Child support and male entitlement
| July 29th, 2005The more I hear men’s rights activists fulminating about the unfairness of child support, the more I wonder how typical my situation is, and whether there are any general lessons to be drawn about expectations of men and women when it comes to child-raising.
My relationship with the father of my child ran into difficulties before my pregnancy was even confirmed. Initially, we hoped to live together, but it quickly became clear that there were too many barriers, both logistical and emotional, for this to be a viable possibility, at least for a few years. I did some research into the rights and obligations of a non-custodial parent and found that although I would be entitled to a certain level of support as a custodial parent, I wasn’t legally obliged to demand it.
I had no desire to take him for every penny I could get: he was someone I cared deeply about but couldn’t live with. Since bearing and raising a child would affect my ability to work, and since I hoped he would want to see his child well cared-for, I envisaged a compromise whereby he made voluntary support payments and was in other ways an active father.
I reckoned without his stubbornness and commitment to traditional family structures. He informed me that it would be better for the child if he was in no way involved, since this would free me up to find a stepfather I could live with and build an approximation of a traditional family. That I have emotional problems that would make the search for a stepfather the worst possible fate I could inflict on myself or the child did not enter into his thinking: the child needed two parents who lived together, and since we couldn’t provide that, he didn’t want to be involved.
Later, he tried to soften that approach by saying that we lived too far apart to make visitation practical. If I lived closer to him, he suggested, it would be far easier to work something out. When I finally ended the relationship, he said that he’d hoped we would be able to find a solution, although I’m not sure what that solution should have been. I can only assume it would have involved my seeing the light and moving halfway across the country to live close to someone who had proved himself incapable of respecting anything about me that he didn’t agree with.
When I look back over the uglier arguments, I’m struck by how often he tried to put both blame and responsibility on me for the fact that he’d fathered a child without being ready for fatherhood. My explanation that I hoped to get pregnant was rendered meaningless by my statement that I’m committed to a woman’s right to choose. That I told him I wasn’t using any birth control wasn’t enough: I should also have told him the date of my last menstrual period. He believes that a child needs a father figure on the spot, therefore I had to enter another relationship despite my own understanding of myself.
I’ve also been told by family members that I’m not being fair to him and should have done more to make the relationship work. I don’t know what more I could have done without sacrificing my self-esteem and my plans for the future on the altar of his personal convenience, but I suspect that is a sacrifice I was expected to make. Not for him, of course, but for the child. It would be equally reasonable to expect him to move halfway across the country to be closer to me, but no-one is demanding that. Because I have no job to leave? Because I’m a woman? Because all my reasons for not wanting to move have been sifted through the mesh of rationality and found wanting?
The bottom line is that we both made a choice when we engaged in unprotected sex, and that choice has consequences for both of us. I go through the discomforts and dangers of pregnancy and childbirth and have the joyful but heavy responsibility of a child at the end of it. He has to pay a percentage of his income to support the child.
And yet he’s the one who feels treated unfairly.
July 29th, 2005 at 11:05 am
It’s not about you. None of this is about you–it’s about his desire to be a blameless victim who doesn’t have to face and take responsibility for the consequences of his choices, and about everyone else’s desire to control you through the choices they want to impose on you.
This comment was written by Kai Jones.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 11:52 am
I hope things get to the point where he feels and is reponsible enough to act like more than jsut an unwilling sperm donor.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 12:01 pm
Not to sound too cold and practical about this Nick, but if you haven’t done so already you should talk to a family law attorney sensitive to your issues. Not because you necessarily need to take any kind of legal action, but because you’re going to need a good idea of all the respective legal rights and obligations at work here. Mr. “I don’t think I should have to act responsibly here” could easily turn later into Mr. “I think I should be allowed to start asserting parental rights even though I’ve been out of the picture for eons.” It wouldn’t be the first time.
This comment was written by nolo.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 12:13 pm
Nolo, a visit to my local citizens’ advice bureau is scheduled in the near future to confirm exactly what the legal situation is.
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 12:16 pm
hmmm. I think it can be argued that you did, in fact, use him to get pregnant. Isn’t that what you informed him of when you told him you wanted to become pregnant and that you weren’t on birth control? I think that also implies that pregnancy was more important to you than the viability of your particular relationship with him. Why do *you* feel he is financially obligated to pay child support? You actively chose to become pregnant — did you discuss his views on fatherhood prior to your doing so?
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 12:31 pm
I’m not sure what you mean about using him to get pregnant. Yes, I made use of the fact that he was prepared to have unprotected sex with me, but that’s not to imply I saw him as a walking sperm bank. With hindsight, I can say that it would have been better to discuss our different views on parenthood before the event, but I assumed that he understood my views (I’ve expressed them openly and we were friends for over a year) and would speak up if he disagreed enormously.
I get the impression that his views on fatherhood have shifted as he considered them. When I told him I wanted to get pregnant, he was enthusiastic about it, and even when he started having misgivings he spoke of his long-held dream of being a father.
I do sometimes feel that I was slightly unfair to him in that I had plenty of time to consider getting pregnant and he hadn’t considered the possibility before that night. On the other hand, the option was always open to him to say “Well, I need some time to think about that, in the meantime we’d better use condoms, OK?” He didn’t, and now we both have a child to consider.
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
Q, I strongly disagree with you on this one.
If a man is unwilling to be a father, he shouldn’t have unprotected vaginal intercourse. If he’s really really really unwilling to be a father he shouldn’t engage in any activity where semen gets close to a vagina.
If he’s willing to engage in those activities he needs to be prepared to face the consquences, be they seeing his potential progeny aborted against his will, or finding himself with a child to raise.
Men have a surefire method of keeping themselves from parenting. If they don’t use it, they have every responsibility for that.
This comment was written by Jake.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 1:11 pm
If a man is unwilling to be a father, he shouldn’t have unprotected vaginal intercourse.
If a woman is unwilling to be a mother, she shouldn’t have unprotected vaginal intercourse. True or false?
If true, what happens to abortion rights? If false, why the different treatment for different genders?
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
Robert: women get pregnant through rape and coerced intercourse. Don’t even try to paint that as the same scenario. For many women, the choice to have sex or abstain from it is not theirs to make.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 1:29 pm
Why the different treatment? Seriously? Um, maybe because it’s the woman who goes through the pregnancy?
This comment was written by Beidran.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
Nick: I meant “use” in the utilitarian sense, not the “take advantage” sense.
Jake: I’m not sure I’m suggesting a blanket “men don’t have to step up to the financial plate” rule. I was curious about the specifics of this pregnancy and relationship and why Nick feels that it might be male entitlement that is wrapped around the financial question.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
Robert, that’s an old question with an oft-repeated answer. Has something to do with that nine-month gestation period.
Nick– glad to hear you’re taking the steps to get all the info you need. I hope my advice didn’t sound insulting.
This comment was written by nolo.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 1:44 pm
I know this thread isn’t supposed to be about abortion, but in tangentially it is.
In another thread on this site about pregnancy being a process (or some such thing) someone introduced the idea that abortion wouldn’t be necessary with an artificial womb. It was very interesting how many pro-choice arguments seemingly turned from “its not the fetus that is the problem its the pregnancy” AND “Its my body so its my choice” TO “I want the control as to whether or not I have offspring”. In other words, if the fetus could be removed safely (thereby negating the “my body my choice” argument) and raised in an artificial womb many would still want to kill the fetus. Many of the arguments maintained that outlawing abortion is simply punishing women for having sex. It seems to me those arguments could apply equally to men in the case of whether or not they want to be fathers and whether or not you are simply punishing men for having sex. If a woman’s right is not simply “its my body my choice” but rather “I don’t want offspring”, why can’t men have the same right to absolve themselves of all parental responsibility?
This comment was written by TheEngineerFormerlyKnownAsLarry.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 2:09 pm
If a woman’s right is not simply “its my body my choice” but rather “I don’t want offspring”, why can’t men have the same right to absolve themselves of all parental responsibility?
As soon as men can be impregnated, they too can have the same choice.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 2:23 pm
But Larry is positing the question in a context where women aren’t impregnated either, Jake.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 2:25 pm
Jake Squid: “As soon as men can be impregnated, they too can have the same choice. ”
Ahh hemm. Maybe you didn’t read the whole post? You know, the part that removed pregnancy from the equation of abortion (at least partially)?
This comment was written by TheEngineerFormerlyKnownAsLarry.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 2:30 pm
But pregnancy has never been removed from the equation, it’s merely been extremely shortened in the hypothetical future technology scenario. See, the hypothetical future technology scenario doesn’t forego intercourse & uterus. Sexual intercourse does happen and insemination, fertilization & implantation all happen. The woman, in hypothetical future technology scenarioland, does get pregnant & then has the option of moving the zygote/embryo/fetus to the artificial womb.
So, I will say again that as soon as men can get pregnant they can have the same choice.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 2:30 pm
She did discuss that she was not on birthcontrol and wanted pregnancy, which ultimately means he failed to take the precautions that were right for him at the time if it was something he did not want. He had sex knowing that his partner was not using birthcontrol and took a gamble.
As for the abortion tangent, it’s interesting how anti-choice men like to swing the argument about to make women who are choosing life be the one’s that hold the lions share of accountability. My best advice to those men is to find out in advance what your lover’s feelings are on pregnancy, pregnancy right now and parental responsibility. Men have a choice as well and whether the choice is to leave yourself open to impregnating a woman, getting an STD or using a condom, the myth that choice is not available is nonsense. And if somehow you do end up with an STD, it’s not like the woman giving you an STD has any right to demand you not get that STD treated, right?
You don’t have to like your choices or consequences any more than the woman you sleep with does, but it doesn’t mean that you aren’t accountable if the dice roll lands on ’she’s pregnant!’ and you slept with someone that has different reproductive beliefs than you do.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 2:41 pm
There’s a difference between garnishing someone’s paycheck and taking control, even temporary control, of their body. Pro-choice (and anti-”choice for men”) activists differentiate between the choice to not continue a pregnancy and the choice to not pay child support for the same reason the courts allow people to sue for money but not for pounds of flesh.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
I think Kim has it spot on. It sounds like there was at least the knowledge that Nick was unprotected and hopeful for pregnancy, and if her partner was not ready to seriously consider that burden then the onus would IMMEDIATELY be on him to use birth control (condoms) until he had fully examined the topic and decided on what he wanted. It’s called personal responsibility.
This comment was written by wookie.Now that this person has not taken responsibility previously, he doesn’t want to do so now. Unfortunately, this should not be an option for anyone (not taking responsibility for personal actions).
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July 29th, 2005 at 2:58 pm
Jake Squid: “So, I will say again that as soon as men can get pregnant they can have the same choice.”
Or until women no longer need to go through the pregnancy to reproduce?
This comment was written by TheEngineerFormerlyKnownAsLarry.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 3:07 pm
I have a couple of things I’d like to toss out.
In discussions of abortion, I really think it’s useless to suggest abstinence on the part of a man that uses some form of birth control, and who doesn’t want to accidentally impregnate someone. A truly tiny sector of society is abstinent - for everyone else, sex is a necessary part of their daily life. This is as true for men as it is for women.
Also, I believe that by virtue of biology, a woman has the last say in whether a fetus inside her is carried to term - her body, her choice. But in the baby-incubator secnario, both possible-parents-to-be have an equal say as to whether the fetus matures. When the zygote is not in her body, she loses the veto power.
This comment was written by Sara.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 3:19 pm
Perhaps male entitlement was the wrong word for what I was trying to describe, but it was more than the financial question that I thought of as an entitlement issue. He tried to paint me as responsible for a decision we both made freely, and expected me to rearrange my life to fix what he saw as a problem (lack of two-parents-together). I don’t know whether that was individual assholishness on his part or a symptom of a wider problem, which is why I just wonder whether there are general lessons to be drawn.
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 3:38 pm
“Robert: women get pregnant through rape and coerced intercourse. Don’t even try to paint that as the same scenario. For many women, the choice to have sex or abstain from it is not theirs to make.”
Most of women who abort their children had consensual sex. Further abortion is not the only legal option for woman to avoid her parental responsibilities, it’s one of 3.
Abortion, adopting out, and legal abandonment allow for *women,
only* to evade the consequences of sex and legal responsibility toward
their children.
Men are held to have “chosen” at time of sex, while women are NOT.
This comment was written by Larry.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 3:58 pm
Take this hypothetical:
My wife and I are worried about having babies. We set aside some eggs.
We have a divorce, and I get half of the eggs.
I then hire a surrogate mother, fertilize the eggs and implant them.
Can I now get child support from my ex-wife?
Would it be different if the lab had fertilized the eggs before freezing them?
This comment was written by Mike.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 4:25 pm
Nick:
The ex and I had an unplanned pregnancy which resulted in our parenting of our son. At the time I figured that at age (almost) eighteen and with enough resources to follow through with the pregnancy, I would do so and make my decision whether or not to adopt or parent through the course of the prengnacy. During this time it became clear that he viewed pregnancy and fatherhood as a Hallmark card, while I was kicked out of my parents’ home and couch-crashed with friends for the duration of my pregnancy.
Arguments ensued and we had little to no contact while I was pregnant. We tried to make decent arrangements but couldn’t on our own. However, soon after our son was born we decided to give it another go, at which point I “sacrific[ed] my self-esteem and my plans for the future on the altar of his personal convenience” because I was indeed expected to do so by everyone involved but me. Not knowing better, I dove in to the most horrible year of our lives. We were miserable, depressed, at one another’s throats. I moved out after both of us experienced a serious emotional breakdown apiece.
After we split we tried to make arrangements for visitation and child support outside of court, both of us agreeing that because I had a more flexible schedule I should be primary caregiver and he would have copious visitation time. He would pay child support in $X on N day every month. We did this for awhile with sporadic success, but for whatever reason the lack of a court order allowed him to feel free to trample all over me and our original agreement, and would withhold child support if he thought I was being mean to him or if he thought it would give him leverage. We then changed it to him paying the full price at an in-home daycare (same amount of money) but that fell through when I found out that he hadn’t paid our daycare provider in months. She continued to keep our son, and keep me in the dark, because she knew I was stuggling to get through college.
We embarked on a horrific custody and child support lawsuit that had me accused of everything from mental illness, drug abuse, child abuse and neglect. Though I tried to play fair the whole time, I was forced to bring out his skeletons, leading to wounds that still have yet to heal on both sides.
The irony is that the arrangement ruled on by the courts was exactly the one we had agreed upon in the first place. And it works! It was tense for awhile but the two of us get along now quite well. We have a modest child support agreement, he covers our son’s insurance expenses, and gets an overnight twice a week and pretty much any other time he asks for one.
All this is to say that boundaries must be established in the relationship if you want the relationship between him and your child to continue. If he wants nothing to do with the child, I would strongly suggest you have him sign away his rights to be a parent. This is not to say that he couldn’t become a positive force later on, but it prevents him from being a negative one by trampling on your rights as the parent. Foregoing child support in a case where he is disinterested or resistant to fatherhood will save you a lot of grief in the long term.
This may not be the most popular (somewhat unsolicited) advise, but “Forget the semantics and start thinking about the bigger picture” is the most honest advice I can give you with my experience and the experiences of my friends.
Now back to your thread derailment.
This comment was written by Lauren.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 4:38 pm
>>Most of women who abort their children had consensual sex. Further abortion is not the only legal option for woman to avoid her parental responsibilities, it’s one of 3.
Abortion, adopting out, and legal abandonment allow for *women,
only* to evade the consequences of sex and legal responsibility toward
their children.>>
Men are accountable for child-support iff the woman assumes the greater role of custodial parent. Both parents have parallel support obligations after the child’s birth; the only reason women aren’t usually seen as having non-custodial parental obligations is that they’re usually the custodial parents.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 4:46 pm
Seeing as how there are now two “Larry”s in this thread could some mod change the name in my previous posts to “TheEngineerFormerlyKnownAsLarry” or something unique?
This comment was written by TheEngineerFormerlyKnownAsLarry.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 5:16 pm
I second Lauren’s advice.
Also, for all the folks who are wondering why a woman ought to have veto power over a fetus growing outside her womb (this of course being a purely theoretical conversation, as it is doubtful that artificial wombs are likely to be around for at least several generations to come, if that)—exactly how do you think that fetus is going to get from the woman’s womb to an artificial one? You do realize that scalpels and anaethesia are going to be involved, right? You do realize that it would be an invasive medical procedure, right? And that since it’s still her body that is going to be impacted by any decision she makes, it’s still her choice what, if any medical procedures are going to be performed on her, right?
Sheesh.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 5:38 pm
Ah, it’s cute when the anti-feminists think they’ve worked in a “gotcha”. I suppose the sentence could have been phrased better, but that’s quibbling over semantics.
In our legal system, if you give someone a gift, it’s theirs to do with what they like. If a man ejaculates inside a woman, he has given her his semen and she is free to use it as she likes. She can make a baby with it, if she wants. She can abort if she wants. She can squeeze out the semen and put it in a vial to wear around her neck so people can sniff it if she likes and the man, having given it freely to her, has no rights to stop her.
As much as many men would like our law to follow the piss on it/spit on it/come in her view of legal ownership over a woman’s body, that’s simply not how the law works. You come in a woman, she gets to keep your semen. If you don’t like that you have two choices–don’t give her your semen (use a condom) or give her the kind of semen she can’t use to make a baby (get a vasectomy). Thems the law, guys. Sorry.
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 5:46 pm
This question is discussed in copious detail here
My short answer is that both men and women should have the right to do whatever they want to with their own bodies to protect themselves from unwanted parenthood.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 5:56 pm
This brought to mind a rather disturbing scene from a rather disturbing book I read when I was 18. It featured a young girl finding a discarded, tied-off condom in some public place and carrying it around inside her as part of some kind of sexual experimentation.
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 5:59 pm
That’s hardcore demented. I love it.
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 6:24 pm
I have three headaches right now. One from the sun beating down on my head all day (local county fair), one of the ice cream variety, and one from all the stupidity I keep running into online. So please excuse any snarkiness that’s too, well, snarky.
“My explanation that I hoped to get pregnant was rendered meaningless by my statement that I’m committed to a woman’s right to choose.” There are people stupid enough to think these things cancel each other out?!
“That I told him I wasn’t using any birth control wasn’t enough . . .” Speaking of unbelievable stupidity.
“If a man is unwilling to be a father, he shouldn’t have unprotected vaginal intercourse.” versus “If a woman is unwilling to be a mother, she shouldn’t have unprotected vaginal intercourse,” OBVIOUSLY, she has the option of birth control, which unprotected vaginal intercourse does not override. Once male birth control is available (I think they’re working on developing a male oral contraceptive), men who don’t want to be fathers can have unprotected vaginal intercourse without worrying (about that, anyway). In addition, either of them have the authority to require the use of a condom in any sex they have.
Regarding the argument about how “I don’t want offspring” relates to abortion and to men’s and women’s options, 1) both men and women can choose not to contribute their genetic material to a pregnancy, and 2) women, because they carry the fetus for nine months, also have that option during most of the pregnancy. Each person, male and female, loses control over their genetic material the instant it leaves their body, men at conception, women at birth.
Piny–You. Are. A. Genius. “Pro-choice (and anti-”choice for men”) activists differentiate between the choice to not continue a pregnancy and the choice to not pay child support for the same reason the courts allow people to sue for money but not for pounds of flesh.” Absolutely brilliant!
“Abortion, adopting out, and legal abandonment allow for *women,
only* to evade the consequences of sex and legal responsibility toward
their children.” Generally the latter two happen AFTER the guy in question has abandoned the mother (and hence the child)–otherwise I see no reason why the father could not request to take the baby if the mother didn’t want it. Around where I live there’s this organization called the Fathers’ Adoption Registry; I know nothing about it but what was depicted in the commercials, which was a man who wanted the baby his ex-girlfriend was planning to give up for adoption. And, OBVIOUSLY, if men got pregnant, they could have abortions, too.
Too often, people think of child support as money lost to the custodial parent, when it should be thought of as money paid to the child, for, well, child support. And mothers, by the time said child is born, have given nine months worth of total child support, life support, full-time, with no breaks and at great inconvenience. Translate that into money–say, minimum wage, plus overtime for all but forty hours in every week, plus medical expenses, cost of extra food and maternity clothes, plus a bonus for the time, energy, and pain spent during labor, and that’s a shitload of child support right there, of which no father will ever pay.
Mike–”My wife and I are worried about having babies. We set aside some eggs.
We have a divorce, and I get half of the eggs.” Why would you get half? They’re hers. Fertilized embryoes, yes. Eggs, I doubt it. But, if this did happen, once YOU have sole control over them and how they’re used, she ceases to be responsible for them. It’s the same principle as sperm donors being exempt from being sued for child support.
La Lubu–VERY good point. Person in whom fetus is contained controls how it gets out of her. I had a nightmare a couple nights ago in which I was pregnant and in a car accident and some pro-life surgeon decided the (viable) fetus was more important than I was and just sliced me open to get it out, which dramatically increased the danger I was in, and I was struggling to stay alive so I could sue him. There was a murder up here, too, about six months ago, in which one woman cut another one open like that and kidnapped her fetus, and left her to bleed to death. (Unfortunately, I’m not kidding.)
This comment was written by Kyra.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 6:47 pm
Thank you La Lubu - that is exactly what I’ve been trying to communicate. So,
Or until women no longer need to go through the pregnancy to reproduce?
Yes. Once reproduction is completely removed from the human body, both (or, perhaps at that point, all) genetically contributing parents will have equal say on what happens to the embryo that they all purposely created outside of any human body. I think, however, that Mr. Sperm ‘n Eggs will hunt you down and hurt you if you pursue this line of inquiry as it is, apparently, objectively immoral to reproduce in such a way.
And, as long as we’ve gone down this long weird road of tangential speculation on reproductive technologies of the future, I would like to bring Raznor’s womanbabykeet & attendant moral quandries into the discussion.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 7:09 pm
I think the fake-womb argument is one of the lamest derails of abortion/child support discussions ever. It’s the kind of thing you bring up around the bong in grad school (dude!). If we ever get to Brave New World territory where all babies grow in glass bottles from conception, then we’ll have to adapt our laws accordingly. But that has absolutely no bearing on the discussion at hand.
And the sniveling “but why don’t MEN get to decide about abortions too?” argument is just too annoying. Put on your jimmy hats or get a vasectomy, fellas. It ain’t brain surgery. It’s not that hard to avoid being a daddy, and once you’ve ejaculated, your choice is already made. If those aren’t enough options for you, start agitating for male birth control pills that work better than condoms. No sensible woman is going to have a problem with you doing so.
As far as Nick Kiddle’s question, I would just second what everyone else says here; either get a legally-enforced child support set up, or make sure he terminates his parental rights. He made his choice on the night in question, and for your child’s sake, you have to make sure its future is as stable as possible no matter what bio-dad does.
This comment was written by emjaybee.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 7:24 pm
In our legal system, if you give someone a gift, it’s theirs to do with what they like.
In our legal system, if you turn around and then ask for payment to buy the gift nappies, you get laughed out of court. The “semen is a gift” argument is a perfectly valid position - in a world where males bear no responsibility for children.
