Pajamas Media

114 Comments

1. Aledra Hollenbach:

Thank you for having the nerve to say women have responsibility for unwanted children.

Nov 14, 2007 - 3:48 am 2. SaltedSlug:

The argument I’ve always heard back when I bothered making similar statements is that (in an ironic twist that makes women merely impersonal sex objects) a man’s decision to have sex is implicit consent to have and be financially responsible for any resulting children. Unless, of course, it’s the woman’s unilateral choice not to give birth.

There are many similar, and more egregious, laws hitting the books these days.

The statement that “chivalry is dead, and women killed it” is rather old. I wonder what’s being killed now?

Nov 14, 2007 - 5:07 am 3. JHoward:

Bravo. Custody law is a sham and a corruption against bedrock constitutional justice. Family Court grants no constitutional justice whatsoever. In fact, it and its supporting industry thrives on denying it.

You ask why this is so? It’s because of bad social law, enabled partly by leftist gender feminists who root for lopsided treatment of and by the sexes, and by rightists who mistakenly that the best way to deal with the Welfare State is by enacting bulletproof welfare enforcement, against any number of constitutional proofs and protections, that always force single fathers to pay, even if it has to create them, which it does by the legions.

The root causes are exposed in Stephen Baskerville’s brilliant new book, Taken Into Custody, which documents the enormous money trail from Washington DC’s Title IV-D, down to your local divorce industry, which earns millions in federal kickbacks.

You read that right: Single parenthood makes a pile of money and the combination of trial lawyers and gender feminists work in your statehouse to keep it so. They benefit, and your state’s coffers benefit.

The short version is that we’ve created a culture that’s invented enormous incentives to have children out of wedlock, or once in wedlock, to end it. “Child support” and a lackey family court system, operating as what amounts to a secret, unconstitutional court, have made a nightmare out of the American family. The situation is now so bad that the conventional wisdom simply says to never get married, and never have children.

Nov 14, 2007 - 6:13 am 4. Webutante:

I think we must live in two different worlds.

To wit, I have always lived by the maxim that a man’s and a woman’s actions speak louder than their words. Believe what a person does rather than just what that person says, because talk is oh so cheap in our world.

Thanks for educating me once again, Amy, to the real way of it. That in fact a man can and should have it both ways. Having his cake and eat it too are a wonderful way to keep men and women in a perpetual state of adolescence.

What’s next? I didn’t want to declare bankruptcy, judge! Even though I spent money like a drunken sailor, I didn’t want to declare bankruptcy…..Someone call Amy and tell her that was what I said so she can tell the world I have no responsibility here, cause I that was never my intention and I shouldn’t have to pay…..

Nov 14, 2007 - 6:22 am 5. Louis Santacroce:

I never wanted children for the simple reason that I have no patience for them. Not fair to the child, in other words. The solution? A visectomy. Simple, painless and — if I had changed my mind later on (I never did), reversable in the majority of cases (and, if not, there are a million children in this country who need to be adopted)

Nov 14, 2007 - 6:35 am 6. Xanthippe:

_Parents_ are responsible for offspring.

If you don’t want children, ensure that you won’t have them – use birth control yourself or become neutered. Even with that, sometimes pregnancy still occurs.

Teach children not to rely upon other people’s assurances that a pregnancy will not result.

It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. There is still a child to be raised.

And teach children that life isn’t fair, so they don’t grow up into adults who constantly complain about the unfairness of it all.

Nov 14, 2007 - 7:08 am 7. D:

except for the part webutant, where peoples actions don’t becoem clear until MUCH later. So the upshot for men is pretty simple:

Assume the worst. assume that anyone you can talk into casual contact, has a reason for that. You either catch something or be caught.

Also? Just because you are envisioning something long term doesn’t mean you can know everything. Do some detective work, to make sure you aren’t being played for a patsy.

remember: cheap lovers make expensive wives.

One hopes that you yourself are above reproach in this, but that is no armor against someone who wants to target you. There are also women out there who want to be taken care of, and are willing to say anything to make it happen. Once you have a kid, the law it totally on her side…

So, verify. THEN trust.

Nov 14, 2007 - 7:37 am 8. Drugstore Cowgirl:

Absolutely true. I know far too many men who are spending their lives supporting children they will never know and whom they never wanted because of out of control child support laws.

Nov 14, 2007 - 7:56 am 9. bramie:

If a man doesn’t want children, then use a condom or have a vasectomy.
Although there are without a doubt women out there who are child support sharks, let’s not paint all men as hapless victims of unscrupulous women.
Surely there are plenty of men who father many children with different women without ever paying a dime of support. And yes, it is difficult to feel sympathetic for the women who hook up with these jerks.

Ultimately it is the kids who pay the price for irresponsible adults who do not think about the consequences of having sex. “Sex dumbed men ” Amy calls them; I feel no sympathy for these guys either you know.

And society that gets stuck paying the bill for fathers who are AWOL and mothers who can’t provide for the kids they produce.

But oh well; at least the US birthrate isn’t in decline like in Europe where they are slowly killing themselves off…..

Nov 14, 2007 - 8:29 am 10. Serabus:

If you don’t want kids, don’t do things that make them.

Nov 14, 2007 - 8:32 am 11. theo:

I have been saying this for years. Fortunately, being gay, I’m not much in danger of accidental impregnation. That said, custody law is inequitable and unjust. It is a crazy concept and absolutely unacceptable.

I don’t know when there will be a solution, but until then, wear the condom gentlemen. It’s not just your wallet you’re protecting, its your life and the lives of those you love. Pregnancy is not the only thing a condom prevents.

Nov 14, 2007 - 9:32 am 12. bramie:

Amy you write

…..but should a guy really get hit up for daddy fees when he’s, say, one of two drunk strangers who has sex after meeting in a bar? Yes, he is biologically responsible. But, is it really “in the child’s best interest” to be the product of a broken home before there’s even a home to break up?…..

My question to you is; Who should pay?

Let’s translate your unfinished thoughts into a possible scenario;

29 year old guy with income of $80.000 goes to the bar, hooks up with a 23 year old who works at minimum wage for Walmart (she also dropped out in 11 grade). They don’t know each other, but get drunk, end up spending the night at his nice apartment (she now knows where he lives and observes he seems to do well financially). Two months later she finds out she is pregnant. By New York state law she could go after him for 17% of his income…or he could also file for custody.

Now what Amy????

Force her to get an abortion?

Make society pay for her through welfare programs because her minimum wage job isn’t going to cut it after paying for child care for the kid etc?

Go after poor sex dumb 29 year old who couldn’t keep his member in his pants?

Force him to take custody as he has the higher income, even if he doesn’t want the kid?

Let kid live in poverty conditions because of man and woman’s irresponsibility?

Fo

Nov 14, 2007 - 9:46 am 13. JHoward:

…there are plenty of men who father many children with different women without ever paying a dime of support.

Utter myth. Men actually pay for kids they never parented in the first place. Do some research, please.

But oh well; at least the US birthrate isn’t in decline like in Europe where they are slowly killing themselves off…..

Another myth. Statistics show that enormous numbers of American men, aware of the reality of family law, are warding off unions (and families) like the plague. Eighteen years of seven or eight hundred unavoidable dollars a month is no price to pay, nor is losing your driver license, constantly risking the loss of privacy or imprisonment, never having a place in your child’s life, having your basic rights taken, etc.

And society that gets stuck paying the bill for fathers who are AWOL and mothers who can’t provide for the kids they produce.

Consider unintended consequences becoming intended consequences then: Society gets stuck paying the bill for mothers who are willfully gaming a really stupid system — that is the foundation for this particular case. “Child support” includes as much as a hundred billion in matching funds paid by Washington to the states; did you know that?

This means that from the State’s perspective, unwed single mothers are the greatly preferred new social unit. Now tell me about costs to society.

