out pages ago, that the mother has inherently more right to custody than the father, due to the physical hardship. of going through pregnancy and childbirth. But if the child's rights supersede those of any other party involved, then the correct response to that is 'tough tittie'.
The fact of the matter is that the current system only considers the child's rights, if his/her circumstance drop beneath an unacceptable threshold. Other than that, it is entirely focused on balancing claims of rights by parents.
How do you feel about pope Benedict retiring? Think he's telling the truth, that it's ill health, or do you think it's a way for him to dodge prosecution for his role in the child rape coverup conspiracy?
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