Since males DO bear responsibility for children, coequal with females, that analogy breaks down.
My short answer is that both men and women should have the right to do whatever they want to with their own bodies to protect themselves from unwanted parenthood.
Ah, again we find ourselves in agreement, Amp. And it hurt no one, do what thou wilt. But let’s not start down that road again; I haven’t had time to do my research.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 7:41 pm
The problem is, abortion ultimately -is- a form of birth control, but saying that frankly ends up having people run with it into territory of people assuming women use it as ’standard’ birthcontrol.
So either you find out all the options of birthcontrol available, and what sort your partner will or will not be comfortable with and proceed knowingly, or you risk it and risk paying child-support, or risk a woman choosing a form of birth-control you may not be comfortable with.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 8:05 pm
Kyra said:
I figure at minimum wage, plus overtime, a pregnancy should entitle a woman to $46,350 in simple pay alone. Not counting expenses. Not counting harm to her health or body. Not counting pain and suffering. Ouch.
This comment was written by mousehounde.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 9:19 pm
Warning: strong opinions ahead.
The artificial womb concept is ridiculous and insulting. A woman provides more to a fetus than a place to gestate. There is psychic/psychological connection that affects the child’s emotional well-being, and even the movement of her body provides for the child’s neurological development. There will never be a surrogate equal to a mother.
First, do establish your legal rights immediately. Judges are very unsympathetic if a problem arises and you haven’t made the effort to see that the child is properly supported, or terminated the father’s rights. Don’t worry about taking his money. You told him you wanted a baby, he had sex with you, he took the risk. It doesn’t matter if he used a condom or not - he knew your intent was to be a mother. I’m also put off by the idea of someone who isn’t trying to reproduce having unprotected sex. There’s a plague on the planet, ya know. I hope the baby is smarter than he is.
I’m sick to wretched death of men who think they can get away with impregnating women and then whine about child support. He risks a few dollars- she risks her life and most times the complete care of the child is going to fall on her even if they stay together. She gets the blame for getting pregnant. She risks death or severe injury in giving birth. She gets to raise them if he splits. She’ll change the diapers, give up her career or have her career limited, and more likely than not, she’ll live in poverty if she raises the child alone. His life will only change if he wants it to.
Even if a woman has an abortion, her body may be permanently changed by the pregnancy, and she may never recover from the emotional scars. If she gives a child up for adoption, she may never get over the guilt. There is no such thing as an easy way out of an unwanted pregnancy for a woman. It is a life-changing event no matter what the final outcome. Men rarely even bear the burden they should feel at having abandoned a child, and are generally unchanged emotionally and physically. There’s nothing even approaching equality in the situation, so forget all the arguments about fairness.
A man will often lie to obtain sex and it isn’t unusual for a man to impregnate multiple partners, each of whom believes herself to be in a monogamous relationship. Men face absolutley no burden for lying, infidelity, even murder if they have unprotected sex when they know they have HIV. Consider child support a BARGAIN to what I’d make men responsible for if I made the laws.
I start from the assumption that people are going to have sex. It’s natural, it’s healthy and it doesn’t have to have procreative intent or a blessing from state or church to be a positive activity. People do have a responsibilty to prevent the spread of disease, though, and to make a good faith effort not to create children they don’t want. Accidents happen, though, as do rape, coercion and abuse, so I believe abortion should be not just legal, but free so that poor women have fair access to it.
In the specific case we’re talking about, Dude made his decision, so he lives with the consequences. You want the baby, which is awesome, and I hope you’re both very healthy and happy. He pays, or he gives up parental rights. When given that choice, you may be surprised how quickly he finds the cash he should be providing. You make the decisions that are best for you, because your well-being will have a direct effect on the well-being of your child. Your family will almost certainly be more supportive when they see the baby.
Women have been raising children alone since the beginning of time. The first couple wasn’t an “Adam and Eve” it was a Madonna and Child. You can do it. If he chooses to stay away, it is truly his loss. He’ll regret it when he’s older.
This comment was written by Morgaine Swann.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 11:19 pm
I am disappointed at how a post about conflicting ideals about how to raise a child (and whether an absent progenitor has a right to dictate how the custodial parent should conduct him/herself) has devolved into a discussion of hypothetical artificial wombs.
This man had sex with a biological woman who *flatly stated* she’d gone off the pill and was interested in getting pregnant. She did not sneak in and steal his sperm. She did not trick him into having unprotected sex. She did not assault him. He willingly participated in the act of procreation. Then he decided he’d rather not have any contact with the child and didn’t want to pay child support, but wanted to dictate how that child was raised.
I think it’s horrifying that this ex-boyfriend feels he has a right to impose his will on Nick, especially given the circumstances. Is a hastily-selected secondary parent with whom the relationship may or may not work out prefereable to a single-parent home? For some people, maybe. But whose choice is it? I’d say the people who would be having this relationship and raising the child should decide whether to participate, rather than the ex-boyfriend has dropped this baby like a hot potato.
This comment was written by Denise.Report this comment to the moderators
July 29th, 2005 at 11:36 pm
This man had sex with a biological woman who *flatly stated* she’d gone off the pill and was interested in getting pregnant. She did not sneak in and steal his sperm. She did not trick him into having unprotected sex. She did not assault him. He willingly participated in the act of procreation.
Yep. He’s totally responsible for that child, and will be for at least the next 18 years.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 4:56 am
Dear Dad,
When I was in my 30’s you sent me a Christmas card. Last year after the funeral a lawyer sent me a copy of your will, in which I was named as a beneficiary of any remainder. There was no remainder, but it meant a lot to me that I was named.
Ma didn’t require you to pay any support. She said I could sue you myself when I turned 18. I talked about it with Sis — if she wanted to do something through a lawsuit, I would cooperate with the effort. Otherwise, I did not have any interest in taking action.
We had survived the worst of times without you. We used the “Hansel & Gretel” model for survival. We would leave a trail of pebbles, in order to find our way back home. Those pebbles were little acts of loyalty to each other, honesty with each other. We would not allow the facts of our lives to be carried away by the birds. We would verify each other’s reality.
We were dirt-poor, we moved a lot, and along the way we survived physical, mental, emotional & sexual abuse. I felt bad for being unable to protect my sister. She felt bad for letting me take some of her beatings. But we confessed to each other, forgave each other.
Everywhere we went, people would comment on how nice it was, how rare it was, to see a brother and sister so close. But we felt the pain of our symbiosis. Later in life, we would follow the trail of pebbles; we would do what was necessary in order to have individual lives.
I had to let go of all my angry claims against you, because you provided me with a dear sister who made all the difference in my life. We made it home. Still, it boggles my mind that you & Ma couldn’t know how much it would have meant to us if you had cared one shit.
Your son,
Pete
This comment was written by Pete.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 5:50 am
Sorry. I can’t let this one go. Engineer Larry wrote (13) :
Maybe you should go re-read that thread. Nick conceded in it once it got rolling that she herself had always asssumed that this “artificial womb” business would lead to an end to abortion. After being reminded that there would always be women who would not want offspring under any circumstances, she re-evaluated her opinion. But that hardly means that pro-choice women on this blog had never voiced the last view in your salad bar of quotes before, Engineer Larry. It also hardly means that the three quotes you picked are somehow each standing in splendid isolation from one another.
Either you’ve failed to read the abortion threads in depth or you’re being disingenuous. In either case, the idea that the “control” argument appeared like nowhere out of the blue just a couple of weeks ago is crap.
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 6:00 am
piny
Have you even read my post? Mother can avoid all legal responsibilities toward her child after it’s birth, including financial support, by simply returning it to the hospital within 72 hours of birth, no questions asked and no input from the father (who may have wanted to raise his child) required.
She can also give the child away for adoption that is again doable without even letting the father know he has a child.
So since mother is not required to pay for child support if she choses to return the child to the hospital within 72 hours, or when she decides to give her child away for adoption why should a man be responsible for financing her decision to give birth to, keep, and raise her child?
This comment was written by Larry.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 6:16 am
In our legal system, if you turn around and then ask for payment to buy the gift nappies, you get laughed out of court. The “semen is a gift” argument is a perfectly valid position - in a world where males bear no responsibility for children.
Wrong again. But a nice try. Once the baby is born, and I know this pains anti-feminists to admit this, it’s a separate human being and not just your semen in its full form. As such, it’s not a “gift” or an “object”. It’s a person and he/she has rights.
The problem is that you have got to learn that semen is not the end all, be all of making a child. It’s one of the raw materials, definitely. And you gave the raw material to a woman, knowing that one of the things she is legally allowed to do with it is make a child that you have responsibility for.
Indeed, it is hard to cast around for an analogy for a child’s right to support from both parents. And that is because a child is a human being, not a bottle of semen. And human beings, unlike bottles of semen, have rights. That anti-choicers can’t tell the difference between the contents of a used condom and a classroom full of kids doesn’t change the facts.
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 6:20 am
Seriously, this whole notion that giving up semen means you give up responsibility for your own child presupposes that there is no difference between semen and children. An eerie view inside the anti-choice mind.
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 6:43 am
Ampersand, in the thread you linked you stated this:
There are documented cases of women doing something pretty darn close to that - statutory raping underaged boys who were later forced to pay for child support.
http://www.ageofconsent.com/comments/numberthirtysix.htm
“In County of San Luis Obispo v. Nathaniel J., the California Court of Appeals stated that although a 15 year old boy who was seduced by a 34 year old woman, was a victim of the 34 year old (she was prosecuted for statutory rape), the 15 year old father is obligated to pay child support to the child.
The 34 year old mother was prosecuted and convicted of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. According to the criminal court, the 15 year old was a victim. The willingness or lack of willingness of a 15 year old having intercourse with a 34 year old, was not an issue. Statutory rape is statutory rape with those age differences.
The father admitted paternity. The courts switched over to the family law component. There, the same District Attorney’s office which said he was a victim of statutory rape, contended that the new born child should not become a further victim by allowing a parent (15 year old) to avoid the responsibility of supporting the child when and as he is able.
Father’s attorney argued that the California Constitution states that “all persons who suffer losses as a result of criminal activity shall have the right to restitution from the persons convicted of the crime for losses they suffer.”
The clincher for the court, as it turned out, was that the 15 year old admitted that he was a willing participant in the intercourse.”
Although not relevant for the criminal action against the mother, the court found that the willingness of the father did allow them to differentiate between a minor who has been the victim of willing statutory rape and one who was not a willing participant.
There is also a strong history of case law precedents in California and other states, where courts have found that for purposes of child support, voluntary intercourse resulting in voluntary parenthood, allows the minor parent to be liable for the financial support of the minor infant.”
Imagine this for a second with sexes reversed, 34 year old man statutory raping 15 year old girl, getting custody of the child that resulted from rape, and then suing her for child support.
Here’s another, rather famous case:
“When Shane Seyer was twelve years old, he was sexually molested, repeatedly, over a period of several months, by his babysitter.
Colleen Hermesmann, the babysitter, was initially charged with statutory rape (”indecent liberties with a child” in Kansas) but plea-bargained to a lesser charge — “contributing to a child’s misconduct.
When Colleen Hermesmann and her new baby went on welfare, the state did what it usually does in cases of single mothers seeking state assistance — it tried to find the father, in this case young Shane Seyer, and to get him to pay child support.
In March, the Kansas state supreme court ruled that when Shane Seyer was molested by his babysitter at age 12, he consented to 18 years of child-support payments. “We conclude,” the court wrote, “that the issue of consent to sexual activity under the criminal statutes is irrelevant in a civil action to determine paternity and for support of the minor child of such activity.”
The court ruled that “[i]n an action by the State against a minor father for reimbursement of funds paid for support of his child, the fault or wrongdoing of the mother at the time of conception, even if criminal, has no bearing on the father’s duty to support such child.”
The last two paragraphs, Ampersand, seriously challenge your insertion that women cannot legally rape men to get sperm and then later sue them for child support.
This comment was written by Larry.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 7:02 am
Amanda,
If you’re going to state your opinion on a subject can you at least offer a logical and rational viewpoint that can be substantiated with physical evidence? So far you have offered the most absurd, illogical, erratic, delusional, sexist, hypocritical, and insane concepts in regards to the various gender issues whether they be domestic violence, child support, child custody, alimony, etc.
It would be a good idea for you to educate yourself on the subject of gender issues because so far you have demonstrated that you know very little about the subject. If your views on gender issues were to be used as a reflection of your knowledge on the subject, then it must be said that you know very little about the state of law system, the history of feminism, the structure of the Government and the actual relations between men and women.
Please educate yourself on the subject, because your views are insane and fallacious; making you appear to be an uneducated bigot who wishes to live in a society that is built on female supremacy rather than equality.
It is quite easy to refute the claims made by Amanda Marcotte as can be seen at the following web pages:
http://www.mens-rights.net/commentary/chriskey/29-04-05-amanda-marcotte.htm
http://www.mens-rights.net/commentary/chriskey/19-05-05-amanda-marcotte.htm
This comment was written by Chris Key.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 7:16 am
Forgive me for being sceptical, Larry. The site you linked has plenty of charming stuff (why no link to any bigger media, governmental agency? Oh, right. Liberal media and government is evil.):
http://www.ageofconsent.com/comments/forlegalchildporn.htm,
An article advocating for legal possession of child pornography, and
http://www.ageofconsent.com/comments/notabuse.htm
Well, folks, decide for yourself: (emphasis added)
Parents and laws cause rape? That’s novel. On the “real abuse”, the article goes on:
I see.
School, church, hugging a grandma = abuse, being an object or participant in child pornography = not abuse. Oh boy am I glad I was “abused” in the sense this writer considers abuse, not the way most sane people do.
And did I mention the “cool teen sites” -links? Yuck. Enough is enough. Now I must take a shower.
This comment was written by Tuomas.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 7:22 am
Larry, you are wrong about women having unilateral right to avoid responsibility for a child. If a woman wants to give up a child for adoption, the father must consent. If he doesn’t consent and wants to assume custodial care, he has as much legal entitlement to obtain support from the mother as if their roles had been reversed. Don’t argue about this, it is incontrovertibly the law, with Supreme Court backing, and I know some, and know of many other, men who refused their consent and made life extremely complicated for the mother of their children. As was their right.
The law may be uneven as it flows from biological differences, but once the child is born the law assumes equality (even if many judges don’t).
Second, let’s just say it like it is: Nick’s case is unusual. In most cases the pregnancy is an unwelcome surprise to both parties (even if it shouldn’t be). And in the real world, men have a great deal of influence over whether their SO has a baby — visit a few abortion clinics and it is evident that many women are there (at least ostensibly) because their boyfriends make it clear that there will be no marriage, no roping them in, so to speak, via parenthood, whether unplanned by both or just the father.
So women who “surprise” their SOs with a pregnancy that they intended without consultation are usually quite disappointed by the results, because the intent usually isn’t just to have a baby, but a full-blown family life. And that you cannot coerce from anyone. (I had a babysitter who found this out, and who ended up having an abortion — she was disgusted by her boyfriend’s response to her “oops pg”, but any neutral party could have told her that it was quite predictable that when you stop taking OCPs without consulting your boyfriend he might resent the consequences.)
More legal advice for Nick: support is for the benefit of the child, not you, and judges do not look kindly on parents who they perceive as holding their interests above those of their children by foregoing support. But they do appreciate a parent who is extremely reasonable about what is expected. Which is to say, paternity should be legally established, and a reasonable amount of support requested, in lieu of an agreement to terminate parental rights. (But I would never ask for the latter without consulting an attorney well versed in local law and custom — asking for the termination of a parent’s rights in the absence of demonstrated abuse or incapacity is also extinguishing the child’s rights to support that, even if not necessary today, may become necessary in the future.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 7:27 am
Um, my ranting against those articles was kind of off topic, on the topic at hand I think it would be a fair suggestion if men could, with the approval of the woman (beforehand) write off at many of their responsibilities. Along with rights, of course. But then again, the issue of the born child being an actual human being with rights regarding to parents comes into conflict with this.
This comment was written by Tuomas.Argh. I don’t know really (and I suppose I am parroting plenty of people here)… Having an obligation towards the born child should be the responsibility of both parents, and due to several reproductive choices really affecting the one being pregnant more (abortion, giving the baby for adoption… A man might become a father without even noticing, I think women notice the process known as “pregnancy” and “childbirth” when it happens to them.)
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July 30th, 2005 at 7:34 am
Oops, pressed enter too early: the comment should follow: Due to the process being much more time/health-consuming for women it is only natural that women have control over the process, not just intercourse/contraception like men do. (And if men can get pregnant by some freakish technology, or women can sire children, then the roles are defined by whoever is pregnant, is given more choice during/immediately after the pregnancy.)
This comment was written by Tuomas.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 7:40 am
Tuomas, ageofconsent was the first page that came up on google. With little trouble I’m sure you could have found a more reliable source.
http://login.findlaw.com/scripts/callaw?dest=ca/caapp4th/50/842.html (requires free registration)
County of San Luis Obispo v. Nathaniel J. (1996) 50 Cal.App.4th 842 , 57 Cal.Rptr.2d 843
[No. B100055. Second Dist., Div. Six. Nov 4, 1996.]
COUNTY OF SAN LUIS OBISPO, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. NATHANIEL J., a Minor, etc., Defendant and Appellant.
(Superior Court of San Luis Obispo County, No. FS13368, Paul H. Coffee, Judge.)
(Opinion by Gilbert, J., with Stone (S. J.), P. J., and Yegan, J., concurring.)
COUNSEL
Patrick J. Perry for Defendant and Appellant.
Daniel E. Lungren, Attorney General, Roderick E. Walston, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Carol Ann White and Mary A. Roth, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
OPINION
GILBERT, J.
Victims have rights. Here, the victim also has responsibilities.
A 34-year-old woman seduces a 15-year-old boy and becomes pregnant. She gives birth to a daughter and thereafter applies for Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Is the child’s father obligated to pay child support even though he is a victim of statutory rape? (Pen. Code, § 261.5, subd. (d).) We conclude he is liable for child support.
Defendant Nathaniel J. appeals a judgment establishing paternity and reserving an order of child support. We affirm.
Facts
On January 20, 1995, Ricci Jones gave birth to a daughter. The child’s father, Nathaniel J., was 15 years old when Jones conceived the child. Jones then was 34 years old. [50 Cal.App.4th 844]
Upon complaint, San Luis Obispo police officers investigated Jones’s unlawful sexual intercourse with Nathaniel J. (Pen. Code, § 261.5, subd. (d).) fn. 1 During an interview with a police officer, Nathaniel J. described the sexual intercourse as “a mutually agreeable act.” The San Luis Obispo County prosecutor prosecuted Jones and obtained a conviction of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.
The San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s office sought child support and welfare reimbursement from Nathaniel J. (Welf. & Inst. Code, §§ 11350, 11350.1, 11475.1.) Nathaniel J., by a guardian ad litem, admitted paternity but contended he was not required to pay child support because he was a victim of statutory rape. (Pen. Code, § 261.5, subd. (d).) The trial court ruled that paternity was established and reserved an order of child support. Presumably when Nathaniel J. reaches majority or completes his schooling, the court will reassess his ability to provide support.
Nathaniel J. appeals and contends exacting child support from a victim of statutory rape violates public policy. He also argues that the procedure followed herein denied him due process of law.
Discussion
I.
[1] Nathaniel J. asserts that public policy protects him from the effects of sexual exploitation by an adult. (Angie M. v. Superior Court (1995) 37 Cal.App.4th 1217, 1225 [44 Cal.Rptr.2d 197] [strong public policy protects minors from sexual exploitation].) He points out that strong public policy inheres in penal statutes criminalizing sexual exploitation of minors. (E.g., Pen. Code, §§ 261.5, 288a, 273f, 288.2, 310.5, 311.1.)
Nathaniel J. contends the reserved child support order “is exactly the exploitation which the Legislature intended to prevent” because it inflicts economic loss on a crime victim. He points to the constitutional declaration that “all persons who suffer losses as a result of criminal activity shall have the right to restitution from the persons convicted of the crimes for losses they suffer.” (Cal. Const., art. I, § 28, subd. (b).) Nathaniel J. adds that the child will not suffer because she will receive welfare support. We reject these contentions. [50 Cal.App.4th 845]
California law provides that every child has a right to support from both parents. (Fam. Code, §§ 3900, 3901 [former Civ. Code, §§ 196, 196a, 242]; County of Shasta v. Caruthers (1995) 31 Cal.App.4th 1838, 1841 [38 Cal.Rptr.2d 18].) Family Code section 3900 provides that, subject to other statutes governing support, the father and mother of a child bear “equal responsibility” to support the child.
The law should not except Nathaniel J. from this responsibility because he is not an innocent victim of Jones’s criminal acts. After discussing the matter, he and Jones decided to have sexual relations. They had sexual intercourse approximately five times over a two-week period.
In an action to impose vicarious liability upon a minor’s parents, Cynthia M. v. Rodney E. (1991) 228 Cal.App.3d 1040, 1045 [279 Cal.Rptr. 94], held a minor’s consent to unlawful sexual intercourse was “a permissible consideration” in denying liability. “[T]here is an important distinction between a party who is injured through no fault of his or her own and an injured party who willingly participated in the offense about which a complaint is made.” (Id., at pp. 1046-1047.) One who is injured as a result of criminal conduct in which he willingly participated is not a typical crime victim. (Id., at p. 1047, fn. 13.) It does not necessarily follow that a minor over the age of 14 who voluntarily engages in sexual intercourse is a victim of sexual abuse. (Planned Parenthood Affiliates v. Van de Kamp (1986) 181 Cal.App.3d 245, 261 [226 Cal.Rptr. 361].)
Authorities from other states support imposition of a child support obligation upon a minor who has been the victim of unlawful sexual intercourse. State ex rel. Hermesmann v. Seyer (1993) 252 Kan. 646 [847 P.2d 1273, 1278], held that a 13-year-old boy’s presumed lack of consent to intercourse under criminal statutes was irrelevant in paternity and child support proceedings. “This State’s interest in requiring minor parents to support their children overrides the State’s competing interest in protecting juveniles from improvident acts, even when such acts may include criminal activity on the part of the other parent.” (Id., at p. 1279.)
In re Paternity of J.L.H. (1989) 149 Wis.2d 349 [441 N.W.2d 273, 276-277], held that for purposes of child support, voluntary intercourse may result in voluntary parenthood, although the child’s father was 15 years old. Other states agree. (Jevning v. Cichos (Minn.Ct.App. 1993) 499 N.W.2d 515, 518 [child's interests in receiving support supersedes economic consequences minor father suffers from statutory rape]; Mercer County DSS v. Alf M. (1992) 155 Misc.2d 703 [589 N.Y.S.2d 288, 289-290] [16-year-old [50 Cal.App.4th 846] victim of statutory rape legally responsible for child support]; Weinberg v. Omar E. (1984) 106 A.D.2d 448 [482 N.Y.S.2d 540, 541] [age of putative father irrelevant in paternity proceeding and does not excuse support obligation].) We agree with the reasoning and holdings of these decisions.