That is also the widespread reality of today’s legal conventional wisdom. We are remodeling the entire social fabric out of a great sense of cultural hubris, a hubris that paints women as inherently and dramatically superior to presumed deadbeat dads. When you cultivate a pervasive new moral standard by way of federal financial incentive, that’s when you have “costs to society.”

This statist religion is so inculcated that many of us can’t see just how staggeringly unjust it is to core principles such as Supreme Court-ruled rights to parent, due process, jury trial, presumptions of innocence, preexisting contracts, etc.

What some here are openly advocating is an apparently sexist application of those principles — rights dispensed under the prior weight of what makes the most money, which is typically impoverishing dad regardless. And the mantra is “cost to society” the same bogus myth that gives us all manner of nannyist Orwellianism from cigarette taxes to villainizing fast food. Where do we draw the line, poster?

Cost to society? The real costs to society invariably and inevitably come to those most oppressive and unfair societies. And the most oppressive and unfair legal “society” these days is without question or doubt custody and child support law.

What some are advocating is nothing less than sexually-conditional application of fundamental rights. Nice place you got here.

Nov 14, 2007 - 9:59 am 14. wmb:

yes, children deserve support.

The problem is that men are being forced to be responsible, women are not expected to be responsible.

Women should reasonably be expected to take on responsiblity too, more then a man if they are to have more choice about the decision to have a child.

That is how that big word “right” to choose works, the right and the responsibility go hand and hand.

Nov 14, 2007 - 10:13 am 15. Don:

Who even needs a real baby?

http://www.krqe.com/Global/story.asp?S=7054492

Nov 14, 2007 - 10:37 am 16. Little Much:

Actually. It takes two to make a baby. Everyone knows that condoms DO in fact prevent pregnancies at least 99% of the time. What exactly prevents a man from knowing this and wearing one to protect HIMSELF.

No, I’m not in agreement at all. Each party is 50% to blame for making a baby. If one does not want to have children the responsibility to NOT have them is on that person.

Why should taxpayers foot the bill for someone’s good time.

No, sorry, can’t agree with this nonsense of his being a victim. No one is forced NOT to wear a condom when one knows better TO wear it.

Nov 14, 2007 - 10:44 am 17. Gregory G. Oman DDS:

Great points. I have never had the problems these people have had. I have always wondered why? Oh, now I remember, I am still married to the same woman after 29 years and never practiced premarital sex. That must be it.

Nov 14, 2007 - 10:45 am 18. JHoward:

bramie keeps suggesting that cost to society, as imputed by conventional, disproved wisdom, constitutes a standard by which to create sexist, unconstitutional, Orwellianized civil law.

Likewise, wmb doesn’t define terms:

yes, children deserve support.

And I deserve free medical. I mean, you’re talking government “support” here, aren’t you? And when that “support” creates the very problem it was initially but vaguely aimed at preventing? When “support” moves from private responsibility to public-sector opportunity and gamesmanship, then what? Because, frankly, that’s where we’re at and under that guise, children “deserve” absolutely nothing but their patent’s misery.

Controversial as this may seem, governments job is certainly not to manage your costs. It’s not to provide for your children. It’s not to make you safe and secure in the face of bad stuff that happens to you because you do stupid things. Ladies.

Or because you elect to do stupid things, fully intending to profit from them. Ladies.

That obligation falls directly on your shoulders and yours alone.

The idiocy of this flagrant nannyism is borne out best, perhaps, in the tale of the vulnerable barhopper impregnated by the rich lout. If you depend on those sorts of feeble canards to establish law punishable by incarceration and loss of property, well, then we’re screwed, if you’ll pardon the pun.

Nov 14, 2007 - 10:51 am 19. kwo:

Serabus said…

If you don’t want kids, don’t do things that make them.

Winner.

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:02 am 20. pjr12345:

In light of the LEGITIMATE “pro choice” position — The choice is made in the back seat of the car at the drive-in theater; after that, it becomes a responsibility — it seems to me that the man ought to pay regardless of his expressed desire to avoid having children.

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:05 am 21. Squid:

Ah, so Dr. Greg thinks the solution is to outlaw premarital sex and to institute forced marriage on couples who copulate.

Lovely vision there, Doc.

I agree that people should be responsible for their actions, especially when there’s a real possibility of an innocent third party becoming involved. However, I think it’s a sad situation when I see people here basically admitting that it’s up to the man to protect himself at any cost because the law will not treat him fairly. Is this really an acceptable state of things for you people?

I’m not making excuses for the real deadbeats who deserve the judgements against them. But just because deadbeats exist doesn’t mean that we should automatically assume the worst of every man, nor withhold sympathy from those who are tricked into fathering a child they never wanted (and were assured weren’t a risk). It disappoints me that so many commenters are willing to sell their own sons up the river just for falling prey to an attractive liar.

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:05 am 22. Rightmom:

I have always been against abortion. However, I have thought it was not right that woman have the absolute right to abortion without a man’s consideration, even though the baby is 50/50.

My thought to bring more equalization to this has been a “man’s abortion”. That is, once a man has sex and he is not sure of the out come or the woman involved, he can sign an Affidavit in front of a Notary and file with the County Court dis-avowing any child, thus having a “legal” abortion.

I know the feminist would come unglued over the idea. But then again, the feminist drove the idea that women are not entirely free without abortion rights. I think this would equalize the sexes even more and would be more Constitution (under the equal protection clause), than the current ruling on Constitutionality of Abortion itself.

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:10 am 23. cubanbob:

Bramie your argument only makes sense if abortion were illegal. Whether the guy makes eighty grand or eight hundred grand a year in your scenario is irrelevant, she is an adult woman who consented to sex. And since woman get pregnant not men, it is her choice to get pregnant and stay pregnant.

No form of male birth control is absolute. And a man cannot compel a woman to have an abortion. So as long as the woman has the ultimate say in whether or not to conceive and give birth the onus ought to be on her unless she conceived during the course of a marriage or the man explicitly agreed to be a father to her child.

Indeed woman who have kids and defraud the man ought to have their kids removed from them and put up for adoption. It is in the best interest of the child to be brought up by a parent(s) that are honest and caring instead of fraudsters.

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:14 am 24. Stacy:

Sorry, living in the real world means that if you have sex, be prepared for the consequences. Don’t kill a kid for your mistake.

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:16 am 25. Clyde:

A man who really doesn’t want children under any circumstances but still wishes to engage in unprotected sex should have a VASECTOMY.

The “I didn’t know the gun was loaded, Your Honor” defense just doesn’t cut too much ice.

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:20 am 26. JHoward:

…it seems to me that the man ought to pay regardless of his expressed desire to avoid having children.

Define, please. “Pay” means involuntary conscription into a system where all basic rights must disappear…for that system to exist at all?

And define “expressed desire”. Are verbal contracts not contracts? Are written contracts not contracts? Is willfully misleading a fellow citizen so as to take vast sums from him under penalty of law legal? Is the law that does so itself legal?

Lastly, where does this abstract, groundless notion of “I think he should have to pay” (and pay regardless, including when he’s simply not dad at all) come from? From more cost-to-society rubbish? When the real cost to society of our corrupted, amoral, unfolding support/custody law debacle is so blindingly clear, both in fiscal and human terms?

When doing so is to openly admit we’re helpless to order our own lives and must rely on our fellows to pay even greater costs to society to perpetuate this wreckage of a system upon all of us simultaneously?!

Title IV-D’s costs are truly astronomical. So are the costs of paying society for fatherlessness.

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:25 am 27. sam:

It’s disgusting and despicable we even have to have these arguments. Innocent children, who have harmed no one, and only need parents who love and support them are thrown in the middle because two selfish partners want to have a good time together.

It’s incredibly saddening and I wish people would think of the consequences in human life. Kids are suffering as a result of selfish parents, whether those people are willing or un-willing parents.

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:31 am 28. KoryO:

So….all these immature boys who just don’t like the feeling of latex and shudder at the thought of getting a vasectomy are victims? You gotta be freakin’ kidding me!