II.
[2] Nathaniel J. claims the procedure followed by the trial court denied him due process of law because the district attorney’s noticed motion did not inform him that “in order to exercise his … right to trial, he … must appear at the hearing on the motion.” (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 11350.1, subd. (a).)
Here the district attorney filed a noticed motion for child support, stating that Nathaniel J. “admits paternity but disputes liability because he was the victim of [statutory rape].” In accompanying points and authorities, the district attorney stated: “Judgment in Actions Pursuant to Welfare and Institutions Code Sections 11350 and 11350.1 May Be Rendered Pursuant to Noticed Motion.” At the July 19, 1995, hearing at which Nathaniel J. appeared through his attorney, the district attorney stated: “[O]ur office is seeking to establish paternity. We are not seeking a child support order … until such time as the minor becomes an adult and is able to pay support.” fn. 2 Nathaniel J. did not request a trial. He requested a continuance to “find authority” for his defense. He added: “I may want to appeal.” The trial court granted two continuances, amounting to two months. Nathaniel J. appeared by his attorney at further hearings and did not request a trial. He received adequate notice and may not now complain.
Accordingly, the judgment is affirmed. The parties shall bear their own costs on appeal.
Stone (S. J.), P. J., and Yegan, J., concurred.
FN1. Penal Code section 261.5, subdivision (a) provides: “Unlawful sexual intercourse is an act of sexual intercourse accomplished with a person who is not the spouse of the perpetrator, if the person is a minor….” Subdivision (d) provides: “Any person over the age of 21 years who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor who is under 16 years of age is guilty of either a misdemeanor or a felony ….”
FN2. We grant respondent’s motion to augment the record to include the reporter’s transcripts of the July 19, 1995, and September 6, 1995, hearings.
This comment was written by Larry.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 7:55 am
Larry:
I suppose I could have done that (apologies on associating you with age of consent -folks, and the media/government cracks), but it usually is the responsibility of the one making a claim to provide the evidence, so I figured out if there is better evidence you will dig them up (as you have, thanks).
I don’t think such situations are all that common, and therefore I think there maybe ought to be special laws regarding such cases, or exemption of child support in such cases, but I get the feeling you are using those incredible rare cases as sort of a guideline for more normal cases, as in “because some very rare men become fathers against their will, we should always assume that a man is unwilling to become a father” and rework the whole system on basis of that, on giving him choice to be left out of the equation against the needs of the child (which basically child support is all about).
This comment was written by Tuomas.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 8:15 am
Here’s an anecdote about a man getting non-violently raped for sperm–a woman who I’d met randomly told me that her husband didn’t want to have a child, but she did–so she got him drunk after the Super Bowl and had unprotected sex.
She told the story as somewhat humorous, with the punchline being that her son (then about 10) was a sports fan.
I’m not good at moral denunciation, so I just suggested tactfully that perhaps her husband wasn’t too pleased with all this. She looked unhappy, and said that it probably had something to do with the divorce.
I’m certainly not saying such things are at all common, but I also would be surprised if I’d heard of the only one.
This comment was written by Nancy Lebovitz.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 9:29 am
Nancy, in your example above, it doesn’t sound like it was the sex the husband objected to; only the child conceived from the sex. He wasn’t “raped” if he said yes to the sex, but no to the pregnancy, ok? He may have a legitimate beef, but it isn’t “rape”.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 9:43 am
If he was drunk enough that he didn’t realise what he was saying yes to (unprotected rather than safe sex), doesn’t that render his consent meaningless?
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 9:46 am
Yep. He’s totally responsible for that child, and will be for at least the next 18 years.
Who said anything about totally? If I understand the law correctly, a father’s responsibility is limited to paying a proportion of his income in child support; the bulk of the responsibility still falls on the mother.
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 9:51 am
Yeah, so here we go with another thread derailment. Thanks, Nancy; thanks Larry; just what we need. Let’s put aside the actual topic and discuss the exceptions so that you guys can feel better.
This comment was written by ginmar.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 9:53 am
Nancy, your site contains copyrighted phrases from the work of someone I sort of know. Do you have her permission to use those phrases and make buttons and sell them?
This comment was written by ginmar.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 9:57 am
Who said anything about totally?
Me.
If I understand the law correctly, a father’s responsibility is limited to paying a proportion of his income in child support; the bulk of the responsibility still falls on the mother.
Damn the law. I am speaking of moral obligation.
The creators of new life bear responsibility for it. The responsibility is total until the new life becomes a sufficiently independent moral actor to take on its own agency. (With a muddled period of joint agency in there during the transition, which is one reason adolescence is such a bitch.)
In my view, acceptance of the first sentence of the above paragraph is a prerequisite for sexual adulthood; your ex is not a man, he is a boy.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 10:27 am
If he was drunk enough that he didn’t realise what he was saying yes to (unprotected rather than safe sex), doesn’t that render his consent meaningless
Nick, I just don’t want to see any more devolution of the term “rape”. I’ve seen too many of these conversations devolve into “but she told me she was on the Pill! I was raped! Financially raped!!”
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 10:29 am
You know I vaguely feel guilty when I come into these threads and point out that this struggle has shit to do with children and everything to do with the struggle for women’s equality vs. male dominance. That draws the whining MRAs out. Boo-hoo, boo-hoo I came in her doesn’t that mean I get to tell her what to do? It used to be that way, boo-hoo boo-hoo. Why couldn’t the world stay unjust until after my death?
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 10:30 am
Larry, point well taken. If you want to pass a law making it clear that victims of rape (including statuatory rape) cannot be forced to take responsibilty for a resulting child, I’ll certainly support that. It’s unjust to make a victim of rape pay chid support - unjust enough, in my view, to even outweigh the right of the child to support from both parents.
However, if such a law existed, that wouldn’t establish that men who consent to sex, should have a right to cut and run from responsibilities towards the resulting child.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 1:43 pm
Larry, for a long time, it was considered to be impossible for a man to be the victim of rape. Basically, the attitude was, “a guy should be so lucky.” So now we are enlightened enough to apply statutory rape principles to boys, a very good thing. What you are describing is a clear gap in the law that ought to be rectified. I honestly can’t tell you what parental rights a rapist has (I mean to a baby borne by a woman he raped), but I’ll try to look it up.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 2:28 pm
Here, here. I agree with both Amp and Barb.
The fact is, Larry, that I don’t think you’ll find many people on this blog of ‘man hating feminists’ that would disagree with you that said case is both disturbing and unjust, but isn’t it a bit insulting to the very serious subject matter at hand to pass it off as anything but an exception to the rule? The implication ends up being that this case makes all of responsiblity shirker’s are somehow cleared of wrong-doing by a wrongly judged case with a minor victim.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 3:18 pm
Barbara answered Larry’s question about parental rigts of a Rapist.
I honestly can’t tell you what parental rights a rapist has (I mean to a baby borne by a woman he raped), but I’ll try to look it up.
I read the case Larry’s posted and saw a link to “cases citing this one”. That led to sevaral including In re Kyle F. (2003)112 Cal.App.4th 538 , — Cal.Rptr.3d –
So, it would appear that rapists do not have parental rights when the rape is forcible. However, if intercourse is consesual, men’s parental rights are ensured by the constituion.
California seems to be consistent in distinguishing between forcible and consensual statutory rape with regard to parental rights and responsibilities. Whether the victim is male or female doesn’t matter, forcible rape affects parental rights and responsibilities; consensual statutory rape does not.
As to my opinion, I’d prefer it if California severed the parental rights of both the male and the female adult parents in cases like these and permitted the 16 year old girl to give her child up for adoption, and the 15 year old boy be permitted to give his child up for adoption without interference of the adult who committed statutory rape. T
This comment was written by lucia.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 3:31 pm
Actually I’m curious - a 16 year old girl having sex with an 18 year old boy isn’t necessarily statutory rape as I understand it - one of you lawyer types feel free to correct me. Basically, there seems to be a sliding scale of unlawful sexual intercourse and statutory rape. One being a child that has no protected right to engage lawfully in intercourse (generally under age 15 in most states if I recall), versus a minor engaging in lawful sexual intercourse with other minor’s (a 16 and 17 year old). I know that the law then changes when one becomes an adult and is then having sex with the minor, but the specific age of the minor shifts the law around some.
For instance, the case on Family Scholars has a 13 year old impregnated by a 22 year old. At what age does a child shift from being out and out molested (plenty of children give consent, but it still represents molestation/pedophilia) to this nebulous area where the adult engaging in this activity is considered outside of the rape contingency?
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 4:12 pm
Depends on the state, Kim. Some have Romeo and Juliet clauses where the age difference between the two parties has to exceed a number of years and some don’t.
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2005 at 4:28 pm
Any twenty-two-year who’s having sex with thirteen-year-olds is a rapist. There’s too big a maturity gap there. I notice John Howard was really eager to bring up those exceptional cases rather than deal with the reality of early teen pregnancy: the younger the girl at impregnation, the older the guy. These girls aren’t getting impregnated by other thirteen-year-olds; it’s guys who are old enough to drink who are doing it.
But, yeah, let’s talk about those rare cases, though.
This comment was written by ginmar.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2005 at 3:35 am
She did discuss that she was not on birthcontrol and wanted pregnancy, which ultimately means he failed to take the precautions that were right for him at the time if it was something he did not want. He had sex knowing that his partner was not using birthcontrol and took a gamble.
Kim has said it all, really. Who could be so brain dead as to have UNprotected sex with a woman that tells you UP FRONT that she is ‘hoping to get pregnant” and then whinge about it? he’s a moron. The greatest concern for me is that the kid might inherit his mental capacity.
Now I think I’ll go and lie down in the road (it’s night time here in Australia) so I can complain and sue someone who runs over me.
This comment was written by Helen.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2005 at 3:37 am
Also: besides male entitlement, the issue is also of men assuming the responsibility for birth control must lie with the woman. No pun intended. This is probably the most extreme (and ridiculous) example of that kind of thinking I’ve seen.
This comment was written by Helen.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2005 at 4:45 am
I was going to try to describe general consent laws but the link I used to have still works, though I am not really sure how up to date it is:
http://www.ageofconsent.com/ageofconsent.htm
The site has some annotations too (though this may be from the sources). Note that the info on California states that 70% of children that are borne by underage teen mothers are fathered by adults.
Also, I apologize if anyone is offended by this site, because it seems that it is consulted by those who like to go right up to the line but not cross it, age-wise but not otherwise.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2005 at 8:41 am
“…my statement that I’m committed to a woman’s right to choose”
See, there in itself is the majority of the problem: It’s “YOUR” right to choose, where is HIS right; his opinion; his choice? Comments like that are typically sexist and reflect the supremacist attitude of many women in today’s world.
“I don’t know what more I could have done without sacrificing my self-esteem…”
And there’s another issue - you’re so stuck up your own rear-end you can’t see beyond your own nose. Other people are less important to you than your ’self esteem’. “Hey hunny, I just had a real hard day at work.. I’m ready to flake out, could you make me a drink please?” - “Hell no, that would lower my already oh-so fragile self-esteem, and I’m not here to bow to your patriarchial demands of coffee-making, you chauvinistic bastar…”
“…and that choice has consequences for both of us”
This comment was written by Karl.For which ONLY you get to choose the outcome of. Again, he has no recourse, no options, no nothing. His life and his wallet are in your hands and you know full well they are. If feminism truly is about equality; they’ll have no problems fighting for his right to choose whether he wants to be a McDaddy and your personal piggy-bank for the next 18 to 21 years.
Of course, you’d never consider thinking that the money he gives be spent on you.. that would be selfish, and so far you’ve not done annnnnything selfish *cough*
Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2005 at 9:47 am
Oh, for FUCK’S SAKE ALREADY! SAY SOMETHING ORIGINAL!
This comment was written by ginmar.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2005 at 9:57 am
I spoke too loosely, and I of all people should know better. I’m commited to a pregnant person’s right to choose; naturally trans men should have the same choices available to women.
But somehow I doubt that’s what you were referring to.
I don’t know what issues with women you’re projecting onto me here, but I don’t have to be the receptacle for them. You can pull imaginary conversations out of your ass for as long as you like, but it doesn’t prove that self-esteem is as inherently frivolous as you seem to be suggesting.
He had a CHOICE to fuck me or not fuck me, to insist on condoms or say “OK, I’ll make you a present of my semen.” I had a CHOICE to continue the pregnancy or get and abortion. Because of the CHOICES that both of us made, there is now a third person whose needs need to be considered.
He had plenty of options, but one by one he’s given them all up. He had the option not to fuck me, he had the option to insist on condoms, he had the option to go out and get snipped years ago. He also had the option to negotiate with me like an adult after I became pregnant, but he chose instead to push all the responsibility onto me.
In fact, at least one option still remains open to him. He could go to court and demand custody, whereupon he would become the custodial parent with responsibility and I would become the non-custodial parent, or in your words “personal piggy-bank”.
I happen to think it’s in the best interests of any child to have a custodial parent who is well-fed, well-sheltered and not being dragged off to the debtors’ court. I also think it’s in the best interests of any child if his or her parents are able to interact like adults without random accusations of selfishness being flung around, something that you appear to believe is optional.
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2005 at 10:14 am
Both men and women should have every reproductive choice biologically possible. For men and women both, that means they should have the choice not to fuck, if they don’t want to. For men and women both, that means they should have access to every kind of birth control. And for women (and pregnant trans-men), that should mean access to abortion.
Cutting either men or women off from their biologically possible options is wrong, in my view. But “abortion” just isn’t one of most men’s biologically possible options.
In fact, for the record, let me say that I strongly support men’s right to have an abortion if they choose. As soon as you get pregnant, I will strongly support your right to choose between aborting your fetus or giving birth, Karl - regardless of if the man or woman who got you pregnant agrees with your choice.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2005 at 11:24 am
Do MRAs really, truly think that women don’t make our own money and live solely off men?
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2005 at 1:40 pm
Barb and Amanda;
Thanks for the answers on that question. I did find this tidbit of information as well, with regards to Nebraska:
Nebraska law forbids sexual relationships between a person 19 or older and a person younger than 16.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2005 at 2:29 pm
Amanda: now that isn’t that an interesting question? IF they’re the ones preyingon thirteen-year-old girls that might not be an inaccurate depiction of their world.
This comment was written by ginmar.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2005 at 4:06 pm
Nick,
I have to say that I find your story troubling on a many levels and it left me very conflicted. Unquestionably, dad should have stepped up to the plate and decided to be a father after you got pregnant. He also had no basis for expecting you to abort the child–especially since you were so unusually frank that you were shopping for a dad/sperm donor–although I don’t think he should necessarily be faulted for suggesting it.
But I guess I am rather baffled about your decisionmaking in this whole family drama. You wanted to have a child and decided, I assume, that this was the guy to do it since you’ve said you aren’t emotionally capable of finding a step-father for the child. Why was this the guy? Why not be more upfront about the planning and include him in it, instead of approaching it so casusally? Wouldn’t someone who was involved in getting your pregnant and who wanted to a child be a better candidate whose only qualification appears to be he was willing to have unprotected sex?
As a lawyer, I am also a little baffled by the deals you are willing to make on behalf of your child. You were willing to forego child support, I sense in part as a carrot to keep dad involved. You weren’t even prepared to go to court to set out legal expectations, as if this were a puppy or an couch instead of a child.
You appeared to have a fantasy about how this was all going to play out, but now the fantasy has tuned into a nightmare. Did you consider this could all go awry when you orchestrated this childmaking?
This comment was written by resipsa.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2005 at 4:22 pm
Yes, I was unquestionably naive in the way I tried to handle things. The father and I were good friends, and I assumed that was enough of a foundation to build on (my desire for a child overruled a lot of my logical thinking here). He did claim, initially, that he wanted a child and that if I became pregnant it would fulfil his long-deferred dream of having a family of his own, but apparently he only wanted a family on his narrow terms. Lots of miscommunication there that a longer discussion period might have solved, but hindsight is always 20-20.
I was also naive for believing that two adults could work things out with goodwill rather than resorting to the courts. I felt that the system here in the UK is rather harsh on unmarried fathers and that the two of us could manage something better between us. Sadly, I’ve learned the error of my ways.
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2005 at 7:13 pm
I don’t think it’s out of line to point out to Resipsa that Nick was upfront: it was the dad who kept changing his mind when he couldn’t have his way. How is that Nick’s fault?
Sorry, Nick, but it was right there. YOU were upfront; he kept waffling.
This comment was written by ginmar.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2005 at 8:55 pm
Do MRAs really, truly think that women don’t make our own money and live solely off men?
Remember, we’re supposed to support ourselves 100%, except when we have children and are married, in which case we should stay home with the babies and let the man be the breadwinner.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2005 at 10:33 pm
I just returned from a visit with a friend whose husband of fifteen years was recently diagnosed with a very virulent form of cancer. Two weeks after receiving that diagnosis they learned he had AIDS. She believed their relationship to be monogamous. It came to light that he had been engaging in unprotected receptive anal sex with men, as well as sex with female prostitutes. There is some evidence that he actually knew his HIV status for awhile. Although my friend is currently testing negative for the virus, she will need to be retested for the next 6 - 12 months.
I suppose we could say that she, in having unprotected sex with her own husband, was engaging in a voluntary transaction whereby she could potentially be the recipient of the “gift” of the HIV virus, but I suspect that must people here would place a higher degree of moral culpability on her husband, to disclose his extramaritial activities and HIV status. He was the only one to have this “special knowledge,” that she was not privy to.
There have been cases of individuals who have knowingly infected partners with HIV, sometimes serially, and they have been held criminally responsible for their actions.
Nick, although you had some hypothetical discussions with your boyfriend where you both acknowledged a desire for parenthood, you were the only one in this relationship that knew that you were actively pursuing this goal, knew you were likely in a fertile period, and were wagering on his not using a condom. Now his using a condom or not, has nothing to do with his fiscal responsibility under the law. If he had used one, and it had broken, or if you had lied and said you had had your tubes tied, and a pregnancy resulted, he would still be financially responsible.
My question goes to what we owe each other as human beings. You were essentially attempting to have your needs gratified, by withholding information that was immediately pertinent to his decision to have sex with you, and banking on the fact that he’s probably not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to female reproduction, and then falling back on the “he could have used a condom,” justification. How is that not using him as a means to your own end? How is that different from a male sexual predator who uses a thirteen year old girl’s immaturity to gratify his sexual desires? How is it different from friend’s husband who withheld the special information that only he held?
You want to treat your act of sex with your ex- as simply being a contractual transaction in which he didn’t read the small print. I think that’s a very impoverished view of human relations.
This comment was written by Emmetropia.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2005 at 11:00 pm
Emmatropia, I disagree completely. Nick has stated that she made it clear to him that she wanted a child and was not using contraception of any sort. That is absolute foreknowledge.
It seems more likely to me that your own very serious tragic story with your friend (which is horrible, by the way) may be coloring your view of Nick’s actions. For the story to be comparable, it seems to me that your friends husband would have had to have told his wife that he was actively interested and participating in unprotected sex outside of their relationship for the story to have a true parallel.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 2:30 am
Kim, I think my example, tragic as it is, is a perfect complement to the scenerio Nick presents. Nick and many others on this thread, have argued that the responsibility for her pregnancy laid solely on the now-remorseful ex, who had failed to use a condom after Nick had told him she desired to become pregnant. In essence, she had given him fair warning (which removed her culpability as a moral agent), and he had closed the deal by not using a condom. His sperm was a “gift.”
First of all, it is unclear to me how explicitly Nick conveyed her intentions to become a mother. She describes the entire relationship in vague terms, and apart from them being “good friends,” I don’t know how intimate a relationship it actually was. The relationship “ran into difficulties before my pregnancy was even confirmed.” (A mere two weeks by my reckoning.) She admits “I made use of the fact that he was prepared to have unprotected sex with me.” And, “I do sometimes feel that I was slightly unfair to him in that I had plenty of time to consider getting pregnant and he hadn’t considered the possibility before that night.” She complains that she was expected to tell him the date of her last menstrual period.
Well, before rushing to defend her honor and bashing him, I’d want to ask a few questions. When and under what circumstances did she tell him she wanted to be a parent? Did she have an ongoing intimate relationship with the man, or was it simply a friendship with occasional benefits? Did she talk about having a child WITH HIM, or was it mentioned more as a hypothetical: “Gee, I’d love to have a child,” within the space of a casual conversation? I suspect from her writing, that she knew the night she slept with him — and maybe I’m wrong here, but she only mentions the one time — that she knew it was a fertile period. Did she have a conversation that night? “I might be fertile, and I’m not using birth control?” Or was she simply relying on some comment she made six months earlier in a passing conversation, to give him fair warning?
If she did, and he was sober, and of average intelligence, and not suffering from mental illness, he conceded to become a father.
My point is this: healthy human relationships are not simply contractual. If I am going to make a decision that is going to effect another person, I have to be clear about my intentions, and not withhold information that they need to make their own informed decisions. If I’m relying on someone else’s ignorance, immaturity or misplaced trust, to help me fulfill my desires, whether they be sexual gratification, a child, or making money, I may be acting legally, but I’m not acting morally.
Let’s apply my friend’s scenerio to Nick. Say her ex had, unknown to Nick, had a history of engaging in risky sexual behavior. At the same time he gave her the gift of semen, he also “gifted” her with the HIV virus. Most people would be up in arms for his failure to fully inform her of the risk.
This comment was written by Emmetropia.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 2:55 am
“we’re supposed to support ourselves 100%, except when we have children and are married, in which case we should stay home with the babies and let the man be the breadwinner.”
….but then we’re parasites, sucking the lifeblood out of a poor, helpless male, taking advantage….but if we then get out and get a job, we’re castrating she-devils, implying that the guy’s not got enough cojones to take care of his woman and his offspring….but if we then give up the job and let him earn the money, we’re parasites again…..
It’s just like sex: if we have sex with men, we’re sleazy sluts, but if we don’t, we’re prick-teasing, man-hating frigid bitches. Nope, no way to exist that will actually please your average MRA, is there?
This comment was written by Crys T.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 3:59 am
‘In our legal system, if you give someone a gift, it’s theirs to do with what they like. If a man ejaculates inside a woman, he has given her his semen and she is free to use it as she likes. She can make a baby with it, if she wants.’
All fine and dandy then, just don’t ask him to pay…’if she likes’ ‘if she wants’…if you get pergnant purposely just ’cause you wanna, especially without the male’s consent ,don’t come round with your hand out later when you find it a bit more challenging than a Betsy-Wetsy. This is a human life we’re talking about here, not a puppy. Cripes, a dog breeder gives more thought to the sire and dam when breeding puppies than most humans do when they make the same decision to reproduce.
This comment was written by crella.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 4:21 am
Emmetropia, you need to go back and re-read Nick’s posts on the subject. You’re totally getting it wrong in your desire to nail her for her boyfriend’s actions. She was clear: he was in agreement. Then he changed his mind. You just don’t want to deal with that.
This comment was written by ginmar.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 7:24 am
I don’t want to comment specifically about Nick’s situation, but I do think that in it lurks a real conundrum that all of us should realize when it comes to pregnancy and parenthood: we usually don’t know what we are getting ourselves into and feelings can change dramatically when it becomes “real” to us. There are many people who think that, once pregnant, a woman should accept the blessings of motherhood and oppose abortion pretty much on that basis alone. But the fact is, people change their minds. Because of biology, women can change their minds at a later stage than men, and often do even when they were sort of not trying but not doing much to avoid becoming pregnant. Just as I won’t castigate Nick for misjudging her partner or not acting with sufficient foresight, I won’t castigate her partner for changing his mind. Sure, he’s too late to the party, we should all try to anticipate the reasonably likely consequences of our actions and act with insight and good judgment, but at this point the only thing that can be required of him is financial commitment, to the best of his ability, and while it may seem cruel to the child, who had nothing to do with any of this, it’s the way life works. I still have fresh in my mind the shock and disappointment of my babysitter at her long-term boyfriend’s complete rejection of her plans for “their” family. No one can coerce love and affection and no one is at fault if they don’t feel it.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 10:23 am
First of all, Emmetropia, I’m very sorry for your friend’s heartache and unwitting jeopardy. I’m glad she’s tested negative so far, and I hope her health remains intact.
However, these situations–your friend’s, which you related in detail, and the other example you referred to briefly–are completely different from what happened with Nick and Nick’s ex-lover.
Your friend was lied to. Her husband made promises of fidelity to her; that’s what most marriages mean. He also promised–”love and honor”–to protect her health and be mindful of her well-being. She had every reason to believe that he was not screwing around, let alone without using any protection. She therefore had no reason to worry about STD transmission, either to him or through him to herself. He did not disclose any of his activities or any of her risks. She had no way of protecting herself from a danger she had no way of perceiving.
Nick told the ex that the ex could not depend on birth control. Nick told the ex that there was no possibility of an abortion in case of pregnancy. The ex knew that there was a very strong possibility that he would become a father. He knew that Nick had legal standing to demand child support, and a great deal of financial and parental interest in doing so. He was informed. If he wasn’t interested in fatherhood, he could have refrained from having sex with a fertile baby-wanting person, or been responsible enough to clarify Nick’s plans. An analagous STD-related situation would not involve him deceiving Nick about his HIV status. It’d be more like barebacking with someone when you know full well that they’re HIV positive. Would your friend’s husband have any cause to complain about whoever (probably unwittingly) gave him HIV, or was he responsible for protecting himself?
>>How is that different from a male sexual predator who uses a thirteen year old girl’s immaturity to gratify his sexual desires?>>
Well, that would be rape. Sex with a thirteen-year-old is considered rape precisely because thirteen-year-olds are not considered mature enough to understand the physican and emotional consequences of sex. The law withholds their consent until they’re old and wise enough to give it. Once someone is an adult, like the ex, the law considers them old enough to be conscious of the potential consequences of sex, and responsible enough to protect themselves from risks and bear potential costs.
What about his responsibility and her potential injury? He wasn’t using a condom, IIRC. What if Nick had contracted an STD or gotten pregnant against her will? Would Nick have any right to complain that he hadn’t taken precautions against conception, or that he hadn’t gotten regular STD tests or taken it upon himself to wear a condom, or that he hadn’t reminded his partner that sex sometimes results in illness and/or babies, or urged birth control on his partner? Or would at least half of that responsibility–protection and planning–be Nick’s?
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 10:46 am
>>That I told him I wasn’t using any birth control wasn’t enough: I should also have told him the date of my last menstrual period.>>
Also–this isn’t Nick complaining about full disclosure. This is Nick’s ex admitting that he damn well knew Nick wasn’t using BC, and then complaining that Nick should have made sure to let him know _exactly how fertile_ Nick was. Which, come the fuck on, asshat. Nick was fertile, full stop. Nick was not using birth control, period. That’s enough for you to wrap up Lil’ asshat if you didn’t want to worry about knocking anyone up.
I’m sure that if Nick had given him a comprehensive briefing of personal ovulatory history and timing, he would have jumped on Nick’s failure to disclose a late period eighteen months before. Either that or complained that Nick’s discussion of monthly cycles caused him to have greater faith that he otherwise would have had in the notoriously unreliable rhythm method.
I’d bet a Violet Crumble bar that he wouldn’t have known what to do with those dates if he’d been given them.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 11:02 am
Or failed to disclose that sperm can live for more than 72 hours in the female reproductive tract or that some women ovulate twice and that ovulation can only be “confirmed” after it has already happened and that even in women with normal cycles it can vary its timing from month to month by more than a week. It’s called “hidden fertility” and it is an extremely well-known characteristic of human biology (as opposed to canine or feline biology in which it is abudantly clear when female fertility peaks). She could have offered him the chance to inspect her netherparts under full light to determine the presence of other features of peak female fertility that are too gross to list here. Surely if someone tells you full stop that they are NOT using birth control you have been sent some kind of reasonably clear message.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 12:38 pm
Thanks for that staunch defence piny and others.
To make everything clear, my now-ex and I spent a night together which we had both hoped would mark the blossoming of a solid friendship into something more. During that night, we had a conversation that went something like this: “So… do we need a condom?” “Well, I’m not really sure. I’ve not taken the best of care with sex over the last six months, so I could have any disease you care to name, and I’m not using any other birth control. But I’d prefer not to use a condom because I was hoping to get pregnant.” “Oh… Well, I sort of hoped you would say that.”
I’m not treating it as “a transaction where he didn’t read the small print”. If anyone’s treating it that way, it’s him, by trying to use my failure to disclose every imaginable detail as some kind of loophole that absolves him of blame even while his legal responsibility remains.
I have every sympathy with the fact that he made a decision he now regrets. I don’t blame him for concluding that fatherhood isn’t for him, although it would have simplified things for everyone if he’d been clearer on that point before we slept together. What I do blame him for, and quite bitterly, is his attempts to put blame and responsibility onto me and me alone for something that he was consciously complicit in.
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 12:56 pm
He was either drunk or drunk with passion. It goes right to the cerebral cortex to think that someone wantst to have your child. People don’t really think straight. This is why women appreciate being able to get an abortion.
This comment was written by John Howard.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 2:00 pm
What? What does that even mean? Yup, go up to most guys and say “I want you to knock me up” and they’ll fall over and beg for it right on the floor. yes sireebob, everyone knows that!
And that’s why women love abortions! :)
Kittens have fur!
I like chocolate!
And other non-sequiturs.
This comment was written by j-ha.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 2:23 pm
>>He was either drunk or drunk with passion. It goes right to the cerebral cortex to think that someone wantst to have your child. People don’t really think straight. This is why women appreciate being able to get an abortion. >>
That’s odd. I’ve been in procreative situations and I haven’t noticed any men feeling giddy and flattered at the prospect of a woman not their spouse growing a little smoosh of them. Nor does it seem to keep them from thinking clearly about the ramifications of an unwanted pregnancy.
Maybe you just have an insemination fetish, John.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 5:37 pm
‘Seriously, this whole notion that giving up semen means you give up responsibility for your own child presupposes that there is no difference between semen and children.’
I vehemently disagree…what we are talking about here is a woman’s unilateral decision to have a child…if she decides to have a child on her own, against the wishes of the male, why then is he obligated to pay?
You say that a woman can do ‘as she pleases’ with a man’s sperm, but then in the next breath say the man has responsibility.
‘ giving up semen means you give up responsibility for your own child ‘
If the man has no intent of having a child, and says so, he should be able to bow out. Ditto for women who save condoms and impregnate themselves. Using a condom=not wanting a child, so his intentions are clear.
‘there is no difference between semen and children.’
If a woman lies to a man , for instance tells him she is on the pill when she isn’t, he has intercourse presuming a child will not result. If she decieves him and concieves, it’s her decision. She made the decision to have the child without his consent….it’s her responsibility.
This attitude of ‘A woman can do what she wants with the sperm’ but then again ‘giving up sperm doesn’t mean giving up reponsibility’ is inconsistent in the extreme. I wish you people would get all your ducks in a row before you presume to tell people how to live their lives…
This comment was written by crella.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 5:42 pm
‘We have a divorce, and I get half of the eggs.” Why would you get half? They’re hers. Fertilized embryoes, yes. Eggs, I doubt it. But, if this did happen, once YOU have sole control over them and how they’re used, she ceases to be responsible for them. It’s the same principle as sperm donors being exempt from being sued for child support.’
In recent news was the story of a woman who used her husband’s sperm well after their divorce to concieve, had the child and is now asking for child support. If divorced women can have their ex’s sperm, why can’t the man have the ex’s eggs?
‘once YOU have sole control over them and how they’re used, she ceases to be responsible for them. ‘
So in this line of reasoning, why is a man responsible for the results of his sperm after he’s lost control of it?
This comment was written by crella.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 5:47 pm
‘Boo-hoo, boo-hoo I came in her doesn’t that mean I get to tell her what to do? It used to be that way, boo-hoo boo-hoo. Why couldn’t the world stay unjust until after my death?’
Intercourse takes two…why should not both individuals have an opinion as to what happens afterwards? Men are not asking for the right to ‘tell women what to do’ but to even be able to discuss it…current law allows the woman to get an abortion without consulting the partner at all.
This comment was written by crella.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 5:51 pm
Oh, Jesus Fucking Christ already. Men and women already do have a choice, Crella, and it’s been discussed to death here.
They have choices at different times in the process. This is because of biology. Once the sperm leaves the guy’s body, he’s done with it.
Men have to deal with the fact that their choices occurs a great deal sooner than women’s. This is because women carry the pregancy. Deal with it.
And I wish to Christ someone would pound this really fact into people heads because it’s getting to be really damned old to hear it again and again from people who evidently flunked Biology 101.
This comment was written by ginmar.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 5:55 pm
Men already have the right to discuss their partners’ pregnancies. They can talk all they damn well please. It’s just that their wishes have no bearing on the woman’s decision. She has the final say in what happens inside her uterus. Men can choose not to conceive children by insisting on either birth control or abstention. If they don’t want women to have control over their sperm–which includes possibly making babies with it, babies that have two biological parents who share responsibility for conception–they should refrain from leaving it inside women’s bodies.
Nick, moreover, did not save a condom–like most women. The man involved didn’t use one. Does that mean Nick has every right to demand his contribution as a parent, even though he demanded after the fact that Nick abort?
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 7:25 pm
I realize I’m a latecomer and have no real authority, influence, or even right to speak here, but one thing occurs.
If a close friend told me about this sort of problem, I would strongly urge her to spring for a family attorney rather than just your own research. You can’t anticipate all contingencies, and a good, experienced family attorney can help you in that regard.
–|PW|–
This comment was written by pennywit.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 8:37 pm
Emma, you’re completely off base. That’s like saying that someone showing up at your house and handing you a $100 bill is the equivalent to someone showing up and dumping a big pile of shit in your hands. The latter could be considered assault.
But if someone gives you a $100 bill, you have the right to spend it or burn it. If someone dumps a big pile of shit in your living room, that’s offensive by any standard. Totally different.
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 9:04 pm
current law allows the woman to get an abortion without consulting the partner at all
Do you think that ‘current law’ should require the woman to sign a form saying her male partner has been told, or bring in a permission slip? Or what?
Fertilized embryoes, yes.
Fertilized embryos, no.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 9:09 pm
Do you mean >this recent story?
It’s undeniably a very weird story, but the couple is still married. They seem to have been estranged a long time. At least one baby was conceived using the frozen sperm. That baby is 8 months old. A second is on it’s way. (The story doesn’t say if the father is the woman’s estranged husband or someone else.)
You can read various answers to your hypothetical in question in the newspaper article. But, the direct answer is, evidently, she can’t have access to his sperm unless he gives permission, which she claims she got. (The man claims the form is forged and is suing the notary.)
This comment was written by lucia.Report this comment to the moderators
August 1st, 2005 at 9:23 pm
And she’s not his “ex-wife.” If she were, then he would not be presumed the father.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
August 2nd, 2005 at 6:59 am
“If a woman lies to a man , for instance tells him she is on the pill when she isn’t, he has intercourse presuming a child will not result. If she decieves him and concieves, it’s her decision. She made the decision to have the child without his consent….it’s her responsibility.”
Except that Nick told her partner that she was actively trying to get pregnant, wasn’t using birth control, and would continue with any resulting pregnancy.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
August 2nd, 2005 at 7:15 am
There is a saying that lawyers have, that “hard cases make bad law,” which means that adopting general rules based on outlier situations tends to bring about illogical and unfair results. So again without discussing Nick’s situation specifically, there is a big difference between the “average” predicament faced by a dad to be, in which neither he nor his partner wanted or expected to face a pregnancy (even if they should have known better) and a situation in which a woman “knowingly deceives” or tricks her partner into having intercourse that turns out to be unprotected, or, for heaven’s sake, where an adult woman engages in statutory rape of a minor but sexually mature boy. Nick isn’t in any of these camps, but I would venture that her situation is also pretty rare.
So is the law justified in overlooking these “nuances” and applying a the general rule (you are obligated to support anything that bears your DNA)? I tend to think that allowances should be made — certainly for the protection of the crime victim, and perhaps where the dad really can show that he did not consent to the use of his sperm. But neither of these is going to help Nick’s boyfriend. Support is for the benefit of the child who was not a moral agent of either of his parents and their bad conduct should not be attributed to him in any way. Although there may be valid reasons not to require support in order to deter patently obnoxious and unfair conduct, such conduct is not the norm and should not drive policy regarding custody and support.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
August 2nd, 2005 at 9:16 am
>>Except that Nick told her partner that she was actively trying to get pregnant, wasn’t using birth control, and would continue with any resulting pregnancy. >>
Well, but women lie. By definition. They just do.
Do you really think crella read any further than “Pregnant, wants child support from the other major player if not too much trouble, thanks so much”?
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
August 2nd, 2005 at 9:35 am
Nick, good luck with your journey to motherhood. Good luck with motherhood, too.
A (male) friend was in a similar situation to yours about 7 years ago. He wanted to get married and start a family, she didn’t, they had unprotected sex while she was taking an oral antibiotic with the birth-control interference warning label on it, and she got pregnant. He was thrilled to pieces, she was more ambivalent but agreed to carry the baby to term. Bottom line was that they got married just before the birth, she took maternity leave, then she filed for divorce and he got full custody of their daughter. He’s doing the single dad thing now and loving it, although he admitted to me recently that he wished it had worked out better with his ex because a girl needs a mom, but he knows now that his ex just wasn’t cut out to be a mother. So take heart - sad as it is that your ex couldn’t stick to his original position, for whatever reason, other people have gone through the same thing and are doing fine.
This comment was written by Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
August 2nd, 2005 at 9:35 am
Well, but women lie. By definition. They just do.
It’s the ovaries that do it. Ovaries make your words not to be relied upon.
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
August 2nd, 2005 at 6:26 pm
So if one’s tubes are tied, does she tell half-truths ?
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
August 2nd, 2005 at 6:49 pm
So if one’s tubes are tied, does she tell half-truths ?
Nope. It’s a purely binary thing: ovaries present/ovaries absent. The only way to have reliable words is to have them removed altogether, or better still, arrange to be born without them in the first place.
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
August 2nd, 2005 at 7:52 pm
Ah, yes. It’s all clear now. ;)
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
August 8th, 2005 at 10:24 am
Amanda
It’s the law? Good answer and true…..but the law changes and evolves. Slavery was formerly allowed and protected by law but then the pendulum eventually swung the other way. It took hundreds of years to start a civil war to end slavery based on skin color.
With most statistics indicating that 85% to 90% of the time that women are ajudicated custodial rights…that gives one class…100% of the choice, 90% of the custody and leaves the slave class toiling full time for 35% of their fruits (child support = 30% and taxes = 35%)
I have heard the Nazis allowed the Jews in Polish ghettos a similar portion of their fruits.
This comment was written by kuntakintee.Report this comment to the moderators
August 8th, 2005 at 11:02 am
your blog your right to censor……
why does amanda have right to discuss the way she did and me just state facts and be censored…
This comment was written by kuntakintee.shame
Report this comment to the moderators
August 8th, 2005 at 3:40 pm
Kunta;
One, you’re being inflammatory. Two, you’re being extremely simple in your exposition. Were you to be honest and genuinely academic within this conversation, you’d acknowledge the fact that custodial parenting may end up as the responsibility of the mother most frequently, it does not mean that the father had no say. Fathers pushing for custodial rights equal to, or more than women are becoming more and more common, and providing they are good parents, bully for them.
Addressing it as a non-evolving and intentionally oppressive system is frightfully dishonest.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
August 9th, 2005 at 8:39 am
This entire situation is a great argument for getting married before having kids. Both these people were idiots for having unprotected sex when clearly neither one of them had any concern regarding what the consequences of producing a child would have for themselves and (most importantly) for the child. Then there’s the fact that getting married first makes the legal responsibilities of the mother and father towards the child much clearer than they are now.
And both of these folks are saying, “I’m being treated unfairly.” Hey, guess what? Both of you took an action that has resulted in entirely forseeable consequences. You are both getting treated entirely fairly; do something like this without getting to know the person involved and heedless of the consequences and a bad outcome is entirely fair.
You want to know who’s getting treated unfairly? The child being produced by this union. That kid deserves two parents committed to each other and to the welfare of the child they are producing it. He or she is not going to get that. Instead, they’re going to get two parents who have no bond to each other and whose first concern was then and is now themselves. That’s what’s unfair here. These two should stop whining and act like grownups.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
August 9th, 2005 at 8:50 am
“With most statistics indicating that 85% to 90% of the time that women are ajudicated custodial rights…that gives one class…100% of the choice, 90% of the custody and leaves the slave class toiling full time for 35% of their fruits (child support = 30% and taxes = 35%) ”
… and it would be cheaper for the slaves to have custody? And did you just compare men supporting their children to slaves? Wow. How do you perceive custody as being the less expensive of the options (implied by your whining about men paying child support)? If it were the cheaper option, why would women need help to begin with?
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
August 9th, 2005 at 9:35 am
>>Both these people were idiots for having unprotected sex when clearly neither one of them had any concern regarding what the consequences of producing a child would have for themselves and (most importantly) for the child.>>
I have a sneaking suspicion that you didn’t read too carefully before commenting, but you’re wrong. The father apparently didn’t think too hard about what would happen if the unprotected sex he was having resulted in a baby, but Nick certainly did. Considering said father’s failure to inform Nick that he had no intention of taking any parental responsibility whatsoever–”You didn’t tell me this was a particularly fertile time of the month!”–and that he is by all accounts an adult, Nick had no reason to believe that he would demonstrate a near-sociopathic inability to bear the consequences of his actions.
Nick, on the other hand, has no plans to either abandon the baby or neglect it. Nick is fully prepared to care for it, financially and emotionally. It’ll be a much larger burden than it would have been had the father not abrogated his parallel responsibilities, but Nick has assumed it. That child will be sheltered, fed, and loved. It’s pretty fucked up of you to complain about that.
You know what else is fucked up? Comparing “Got pregnant, had no help, decided to assume all responsibility for the child,” with “Got someone else pregnant, refused to help, shoved all responsibility for the child onto its mother.” Nick’s only mistake was in trusting that the father would sack up and help raise and maintain his child. The father’s mistake was…being a child.
>>Then there’s the fact that getting married first makes the legal responsibilities of the mother and father towards the child much clearer than they are now.>>
No, it doesn’t. The law is perfectly clear about the legal responsibilities that parents have to their children. If you contribute to the making of a child, you owe that child support. The _amount_ of support you must provide requires more detailed analysis, but the simple fact of obligation is not at all ambiguous. The law doesn’t deprive children of parents just because said parents happen not to have been married. Good thinking on the part of legislators, eh?
Not just that, but plenty of abuse, neglect and abandonment occurs in families headed by married couples. A marriage contract doesn’t seem to prevent a good number of parents from taking off, or from pushing parental responsibility onto the other parent. Given this guy’s demonstrated ability to take big risks with other people’s lives and then flit off blithely as a swallowtail when the shit hits the fan, I doubt he would have had any more problem marrying and then jilting some unlucky woman than conceiving a child and then pretending it sprang fully-formed from Nick’s forehead.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2005 at 6:03 pm
Having had a similiar situation, I offered my child’s father the ability to walk away without any strings. I realize that I have no legal ability to do this, but I meant it. I made 2x as much money as he did and I was ready to put “unknown” on the birth certificate. Instead, his choice was to stay around and torment me for having gotten pregnant in the first place, which ultimately was defacto torment of our child. I didn’t collect a penney of child support, or any other kind of support for five years, but that wasn’t enough to create peace.
I finally realized that his real problem was his desire to control, and one thing a guy doesn’t and never will have is any significant control over the reproductive process.
This comment was written by Marina.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2005 at 6:47 am
I wonder if that’s common to most men in that situation. Certainly, the father of my child seems most bothered by the fact that I have more control than he does: in the last discussion we had, he seemed to be saying that the reason he didn’t want to be an involved father was because he didn’t get the final say on all important decisions.
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2005 at 6:51 am
>> he didn’t get the final say on all important decisions.
Did he get the “final say” on _any_ important decision?
This comment was written by hun.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2005 at 7:14 am
Yes, he got to walk away from all parental responsibility and let his child grow up without a father.
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2005 at 7:46 am
Well, the final say on the former is yours; on the latter is indeed his.
This comment was written by hun.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2005 at 8:19 am
Did he get the “final say” on _any_ important decision?
Indeed he did. Nick informed him that she wanted a baby and was not using birth control. At that point, he had the final say on whether he wanted to have sex with a woman who not only wanted a baby, but was making sure that she could have one.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2005 at 8:46 am
You’re right; indeed that was the single most important decision concerning him and he had the final say… and, in light of the later happenings, his “final say” was definitely the wrong thing.
This comment was written by hun.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2005 at 5:03 am
Having considered overnight, I offer you a (non-exhaustive) list of decisions on which the father had the final say:
Whether his semen ended up in me in the first place.
Whether to address the conflicts in our relationship or pretend they could be waved away (or I could be talked into ignoring them?)
Whether to gain automatic parental responsibilty by registering the birth jointly with me (the offer is still open, but has thus far been resolutely turned down).
Whether to apply to the courts for custody.
I find it very telling, actually, that he hasn’t even mentioned applying for custody. If he was awarded custody, he would have all the control he liked, but he would also have to do some of the irritating practical tasks connected with raising the child.
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2005 at 5:44 am
Well, the ex wouldn’t necessarily be burdened by all those “irritating practical tasks connected with raising a child.”
One thing we have noticed in the non-custodial mothers camp is that custodial fathers seem to have a real talent for dumping day-to-day care on another woman. The new enabling girlfriend of the month, or maybe dear old mom. So in a sense, the kid is passed from a devoted caretaker to a series of often indifferent ones.
This comment was written by silverside.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2005 at 6:05 am
“enabling girlfriend”, “dear old mom”… “indifferent [child caretakers]” - the sheer respect for women [other than bio mom] is just amazing.