And as for some girl hitting “pay dirt” by getting pregnant? Again, you gotta be kidding me. I made as much money, if not more, than the guys I dated. I had the house and a paid off car, and no student loans. I wasn’t the only one out there like that, either. Amy, this ain’t the 50’s any more, where guys automatically make more and have more financial resources.

Wrap it, snip it, or grow up and realize that sex, while fun, is not and has never been without potential consequences. Yes, they are literally life (pregnancy) and death (AIDS). Do the gene pool a favor and whack off until this seeps into your tiny craniums.

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:40 am 29. mark:

I was trying to find this study I read about a few months ago that was done at a university that revealed that at least half of all young women polled admitted they would be willing to lie to a man about being on birth control in order to trick him into fatherhood against his will becuase the woman felt ‘he was father material.’ Can someone help me here? Does anyone remember that study and the link to it? Please provide if you know where to find it.

Have you ever wondered why it is that we have had birth control pills since the 1960’s and still massive amounts of abortions? With birth control pills, abortion shouldn’t even be an issue today! But of course it is, and the average woman’s amorality is the reason why. It’s easy to figure out- the man flips out hard enough, she’ll get the abortion- still crying and wanting sympathy even though she decieved him (?!?)

One thing is clear to me though.. today, except for a handful of women like the author of this article, we as men have virtually nothing in common with the average woman and how she thinks. Our standards of right and wrong are as different as chalk and cheese. Women are living in their own world, and so is our legal system.

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:41 am 30. plutosdad:

I have always wondered why, when it comes to men, feminists say “you make the decision to have a child when you decide to have sex”

That is the exact same argument pro-life people use. But the same pro-choice people who say MEN decide at the time they have sex, say WOMEN don’t have to decide.

This doesn’t make any sense.

100 years ago, forcing a man to pay might make sense, but everything’s different now. Women have more choices and power, and they too need to be responsible for their choicees.

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:42 am 31. D Palmer:

Sorry buddy, pay up.

If you don’t want kids it is YOUR responsibility to make sure you don’t have them. A woman’s word that she has a “medical condition” that prevents conception is not a method of birth control. If you aren’t smart enough to protect yourself then you deserve what happens.

And yes, if 2 drunk people hook up and produce a child then the father should be responsible. He wanted to play, now he pays the price.

Stop whining about being held responsible for your own actions. If you know you don’t want kids, get snipped. Voila, no children.

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:43 am 32. TomP:

I got a vasectomy (had to get written permission from my wife to do so). A year later, she got pregnant. I am paying child support, since she has no idea which of a large number of men might be the sperm donor. (She liked to go out and party when I was at work.)

I am not permitted to be a father to the child, but I am permitted to pay the mother’s bills. Can you say “Presumption of Paternity” laws? Knew ya could.

If you are male, and you don’t want to be used as an ATM, don’t rely on vasectomy or a condom, and especially don’t rely on the Law. The Law is not your friend. If you can state with certainty that is provable to a disinterested observer that the woman you are having sex with will NEVER leave you, NEVER lie to you and NEVER take advantage of you, and you can prove that you will act the same to her, then get married. Otherwise, you are setting yourself up.

It’s just another example of acceptable sexism.

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:48 am 33. Gahrie:

1) Most of you are ignoring the case Amy cited where a boy was raped by an older woman, and is still forced to pay support.

2) There is at least one documented case where a woman saved the product from oral sex, impregnated herself, and later won child support.

3) It is simply undeniable that under current law concerning procreation, men have responsibilities and no rights; while women have rights and no responsibilities. Men have no choice, women have absolute choice.

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:56 am 34. Looking Glass:

Squid wrote, “people here basically admitting that it’s up to the man to protect himself at any cost because the law will not treat him fairly.”

That’s the consensus. Women have authority without responsibility. Men have responsibility without authority. That’s a recipe for disaster.

Plekto, commenting on Fetal Attraction at Advice Goddess’ site, points out:

“It’s an expensive lesson to learn (but infinitely better than marrying someone who would pull this trick)”

Compared to a divorce from such a person it’s more than infinitely better.

Point-Counterpoint Synchronicity:

“A one-night stand may be the best thing that ever happened to him” – tag line from the “Knocked Up” trailer that just showed on TV. Paired with that is the trailer from “28 Weeks Later”, which follows immediately with – “They thought it was over.” as a threat thought dormant arises unexpectedly to devour people’s lives in a cannibalistic horror-show.

Think someone’s trying to be clever with that particular pairing?

Related news, report from the UK earlier this year.

“co-habitation laws are already in place in the UK. If you live with a woman for more than two-years, you’re stuffed. She can take at least half of your assets and plenty of your future earnings too.”

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:57 am 35. The Monster:

Re: “man’s abortion”.

Since the woman has the absolute right to choose whether to abort or carry the pregnancy to term, the man’s liablity should be limited to the cost of the abortion and follow-up medical care, and any lost wages due to missing work for such care.

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:57 am 36. Akaky:

I am not a clairvoyant nor do I play one on television, but I’ve known something like this gentleman’s challenge was coming for the past fifteen years or so. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the concept of child support rests firmly on the belief, once common throughout the United States, that men ought to support the children they father. This belief was itself the product of a time wherein abortion was dangerous and not readily available, and birth control was at best crude and not very effective. We now live in a world where abortion is both safe and commonplace and effective birth control is widely available. In addition to this, through a series of court decisions, radical feminists have more or less eliminated the male role in the decision to become a parent, reducing him to little more than a sperm donor and an open wallet. Children today are wholly optional, it seems, and only women get to exercise the option. Sooner or later, someone was going to challenge this situation in the courts.

I didn’t think the courts would go along with this gentleman’s argument, and I use the term gentleman in the most generic sense possible; most judges are old enough to believe the old premise that fathers should pay for their children, and those that don’t will look to the vast corpus of legal opinion that exists on the subject and refuse to throw the baby out with the law books. This attitude, however, will not survive in the long run. The radical feminists have fatally undermined it, thereby proving yet again that the law of unintended consequences is still with us and doing quite well these days, thank you for asking. The feminists’ constant demand for unfettered sexual rights without any sexual responsibilities have led inexorably to this argument: if a woman cannot be compelled to be a mother, then it necessarily follows that a man cannot be compelled to be a father. If the courts do not accept this argument now, they will sometime in the next twenty to thirty years; it is only a matter of time, for this is the inevitable conclusion of the demand for complete sexual freedom.

It will be more than a little amusing to watch the feminists upend all their usual arguments in order to keep child support going; it will, I think, be very similar to their performance during the Lewinsky scandal, where more than one prominent feminist shaded her demand for ever more stringent protections against sexual harassment in the workplace with her desire to keep President Clinton in the Oval Office. If nothing else, this episode might teach the feminists that running to the courts for redress for all of the nation’s ills might not be such a good idea; any state legislator in the country would laugh off this guy’s argument in a heartbeat, if for no other reason that there are no votes to be had in being known as a defender of cads’ rights, but the courts must follow precedent and the Constitution, and if the Constitution gives women the right to be irresponsible dolts then it must give men the same right. After all, we live in a country that prides itself on giving the equal protection of the laws to everyone, even sexually irresponsible jackasses.

As for the rights of cads, I thought everyone knew that the major unintended consequence of women’s liberation was the liberation of the caddish impulse in most men. Once upon a time, if a young man wanted to sow a few wild oats or a older man wanted to pretend he wasn’t getting old, they would both hie themselves hence to the nearest house of assignation, there to indulge the reproductive urge without having to deal with any of its consequences. Everyone involved knew the rules: the man wanted sex, the girl wanted money, and afterwards the man would go home and pretend to be a moral pillar of his community. You would certainly not marry a denizen of the demimonde nor would you encourage a decent girl to become a demimonde herself, and if you should impregnate a “nice” girl, the rules were clear: you had to marry her, whether you wanted to or not, if only to avoid being blown apart by her menfolk’s shotguns.