This comment was written by hun.Report this comment to the moderators
November 12th, 2005 at 2:21 pm
To prevent men from avoiding their responsibility, should DNA testing to prove paternity fraud be made illegal? or at least very difficult? See this:
http://www.mensconfraternity.org.au/menswebpage74.html
This comment was written by Alice.Report this comment to the moderators
January 1st, 2006 at 7:45 am
From reading this blog and numerous others accross the web,it is obvious that there are lots of problems with child support. Well here is my contribution to the mix.
This comment was written by Ian Miller.In 1998 I met a woman who had four children from a previous marriage. Despite many many warning signs I married her in 2000. In 2001 we were living in New York. One day she packed up and left the kids with her ex husbands parents and left the state. NY immediately filed for child support against me. Despite the fact that I was neither the biological nor adoptive parent to any of the children Ny required me to pay support. I appealed the order and in 2003 my wife and I divorced on the grounds of her infidelity and abuse. I ended up reconciling with my first wife and our two children. In 2004 NY attached my wages and in 2005 they intercepted my tax refund. This hindered my ability to provide for my physically disabled wife and our two children(whom I always supported even when we ere divorced). In August 2005 I was notified in writing that I had satified the child support judgement and that NY would return my intercepted refund in Dec 2005. Well guess what it is now 2006 and still not one sign of a refund. I have called and emailed Montgomery County NY child support and the Governors Office. No responses have been received.
Children are a blessing from GOD and biological parents must support their children. Adoptive parents have the same obligation. To require a person like myself to support children unrelated to me is wrong. NY required me to pay them support while not hitting the biological mother or father for the same support.
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January 20th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
My point as a female is this bitches - YOU SPREAD YOUR LEGS - YOU PAY THE BILLS. I’ve been with two men tricked into fucking a broad with a condom only to have the broad stick the condom inside her to get knocked up - which by the way takes knowing when you’re ovulating. I have pets - and not once when I got divorced and my ex left the pets with me did I begin describing my poor sorry ass as a “single pet owner” know why? Because people would say well why don’t cha just get rid of em if you’re gonna bitch about paying for em. But alas - pop out a human puppy and behold–violins play and “single mom” is met with “awww, you poor thing the bastard won’t give you money for the rugrat?”
This comment was written by The Bitch.I am a woman but WOMEN MAKE ME VOMIT!!!!!!!!!! Pathetic whores who knowingly spread their legs welcoming the cum, knowing Goddamn well a baby will be made and then whining that “they were victimized”.
My take on it is YOU pay the bill ho-bag. I’ve got several guy friends who are harassed to death for money for kids they did not want - they were lied to - “Oh its OK I’m on the Pill” or the bitch that sticks the used condom into herself. No matter how you get knocked up IT IS YOU who has the option to say no slut. Get that ! Not one bitch is accountable for the free money she gets to raise the offspring. Listen bitches - ya need a friend so bad because you’re a lonely loser don’t have a kid - adopt a dog or cat. And quit whining about support. Fuck supporting kids you don’t want. Women HAVE the last word in getting knocked up - close your legs bitch. Sorry I gotta go puke now.
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January 20th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
Oh what a lovely trolly troll. Anyone up for a troll roast?
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
January 20th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
What kind of wine/whine are we having with it ? :/
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
January 20th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
I’m thinking of a word… It starts with a letter that sounds like an insect that loves honey and lives in a hive… and it rhymes with “land.” Can you guess what word I’m thinking of?
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
January 20th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
::gasp::
You want to BRAND the TROLL?
I think that sounds a bit violent, Amp. Surely there’s a more peaceable solution?
This comment was written by Elkins.Report this comment to the moderators
January 20th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
Hell, no, there isn’t! I am sick and tired of seeing “Alas” trolls that Alsis and others have sweated blood over, beating them into shape, showing up on other blogs like “Feministe”! They’re MY trolls, dammit, and once I’ve burned an & mark into their flesh they’ll STAY my trolls!
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
January 20th, 2006 at 11:28 pm
“Branding” ? “Sweating blood” ?
Bah. I knew this would be the inevitable result of all those goddamn BDSM threads, but did anyone listen to me ?!?! Nooooo…
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
January 21st, 2006 at 1:40 am
“Bland”? I guess it was predictable but I don’t know about bland.
And your troll-hogging made Lauren quit blogging, Amp, you bastard! Oh, she SAYS its because she needs to earn a living but we know what’s really going on.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
January 22nd, 2006 at 1:04 pm
Didn’t anyone ever teach you to share, Amp?
Ny required me to pay support
On what grounds, Ian?
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 3:47 am
I think “The Bitch” has a point. To put it slightly more elegantly, if you have a child then either:
(1) Having the child (and paying for it) makes you happier than you would be otherwise, and having it was a good decision. If this is the case then I’m happy you’re happy and I hope you enjoy being a parent. Or,
(2) Having the child (and paying for it) makes you unhappier than you would be otherwise, in which case you made a mistake having it. If this is the case you should put the child up for adoption and try to get on with being happy.
I think it’s difficult to say that either of these situations is “unfair” to the single parent. (Though they may well be unfair to the child).
This comment was written by nik.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 4:32 am
The unfairness isn’t in the fact that I have to raise my daughter (or even pay for her upbringing), the unfairness is in the way her father has sulked, accused me of treating him unfairly by getting and staying pregnant after he decided he didn’t want his sperm doing that, tried to argue and emotionally blackmail me into bringing up the child he doesn’t want as he sees fit and generally acted like a dickhead.
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 6:19 am
Nick, I was not accusing you of anything or suggesting you hold any particular views. I know nothing about your life and wouldn’t presume to speak about it.
I was just clarifying what I thought was an interesting general point “The Bitch” made. I thought there was a rather elegant argument at the heart of an ugly rant. It wasn’t aiming it at you, or my post wasn’t at any rate. (And for what it’s worth, if someone promises to do something and then doesn’t, or tries to promote their interests to the exclusion of yours then that obviously is unfair).
This comment was written by nik.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 9:06 am
Please. I wouldn’t dignify #136 by calling it a rant. I’ve seen clots of puke in bus shelters more “elegant” than that, frankly. Babies are punishment because women act like sluts. How inventive. How balanced. [snicker]
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 9:28 am
I think it’s difficult to say that either of these situations is “unfair” to the single parent.
What happened to the other parent? Was this parthenogenesis?
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 10:12 am
No, but either the child makes the single parent happy (in which case they benefit) or it makes them unhappy (in which case they can have it adopted, which will prevent the child making them unhappy). So having a child could not have decreased the single parent’s happiness. So it is hard to say they are victimised by being a single parent.
This comment was written by nik.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
Hell, no, there isn’t! I am sick and tired of seeing “Alas” trolls that Alsis and others have sweated blood over, beating them into shape, showing up on other blogs like “Feministe”! They’re MY trolls, dammit, and once I’ve burned an & mark into their flesh they’ll STAY my trolls!
Better fix that fence, though, ’cause Robert keeps getting out. ;)
This comment was written by zuzu.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 10:16 pm
nik, again, you’re pretending there is only one parent and one person with any say here.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Ok, here’s my input. I think things sorta got off the main subject when abortion, wanted or not wanted, planned or not planned, started being the topics. I thought the main thing was the child support issue. So that is what I am addressing. Whether he has any relationship now or later in life with the child, it is still his responsibility to support his offspring. Of course if he has a relationship with the child, it’d be the best thing, if the father is a decent person. If not, just take his support and be glad he won’t be around. But regardless, it is STILL his responsibility to support his child. I have 3 children. My oldest is now 23. I let her dad off the hook, but took in leiu, a restaurant we had. I knew I’d be chasing him forever for support. And he ended up when I was really in a tight, coming through. My 2nd and 3rd children were from my 2nd marriage. He has always paid support. And he’s a horrible, mad at the world, alcolhic. He’s been there but in a way the kids don’t even want to be around him. But then again, alcolhic or not, he also comes through even w/ extra funds when needed for them to do extra activities, etc. And yes now, my 3rd husband! he has custody of his 3. Which the youngest girls are twins, now 12. He has had custody for 11 1/2 years. His ex was fooling around. Ended up marrying her lover. Anyway, to make his divorce go smoothly, I guess is the reason, he let her get away with paying nothing. He had to pay off their van and give to her. He has to cover them on insurance. She has all the non custodian rights though. Every other weekend, holidays, summer weeks, etc. And the kids think she hung the moon! And me? I’m just the mean ole stepmother that raises them in the real world. Point is, I kinda get off the subject when I discuss this, when they divorced she had quit her job, didn’t have a steady home to live in, etc. It would have been useless for her to have to pay, cause she had no way to pay it. Yes, I understood when I married him this was the way it was. Well, over the last 6 1/2 years, her and her husband have come a very long way. They do quite well financially. While, my husband got laid off, went back to school, and I quit my job and opened my own restaurant. She still pays 0. My husband won’t even discuss modifying child support. She won’t even pay for both of the twins to go to a Church function! She only sends half, but yet now, she pays nothing all year long. She has a brand new convertible sports car, RV, camper, 4 wheelers, 2 new trucks between her and her husband, boats, etc. I paid for her son’s braces. And the girls need them too, but I refuse to even make a dentist appt. So, needless to say, this is like a disease eating at me. His loyalty is more to keeping the peace with her and not upsetting his kids, while we struggle to pay bills until we get on our feet. In fact, I will be leaving him when I get the extra money.
This comment was written by patty.Morale of this story is: get the support. On down the road, maybe years later, you’ll be glad. I’m a strong believer in it took 2 people to make a child, it should be both’s responsibility to at least support it!
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August 9th, 2006 at 8:17 pm
Here’s my take in all this; I fathered a child in a similar way as Nick’s ex. I took financial responsibility for this child since she was born in 1997. I still support her as there is a court order in place as is the custom in Florida that deducts the support from my paycheck. Unlike Nick’s ex, I want to partake in the child’s life however the mother moves around and keeps me chasing to where I have to hire PI’s to locate their whereabouts. She insists on making the kid who is now almost 9 call stepdads “Dad”. It just seems to me we all end up with the wrong partners at the wrong times. By the way Nick, this child was fathered in a one night stand, drunken stupor from a Christmas eve party. I never once have questioned the legitimacy of this child. I would not go so low and would not ever want that child coming back to me someday (assuming she is in fact mine) and saying her dad questioned. I hope your ex comes around and realizes he brought a life into the world and now he owes both finacial and emotional support; whether you want the money or not.
This comment was written by Raymond.Report this comment to the moderators
August 10th, 2006 at 3:52 am
That sucks Raymond.
This comment was written by B.If you stay in touch occasionally, with letters and birthday gifts or whatever, and show that you care your girl will probably contact you on her own when she is old enough. If that is any consolation.
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August 13th, 2006 at 3:35 pm
A woman gets pregnant, she decides to have the baby, the man says he does not want anything to do with the child, he wanted you to have an abortion (this has been a prior discussion, Sorry I know this does not relate to Nicks situation)? Here’s a thought, if you make a decision to get pregnant and the man wants nothing to do with you or the baby, move on. Why can’t you as a woman take resoposibilty, for your actions. you should know that when you decide to get pregnant you need to be prepared for that man to say” ok I want nothing to do with the baby”. I think that most women before they get pregnant should know their financial situation, don’t you all? If you can’t afford children and have to depend on a man, then take responsibilty for YOURSELF and go on the pill. You want to depend on a mans checkbook, go ahead, but most of us smart, educated, independent women know better and don’t need a monthly check from a man.
This comment was written by Kimmie.Report this comment to the moderators
August 14th, 2006 at 2:15 am
Well Nick, it’s been a year, hope everything is going well.
I found this site searching for details on County of San Luis Obispo v. Nathaniel J. which I was using as a point for a letter to the editor. I have nothing specific to your case, Nick, but I pose this question to the debate raging here:
If Abortion, Adoption, Abandonment at a hospital/firestation, and the morning after pill were all outlawed; leaving women to face the same choices as men: keep it in your pants or take your risks; would the women here perfer that to giving men some level of post-conception choice?
This comment was written by Demonspawn.Report this comment to the moderators
August 14th, 2006 at 2:31 am
Not for the first time, the “C4M” argument reminds me of the classic short story Harrison Bergeron.
Funny, how conservatives suddenly start favoring Harrison Bergeron policies when what’s being discussed is women’s bodies. If we’re really going to apply your notion of using the law to eliminate biological inequality between the sexes, shouldn’t we also outlaw men peeing standing up? And use sandbags and restraints to take away the unfair biological advantage of the biggest people, most of whom will be male? And create special devices that will produce cramps and bleeding in men once a month?
Look, in a perfect feminist world, women and men will have unequal abilities regarding pregnancy and childbirth; and the biggest people, on average, will be male; and women but not men will have monthly periods. Feminism cannot eliminate these inequalities. Only a fascist state of the sort Vonnegut described can do that.
That women get pregnant and men don’t is not a policy feminists advocate; it’s a biological fact.
Anyhow, to answer your question (even though I’m a man, not a woman): Even if all those awful things you mention come to pass, I’d still favor the policy that both women and men are responsible for their born children. Because children still need to be clothed, and fed, and housed, even in the awful society you describe.
However, if we chose a different hypothetical - which is to generously socialize the costs of raising children, so that relieving men of the horrible burden of being responsible for their own children wouldn’t mean screwing over children and their mothers economically - then I could favor C4M. In some ways I think it would still be a lousy policy, but not as bad as it would be in our current society, when men who favor C4M are basically saying that they don’t give a shit if their children are homeless, starving and in rags.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
August 14th, 2006 at 7:40 am
would the women here perfer that to giving men some level of post-conception choice
Only men? Why do you think men should be given a ‘post-conception choice’ women don’t have?
Kimmie, like many posters here, is forgetting that we’re talking about child support, not alimony.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
August 14th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
Right child support, why can’t a woman support her own child, when SHE made the choice to carry that child and the father has told her in the past he does not want children! (oh yeah he should know better I agree, but some women will go ahead and have the child anyway and have the nerve to ask for child suppprt. My thing is if a women wants child so bad she should be able to take care of it on her own and not depend on a man, and I was not actually talking about Nicks situation? That’s all I’m saying and pumkin I realize we are not talking about alimony obviously you missed the point like most people. If you would actually read a post mythago you would have gotten what I was trying to say so I have repeated it for you. Some people have different perspectives and just because it does not go along with the way everyone else thinks does not mean it is wrong! Every situation should be looked at seperately, everyone has the right to do as they wish, I am simply giving you MY OPINION, so you probably don’t agree, that is why it’s mine and not yours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This comment was written by Kimmie.Report this comment to the moderators
August 14th, 2006 at 6:40 pm
post conception idea was was demonspawn not me!!!
This comment was written by Kimmie.Report this comment to the moderators
August 14th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
her own child
It’s not “her” child. It’s their child.
By the way, this is not the No Tagbacks Blog. If you post your opinion, it’s silly to throw a fit because people disagree with it. If you want to post opinions and not allow anyone to say anything but “Right on, Kimmie!”, start your own blog.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 7:27 am
Wow mythyago you are comical, In a blog everyone posts their opinions and people read them and respond, is that not not expected? I’m sorry you must think I did not get that part! Has anyone ever told you that you are brilliant? I don’t expect people to agree with me, and I never wrote that I did, and I’m not throwing a “fit”. You see my response as me throwing a fit that’s fine, but if your going to respond make sure you read thoroughly, get the right person and then post your response. Now I think people can get back to the topic at hand.
This comment was written by Kimmie.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 7:33 am
Kimmie, stream-of-consciousness insults are not the ‘topic at hand’. You made the claim that if a woman is truly independent, her child is somehow not entitled to support from the father.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 7:58 am
Kimmie: it is nigh impossible for a woman to get pregnant without a man’s ejaculate. If men don’t want children, the responsibility to not procreate lies with them. Men cannot simply *say* they don’t want children and then continue to ejaculate with insufficient birth control, on their part, and then after-the-fact demand that they *still* don’t want children. The different biologies of male and female demand a significantly different sexual and reproductive ethics for men and women. Men’s choices are entirely constrained by their particular biological function. Women’s choices, on the other hand, are constrained by biological function and, ta-da!, the interference of the state. Men, as it currently stands, take up a sexual ethic where in order for the playing field to appear equal, they have to take away some of women’s choices. They take away women’s choice to cover up their denial of responsible choice on their part.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 7:58 am
Again you miss the point, The question I simply raised was, Why can’t she do it on her own? Support from a dad (because it takes more than sperm to make a father) a man that does not want anything to do with supporting that child in the first place. If you want to take the money go ahead, I on the other hand I personally would not because I can do it on my own.
The child is entitled to support? lol I know a lot of people use that their “child support money” for other things, and most of the time it’s not for the child.
This comment was written by Kimmie.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 8:01 am
Q Grrl, then I guess that woman should take responsibilty and close her legs!
This comment was written by Kimmie.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 8:07 am
The question I simply raised was, Why can’t she do it on her own?
Why is his responsibility to his children dependent on her income?
If you know a ‘lot of people’ then you would know people who are struggling because the other parent decided that drugs or a new car or presents for the arm candy are more important than meeting their obligations to their children. You’d also know people who were very enthusiastic about having kids right up until the time they started to cost money.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 8:21 am
Well, which scenario do you want Kimmie? Your original one suggested that the women *did* want to become pregnant, told the man, the man said he didn’t agree, but he ejaculated into her without his own birth control, and she subsequently became pregnant. What part of him saying “no, I don’t want a child” did he really mean?
Yes, abstinance is an option. But if women are keeping their legs together, men are also not having the sex they desire, so your comment is a bit sophmoric. I think it is entirely possible to explore sexual ethics that take into consideration the limits/boundaries of men’s choice and also explore men’s responsibilities to the children they help create. I often say, if men dont’ want child support, they should keep their zippers up. I say it in the atmosphere of a male, heterosexual sexual ethics that completely lacks awareness of men’s active and passive choices regarding reproduction. If gay men can wear condoms to reduce AIDS transmission, why can’t straight men wear condoms for birth control? The most apparent answer, by default, is that straight men simply do not view birth control as their responsibility and an active part of their sexual ethic.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 8:29 am
I see your point, I do! But maybe they are struggling because mom spent the money on drugs or a new car, it goes both ways, no one is the victim here. My best friend has raised her son for the past 10 years without any child support, she has struggled, but she also says she would not have it any onther way, because she does not want the dads money, and her child is better off because of it.
This comment was written by Kimmie.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 8:38 am
What’s wrong with a person taking accountabilty for themselves, if thats sophmoric then I’m sorry. Why would you depend on a man for birth control and STD protection, if you want to have sex get on the pill and carry your own condoms. PROTECT YOURSELF, yeah it’s easier said than done!
This comment was written by Kimmie.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 8:47 am
Well, you are correct Kimmie. Absolutely. But the very same standard holds true for men who do not want to pay child support or even have children. You seem to be imply that men have no responsibility for the consequences of their sexual activity. If a man risks a court order demanding child support from him, why doesn’t he accept that risk and head it off accordingly?
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 9:11 am
The only people we can control is ourselves, not the ignorance or lack of responsibilty in someone else .
This comment was written by Kimmie.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 11:09 am
mythago-
I’ll address you first. As far as post-conception choices that women have which men don’t: Abortion, which a woman can choose to have without a man’s consent, and a man cannot have without the woman’s consent. The morning after pill, which works the same way. Both of those choices are post-conception.
Women also have post-birth choices that men do not. Abandonment at a hospital or fire station can be done without the man’s consent, and I have never heard of a man being allowed to do so. Adoption is another woman-only choice, and while it supposedly is to be done with the father’s consent, I can give you many cases where it was done without that consent.
Ampersand-
While you suggest that not everyone should be treated the same, feminist policies and the laws of the goverment suggest otherwise. Apparently, women and men have exactly the same ammount of interst in sports, otherwise title IX would not exist. I can also point to several instances where the feminist movement has harassed/sued/etc to have standards lowered so that women could enter previously male-dominated fields. But I’m not here to discuss that, simply reproductive choice.
Why? Because women have so many choices, men’s reproductive rights end the moment sperm leaves his body. It doesn’t matter if the man never consented to the sperm leaving his body. It doesn’t matter if he wears a condom, if the female decides to use the sperm inside to inseminate herself at a later point (I can provide cases for both points if you desire).
And then, after the baby is born, men are seen as nothing more than wallets. That is why several attempts to get accountability for how a man’s child support is used has failed. That is why if the woman decides to refuse visitation, no big deal, but if a man decides to refuse his money, he’s sent to jail. If you want I can provide details of a striking case where the mother decided to quit her job, and therefore the father’s child support was increased. I can name probally a thousand cases where a women decided to alienate the father from the children, raising them on her own, yet when she decided she really did want his money, she’ll sue for BACK child support. When have you ever heard of a man winning back child visitation? Quite simply, women have all the rights, men have all the responsibilities.
Q grrl-
Women’s choices:
Pre-Conception: Abstinance, oral birth control, IUD, Sponge, Diaphram, Noroplant, Depoprovera, Spermacidal cream, Female Condom, VFC, Contraceptive Patch, Nuva-Ring.
Post-Conception: Morning-after pill, Abortion.
Post-Birth: Abandonment, Adoption.
Men’s choices:
Pre-Conception: Abstinance, condoms.
Post-Conception: None.
Post-Birth: None.
Do you care to explain what choices the govement is taking from women?
This comment was written by Demonspawn.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Surely people don’t have a duty to support their children? Plenty of people don’t support their children: donors, surogates or people who have had their children adopted are good examples. Isn’t it just cruel to suggest these people are behaving wrongly when they do what they do?
Quite, before we knew it we’d be doing all sorts of crazy stuff like introducing maternity leave and medical assistance for pregnant women, on hang on… I think government action to reduce the effects of biological inequalities on people’s lives might not be a bad thing.
This comment was written by nik.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Surely people don’t have a duty not to cut or shoot at each other? Plenty of people shoot or cut each other; surgeons, actors shooting blanks, and policemen defending themselves are good examples. Isn’t it cruel to suggest these people are behaving wrongly when they do what they do?
As far as I know, men get time off and medical assistance for male-only conditions, such as prostate cancer. I don’t oppose that. However, I think there’s an important difference between providing assistance to help reduce the effects of biological inequalities, and limiting other people’s choices or taking away their rights in order to reduce the effects of biological inequalities.
As I’ve said a few times, I’d be content* to have “choice for men” if we fully and generously socialize the cost of child-rearing, because in that situation we can provide fairness to men without increasing the unfair burden on children and women. But I don’t see how it’s really “fair” to screw over children and mothers so that fathers’ lives can be better.
As far as I can tell, C4M advocates just don’t see anything wrong with leaving children unsupported. I can’t understand that at all.
(*Content but not thrilled - because a likely side effect of C4M is more single mothers who aren’t well prepared for motherhood).
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Demonspawn -
For the most part, you’re talking about stuff that’s due to biology, not the law, and which really can’t be altered. You say that men can’t get abortions without the woman’s consent, but that’s because men don’t get pregnant, not because the law requires pregnant men to get the mother’s consent.