Our modern era does not prize the concept of the nice girl anymore, since there is no real need for any girl to be nice in the sense that the term usually meant, which is to say, sexually chaste before marriage and monogamous afterwards. The invention of the birth control pill, the advent of readily available abortion, and the relative ease of modern divorce have changed the traditional equation. I am sure that many women would say, hallelujah, to the old order’s passing, and they may well be right about the overwhelming hypocrisy of that order, but it seems to me that Oscar Wilde was right when he said that hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. The old order served a purpose by channeling humanity’s greatest creative and destructive drive onto a constructive path that served, in the broad number of cases, the best interests of everyone involved. The old dispensation did not serve all equally well, though; it stigmatized gay men and lesbians viciously, and often victimized women, especially lower class women, by limiting their educational and economic opportunities, thereby trapping them in marriages where they were utterly dependent on the goodwill of their husbands.

It was largely to stop the abuses of the old order that activists created the gay rights and the women’s liberation movements, and both movements have done a tremendous amount of good for their specific constituencies and for the nation as a whole through their efforts to eliminate the mental exception. The mental exception is what comes at the end of the Pledge of Allegiance, when the person pledging allegiance to the flag says, “…with liberty and justice for all…” and then mentally makes the exception for blacks, Jews, Hispanics, Catholics, women, gays, or life insurance salesmen, whom they can treat in as abusive manner as they want without worrying too much about their rights.

In freeing women from the old order, however, the women’s liberation movement tossed much good out with the bad. The women’s movement’s systematic demonization of men has led to a situation in which men bear almost no responsibility for the children they sire. We now live in an age where a woman can choose to become mothers, but men cannot choose whether or not they become fathers. Men do not have a say in whether or not their sexual partners have an abortion or not, which is to say, they have no choice in whether or not they become fathers, and yet the law, and the women’s movement as well, insist on their paying for children they do not want.

This last vestige of the old dispensation will soon disappear as well. After all, we now live in a world of rights, and if a woman has a right to choose then so does the man, and compelling him to pay for a child he does not want seems grossly unfair and is probably a violation of his constitutional rights. The women’s movement will fight such an interpretation of the law; their ideal world is one in which men play the role of sperm donor and sugar daddy, paying all the bills and seeing the children every other Tuesday in July, but the more I think about it, the more likely this scenario becomes. You can only undermine institutions for so long before they come down, bringing down everything else with it. You cannot, I think, knock down all the supporting walls out of your house and then complain to all and sundry when the roof comes crashing down on your head.

Nov 14, 2007 - 11:59 am 37. PatHMV:

Oh, those poor, pitiful men. Forced to have sex against their will! Forced to rely on the woman’s assurances rather than take action themselves to insure that they couldn’t father children.

Abstinence, condoms, vasectomy. If a man doesn’t want children, he must do one of those things. There’s no need for the law to get into the minds of the two people who chose to have sex and decide which is telling the truth about who wanted children, etc.

There’s a baby. It’s got to be fed, clothed, housed, and diapered. If the father doesn’t pay his fair share, the odds are that the taxpayers going to have to pick up the slack in some way. And WE didn’t make the mistake he did. Child support is not about “rewarding the mother,” it’s about making sure that the child is provided for.

Nov 14, 2007 - 12:02 pm 38. sparky:

The other great unfairness is that the woman has ALL the choice and the man none.

If he wants to be a father and keep the baby but she chooses to abort, tough luck to the guy.

If he doesn’t want the baby, he has no say as to whether an abortion should take place and gets to pay child support for the next 18 to 21 years.

All the laws are 100% on the woman’s side.

Nov 14, 2007 - 12:03 pm 39. AST:

I see this as the righting of an ancient wrong. Men have seldom had to worry about engaging in promiscuous sex while women had to guard against becoming pregnant, especially out of wedlock. The pill has leveled the field, but there’s a lot of history to make up for. Until men are as careful about their behavior has women must be, this is a good way to send the message, especially when the alternative is too often letting the rest of society pay child support.

Nov 14, 2007 - 12:06 pm 40. Tom Paine:

Webutant (Nov 14, 2007 06:22 AM)

If you will lend me your Drivel-to-English dictionary, I will try to figure out what you think you were saying…. although Abnormal Psychology isn’t really my main field.

Nov 14, 2007 - 12:15 pm 41. sofasleeper:

“Ah, so Dr. Greg thinks the solution is to outlaw premarital sex and to institute forced marriage on couples who copulate.”

I think you’re reading a bit much into what he said.

But I’m going to join Dr. Greg under the hail of brickbats, and agree with what I think you can reasonably read into what he said: So many problems would be solved if folks could keep it in their pants until they’re ready for a marriage commitment.

So maybe we need to heap a little more social opprobrium on those who don’t.

Nov 14, 2007 - 12:19 pm 42. jim2:

I think the original column was carefully crafted, but would like to point out a few other points.

First, a child is an innocent member of society and the rest of society has a valid interest in assuring that the parties responsible for the child bear the financial burden instead of the rest of society. Yes, a man may have been hoodwinked by the fem, but he was an adult and caveat emptor would seem to apply. The tricked under-age male father seems a real problem, though. After all, if Vanessa Hudgens can use her age to get out of a contract, how can a 14-year old boy be held to the implicit contract of fatherhood?

Second, a vasectomy is not the answer if a man might want to have kids some other time. It would be like saying that women should have their tubes reversibly tied (with a clip or something) unless they are willing to become pregnant.

Third, the man’s child support is to the child (at least in theory). Even if the mother has no money, her commitment in time to the child has been demonstrated to be so great that (even assuming minimum wage) her expenditure is usually greater by far than court-ordered child support. (I admit some exceptions there for wealth or celebrity dads, but not the earlier mentioned $700/800 per month) So, in the case of inadvertent pregnancy from consensual sex between adults, both parties result in paying and the man probably less (but the woman has the choice so that’s not entirely unfair).

Fourth, there are notorious unfair examples that simply boggle my mind. IIRC, there is one case where a fem used the products of oral sex to essentially artificially-inseminate herself. There are other cases where a wife got pregnant and it was demonstrated that the kid was not the husband’s. In those cases, the man (in the former) and the husbands (in the latter) were held financially responsible. Any system that allows that is so patently unfair as to extinguish respect for all the rest of it.

Nov 14, 2007 - 12:20 pm 43. Sarah:

We have a word for disavowing parenthood already: it’s called adoption. I stand ready to be convinced that elective abortion is morally superior to adoption, but I must say that none of what I’ve already seen comes close to a reasonable standard of persuasion. For cases in which it’s not about the health of the mother, why not simply say:

1. the mother can voluntarily (and irrevocably) turn custody over to the father, or
2. the father can voluntarily (and irrevocably) turn custody over to the mother, or
3. both can jointly (either by one turning custody over to the other first, or actually making the decision together) voluntarily and irrevocably turn custody over to the courts, another individual/family, or another appropriate agency (church, hospital, whatever.)

You lose elective abortions and enforced non-custodial child support. You also lose all the nasty legal wrangling that comes up when you have non-married parents fighting over the child, the support payments, and so forth. I work as a legal assistant on GAL and custody cases, and it’s a nightmare for all parties, including the court system, to try and sort it all out. My parents did the semi-responsible thing (they divorced, hence the “semi”) and went through a mediator rather than the court system for custody stuff; they also managed to act like adults long enough for me to turn 18 and solve the problem permanently. But if there had been trouble, the juvenile court system, which was meant for abuse and delinquency problems, would have taken over.

Oh, yeah, and don’t have sex, and especially unprotected sex (and that’s what it is if you believe the girl who says “oh, no, baby, I can’t get pregnant”) if you don’t want children. My gosh. The 14-year-old is one thing, but the rest of us are supposed to be grown-ups, right?

Nov 14, 2007 - 12:20 pm 44. Greg:

Am I the only one who thinks of NYC Mayor Lindsey? As in:

A welfare mother, screaming at New York mayor John Lindsay (responsible for much of the city’s rise in welfare cases), expressed the system’s new philosophy: “It’s my job to have kids, Mr. Mayor, and your job to take care of them.”

I remember growing up in NYC, during this time. And yes this was real, there was a cottage industry in illegitimate babies, because the support payments scaled per child. Each net bastard was net profit.

What with welfare reform and all, this is passe. But again, we have women, who have been granted (rightly or wrongly) final control over whether a child is born, trying to find someone else to pay. Except this time, since the legislative route is closed, it has to be done through the courts.

Personal responsibility is *not* expecting someone else to pay for YOUR decision. You want men to be on the hook to pay for *any* child, desired or not, let men decide whether or not the child should be born. Only fair.

But that will *never* happen.

Nov 14, 2007 - 12:20 pm 45. Crystal Therese:

Wow, this is the most narrow-minded drivel I have read so far this week.

If people have sex they BOTH know the risks and have to accept the consequences. Women should not be forced to abort or give their children up for adoption because they get pregnant by accident.

If men can’t accept the consequences of having sex then they have NO business having sex.

Nov 14, 2007 - 12:32 pm 46. Lord Nazh:

http://lordnazh.com/DailyRamble/2007/09/pro-choice-equality.html

Great post. I wrote on this a couple of months ago and got many various responses (now deleted due to move to haloscan , but you’re layout and reasoning seems to be aces above my thoughts.

Nov 14, 2007 - 12:38 pm 47. Rupert Fiennes:

Sorry, pathetic. It is the real world; if you have sex, no whining if someone gets pregnant. In short, STFU and be a man

Nov 14, 2007 - 12:39 pm 48. Tigger:

Will anyone using the tired “oh those poor poor men who were forced to have sex…” line of thinking please address the example she sites in her originial post? The victim of statutory rape being forced to pay child support? How about girl who had oral sex with a guy and then used his sperm to impregnate herself and win support after the fact?

Someone please tell me how right it is that these people pay support for the rest of their lives. Because every man should assume that if a woman is anywhere near sperm she will do anything in her power to get herself pregnant and ‘he should have just been more careful’?

I’m eager to see the suspension of logic and ad hominem attacks in each reply.

And AST, that is the WORST form of argument I can possibly think of. Let’s break it down. It was tough for women in the past. Some men made it tough for them.

They’re dead now.

So let’s wrong an entirely new class of people who had NOTHING to do with the original problem. We’ll give the benefits to people who never really suffered the old problems but it will make us FEEL so much better about ‘our guilty pasts’.

It’s just a cosmic way of saying that two wrongs make a right. We’ll do to them what they did to you. Not because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s payback for all those historical wrongs you’re ancestors suffered.

Equality is equality is equality. What you’re advocating isn’t equality so much as discrimination in your favor. And discrimination is discrimination no matter how much you torure logic or the historical record to get the outcome you desire.

Nov 14, 2007 - 12:42 pm 49. Looking Glass:

Crystal Therese wrote, “If men can’t accept the consequences of having sex then they have NO business having sex.”

If women can’t accept the consequences of having sex then they have no business having sex.

Nov 14, 2007 - 12:44 pm 50. submandave:

I am always amazed every time this topic comes up with the sheer number of people who use the “if he doesn’t want a child he should keep it in his pants” argument when they know damn well they’d never use it as an argument against abortion on demand.

If you’re gonna get all high and mighty with regard to responsibility, at least try to act consistent.

Nov 14, 2007 - 1:04 pm 51. holdfast:

Saying that by having sex the man consented to paying child support is complete BS. Sure the woman did too, but she has another three or six months (depending where you live) to change her mind about having the moppets. The man only has one chance to make that “choice”. This situation clearly is not fair, but as smart as I think I am, I cannot come up with a really fair alternative eiher, unless one wants to discuss forced abortion, and I don’t think anyone wants to go there.

Unfortunately, men are in the more vulnerable position here – it is totally unfair – but for god’s sake, use a rubber. If she’s such a little skank that she wants to be a chequebook mommy, then she;s likely packing some other presents in her special places.

Nov 14, 2007 - 1:17 pm 52. JHoward:

What a pitiful, discouraging thread of comments: Tantamount to socialism, most of it is, all this mustered, angry bravado about paying consequences so as to reduce costs to society.

The entire notion of forced conscription into The Divorce/Custody/Child Support System — more of a regime, actually, as Baskerville aptly defines it — underscores nothing but enormous costs. Those billions are squandered in federal and local administration.

This left-leaning, nannyist tyranny is then, naturally, a huge assault on civility, decency, social excellence, education, and the like.

Make the bastards pay, say you! Because a hundred billion dollars in federal overhead is far cheaper than say, accepting personal responsibility and never having the kid in the first place. Do you not understand what you’re advocating when you blindly demand the state enforce child support blind to the particulars? Is this somehow such a mystery?

Do you also believe government schools educate? That Welfare ensures welfare? That there’s anything secure about Social Security?

Then how is it the federalized child support system (operating outside the Constitution and Bill of Rights, by the way) somehow supports children?!

Didn’t exactly work out that way here, did it folks? Our lovely child support system induced, in whole or in part, the fraud of the mother’s original choice! Is this somehow lost on you? Because your government, acting by way of that quasi-conservative social bravado, paid her to.

Your ostensible conservatism created a vast sea of collectivist legislation! Did you expect otherwise?

All because, in this thread, rightists adopt this impossibly misled belief that you screw, you pay, dammit, thereby saving the rest of us big dollars.

To make that claim is to profess utter ignorance of the system and its repercussions.

Please allow me to reassert an excerpt of my now-prescient comment from the third reply to the author, above:

You ask why this is so? It’s because of bad social law, enabled partly by leftist gender feminists who root for lopsided treatment of and by the sexes, and by rightists who mistakenly that the best way to deal with the Welfare State is by enacting bulletproof welfare enforcement, against any number of constitutional proofs and protections, that always force single fathers to pay, even if it has to create them, which it does by the legions.

Nice job. Enforcing the child support regime means you’re wrong economically, constitutionally, legally, and ultimately, socially.

Nov 14, 2007 - 1:20 pm 53. Mark G:

If it can be shown that a woman is intentionally deceiving a man in order to impregnate herself for the purpose of financial gain, then she should be found guilty of fraud.

For the majority of cases, you have two people being stupid, and I don’t see how you can pin the responsibility on the partner that was being slightly more stupid.

You want to make the system more fair? Let the fathers have a shot at primary custody and make the mothers pay child support in those cases.

Nov 14, 2007 - 1:27 pm 54. JHoward:

Let the fathers have a shot at primary custody and make the mothers pay child support in those cases.

The impossible legislation in this land of equality, gender-neutrality, enlightened feminism, parenting rights guaranteed by the SCOTUS for 200+ years, and simple civility and reason is what’s called a presumption of joint, equal custody.

Who fights against the presumption of joint custody tooth and nail in all 50 statehouses and in DC?

Gender feminists and the legal associations.

Might that give us a clue that there’s huge federal cash in single parenting? Even if it involves what normal humans know to be clear and willful fraud?

Nov 14, 2007 - 1:41 pm 55. Little Much:

What is funny about this whole thing is if one even LOOKS at the amount of “child support” a father gives up for the fruit of his loins it PALES in comparison to what the child actually DOES need – Geesh just way an episode of Judge Judy to see the extent of irresponsibility there is on both sides. This “child support” is never even close to representing what the mother of said child must pay, in time, loss of social life, end of college career, day to day care of child, sleepless nights from illnesses and days missed from work due to such and the list goes on.

So which position would you prefer?