I do agree with you that the handful of cases in which men are raped, or sperm is stolen deliberately, leading to children being born, are not cases in which child support should be ordered (unless the father is also the custodial parent). And I’d support legislation that was narrowly tailored to correct the injustice in such cases. This is because the useful effect of child support laws is not only to support the child, but also to encourage men to act responsibly and use birth control. In those rare, extreme cases that you refer to, it makes sense to consider the man a sperm donor rather than a father, because otherwise men might begin to feel that there’s no point in being careful.
However, bad cases make bad law. The idea that we should deprive tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of children needed financial support because there have been a handful of isolated cases in which victims of rape or stolen sperm have been unfairly made to pay child support, is wrongheaded.
Finally, you’re wrong about “safe harbor” laws - except for Georgia’s law, all those laws allow either the father or the mother to drop off the baby. And all of them require the authorities to try and find the parents and confirm that they don’t want the baby.
Now, it’s true that it’s easier for mothers to secretly abandon a baby that the father never knew about than vice versa. But that’s because mother’s get pregnant, go into labor and give birth, and fathers don’t. You’ve got an incredibly self-centered “no one in the world but men matter” view if you genuinely think that’s an advantage for mothers, on the whole.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
Every once in a while I allow myself to believe that most people are compassionate, insightful, and concerned about their fellow humans. Then I read something like this.
Demonspawn: I can only assume that you read and watch absolutely no media and that you live in a vaccuum — possibly somewhere in upper Manhatten, or downtown Tokyo. This is where I can safely say that this is your homework to do. Seriously though.
Men do not have a single reproductive choice that is being actively legislated against, which is my point; but which you missed by tripping over the gaping whole in your knowledge of women’s reproductive rights and choices.
I’m trying to be charitable to you here; Amp prefers it that way. But I find it ethically and morally repugnant that an adult male can baldly state that he doesn’t see where women’s reproductive choices are being legislated into oblivion. Whether you agree with that legislation or not is another matter entirely. But to say that you’re not even aware of this political and legislative climate is shameful.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
You missed the beauty of the pregnancy point. Pregnancy isn’t treated as a just another sex specific illness, and feminists have campaigned long and hard to make that so. You get maternity leave, not sick leave, and so on. Plenty of policies have been put in place specifically to limit the damage this biological difference causes to women’s prospects which you don’t get if you come down with a random women’s illness. I’m not complaining about this. It’s a great example of ‘Bergeronite’ government action to reduce sex specific biological inequalities. But people who live in glasshouses…
I’m probably being slow, but I don’t see what the point of that was. For what it’s worth I think is a totally compelling argument. You’ve convinced me that people don’t have a duty not to cut or shoot at each other. I hope I’ve convinced everyone that people don’t have a duty to support their children. I do think people are throwing it about like it’s a general obligation when there are pretty broad classes of people who don’t have to do it.
If one parent wants a newborn adopted and the other doesn’t, then why don’t we act on that parents views, or at least allow them to unilaterally disassociate themselves from the child (which is essentially what C4M is)? The ‘children in poverty’ point isn’t that compelling. If that happens then it’s as much the fault of the parent who refused an adoption as the fault of the parent who doesn’t pay support. They could have both avoided it. And no-one opposes single women using sperm donors because of potential future poverty.
I’m dropping gender neutral terms here. When it comes down to people oppose one option because they view the ‘mothers’ right to keep the child (and maybe not to be influenced into an abortion by financial concerns) as more important than the ‘fathers’ right to financial independence. They just view some people as being more important than others. C4M supports the father, defenders of the status quo the mothers. Amp’s completely open about this, I just wish everyone else would drop the pretence of an abstract ‘duty to support your children’. It doesn’t exist, this is just a clash of interest groups.
This comment was written by nik.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
The point is, a “but there are exceptions!” argument - which is all that you provided - doesn’t negate the general point. Just as our society can and does have a strong expectation that people will not cut and stab each other, our society can and does have a strong expectation that people will not abandon their children - even though there are some exceptions. If you can’t understand this incredibly basic, obvious truth, then I don’t think you understand enough about the society you live in to be able to discuss it.
For argument’s sake, let’s say I agree with you. It’s always the fault of the custodial parent (probably the mother), and the other parent is not at all responsible.
Now that we’ve established that, how will our agreement that it’s the mother’s fault put food in the child’s stomach? How will agreeing it’s the mother’s fault pay for doctors appointments and clothing and schoolbooks and braces?
Until you’re willing to agree that child poverty is a serious problem, and any policy which is likely to make child poverty worse is a bad policy, your ideas cannot be taken seriously. Saying “it’s the custodial parent’s fault” doesn’t address this problem; it just shows that you’re not taking the problem seriously.
Because having a child through artificial insemination is generally done by mothers who have carefully planned to have a child and who have the resources to support a child. If poverty-stricken single-mother families with AI children were a wisespread social problem, then people probably would oppose it - but it’s not.
Oh, please. The “you guys should just drop the pretense” argument has got to be the single lamest argument I’ve seen this month (and I see a lot of lame arguments! I read “family scholars blog” comments regularly!). Nor have I ever said that I consider mothers more important than fathers - nor do I believe they are - so unless you can provide a direct quote of me saying that, stop lying about what I’ve said. (I think there is a good argument that the child’s interests should be given greater weight, however).
Just because you have no serious response to the child poverty argument, doesn’t mean that the rest of us aren’t serious when we bring it up.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
Just because you have no serious response to the child poverty argument, doesn’t mean that the rest of us aren’t serious when we bring it up.
I’m surprised that you don’t embrace C4M and use that as a justification for why we need socialism, frankly. (”It’s unjust that men are oppressed! Only the socialist state will provide humans with the freedom they need to…”)
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
Abandonment at a hospital or fire station can be done without the man’s consent, and I have never heard of a man being allowed to do so. Adoption is another woman-only choice, and while it supposedly is to be done with the father’s consent, I can give you many cases where it was done without that consent.
If you’d read the previous comments, you’d have learned that:
a) ‘Safe harbor’ laws (allowing abandoning babies at a hospital etc.) apply to fathers as well as mothers. The reason why should be obvious.
b) In those ‘many cases’, the adoptive parents had better hope the biological father doesn’t find out.
I hope I’ve convinced everyone that people don’t have a duty to support their children.
No. The rule is that people have a duty to support their biological or adopted children, unless those people fall into exceptions that make them legally not the child’s parent (e.g. egg donors), or if parental rights and responsibilities have been severed (adoption).
You are proposing a new rule for men only whereby if you didn’t want to be a parent and weren’t able to terminate the pregnancy, you are legally not a parent.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 9:24 pm
Mythago-
Um, the cases I can bring to your attention are where the father did find out, and the courts said: tough shit, too bad, you don’t have any rights. Case in point:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/nyctap/I92_0196.htm
Q grrl-
It would be extremly difficult to legislate against men’s reproductive rights: we don’t have any. And I suggest that you do your homework as well; in your personal attack against me you failed to bring up even one piece of proposed legsliation.
Ampersand-
The main problem is what all the bad case law has lead to: We are in a country where women have all the rights, and men are walking wallets. “The best intrests of the child” really means “in the best intrests of the mother” as the mother gets primary physical custody 90% of the time. My uncle pays more in child support, for one child, than my girlfriend and I make in a year. Yet, when he wants accountability for where that money goes, he is refused that.
In my own personal case, my ex-wife moved out of state with the kids, in violation of the divorce decree. Court’s reply? They didn’t care. Later I became unemployed and couldn’t pay my child support. Court’s reply? Find a way or go to jail.
The sad truth is, women use babies to trap men in their lives. They know they can get away with it too, since they will get custody, and then the man is beholden to that child for the rest of their lives. They know between the child support payments and the goverment handouts, they’ll be taken care of from that point foward. I wish I could say I had an easy experience as them when I was in the WIC office with my kids to go on food stamps.
Since I realize that women are going to be the primary winners of the custody battles…. I mean, after all, they KNOW the kid is theirs; if men had some level of choice in the post-conception field. If they could sign an affadavid that they were giving up their parrental rights for adoption, that the woman wouldn’t be able to use a baby to trap men, I figure women would stop with the “oops I missed a pill” bullshit that goes on.
This comment was written by Demonspawn.Report this comment to the moderators
August 15th, 2006 at 11:40 pm
Heh.
Well, from the point of view of C4M advocates, I’m not sure that socialism will ever be a temptation. They favor C4M because they don’t want to have to be responsible for their own children; is a system in which everyone is responsible for everyone’s children really going to strike them as an improvement?
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 12:00 am
is a system in which everyone is responsible for everyone’s children really going to strike them as an improvement?
I guess it depends on the person. I would rather live in a libertarian-ish but decently civil society than in Sweden - but if I had to choose between AynRandLand and Sweden, I’d pick Sweden.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 12:59 am
Actually, my last paragraph sent an echo inside of my brain. I remembered an old-coworker of mine who was being crushed under the child support payments to the mother of a child that was not his. I decided to dig:
If you honestly belive that child support is anything other than men paying for women’s choices, please read:
http://www.wfmynews2.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=52892
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.step-parents/browse_thread/thread/9bd626f8dbf4f36d/9bc14e8a7653a32a
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.true-crime/browse_thread/thread/df61fc098a01edd1/524ca5e4155d3d64
I’m sure there is more: according to the American Association of Blood Banks (see their Annual Report Summary 2001) 29.6% of men named on birth certificates cannot be the fathers of the children named.
This comment was written by Demonspawn.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 8:39 am
Q grrl-
It would be extremly difficult to legislate against men’s reproductive rights: we don’t have any. And I suggest that you do your homework as well; in your personal attack against me you failed to bring up even one piece of proposed legsliation.
You’re kidding me right? Are you catching this Amp?
Demonspawn: South Dakota, Ohio, Mississippi, WalMart, Target, pharmacists, CDC. God, the list is fairly endless.
I can safely guess that you hate women enough that it doesn’t even register with you that in some states women can’t get abortions; that at some pharmacies women can’t get EC, even though they have script for it; and some pharmacists refuse to even dispense BC because they consider it an abortificant.
And they are backed by the law. They are backed by legislative measures.
That’s your homework to do trollspawn.
For the rest of you playing along at work, this is the face of male privilege.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 9:51 am
Yeah, I am. I like having a few people who post opposing views on “Alas.” But I like them to be from people who are able to acknowledge and understand arguments that they don’t agree with, rather than just posting contradictions.
I’m not seeing that from Demonspawn. For that reason, Demonspawn, please don’t post here on “Alas” anymore.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 10:10 am
Oh dear. I was just going to ask him if he bothered to read the case he cited.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 10:10 am
Thanks. I don’t want to be a cry baby, and I tried to view it as an “oppossing” opinion deal, but couldn’t find even that silver lining.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 10:40 am
So..I’ve been reading this blog for a while now and haven’t had a chance to respond, but after reading this thread I am compelled to do so.
This comment was written by Rachelle.First and foremost I would consider myself to be a rather liberal 20 something with a 2 year old daughter that I am raising by myself. I have to admit though that child support from her father has never crossed my mind. He still plays a very active role in her life, but money is one thing I neither need or want from him.
Maybe I just lucked out and that 4 year degree that I have made it possible to get a really good job that has fantastic health benefits, but I have to wonder what is going through some women’s heads when they CHOOSE not to protect themselves against an unplanned/unwanted pregnancy and then complain about how much their CHILD is costing them.
We could sit here and argue back and forth that men need to have as much responsibility when it comes to sex and protection, but ultimately don’t you all feel that each and every person need to be responsible for themselves, so even if that random guy/girl you decided to hook up with doesn’t feel protection is important at least in your mind you know that you took all the precautions to protect yourself from being in a situation you neither wanted or intended.
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August 16th, 2006 at 11:05 am
Because there are a lot of women just like you, who had sex just like you did, who don’t have a good job? Are you saying the child should suffer just because the woman is “complaining” about supporting her kid?
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 11:13 am
No, I think she’s saying that people need to take responsibility for their own actions.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 11:14 am
No..I don’t think that anywhere in my post did I say that a child should suffer because of the choices of their parents. What I was eluding to was the idea that maybe as “potential” parents people who are not in a position to be able to emotionally and financially support a child should better protect themselves from being in a position were they have no choice.
This comment was written by Rachelle.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 11:14 am
… but ultimately don’t you all feel that each and every person need to be responsible for themselves…
Absolutely. And that is why I keep pushing to 3 year olds to work in coal mines. It’s time for them to be responsible for themselves and provide for their own upkeep.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 11:24 am
Well there is always one in every bunch. You took that comment way to literally and if you had read the entire thread and took it in the context of the conversation going on you would understand that the statement was intended for people that are choosing to have unprotected sex and then complain about the outcome.
This comment was written by Rachelle.And if you know any 3 year olds out there having concentual sex there is something REALLY wrong.
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August 16th, 2006 at 11:27 am
Rachelle: to step it back on degree further, do you think it is unfair or unethical for women to ask men for child support?
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 11:32 am
Myth;
I’m not. I actually think that there’s much, much a stronger case for Choice 4 Women than there is for C4M. If a pregnant woman doesn’t want to be liable for child support her only option is to have an abortion (let’s not get into the adoption/abandonment thing here). I really think it’s intolerable - on standard feminist grounds - that that sort of influence should operate on a woman deciding whether to undergo that sort of surgery.
I’m more ambivalant on C4M. My position isn’t total support, but I feel there’s a stronger case for it than advocates of the status quo accept. (Anecdotally, most C4M advocates I’ve seen have no problem with C4W.)
Amp;
That is kind of my point. You’re saying “there is a duty, but exceptions”, I’d say that the exceptions means there is no such duty. But let’s not quibble. Either way, I think they both land us in the same place. People can’t just say “fathers have a duty to support their children”, they’ve got to explain why some people are exceptions and why people who find themselves in a position of unwanted fatherhood shouldn’t be. I that’s harder than people make out. It’s certainly harder than saying “fathers have a duty to support their children” and acting like that’s the end of it, which is what I think we’re seeing.
Sorry for implying you believe something you don’t.
You may not believe it, but I do think it is the implication of the status quo position. Children’s interests can be served in various ways. If it’s important to eliminate child poverty we could do this by:
(1) making fathers pay child support,
(2) loaning mothers money and punitively taxing them when their children are grown to get it back,
(3) (lets be extreme) forcibly adopting children where one parent wishes for an adoption but the other doesn’t,
(4) lots of other things.
Why go for (1) rather than the others? They all do the job of keeping children out of poverty. Isn’t it just a choice of whose interests to hurt and whose not to? I think, basically, it is.
This comment was written by nik.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 11:51 am
Well, Rachelle, my concern is for the well-being of actual children. Who should provide for them? IMO, due to our societal structure, that falls to the parents. You are advocating releasing one parent from that responsibility on the flimsy reasoning that the woman should have abstained from sex. Why you excuse the man is beyond me - well, I suspect it’s for all the usual biased reasons. Having read the thread myself, I believe that you are either ignoring, minimizing or are just not aware that many of us are more concerned about born children’s welfare than for the financial responsibilities that will be incurred by its parents.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
That would be dependent upon the situation.
Scenerio 1: Two consenting adults decide that they want to have a child together. Women gets pregnant has said child and then the father of that child decides he’s not up for fatherhood.
In this situation I am inclined to say that if the mother finds that she needs financial help from the father of the child to make ends meet then yes by all means the father should have at least some financial responsibility for his child. Now if it is a situation that the father can barely support himself on his income then I am under the impression that you can’t get blood from a stone.
Scenerio 2: Two adults that barely know each other hook up and low and behold she gets pregnant. Neither gave a second thought about protection and the women for her own personal reasons has decided to keep the child.
This situation is a little bit more complex for me. A part of me wants to say that the women who is pregnant in this situation should have protected herself and she wouldn’t be in this situation and another part of me wants to say it takes two to tango.
Scenerio3: Women decides that she wants to have a child, talks with partner who on first reaction thinks it’s a great idea. They get pregnant and once the women tells her partner that she is, he isn’t excited after thinking about the responsibility that goes along with being a father.
In this situation I am going to throw myself out to the wolves and say that I don’t think that the women should think that she is entitled to child support for that child. She is the one that initial brought up the idea of having a child and once pregnant and realizing her partner was not on the same page decided to keep the child. What ever happened to advance planning, knowing that you are in a position to support a child before you decide to have one.
If I had thought for one minute that I would not be able to give my daughter the lifestyle that I feel she deserves I would never have put myself in a position to have a child. Now i know bad things happen and people lose their jobs and what not, but I am not talking about after the child is born, I am talking about the situation you are in when you first decided you wanted to have said child.
I guess the point of this way too long response is that I wish that people would sometimes take the economical aspects of having a child into consideration before they find themselves in a situation they have no way of affording.
This comment was written by Rachelle.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Okay Jake I am just going to lay it out there for you…
This comment was written by Rachelle.I am also worried about all the children right now that are starving without proper clothes and shelter because their “parents” cannot afford them.
What I am trying to advocate for is breaking that cycle. Why not make people sit down and be honest with themselves about the financial side of raising a child before they have one. Instead of having to solve the problem after the fact.
Let’s be pro-active for once with a situation instead of sitting back and being reactive.
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August 16th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Let’s be pro-active for once with a situation instead of sitting back and being reactive.
Yes, let’s. Unfortunately my idea of licensing reproduction is not popular. (It consists of everybody having a certificate good for 3/4 of a child. Two people can produce 1 1/2 children. You can buy and sell these certificates. Reproducing w/o a certificate or in excess of the certificates you own shall be severely punished).
Even more unfortunately, your idea of laying the entire burden on the woman is not only sexist, it is also a losing proposition.
An alternate idea would be a social system that ensures that no child is hungry, homeless or without medical care or an education.
But you don’t seem able to imagine living in circumstances other than your own. The choices that are available and reasonable to you are not so for everybody. Nor do you seem to believe that personal responsibility extends to (at a minimum) paying a portion of the costs of children that you help to create.
Viewing one parent (inevitably the mother) as entirely responsible for the creation and upkeep of a child is ridiculous (not to mention sexist, but I’ve already mentioned that). And that is what I see you doing. If men don’t want to have children or risk the chance of becoming responsible for the well-being of children that they help to create there are a number of fool-proof options available to them. Apparently you believe that saying, “I don’t want a kid, I’m not responsible,” is one of them.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
FTR: I am all in support of social programs that reduce the need for fathers to pay child support. That would be ideal.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
In this situation I am going to throw myself out to the wolves and say that I don’t think that the women should think that she is entitled to child support for that child. She is the one that initial brought up the idea of having a child and once pregnant and realizing her partner was not on the same page decided to keep the child. What ever happened to advance planning, knowing that you are in a position to support a child before you decide to have one.
First point: technically “the women” (sic) isn’t the one entitled to the support: the child is. Your language kind of obscures that fact.
Second point: What happened to advance planning on the part of the father? In your scenario, he was also a voluntary participant in conception, so presumably he should have figured out whether he was in a position to support a child before he said OK.
Third point: Reading between the lines, it sounds as if you don’t think I should have had my daughter because I can’t give her the appropriate lifestyle with or without support. If that’s not your view, I’d appreciate your restating your case so that’s clearer. If it is your view, I’d appreciate your bowing out of this thread.
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Hey - I am all for testing people before they have kids. But that is totally off the topic.
As far as a social system being put in place to make sure that kids are well taken care of..I agree with you on that idea. But being realistic I don’t see that happening anytime soon. So what we are left to do is figure out how as a society we are going to take care of the children.
And I know how “wonderful” many state programs are that are set up to do this, so maybe what we really need to be doing is advocating to improve those programs. Instead of fighting over who is to blame.
I know that you feel that I am being sexist with my ideals when it comes to parenting and responsibility for children, but aren’t children everyones responsibility. I think that your basis for calling my sexist is alittle far fetching as well. I never said that men should not hold some responsibility when it comes to child rearing what I stated was that there responsibility should not be soley financial.
You say that it is “about the children” and not about the money. But lets be honest for a minute..it is about the money and will always be about the money. If everything was free do you think that women would be filing for child support. Of course not, they wouldn’t need the fathers money to raise their children.
This comment was written by Rachelle.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Before everyone freaks out the comment about testing parents was a joke.
Second- Nick I would never tell anyone that they should or should not have a child. As far as the appropriate lifestyle goes that is a personal idea of how you feel your child should be raised.
My feelings are that if you know you aren’t going to be able to provide the basics..food, clothing, shelter. Then you should really think long and hard about bringing a child into the world. You wouldn’t be being fair to either them or yourself if you didn’t think about that first.
If I have offended you I am sorry. It wasn’t intentional.
This comment was written by Rachelle.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
If it’s all about the money, perhaps there should be a docking fee for male partners?
:p
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
but money is one thing I neither need or want from him.
What about what your daughter needs and wants?
You’re saying “there is a duty, but exceptions”, I’d say that the exceptions means there is no such duty.
That makes no sense. Are you really saying that no valid rule can have exceptions?
making fathers pay child support
And here we go again with forgetting that mothers, too, are legally obligated towards their children.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
I don’t want to get into an argument about whether there is a general duty from which some parents are exempt (you, Amp), or whether there’s a limited duty which only applies to some parents (me). I can’t see the point. There’s no practical difference between the two.
People are arguing for a duty to support (see posts #162, #164, #168…). This is being done in a clever way, saying ‘parents have a duty to support their children’ is quite a powerful statement. It says people have obligation to support their children and it gives a reason for this, it happens by virtue of them being a parent.
Introduce exceptions and this changes. What you’re saying basically becomes ‘parents who I think have a duty to support their children have a duty to support their children, whereas parents who I don’t think have a duty to support their children don’t have a duty to support their children’. I agree with this completely, but since we don’t agree on who is in which group this doesn’t really get us anywhere. While the first statement is a coherent argument, the second is basically saying ‘what I think is right because what I think is right’.
We can both say that. But I think neither of us will convince the other person.
This comment was written by nik.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
There’s no practical difference between the two.
There’s a vast difference between the two. If the rule is that parents do not have duty unless the law imposes it, then our general policy about parental obligations is that we only impose them in some circumstances. If the rule is that parents always have a duty unless the law exempts them, then our general policy is that there must be a specific reason that the blanket obligations do not apply.
The latter is actually what the law does. And since you’re talking about legal obligations, policy and the reasons behind a law make a big difference.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
If the rule is that parents always have a duty unless the law exempts them, then our general policy is that there must be a specific reason that the blanket obligations do not apply.
Very well.
The specific reason is the principle in our legal tradition that an obligation on party B cannot be incurred by the actions of party A, unless A and B have some contractual arrangement that creates such a linkage. I can’t buy a house in your name. You can’t sign me up for long distance with QWest.
Marriage is such a contractual arrangement. If we were married, you could sign us up for QWest long distance, and we’d both be obliged to pay (or exit the contract). Intercourse, per se, is not such a contractual arrangement.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
Marriage is such a contractual arrangement. If we were married, you could sign us up for QWest long distance, and we’d both be obliged to pay (or exit the contract). Intercourse, per se, is not such a contractual arrangement.