Simply writing a check in the amount a man might use to go clubbing or wine and dine another sex-buddy on any given weekend, or the loss of having “a life” and the physical freedom that goes with it>

The blame and responsibility must be equal for both parties regardless whether they “wanted” a child or not and they must grow up – be accountable and share in it.

No sympathy here.

Nov 14, 2007 - 1:43 pm 56. Russ:

I agree that if a man and woman “hook up” at a bar and a pregnancy results, the man should absolutely pay child support.

But that was never the premise of the thread.

The premise was that the man in question was LIED TO on repeated occassions. If such a circumstance can be proven in court, he ought to be freed from such obligations. And those that have sex with underagers or impregnate themselves through “oral insemination” should be brought up on charges and jailed, with their children being given up for adoption.

I listen to a lot of women moan and gripe about men not wanting to settle down, but they whoop with righteous indignation when stories like this come up. Women, you made the bed, now lie in it.

As was said earlier – Chivalry is dead, and women killed it.

Nov 14, 2007 - 1:43 pm 57. jim2:

The fraud cry sounds good and feels even better to cry, but it has real problems, IMHO. You have an innocent kid and two parties unequally able to contribute.

Lawyers call similar situations something like “The Deep Pocket Rule”:

+++++++
When tort defendants are held jointly and severally liable, the total of all damages is payable by each defendant without regard to each defendant’s individually assigned degree of fault. Because this rule allows plaintiffs to seek out defendants who may be minimally liable but have substantial assets, it is often referred to as the “deep pocket” rule. In contrast, the rule of proportionate or several liability is a legal concept that limits each defendant’s liability to the amount of damages caused by the proportion of each defendant’s fault.
+++++++
http://www.gcglaw.com/resources/govt/deep_pockets_hb143.html

The current practice here is essentially identical to holding both parties to the conception “jointly and severally liable” instead of proportionately.

If one supports tort revision of the “Deep Pocket Rule”, then one should support the same fix here.

Nov 14, 2007 - 1:48 pm 58. Darrell:

If men and women would just get back to celibate dating/courting with the purpose of developing enduring friendship, followed by marriage and sex (and perhaps children), most of these problems would simply go away. Personal responsibility begins with controlling/mastering yourself. I have no sympathy for those that don’t get this simple concept. Men and women who expect rational justice when they act irrationally and immorally will almost always find misery rather than happiness. I have some empathy for men and women who feel that their lives have been ruined by unjust social and legal systems. However, this empathy does not translate into excusing their failure to control their sexual impulses. Happiness is something that we earn through responsible living. It is not a constitutional right.

Nov 14, 2007 - 1:53 pm 59. Little Much:

To JHoward:

The only way a man can be forcible raped is anally. To think a woman can forcibly rape a man is silly.

Or are you suggesting that once in motion, a man has absolutely no choice or mind/body control but to finished “being raped?”

Gee if that was the case I can hardly imagine all the rapes of women there might be when they’ve said “NO” to an otherwise “in motion” and too persistant man on the first date.

Nov 14, 2007 - 1:57 pm 60. KoryO:

Ok, you want me to address the statutory rape example? Fine. Him, I’ll give an exception to. What happened to that boy should not have happened.

But to the rest of them….no. They were all, legally at least, adults. Wrap it or snip it. Yes, the second option is permanent. Probably can’t be reversed easily. But if you want to ensure you don’t have children, there’s your choices, boys.

Life’s not fair. The woman will probably always have more birth control options, since it’s easier to stop 1 egg per month than it is 1 million sperm every other day. Deal with it.

Using the same logic that some of the previous posters have done, it’s not fair that I have a scar across my tummy because I had a child, and my husband doesn’t. Sure, I knew a c section was a possibility when I got pregnant, but… What do you suggest we do to make it “equal”, so we both have the same consequences for bringing our boy into the world? Cut him open, too?

Look, if you fell asleep in biology class and missed the part about human reproduction, I don’t see why *my* tax dollars should go to support *your* night of fun. That’s what it boils down to.

And yes….keep it in your pants if you don’t want to man up and possibly assume the responsibility. Grow up and stop buying into the Hollywood bullshit that there are no consequences for anything you do, ever. Sex is for grownups, not immature little twits.

Nov 14, 2007 - 1:59 pm 61. phwest:

While I agree at the individual level with the duty to accept responsibility for your offspring, intended or otherwise, there is more to it than that. By actively rewarding women for having children out of marriage, the current system promotes single parentage, something which is clearly not in society’s interest on the whole, even if it is better after the fact for the child in question.

This is simply another facet of the welfare dilema – child support (from either the state or absent father) is better for the child than abandonment, but it also increases the number of children in single-parent households. The tragedy of the current system is not the burden it places on fathers, but the damage it does to families, whether through casual divorce, bypassing marriage entirely, or the development of a male CW based on the proposition that the system is stacked against men and women cannot be trusted.

For now, I don’t think that’s true. Most people (men and women) have enough of a moral sense not to abuse the system in that way. But just as there was a tipping point with welfare that led to the complete collapse of the family in the underclass, there is a point where the mainstream family collapses as well. That is the fire being played with here.

Nov 14, 2007 - 2:05 pm 62. Mark G:

Darrell said, “If men and women would just get back to celibate dating/courting with the purpose of developing enduring friendship, followed by marriage and sex (and perhaps children), most of these problems would simply go away.”

Agreed. But what do you do with the problems these people are having now?

Nov 14, 2007 - 2:07 pm 63. JHoward:

I agree that if a man and woman “hook up” at a bar and a pregnancy results, the man should absolutely pay child support.

Why?

If a man and woman “hook up” at a bar and a pregnancy results, and suddenly there’s no child support regime, might the odds of that event occurring lessen dramatically before next month?

If the federal child support regime, the one that literally pays for single parenting and for special interest and an entire industry comprising lawyers, gender feminists, psychological professionals, social workers, local and legal officials didn’t exist, presumably because the repercussions of personal acts were personal and not public, how would it impact personal responsibility?

The notion that so many of you have that child support is responsible is folly. It’s utter social irresponsibility to push off on others the consequences of your own bad choices, and rest assured that others are who’s footing the bill for single parenting enabled and motivated by “child support”. And social irresponsibility of the magnitude of this phenomenon is radically reshaping American society and culture.

Is this a mystery? Child support is a federal program and it’s part of public assistance machinery. Do you really expect success at any level?

Nov 14, 2007 - 2:10 pm 64. serabus:

KWO….thank you.

All too often people with personal agendas include them in simple matters and convolute the issue.

As you may have noticed……

Nov 14, 2007 - 2:26 pm 65. Darrell:

Mark: We must teach them that we live in a real world where irresponsible behavior results in occasional injustice and misery. We must teach them that they must live in the bed of their own making (i.e. accept full responsibility for their actions). Turning back the clock is not an option, so they must make the best that they can out of a bad choice and a miserable outcome. We must teach them to pass along their learning experience to future generations, with the hope that we can reverse some of the damage caused by modern sexual permissiveness and chaos. If there is no pain, there can be no gain.

Nov 14, 2007 - 2:26 pm 66. matt cb:

well, hell, my girlfriend told me she never wanted children and that should our birth-control fail, she would seek an abortion. so operated under a pretty clear paradigm, but then lo and behold she gets pregnant, wants to get married and have the kid. this is all nice and good, but i wanted none of it…now i pay child support while have a kid i never wanted to father. i love him dearly, but for crying out loud, men deserve some sort of assurance from the court that it won’t incentivize this female behavior with monetray support from an unwilling and tricked father. and yet, now i don’t even get custody but for a few weekends a year after she used my statements of not wanting children to gain court favor. thanks family court!

Nov 14, 2007 - 2:34 pm 67. JHoward:

…are you suggesting that once in motion, a man has absolutely no choice or mind/body control but to finished “being raped?”

No. What gave you the notion I had and to then suggest as much?

I’m going well beyond suggesting, however, that the notion of forced payments naturally and predictably perpetuate the problem of unwanted pregnancy by greatly lessening the need to act responsibly. Whatever urges men and women have, they’re beginning to be radically altered by federal child support law, and that alteration isn’t exactly gender-neutral (if that matters.)

The private sector has always had means of dealing with the economic consequences of single motherhood and disadvantaged children. Meanwhile, history shows convincingly that the collective public sector eventually destroys whatever domestic ideals it is entrusted with furthering.

Since “making” fathers pay is the majority tone of issues like this, how exactly do we intend to enforce that payment if we’re not prepared to do it by way of social pressure? Penalty of state-level law in all 50 states motivated by federal financial kickbacks is clearly not working, nor is it arguably consistent with American constitutional principle.

Precisely because people have and must exercise sound choices we must eliminate fallbacks for them to do otherwise. To your point, the child support regime, by its very nature, shifts vast responsibility to males and away from females.

To their credit, legions of males are indeed, just lately, bailing out. Admittedly, they’re bailing out because of the dire legal consequences, not because of social consequences or a simple sense of responsibility. This is the only way the child support regime, exemplified by this story in all its gory unfairness and willful single motherhood, serves to slow the tide of single parenting.

I don’t have the statistics, but I’d be willing to claim that that discouraging effect falls well short of the encouraging effect federal policy has to create single parents and their statistically far more dysfunctional children. (Remember that the majority of child support cases come from splitting families, where a mother can typically gain as much as thousands of largely uncontestable dollars a month until her children turn eighteen, and in many cases well beyond.)

Is that consistent with the gender-neutral political enlightenment we profess about ourselves these last 50 years?

Nov 14, 2007 - 2:36 pm 68. Looking Glass:

If the woman claims to be sterile and gets pregnant it’s the man’s fault.

Therefore if the man claims to be sterile and the woman gets pregnant it’s her fault.

Nov 14, 2007 - 2:39 pm 69. JHoward:

I don’t see why *my* tax dollars should go to support *your* night of fun. That’s what it boils down to.

To the tune of billions a year, your tax dollars are going to support enormous federal programs that by their very nature encourage waste, fraud, and kids without dads.

That’s what it really boils down to.

Nov 14, 2007 - 2:40 pm 70. Brown Line:

It’s simple, really:

If the choice is the woman’s, and hers alone,

Then the responsibility is the woman’s, and hers alone.

Nov 14, 2007 - 3:00 pm 71. Darrell:

Too many of you want to assign responsibility and consequences to either the man or the woman for unwanted pregnancies that result from dishonest relationships. The truth is that life doesn’t work that way. Both must assume some responsibility for their freely chosen actions. Both must suffer some consequences. It doesn’t matter if one or both lied. Men and women often lie to each other in irresponsible sexual relationships. Those who think otherwise are just being naive. Finger pointing and the blame game don’t resolve anything. Taking personal responsibility along with the associated painful consequences is the only just outcome for the children that result from such circumstances.

Nov 14, 2007 - 3:02 pm 72. Dave:

Guys, maintain custody of that condom at all times. Don’t just throw it away after sex — squirt in some dish detergent and swish it around.

Also be careful about accepting oral or manual sex. In either case you’re giving live sperm to a fertile woman.

Nov 14, 2007 - 3:30 pm 73. quadrupole:

There is another wrinkle here.

It has been pointed out that the mother has substantial rights to choose whether to be a parent *after* the sex act that are denied to the father.

What has not been pointed out is that she effectively has substantial rights after the *birth* of the child to not be a parent. Under the safe harbor laws in most states she can simply drop the child off at a hospital or firestation and walk away no questions asked. Totally anonymous. The child is then a ward of the state, and the mother has no financial obligations for the child.

The father effectively does not have this option, nor does he effectively have any capacity to prevent the mother from availing herself of this option.

How is it that the mother can abandon her parental responsibilities even after birth, while a father cannot?

Nov 14, 2007 - 3:45 pm 74. Ron Mock:

Why can’t I suggest abstinence from extra-marital sex and still live in the real world?

I live in a real world in which a whole lot of men avoid extra-marital sex their entire lives. I don’t mind if you joke about my looks, and in my case you might be right, but for many abstainers opportunity is plentiful, but self-discipline is in even greater supply.

The pretense that in the real world extra-marital sex is inevitable is a self-delusory (and self-justificatory?) lie modern Westerners willingly tell themselves. There is nothing realistic about it.

Ron Mock
Dundee, Oregon

Nov 14, 2007 - 3:48 pm 75. jim2:

“How is it that the mother can abandon her parental responsibilities even after birth, while a father cannot?”

While I do not totally disagree with that post, the man has invested a few minutes in the pregnancy at the cost of a few sperm cells. The woman, OTOH, has invested nine months and a great deal of expense and personal costs (not the least of which are life-long, life-changing physical changes).

I’m a guy, but I have never considered the gender positions equal in this mater. In short, the woman has EARNED some greater status.

It’s like the difference in the relationships of a chicken and a pig to a breakfast of ham and eggs. The chicken was involved, but the pig was committed.

Nov 14, 2007 - 4:02 pm 76. KoryO:

JHoward….ok, my tax dollars go for a bunch of crap I don’t support, not just kids without dads.

But that still doesn’t justify some little whiner walking away from a child he helped create, and forcing the rest of us to support that child when he has the resources to do so.

I’m pretty sure all of the people adopting that “he had no intention to do that, so he should be able to walk away” attitude wouldn’t be nearly so forbearing if said twit got all liquored up, got behind the wheel and plowed into their car. After all, that twit didn’t intend to wreck your car or possibly cripple you, right? He just wanted some tequila. Had it a hundred times and managed to get home safely. So why get all agitated about this one time?? Sheesh, cut him some slack, will ya?

Nov 14, 2007 - 4:05 pm 77. Little Much:

Jhoward,

maybe if the “forced” payments WERE successfully enforced it WOULD give men the incentive to protect themselves better, don’t you think? It’s no picnic for the woman, believe me, she bears the brunt of ALL the physical responsibility.

I’m so but you do not make your case successfully. there are endless numbers of “deadbeat Dads” (and i do dislike that term) who skip out, get paid cash for their jobs, and use any number of ways to get out of THEIR part of the responsibility. It’s momma who is stuck then 100%.

What better way to punish someone aside from jail, than to pinch the wallet a little. Most of these “accidents” happen in the heat of passion by BOTH parties. Such is not ever a good defense. for unwanted pregnancy – or murder.

Nov 14, 2007 - 4:17 pm 78. Dood:

If you don’t want to be held responsible for children, but want to have sex, it is your responsibility, not hers, to make sure you are shooting blanks, and you’d better be able to prove it.

Her word and actions don’t cut it, and wearing a condom doesn’t cut it.

You’re not a victim here, you’re the idiot not taking responsibility for your actions.

Nov 14, 2007 - 4:23 pm 79. Little Much:

Many seem to point out that AFTER the sex was had that only the mother has the right to abort or not. That is still whining about having to pay the bill after you’ve already “eaten more than his share at the buffet” so to speak.

If men do not want to EVER EVERRRRR be put in such a situation don’t you think the smart thing would be to PROTECT himself from being charged with more than was his fill.

In other words. ALWAYS WEAR A CONDOM IF YOU ARE NOT SNIPPED. why depend on someone else to protect you, against pregnancy OR an STD?

That is the real world.

Nov 14, 2007 - 4:25 pm 80. DWGirl:

I am SO sick of the excuses from BOTH parents. No one bothers to learn about their legal responsibilities before undertaking SEX, an activity which most people should know by now MAKES BABIES, babies which COST MONEY….they probably take more time shopping for a good cell phone contract than learning (BEFORE making a baby) about the laws of their states concerning child support and custody.