Ah. Another one weighs in for all the responsibility of the possible results of intercourse falling on the woman. Whatever happened to taking responsibility for one’s own actions? It doesn’t apply if you’re a man and there is joint responsibility with a woman?
So, in your view, the “contractual arrangement” in law doesn’t apply to the results of intercourse but will apply, for example, in the case of a murder during a bank robbery in which all involved in the robbery are liable (responsible) for said murder even though only one of them committed it?
I’m relieved that the legal system doesn’t agree with your position, Robert.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
Jake, I believe that the reasoning behind the statutes that make all participants in a felony liable for any deaths that occur in the course of said felony is that the people involved are engaged in a de facto criminal conspiracy. I suppose you could apply that logic to the participants in intercourse.
Whatever happened to taking responsibility for one’s own actions?
Quite. People who have intercourse should be prepared for the moral obligations that the creation of new life entails. But you can’t really make this argument AND a “reproductive autonomy” argument at the same time.
Well, you can, but I’m not going to take you seriously.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 7:30 pm
Sure you can. “Reproductive autonomy” has never been argued (by feminists) to include the idea that one should have the right to abandon a born child.
With all due respect, Robert, the contradiction you refer to exists for those who believe that having a fully functioning brain, or not, makes no moral difference at all to what rights an entity has, or what it is owed. But for those of us who don’t believe that a two-week-old embryo and a two-year-old child are morally identical, there is no contradiction.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
How do you propose to make them do this?
I think that requring men to pay child support is actually pro-active in effect, because it makes men less likely to have sex without birth control.
With all due respect, you are not everyone in the world, and the reality is not everyone in the world shares your values or makes plans the way you do.
Wishing isn’t very useful public policy. No matter what you wish, there will be poor parents (a large portion of them single mothers) whose children have needs. Saying you think they shouldn’t have had children doesn’t alter that they did have children. So what public policy do you favor to provide support for as many of those children as possible?
I don’t think it should be “solely financial.” But in practice, you can force an unwilling man to give part of his paycheck to support his kids; but you can’t force him to love those kids. And if he doesn’t want to spend time with his kids, I don’t think it’s in the children’s best interest to force him to.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 7:45 pm
“Reproductive autonomy” has never been argued (by feminists) to include the idea that one should have the right to abandon a born child.
I agree. Rather, it is argued to include the idea that one has the right to decide a priori whether one is going to reproduce or not - and this right is explicitly detached, by RA feminists, from the question of whether one has engaged voluntarily in sexual intercourse or not. You don’t have to be raped to have a right to decide not to have a child. You don’t have to be celibate to have a right to decide not to have a child. All you need in order to decide not to have a child, is the capacity to decide not to have a child.
That - not the idea that a fetus and a baby are morally identical - is the source of the contradiction in the RA-but-no-CFM position.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
To point out something I haven’t seen yet on this thread. Mothers can indeed abandon their parental duties - as long as they have ensured that those duties will be taken care of. Abortion does it by ensuring that no child is born. Adoption finds alternative parents to take care of the child. Even the safe harbor laws don’t circumvent this. By dropping a child at a safe harbor, the parent is giving it over to someone else - not simply walking away. No where in this country is it legal for either parent to leave the child on a street corner and walk away.
I’m all for C4M - as soon as the guy in question finds someone else to step up to the plate and provide child support, he can walk. Of course he’s a little handicapped by the pesky problem of not being able to force the mother to get married, but neither can she force him to get married if he ends up with the kid, so that seems fairly equal to me.
BTB - Plan B is NOT post-conception. It is post-ejaculation. It operates by preventing ovulation, hence preventing conception altogether. Yeesh.
This comment was written by Tapetum.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
I don’t see the contradiction. For your argument to make sense, feminists would have to claim that because one has had sex, therefore one has the right to not have a child. Then, the fact that men can lose that right by having sex would be a genuine contradiction.
But that’s not what feminists argue. Feminists argue that everyone has the right to control their own body, and as a consequence of this, everyone has a right to control their own body to control reproduction.
No feminists claim that men have no right to control their own bodies. On the contrary, feminists apply this idea - that all people have the right to do what they want with their own bodies in order to prevent reproduction - equally to men and to women.
(There are isolated court decisions in which this right was not given to men. I don’t think those decisions are consistent with feminist analysis, and I disagree with the current state of the law regarding such cases.)
Edited to add:
Some may respond, “But what about the children?” That is, by advocating that the extremely rare children who are conceived in circumstances in which the father’s right to make his own choices about his own body was violated - for example, male rape victims whose rape results in pregnancy - aren’t I violating my own argument that children must be cared for?
Not necessarily. I’d certainly advocate that any laws passed to exempt men in such circumstances from forced child support, should also provide for state support of the children. It’s quite possible to have a coherent policy that calls for most fathers to pay child support, but that makes exceptions for cases in which the father was raped by the mother, or similar cases.
I also think the balance of interests is vastly different - both because such children are very rare (whereas children of single mothers are commonplace), which means that society can more easily afford to pick up the tab, and because “I was raped and as a consequence I forced to pay child support” is a much greater injustice than “I chose to have sex and as a consequence I had to pay child support.” The needs of the children don’t change between the two cases, but the extremity of the injustice done to the father forced to pay child support is very different, and that changes how I balance the competing interests.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
I hate to be difficult, but I think I’d argue that.
Or rather I’d say that raising children should not just be an individual responsibility based on biology and if any parent felt like they could not do it either on a temporary or permanent basis, then there should be a way for other people to take that repsonsibility with no penalty for the child or the parent.
This comment was written by Maia.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
The specific reason is the principle in our legal tradition that an obligation on party B cannot be incurred by the actions of party A
Libertarians may wish otherwise, but the whole of the legal system cannot be turned into one variety or another of contract. Your principle doesn’t even hold true when we’re talking about commercial arrangements. (It’s not true that if I buy a child seat from Company A, and it fails, my child cannot sue Company A because the contract was between Company A and me, not Company A and my kid.)
Obligations to a child have nothing to do with any contractual arrangement between the parents. By the way, Amp, while the law can’t impose love, it can impose duty. If I walk past a drowning child that isn’t mine, I have no legal obligation to lift a finger to help that kid. If it’s my child, I do have an obligation–regardless of whether or not I wanted to be a mother.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
Maia, you are consistent in your position, then. Kudos to you.
Feminists argue that everyone has the right to control their own body, and as a consequence of this, everyone has a right to control their own body to control reproduction.
Among other things, we have seen “reproductive autonomy” used by feminists to demand access to birth control. What exactly does controlling one’s own body have to do with a right to a specific external chemical, device, or process? I want my body to be intoxicated; do I have a right to access to liquor because of my bodily autonomy? No. We have seen reproductive autonomy offered as the justification for the right to in vitro fertilization - again, having nothing to do with direct control of the corpus.
It is clear from usage that, while bodily autonomy is certainly an important complementary component of reproductive autonomy, feminist use of reproductive autonomy is not limited to the direct logical consequences of control of one’s own physical form. Clearly other forces are at play in claims of reproductive autonomy - specifically, the right to decide whether one is going to have a child, and to have that decision respected.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2006 at 10:15 pm
My children do not recieve monetary nor emtional support from their biological father, and that is exactly the way I want it. In fact, it is written into our divorce and custody agreement that he doesn’t need to pay child support. Now, if for some reason I should ever need state assisstance, then the state may arbitrarily against my wishes garnish any income he may have for the “support” of children he hasn’t supported since their conception and birth. Then the state can force me to give him certain visitation rights whether that is what I or my children want…
I know there are women that need child support and there are women that do not, but in my case since my ex-husband never supported his children then I don’t want anything he may have to give them…and I don’t want his advice on the proper way to raise my kids.
This comment was written by Mendy.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 5:46 am
AMP-
This comment was written by Rachelle.Sorry about the delay in getting back to you. To answer just a few of your questions.
1. You had asked how I would get people to realize just how expensive it is to have children. Maybe what we need is some sort of education campaign. Now I know that isn’t going to change everyone minds but even if we have an effect on one person then it would be working.
2. I think that back in one of my past responses I stated that not everyone was like me or in my exact situation. I know that and respect that.
3. Someone had stated that they thought a program were loans were given out by the state or federal government you take your pick would be a good idea. I have to agree. If we have billions of dollars to spend outside of this country isn’t it about time that we start taking care of our own? I think a program were low interest loans are made available to parents to help off set the cost of raising a child would be a great idea.
As for Mythago: you asked about my daughters needs and wants. You can be rest assured that she is very well taken care of and doesn’t want for anything. I have managed to sit myself solidly in the upper middle class so I have things covered. But thanks for worrying about my daughter.
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August 17th, 2006 at 7:27 am
Robert,
I’m not sure I understand your argument in comment # 221. Can you expand on what you’ve said?
I want my body to be intoxicated; do I have a right to access to liquor because of my bodily autonomy?
Well, why do you have the right to access and imbibe liquor if not because of bodily autonomy? If you’re going to claim that it isn’t because of bodily autonomy, can you explain why you do have that right?
I look at what you’ve written and make some modifications and come out with:
Among other things, we have seen “bodily autonomy” used by feminists to demand access to body modifications (such as piercing or plastic surgery). What exactly does controlling one’s own body have to do with a right to a specific external chemical, device, or process?
Either I don’t get what you are trying to say or what you are trying to say is nonsense. I suspect it is the former.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 8:04 am
Well, why do you have the right to access and imbibe liquor if not because of bodily autonomy? If you’re going to claim that it isn’t because of bodily autonomy, can you explain why you do have that right?
I have the right to imbibe liquor because I am free to do what I want with my own body. But that freedom puts no burden on anyone else; if nobody wants to make beer, I’m out of luck. If nobody wants to grow hops to sell me so I can make my own beer, tough titties for Robert. If nobody wants to sell me beer (because they don’t like the way I act when I’m drunk), too bad, so sad. My bodily autonomy affords me no levy on the actions of others. I have bodily autonomy, not a right to get hammered. My BA doesn’t require the county to make it legal to sell beer on Sunday; I have no right to access.
But according to the feminist view of reproductive autonomy, women are entitled to (say) birth control, or in vitro fertilization, or what have you. This entitlement means (for example) that pharmacists who disapprove of certain forms of contraception aren’t allowed to decline to provide it. Bodily autonomy alone cannot possibly justify making pharmacists do things against their conscience; reproductive autonomy, however, can.
And therefore Amp’s attempt to recast reproductive autonomy as something that derives trivially from bodily autonomy fails. For the claims made for RA to be true, there has to be something else there; a something which I have characterized, I believe reasonably, as a person’s right to decide whether or not they are going to have children.
I’m afraid I don’t understand your recasting of my statement to refer to body modification; that would seem (assume you’re doing it yourself) to fall entirely under the rubric of bodily autonomy without requiring any additional rights.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 8:16 am
Robert wrote:
I am sure this has been said before, and I think it was by Q Grrl among others, but men do have that capacity. We can choose not to have vaginal sex. Once we choose to have vaginal sex, that choice brings with it several consequences, one of which is that we no longer have control over the sperm we ejaculate; another one of which is that, after we have vaginal sex, we do not and cannot stand in the same place as the women we’ve had sex with vis-a-vis pregnancy and childbirth. More to the point, our positions are radically other to each other–they get pregnant; we don’t–and essentially unequal: if we try to control what a woman does in response to her pregnancy, we are trying to exercise power over her, to take power away from her. (You may think that is a desirable thing to attempt; I am merely pointing out the inequality, or maybe non-congruence is a better term, of our positions.) To acknowledge these differences and to be willing to live within them and to insist that people be willing to take the consequences of them is not a contradiction, though I agree it does not result in men and women standing in congruent positions in relation to pregnancy and childbirth.
I would submit to you that if intercourse were taken out of the central place it occupies in the heterosexual imagination, if we no longer saw it as the be all and end all of heterosexual activity, that this discussion would take a very different shape. Because in one sense, the C4M argument is an argument that depends upon the centrality of vaginal intercourse in heterosexual relations. Because, as I said above, prior to ejaculating inside a woman, men can decide to have sex in ways that will guarantee a child is not conceived.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 8:30 am
This entitlement means (for example) that pharmacists who disapprove of certain forms of contraception aren’t allowed to decline to provide it. Bodily autonomy alone cannot possibly justify making pharmacists do things against their conscience; reproductive autonomy, however, can.
See, this is where you are not making sense to me. Are pharmacists allowed to decline to provide any other prescription drugs? Not that I’m aware of. Their job is to dispense chemicals that doctors prescribe and to not give those chemicals in their charge to those without prescriptions from a doctor. Why, then, do you want to make an exception for “certain forms of contraception?” It seems to me that you are making your argument from your view of how things should be in your perfect semi-libertarian paradise as opposed to the system in which we all currently live.
But, if we continue in the world of your utopian vision of how things should be, you shouldn’t have a problem with contraception/bodily autonomy because, unless I’m mistaken, in your world contraception would be OTC, the same as the beer to which you refer in comment #225.
And now that you’ve dropped your most recent two lines of argument against men’s responsibility to children that they have helped to create, you have moved to an argument about whether or not pharmacists should be allowed to decline to dispense whatever drugs they are opposed to. Which has not one whit to do with child support and male entitlement.
I’m afraid I don’t understand your recasting of my statement to refer to body modification; that would seem (assume you’re doing it yourself) to fall entirely under the rubric of bodily autonomy without requiring any additional rights.
You could do plastic surgery on yourself? Does this mean that you don’t have any moral/philosophical problems with women who perform their own abortions? But my big point in recasting your statement is that piercing, plastic surgery, etc. does have something to do with “a right to a specific external chemical, device, or process.” A needle, an operation, anasthaesia are all specific external chemicals, devices or processes as are everything outside of your body with which you might interact. So your statement still doesn’t make much sense to me.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 8:42 am
I am sure this has been said before, and I think it was by Q Grrl among others, but men do have that capacity. We can choose not to have vaginal sex.
Indeed. Women also have this capacity. But feminists reject the argument categorically as a justification for checks against abortion in cases of consensual sex, and advance a theory of strong reproductive autonomy. Just because she had sex willingly and knew that pregnancy could result is no reason she can’t abort. Accordingly, the argument as used against men’s reproductive autonomy seems disingenuous; if you really believe that “keep your pants on” is a valid argument against male reproductive autonomy, then you really ought to advance it as an argument against women’s RA as well. Do you?
More to the point, our positions are radically other to each other–they get pregnant; we don’t–and essentially unequal: if we try to control what a woman does in response to her pregnancy, we are trying to exercise power over her, to take power away from her.
Again, I agree. But C4M does not attempt to oblige a woman to terminate the life within her if that is not her desire; no control of the woman’s actions is contemplated or intended. She has reproductive autonomy: nobody is telling her to continue or abort her pregnancy. That’s her decision, about her life and her resources. As has been noted by others, C4M is (at bottom) about child support - and child support is about the relationship and obligation between the man and the child. The woman doesn’t enter into it. So arguments about controlling women’s behavior seem inappropriate; it’s not about her.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 9:02 am
Robert:
Just to be clear, what I was talking about was not “keep your pants on,” but rather, “keep it out of a woman’s vagina,” and that is a very different thing. And, yes, “keep it out of a woman’s vagina” is something I would advocate as a reasonable position for women to take who want to avoid, absolutely, the risk of conception. More to the point, I think that “keep it out of a woman’s vagina” is, when expressed by men, an expression of male reproductive autonomy, not an argument against it (as would “keep your pants on be,” were that what I was talking about)—because, don’t forget, a man who takes that position (”keep it out of a woman’s vagina”) is going to be asking any woman he has a sexual relationship with to respect his wishes, and if she doesn’t, well then that says something about whether he should be having a sexual relationship with her in the first place, doesn’t it?
I also would point out that your equation of my position, “keep it out of a woman’s vagina,” with “keep it in your pants” makes my point about the centrality of heterosexual intercourse in the heterosexual imagination and the way in which that centrality shapes this discussion.
Yes, and the child comes to that relationship with no ability, other than the fact of her or his existence—for which the man is in no small part responsible—to advocate for her or his rights. Nor did the child choose to be there. The man, on the other hand, chose to behvae in a way that he knew might result in a child, even one he would not, on his own, have chosen to have. Absent anyone who is going to advocate for that child’s rights and absent a society in which the community, through its government, takes a true and full financial responsibility for the health and well-being of children whose biological parent(s) for whatever reaons cannot or will not support them, who else shall we hold accountable for the support of such children other than the people who conceived them?
Personally, I think that if the state did take up that responsibility, the C4M argument would hold a lot more weight. In other words, if we were all willing to say that, yes, our tax money should go to help support such children when their fathers have no desire to; if, in other words, we were willing to put our money where out mouths are, then there would be no problem with men who have conceived a child they do not want arguing that they should not have to support it just because the child’s mother wants to give birth.
I also want to say that I am about to start preparing to leave on a weeklong trip; if I do not respond after this, I am not ignoring you, I simply did not have the time.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 9:18 am
Huh? What feminism are you reading? What you wrote is a bald faced lie, or something you made up. Feminism has criticised and critiqued vaginal intercourse for 40+ years, to include how reproductive autonomy is affected by this particular practice. Many women feel the most autonomous reproductively when they can refuse to engage in vaginal intercourse — despite the high cultural cost of taking such a radical approach to heterosexual sex.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 9:32 am
Jake - You aren’t understanding the argument that’s going on, and unfortunately I don’t have time to explain it further. Maybe Amp can amplify if he has time, NPI.
Richard - I largely agree with you regarding the responsibility of parents for their offspring. But at the point in time where the C4M man desires to sever his relationship with the child, advocates for reproductive autonomy and/or abortion believe that no child exists. One cannot simultaneously argue that conceived children have no moral standing at a point in time, and that a man owes a duty to his conceived child going forward because SOMEDAY it will have moral standing, and that women have no ongoing duty to that conceived child because SOMEDAY it will have moral standing. If its future moral standing creates an obligation, then we can’t have abortion. If its future moral standing doesn’t create an obligation, then men can opt out of parenthood, as women can. If it creates an obligation for men but not for women, then feminist claims to be seeking sexual equality and justice are hollow, and pro-choice feminism is simply a cover for female reproductive supremacy. (It should be noted that some feminists recognize this and either say “ok, I’m for female reproductive supremacy”, or “RA does mean that men can abandon their children” - props to them for intellectual honesty.)
If a woman can morally sever her relationship with her offspring at conception+X days, on the grounds that she has reproductive autonomy, and the sexes are to have equal rights, then so can a man. The consistency bind that pro-choice folks are in is that they want to keep reproductive autonomy as an argument in their quiver, because it’s one of the strongest arguments they have. But if you really believe in reproductive autonomy and equality, then you have to apply it to men too, and feminists really don’t want to do that, because it will result in real harm to women’s standing in the world. If you don’t want to extend it to men, then you have to acknowledge that “reproductive autonomy” means women’s reproductive autonomy only - and that in turn puts pressure on claims to believe in equality - “oh, so all that stuff about women and men having the same rights was crap” - which most feminists don’t want to do.
I’m glad that I don’t have to try and balance all of these contradictory claims in my own philosophy; I don’t think I could do it.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 9:34 am
Q Grrl, I don’t follow. How is what I am saying a lie? Do you think that “hey, you didn’t have to fuck him” is a legitimate argument against abortion rights for women who weren’t raped?
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 9:50 am
Q,
I think he is referring to this:
Pretty much any time an abortion argument comes up, some prolifer will make this claim:
“women can avoid all abortions other than those from rape; all they have to do is not have voluntary vaginal intercourse with men. Therefore, there’s no need to allow or permit or encourage availability of abortions for women who were not raped. If they don’t want a pregnancy, they can merely elect not to have sex.”
Of course, this is physically true. No vaginal sex with a man = no potential for pregnancy.
And of course, it’s pretty damn problematic. The usual argument against it, which seems very widespread among feminists, is: although a heterosexual woman can in theory abstain from all vaginal sex unless she is willing to bear a child, this is doesn’t really work in practice. We all like sex too much. From what I have read, it is considered very ANTI-feminist so say “well, she just shouldn’t have sex.”
This is exactly the argument you and I got into a while ago (was it here? I’ve lost track). I think abortion is more important than either side of the C4M argument. So I’m unwilling to give the prolifers a foothold–and a pretty good one, at least in sound bite terms–by admitting that any healthy adult, in any relationship, should be willing and able to refrain from any sex with any chance of procreation.
As a result, I reject the “men who don’t want to support should just avoid vaginal sex” argument. Sure, it works physically. But it’s too much risk to the prochoice fight. And it’s also not especially realistic.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 9:58 am
Robert:
Actually, this is not entirely true. In Jewish law, for example, a fetus does have moral standing–you are required to violate the Sabbath in order to save one that would otherwise die–and abortion is not murder. I have written a little bit about this here. More to the point, I have never heard any pro-choice advocate argue that a fetus has no moral standing. What I have heard them argue is that its moral standing is neither equivalent to nor superceding of the moral standing of the woman who carries it.
Beyond that, I think we have to agree to disagree. You want to apply an equivalance that simply does not exist given men’s and woman’s different biologies; I am willing to accept that the points at which men’s reproductive autonomy begins and ends are different from those at which women’s reproductive autonomy begins and ends. I think what I said about “keep it out of a woman’s vagina” addresses that point, and I note that it is a point you have not addressed at all.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 10:05 am
But at the point in time where the C4M man desires to sever his relationship with the child, advocates for reproductive autonomy and/or abortion believe that no child exists. One cannot simultaneously argue that conceived children have no moral standing at a point in time, and that a man owes a duty to his conceived child going forward because SOMEDAY it will have moral standing, and that women have no ongoing duty to that conceived child because SOMEDAY it will have moral standing.
This is incorrect. AFAIK, nobody has to pay child support for a fetus. So, to parallel your logic, a C4Mer cannot sever his relationship with the child before it is born since, legally, no child exists. A C4Mer is also not required to pay child support before the fetus is born. No responsibility, no obligation at that point, thus no way to sever his responsibilities and obligations since he has none. However, once the child is born it has moral standing (and citizenship) and rights under the law. At that point a C4Mer must pay child support if so ordered and also cannot sever his relationship (from a responsibility and obligations perspective) without agreement from the mother of the child. Not surprisingly, a woman may not sever her relationship with her child (w/o agreement from the father) at this point either.
What you (and C4M) really have problems with is who gets to make the choice and at what point the choice is made whether or not to create a child. Unfortunately for men, biology limits our choice to a pre-coitus time period. Women, biologically speaking, have a choice post-coitus as well. Morally speaking, I agree with biology in this case. Once a man has ejaculated, he experiences no physical consequences of gestation and childbirth. Since a woman is physically affected by gestation and childbirth it seems wholly proper to me that the decision is hers post-coitus as to whether or not to have a child.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 10:20 am
Sorry kids, gotta fly - been fun arguing this with you again. I’ll check back in later this evening and perhaps respond to whatever’s accumulated. But in the meantime, paid work beckons.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 10:21 am
Sailorman:
Two things:
1. There is a difference between phrasing the position in a negative way as you have done here—”men who don’t want to support shouldn’t…”—and phrasing the position in a positive way, i.e., avoiding heterosexual vaginal intercourse is an expression of male reproductive choice/autonomy. More, the point of taking the position is not to make the pro-choice argument to the anti-abortion side. Rather, it seems to me, the point of taking this position is first, to give men a voice within the pro-choice discussion. It is a way for us to own our own boundaries and the limits of what we can control. Second, I think taking this position is way of questioning the heterosexual rhetoric that underlies the whole C4M and abortion debate. Robert’s assumption that I meant “keep it in your pants” when I said avoid vaginal intercourse is an example of what I am talking about.
2. While I appreciate the pragmatic motive behind the position you’ve taken, the end result of it will be to leave the centrality of vaginal intercourse to the heterosexual imagination unchallenged, which means that the heterosexual rhetoric surrounding the reproductive rights debate, including C4M, will remain unchanged, which means the debate itself will remain unchanged as well.
Ok, now I really do have to go pack.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 11:26 am
There’s not a difference to me ;) I think you’re arguing semantics to a point where you’re forgetting the actual topic.
Yes, anything can be flipped as an exercise in semantics. But the main effect is restrictive. Representing choice which can only be exercised through abstaining from a generally-practiced activity as a “choice” like any other is technically true but realistically silly. Just like “a woman who avoids an abortion through abstinence is expressing her reproductive autonomy” is technically true but realistically silly.
This is simply efficiency. Do you honestly expect everyone to preface every statement about “sex” with an explantation that “by which I mean heterosexual sex between a man and a woman, not including rape or other involuntary sexual acts, where both partners are fertile or at least believe themelves to be possibly fertile, and which involves either vaginal intercourse or some other activity that may realistically result in the woman becoming pregnant?”
If you were someone else, i’d think you were trolling. But here, I’ll bite: From now on, when I say “sex” in this thread, that’s what I mean. In fact, unless the context suggests otherwise, that’s what I mean in pretty much every thread. And I think this is reasonably common.
And I also think you’re deliberately side tracking. If you want to have a whole discussion about what “sex” really is/should be and what “sex” can mean, and the evils of heteronormativity, go right ahead (in a different thread, please). But come on–this is a thread about child support and c4m and other related issues, and in THIS CONTEXT I think it’s pretty damn obvious what people mean when they are talking about ’sex’. Don’t you think?
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 11:29 am
Robert, your comment about how RA for men stops at conception and RA for women stops at conception plus X days got me to thinking. There are any number of situations that people face where one party’s obligation occurs at a different time from anothers; applying for school or a job, a loan, buying a house. I make my choice to participate on day X and the other party has an additional amount of time to decide if it will happen or not. Not that I’m saying that having a child is equivalent to buying a house. The point I’m trying to make, albeit clumsily, is that there is a difference between absolutely equal and parity. Very few situations are absolutely equal, someone is always waiting for the other to decide whether to play or not. It may not be fair, but the rules are there for anyone to understand right from the start.
This comment was written by bradana.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
How to make a child:
One person supports the creation of a child through five seconds of ejaculation and the other person supports the creation of a child through nine months of gestation. The ensuing child is made up to equal parts of the two peolpe. All children have the right to an upbringing and financial support from its progenitors.
Jealousy between the progenitors that one had an easier part in the making of the child or that the other had longer time to think about their part in the creation does not relate to the child’s right to support and upbringing.
This comment was written by B.Report this comment to the moderators
August 17th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Sailorman:
I think you misunderstood me or, more probably, I wasn’t being clear. My point about heterosexual rhetoric was not directed at you or the way you said what you said. My point was that insisting that male reproductive choice, C4M, ends once ejaculation inside a woman takes place is a way of engaging the whole question of the relationship between heterosexual vaginal intercourse and reproductive choice, because a very big chunk of how people on all sides of the issue approach reproductive choice, even the conventional, child-support-oriented C4M position, is predicated on a particular understanding of the place and importance of heterosexual vaginal intercourse in heterosexual relationships.
And this is also why I don’t think redirecting the idea of what male reproductive choice means towards an engagement with the specifics of the male body, rather than the question of child support, is not sidetracking. The question of who is/should be responsible for supporting a child once he or she has been born is very much connected to the question of heteronormativity and what sex means.
I guess what I am saying, in part, is that the whole C4M position when it comes to the question of child support is in itself a distraction, a way of not having to look at what it would really mean for men to live within the limitations of our own bodies.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
August 18th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Then the state can force me to give him certain visitation rights whether that is what I or my children want…
The state can do that now. Child support and visitation are not reciprocal obligations. If your ex decided he wants to be Daddy after all, he is not barred by the fact that you did not enforce child support.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
August 23rd, 2006 at 7:06 am
That man must be retarded. I can only say that you were in the wrong only in that you took advantage of someone who was very clearly not playing with a full deck.
This comment was written by jay.Report this comment to the moderators
August 24th, 2006 at 7:11 am
The point the C4Mers are missing is that saying “keep it in your pants unless you are willing to support a child” means *unprotected* sex. It is unrealistic to expect any adult who wants to have sex from abstaining completely from having sex unless s/he has decided s/he wants to conceive a child. However, it *is* realistic to expect the partner who does not want a child to result from heterosexual intercourse to use at least one method of contraception. This means the man should use at least a condom when having sex to demonstrate his intent not to fertilize an egg with his sperm. Also, they should be agitating for more and better contraception choices for men!
The thing is, the only contraception that is 100% is “keep it in your pants”. While I understand and agree with the argument that biological considerations should weigh the choice scale more heavily toward the woman’s side, I think that the legal considerations are still weighted toward the man. That is, because our legal system uses precedent so much, and because the older laws treated women and children as property of the man, we still have the vestiges of this ownership concept in dealing with child support, plus we still have a lot of the pre-contraception and pre-legal-abortion approach in framing the relationship between the mother and the father of a child. Hence, the man is required to “own up” to the child being “his” and pay for the upkeep of “his” child, even if he did his part to signal that he didn’t want a child, because in the olden days, the woman didn’t have much (if any) choice in whether or not to have sex, she didn’t have any contraception available, and she couldn’t legally abort, so a baby was literally considered “all the man’s fault”. So I’m wondering if the C4Mers do have a little tiny point in that if a man has done his best to prevent his sperm from meeting his partner’s egg (short of abstaining from sex completely, which we agree is unrealistic), and that both the man and the woman agree that he has made it clear that he doesn’t want a child, that there should be a legal way for the man to “un-father” himself?
This comment was written by Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
August 24th, 2006 at 7:34 am
The thing is, the only contraception that is 100% is “keep it in your pants”.
Actually, “have sex only with people of the same gender as you” also works 100%. Funnily, while I’ve suggested this to MRAs many times, I’ve never gotten much positive response.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
August 24th, 2006 at 8:26 am
Here is what you can expect in New York State….if your a man….faced with child support beyond your means….and a child that was taken out of state and across the country:
I introduce to you John Murtari…a man fighting unrealistic child support payments and the inability to afford to travel to the other side of the country.
John is now in prison….on a hunger strike….and is protesting the way the NYS Family Court Operates….I too was a victim of the cruel and inhumane NYS Family Court System…..denied a handicapped van and a child was allowed to go to FL…..my severe disabilities prevent me from traveling there. So this child will never see his father….unless when he is a man and wants to look for me.
Here is a Family Court System that one can expect if they have to appear before it for any reason….planned or unplanned pregnancy….as in my case…a woman told me and showed me she was on the birth control pill….said DO NOT use the condoms I had in my hand….as she didn’t like them. I was set up….and in so doing…the family court doesn’t care if you have children living with you…..whom you support…and the support payments coupled with child care payments are so high you are going to lose your home where your two children grew up and have many close friends and family members. See….they Family Court only cares about the child that is subject to the court…..not any other child. And they were both told to forgo religious education so I can support this child that was born out of deceit. The NYS Family Court System is broken and needs to be addressed. Problem is the politicians have chose to close their eyes.
http://www.akidsright.org/support_jm.htm
This comment was written by AJ.Report this comment to the moderators
August 24th, 2006 at 11:59 am
Actually, “have sex only with people of the same gender as you” also works 100%.
See, if you try that, those ebil gold-digging bitches will declare themselves to be trans men solely for the purposes of getting their hands on your sperm…
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
December 18th, 2008 at 10:29 am
What are you not entitled to!!!!!
If you want to see your kids why do you not do that before they are taken away!!!
Grow up!!!!
This comment was written by Diane Krizan.Report this comment to the moderators
January 21st, 2009 at 9:12 am
The Child support Consequence
Here it is once again. The age-old-battle on the fairness of Child support. Let me begin this discussion by first stating that I pay Child support for my children that don’t live in my household and I have children living in my household who get an insufficient amount of support in one situation and no support at all in another case.
Because of my situation and my personal intimate experience in this matter I can therefore speak on this subject with passion, honesty and truth.
There are many different types of situations and circumstances out there that lead us to the point of where we are now paying Child Support. I don’t know everyone’s circumstances but I do know that God intended sex and sexual relationships for the sanctity of marriage. Marriage was created by God and is purposed to be a righteous, Godly institution between a man and a woman. Whenever things are done out of the scope, parameters and purpose in which they were designed there are always consequences.
So let’s get right too it. The payment of child support from one parent to another is first of all a consequence. It is a consequence of either sexual irresponsibility, or for being involved in relationships that were either not in Gods will or those relationships and the situations therein where handled in a manner that is displeasing to God.
At one time I had one Job and something like 37% to 40% of my income was going to the mother of my children for support. That time was very difficult for me financially. I suffered and struggled in many areas because of the child support consequence and at that time I was very bitter and angry at the kids’ mother for putting me in that situation but then God had to show me; if it is hurting me this much to try to survive without that percentage of my income then how difficult must it be for her trying to support the children on that percentage of my income? I also had to realize that she didn’t put me in this situation but in my case, my conduct in the relationship we had is what put me in this situation.
Since then I have been blessed by God with a second job so one Job can handle the support for my Children who I love and I want to support, and the other can give me the ability to do what I need to do for my life in my household. I still struggle financially but that is not due to the Child support or because of the children’s mother but do to other circumstances of life. And I am also blessed because the Mother of my children and her husband are of good Christian character so she gets what the child support system has ordered and she does not hound me, or berate me for anything more than that…and if she or the children did ask for something I would do all I can to assist because they are my kids and my responsibility and I love them. When it comes to the mother of your children brethren; in most cases she is not getting support from you to be mean, or harmful. My brethren she is getting support from you because she needs it, besides, it is your duty and even if she doesn’t need it and even if she is doing it to be mean and spiteful the children still have needs; regardless to how trifling the mother may be. In my situation after some major issues between the families I can say thanks be to Good that we all get along very well now.
I’m not saying we agree on everything but what I am saying is that we have all learned to be kind, respectful, and considerate to one another. The Mother of my children is not my enemy and even if she and I were at odds with one another or even enemies, I would still want and need her to be successful in her life because she has the awesome task and responsibility of developing my children in to healthy, happy and independent individuals. She can only do this if her life is sustainable.
When a person comes to the realization that the intention of God is for man and woman to be married and have children and be together for their entire lives to love and raise those children together; and compare that plan to our current situations and circumstances, then we will be better able to see that our society suffers from deep rooted strongholds that have corrupted the family unit and given power to the worldliness and wickedness that plagues our lives.
Child support is a consequence! In my case Child support is a consequence for not having a relationship with God before I got married so when the time for marriage came around I didn’t understand anything about it. Had I been close to God and obedient to Gods will I would have known what to do and what not to do. Also, If had a Godly example {a father,} I would have been better equipped to operate properly in marriage. God knows I was not good to the mother of my children and my current situation is a consequence for my ungodly behavior in marriage; and even though it is many years’ later, consequences can go on for an unknown length of time.
I don’t need to list the things I did wrong or place any blame on the children’s mother. The only thing that gets me threw my suffering is taking responsibility for what I did improperly in my relationship with her, and being sure that I never repeat those behaviors again and doing my part in the Godly rearing of my children. Anything else is non productive and useless.
Now let’s get to the heart of the issue. For all the guys that think, feel, and believe that they should go out and buy the groceries, the clothes, and whatever else the children need and drop it off at the kids house as not to give the mother any cash and to insure that the money is being used properly on the children….I’ll start with you.
This philosophy is understandable but wrong. It’s wrong because child support is just that support, it is to assist the mother with the needs and rearing of the children. If the mother needs something that helps her to be better able to properly take care of the children then so be it.
Do your part and don’t stress about what she does with the money because honestly, once it left your hands {or your check} it was no longer yours anyway.
I can be real can’t I? This anit for the weak brothers because truth hurts so if you can’t handle the truth then don’t read on.
My brothers lets be mature and real about this. Neither you nor the court system can control who the children’s mother is laying up with, how she spends her money and what she does in her house hold whether it be right or wrong. Don’t get me wrong, the custodial parent can and should be held to a certain level of accountability for the care of the children but that does not mean you can pick their friends or their behavior. And the bottom line is whether you like this reality or not, it is what it is.
For any of you that want to make the argument of abuse or neglect then do something about it….Something other than arguing with her over the phone, calling her out of her name and beating up her boyfriends.
Do something real and legal….If there is some form of neglect/abuse their will defiantly be signs of it. So, build a case. Get a camera and take pictures for proof of the abuse you’re seeing. A video cam would be even better. Get witness like teachers and other people that come in close contact with the children. Try to have witness beyond your girlfriend/wife and people from your inner circle that also can’t stand your children’s mother.
Get a lawyer if you can but if not a strong articulate argument, backed by some creditable witnesses {not your cousin pookie and them from off the block} solid proof, like pictures will sure get the Judges attention and you can win custody……
Oh that’s right. The point of doing all this is to get your children out of harm’s way and to care for them properly YOURSELF! Let me say that again….Yourself! not your mother, or your sister, or that old lady down the street that watches all those children….Don’t get me wrong everyone needs a support system but your support system should be just that; support, not someone else raising the children …That will become your job when you prove this horrible neglect that your claiming.
Then you can worry about who will keep the kids when you have to work, and you can work and cook and clean and do laundry and help with home work and still try to find time for love and other relationships and you can feed the fevers and starve the colds and have the long talks and give the spankings and the hugs and all that fun stuff that the mom was/should have been doing that you claimed she wasn’t doing. Then you can watch the same movies over and over and over again with the children 3 times in a row and you can answer all the why why why’s about everything under the sun and then when the child is crying for mommy and asking you where she is and when is she coming you can look into their eyes and see the hurt and pain that the mom had to see when she had them and they were asking her about you….AND THEN YOU CAN DO IT ALL OVER AGIN THE NEXT DAY and EVERYDAY!
Let me say this….these are just some of the things the custodial parent should have been doing and if she/he wasn’t doing them then they need to lose custody.
There are a million more things that mothers do that I can’t even list or begin to comprehend because I am not a mother and I cannot do what a mother does{I’m a witness as I watched my mother and now I watch my wife}So before you rip a child away from its mother consider these things….
Is there really abuse/neglect or does she {and her man} just do things differently than you would? Is there really abuse/neglect or are you just hurt, bitter, angry, upset, jealous or all of the above? Hold the mother accountable only after you have become responsible!
Now we get to the gift givers. These are the guys that buy their kids really nice clothes and expensive sneakers…Video games cell phones and so forth but don’t spend any quality time and their gifts are less then effective in the lives of the children because PUBLIC SERVICE GAS AND ELECTRIC DON’T EXCEPT NIKE, PHAT PHARM OR HOUSE OF DEREON. And the landlord of the home your children live in only gets really upset when he sees all these nice sneakers and coats but mom is late with the rent over and over again. And when dinner time comes kids can’t eat that psp2 the cell phones or the jewelry you brought them. These guys make me laugh. You wanna show how Hard you are and how much of a man you are then do the hard work of continuous, support in the proper raising of your children…that’s Hard, and that alone will show what kind of man you are.
Child support is for assistance with rent, utilities, food and healthcare, do I need to go further….I think I do because some people just do know what it really takes. So, after rent, utilities, food and healthcare, then their is toilet tissue, and cough medicine, and hair products, and toiletries and feminine hygiene needs and the list goes on and on and on… But wait, there’s more. That’s right, the money isn’t enough. If you pick the kids up and drop them off at the park or the mall or grandma’s house, how will your sons know what a good man is suppose to do in life’s situations and circumstances? And if you don’t spend time with your little girls how they will know what a good Husband and Father should be like? How will you explain to your Girls that ladies are treated as ladies and whatever else they act like is also how they will be treated…. {You fill in your own blanks.}——- will be treated like …. You get the picture
Being Godly, decent, kind, loving and understanding, honest and hardworking, and responsible are all learned behaviors. But how will they learn these things if their father doesn’t show them?
They won’t!!! And many don’t, and that’s why we have so many young boys in the youth houses and in the prison systems… Or dead by 19; because there just aren’t enough Godly father figures being an example. I did say there aren’t enough fathers; I said there aren’t enough Godly father figures being an example. Mothers do teach children, but the mother’s purpose and abilities are different then the fathers, both parents play a vital but different role in the lives of the children. These things will only be developed in the lives of the children as time is spent with the children. I teach my girls what a husband and father is by the way I treat my Wife and the way I live my life and even by the way try to I properly deal with my ex-wife
I know things get hectic, have work, and I dedicate a lot of time to reading and studying the word of God, I have an Awesome wife that I need to and love to spend time with but when my Children who don’t live in my house hold are there, I put aside my video game addiction and I sacrifice other things that I would probably be doing {like watching the game} and I sing with my daughter who’s a singer, {even though I can’t sing} I play video games with my son and I wrestle with him pretty much every time I walk past him. I talk and talk and talk with my 10 yr old daughter because…well she’s a talker… and my eldest {that doesn’t live in my home} well she’s in that I’m to cool to play around with daddy stage right now but out of all of my children it was her that I invested the most in as she was my first child she was the one who showed me the delicateness of children, and it was her that thought me that once you have kids nothing you have is just yours anymore but that’s ok and the sacrifice is well worth it. She showed me how my play and my discipline made a difference in her life and how all of my behaviors impact my children. {And she is a step child} So she and I are well established and I will always continue to make deposits in her soul that will continually replenish what her and I have and will always have.
Why do I do those things…because I must….because I want to… because they need me to, and because If I don’t give them love, affection, attention and proper teaching someone else will, and I fear that; that someone else will be just like I was before I was in Christ. Or what if he’s a Pimp or something like that.
No!!!!
God forbid my Girls run into a guy whose anything like I was and they be needy for love and affection…so I’ll just continue do all I can to make sure that my children have all they need, mentally, emotionally and spiritually from me {to the best of my ability}
Now there are also those fathers that really just don’t care about the children and you have mothers who do spend the support money on themselves only and do anything for the children .To these people I say you will be cursed with a curse of God if you intentionally abuse/neglect a child.
Children are the wonderful living joy of love and relationships, yet remember; to whom much is given much is required. Keep in mind that God intended Children to be a blessing given by him to mankind through the agency of love and marriage and neither by mishap nor by byproduct of passion and lust. Although these things happen all the time it is not Gods plan and these sorts of behaviors are what make the difference in the life of a child.
So I say it again child support can be a financial burden yet it is a consequence for sexual irresponsibility, and/or involving one’s self in relationships that are displeasing to God or for not behaving properly in marriage and intimate relationships, and that’s not something I heard….I’m telling you what I know!!!!!
Mothers if you are out there and you know that the father is being afflicted with an incorrect amount of Child Support or an unfair situation and you can do something about it and you don’t; just remember God is watching you and there are consequences for all ungodly behavior….And what does it benefit you or the child if he goes to jail or if he can’t keep a roof over his head.
Don’t get me wrong if he just flat out won’t support his children then by all means; lock his behind up! But if we are talking about a man that loves his children by word, deed, and thought then be supportive and understanding. The better he can do for his life the better he can do for his children.
On the flip side fathers; if the mother can’t get to work or she starving how does that help your child.
Children cannot flourish when they know that their mother is perishing
Keep in mind Mothers…The father is suppose to support; that is to do his part in the rearing of the children…not to do it all but his part.
Fathers if you are reading this and you’re one of those…
I anit doing nothing for the children because I can’t stand the mother type of dudes, Get over your feelings and Man up!!! This aint about you; this is about that child that needs to be supported financially, emotionally and physically! If you’re not with the mother any more then what she does and who she does it with is none of your concern and if it is then your priorities are screwed up and you haven’t let her go in your heart and/or your mind!!! Like I said your should be concerned about the safety and welfare of your children and if that’s the case then refusing to support the child is not in any way going to force the mother to be a better mother .
We must come to realize that being a good parent and doing what’s best for one’s children is a choice. It’s decision that people make and then act on. If a person is selfish, greedy and not willing to make many difficult personal sacrifices then that is just their character and nothing you do or the courts can do. Now the courts can’t force them to be a better parent. Even though they can be forced to do certain things by the courts that the child needs, that still won’t make them loving and supportive. So refusing to support the child is also neglect and anyone who refuses to support their children financially, emotionally and physically is also guilty of neglect which is a form of abuse.
In closing I want to say that I know there are many brothers out there who are working hard and struggling to survive and the child support is kicking them in the Butt.
I know there are men who are custodial parents out there and the shoe is on the other foot and I know there are mothers out there with kids that get no support from the Children’s father and in some cases he has plenty of money and even time but he does nothing. I know there are mothers out there that are getting support but the children look like they don’t have any parents and the mother looks like a million bucks.
If you are a parent and find you self in anyone of these situations here’s what you do.
Pray.
Pray that Gods will be done in your life the life of the other parent and the lives of your children.
Build your case legally and legitimately if you have one. {Don’t lie in court and don’t get false witnesses.}
Keep praying.
Keep doing your part, and when you do have them for long periods or short periods of time, love them, teach them, laugh with them, and play with them.
All the while praying.
Try to communicate properly with the other parent and if you cannot {whether it be your fault or their fault} then communicate through letters {keep a copy.}In a letter you can say everything you want without benign cut off and you will have proof of what you said but so does the other person. Other people can work too as a go between but only if there is no bias for either side.
What worked for my situation when I was in transitions of a broken relationship and then beginning a new relationship was being part of a Bible believing church where we have deacons and a Pastor who could counsel and mediate based on the word of truth, and also having a person{s}{I’m talking about the mother of my children and her husband} who have a heart for God and a heart for the children also made it workable, livable and now comfortable. But that took time. For a long time it was stressful, painful and seemed impossible to get pass the many obstacles.
But God makes a way for all those who believe and are willing to do the hard work.
Remember family, you can always chose what you do in life but you can never chose the consequences or the length there of.
So for all of those who suffer the CONSEQUENCE OF CHILD SUPPORT I will live you with a scripture and a prayer.
Respectfully and Lovingly
James W. Caldwell Jr.
Philippians 3 (New Living Translation)
This comment was written by James Caldwell, Jr..12 I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. 13 No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it,[d] but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.
Let’s Pray…
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Amen….
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