Women….1) Don’t sleep with losers and then expect an $8 per hour overworked county child support worker to be able to magically turn them into responsible upright citizens once you’ve left them. If he worked at McDonald’s when you were together, NO the court can’t make him go get a $20 hour job just because you want to be a stay at home mom now. 2) If he didn’t pay for the 6 kids he had before he was with you, he WON’T PAY FOR YOUR NEW ONES EITHER. 3) When the kids live with Dad, PAY YOUR SUPPORT….being a “mom” is not a “get out of child support free” pass!!! 4) And stop withholding the visitation every time a payment is a day late….you may think it’s a great way to get back at the jerk, but someday your kids WILL figure out what you’ve done. I hope you pay for it in spades.

Men….1) Don’t wait until you’ve been the kid’s dad for 15 years before you call and say “I’m not the Dad” – it’s TOO LATE. 2) If you already have 4 kids to 2 ex’s….DON’T go out and get a new wife and have more kids! If you couldn’t afford two cars, you’d never go out and buy a third….WHY are you bringing more kids into the world??? 3) And if mom doesn’t let you see the kids….TAKE HER TO COURT. When you just stop paying, you add fuel to her fire and you don’t exactly score points with the Judge. LEARN your RIGHTS and RESPONSIBILITIES. 4) GET and KEEP a freakin’ job. If those kids lived with you, you wouldn’t have the luxury of not paying for their food and housing….just because they live with mom shouldn’t change your responsbilities. 5) Learn about what happens when you don’t pay support, and take steps…LIKE PAYING…to ensure you don’t have to deal with child support enforcement.

To BOTH parents….NO, the situation is NOT GOOD. No, neither of you is going to be terribly happy with WHATEVER the court order is. NO, the court CANNOT “fix” him/her/the situation FOR you. Mom NEVER thinks she’s getting enough money, and Dad ALWAYS thinks he’s paying too much. Mom and Dad show off with new purchases, new boy/girlfriends, vacations, to show the ex how GREAT their life is without them, when all it does deep down is cause problems between you two, and harm your kids. GET OVER YOURSELVES, LIFE IS NOT FAIR and THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES TO YOUR ACTIONS. This is NOT ABOUT YOU, it’s about those KIDS. If you didn’t want to be in this situation, keep your pants zipped…it won’t KILL YOU to not have SEX. I am soooo tired of this excuse, like everyone is some kind of mindless automaton that is required to copulate with whoever is nearest when the mood strikes, or risk exploding. Next time you just *can’t* resist, and the idea of bringing some poor innocent kid into your messed up lives isn’t enough to stop you, think about the THOUSANDS of dollars it could cost you, YEARS of protracted court hearings, and having to deal for AT LEAST the next 18 YEARS with some person you obviously didn’t love or respect enough to maintain a relationship, whether romantic or just being able to treat each other like adults.

YOU both did this, and YOU need to accept that BAD DECISIONS have CONSEQUENCES, and it shouldn’t be the government’s job to make up for your POOR LIFE CHOICES.

(P.S. Yes, there are exceptions to what I wrote above, but if you’re flying to type some angry, screaming, poorly spelled post right now, you’re probably not one of them)

Nov 14, 2007 - 4:27 pm 81. DWGirl:

Also… This constant harping on how much money the states “make” from child support. Child support payments are paid to the person CARING FOR THE CHILD – not to the state collecting it for them. The Federal government provides funds to states, based on performance, in the hopes that obtaining support payments for the children will keep their parents OFF WELFARE. Welfare benefits – cash, medical, food stamps, housing – are infinitely more expensive to society than working to get support payments for kids, so it’s a good investment. Also, morally it’s YOUR job to pay for YOUR kids. I work hard enough for my meager paycheck without having thousands more go on the dole because Mom or Dad feels it’s “unfair” to support their own children. States aren’t exactly filling the coffers with child support money, what little of it they can collect from deadbeat parents in the first place.

Nov 14, 2007 - 4:42 pm 82. Punditius:

If women weren’t willing to have sex outside of marriage, we wouldn’t have this problem. A woman who choses to have sex without marriage chooses to risk being poor – being an unwed mother seems to be the best guarantee of a lifetime at the poverty level.

If men weren’t willing to have sex outside of marriage, we wouldn’t have this problem. A man who choses to have sex without marriage chooses to risk being poor – having to pay child support can put a real damper on the old lifestyle. Welcome to the poverty level…

But for some women, the risk is actually the desired outcome – being poor with a baby is better than being better off without a baby.

So the risks aren’t quite as symmetrical as they seem.

Used to be, we ostracized those women. But no more. Used to be, we frowned on sex outside of marriage, at least if it was “open & notorious.” No more. Essentially, sex used to incentivize marriage. But since it doesn’t anymore, we have no remaining social tools to clamp down on unmarried sex. So the result is going to be…babies who need support.

As always happens when societal mores break down, we turn to the law. The legal answer is that that men need to be careful to avoid these women, or take precautions if they don’t. Otherwise, the woman gets the child and the man gets to pay support.

Any other answer seems to either produce more unmarried mothers (welfare) or impoverished children (no child support.) Both answers seem to produce worse problems.

Bottom line: the bad answer we have is the best answer we can find, as long as we are depending on the law.

Of course, I suppose that we could require unwed mothers who get child support to have sex once a week with the fathers as long as the child support is being paid. That could provide incentives all around…

We could call that system “marriage.”

Uh…wait a minute…does that mean that maybe we should figure out some way to reincentivize marriage? Hmmm…maybe women could refuse to have sex outside of marriage, and then…naahhh…

Nov 14, 2007 - 4:50 pm 83. AM:

“Why can’t I suggest abstinence from extra-marital sex and still live in the real world?”

I was wondering the same thing.

I stopped dating a decade ago, shortly after I became rich enough to make these kinds of scams worth attempting.

I was lucky. The first woman who tried a get-rich-quick scheme on me changed her story so often (and the pregnancy in question turned out to be fictional) that the courts eventually ruled in my favor. We went on just one date. I didn’t sleep with her. I didn’t even kiss her.

That experience, while painful, taught me a valuable lesson. A woman can ruin a man’s life with a false accusation. Men are presumed guilty. Since then I have been extremely cautious about even being alone with a woman (or a child).

I realize that most women will not try to get child support from men who never even slept with them. But there are enough women who will do that to make the legal and financial risks too high.

Of course, if you have no money or morals, the legal and financial risks of sleeping around as a man are very low. It seems like there’s a strong moral hazard element to family law these days.

Nov 14, 2007 - 5:15 pm 84. Beatrix:

The point being left out of this discussion is that child support is not for either parent — it is for the child. There are three people involved in this situation, not just two, and the child is the only one of those three people who made absolutely none of the choices that brought the situation about. I absolutely agree that there are inequities in the present situation and that the result is that women have more ways out of unwelcome parental responsibilities than men do. But the law has to choose, here, which of three people to be unfair to: unwilling mothers; unwilling fathers; or their unwanted kids. If you think about it, there isn’t any solution that is going to be perfectly fair to all three parties. The claim that women who “hoodwink” men into pregnancies should not be able to look to those same men for financial support seems perfectly fair as far as the father and mother are concerned — but the child ends up short-changed, and what’s fair about that, when the child is the one person who did absolutely nothing to create the situation?

Unfortunately, the law cannot create a perfect world in which there is no unfairness at all and nobody ever has to suffer as the result of a bad choice. Confronted with that impossibility, the law must, instead, choose who should suffer least from the inevitable unfairness of the circumstance of an unwanted pregnancy — and the law has picked the child. Really, can anybody here create a defensible ethical argument that society should have selected fathers to protect from these injustices, rather than children? Even fully acknowledging the truth of the various injustices that commenters here have pointed out, I can’t come up with a better answer that doesn’t foist the injustices improperly onto the kids.

And yes, before somebody else points it out, I realize that the legality of abortion is hardly consistent with the theory that in child support, the law is putting children first.

Nov 14, 2007 - 5:48 pm 85. JHoward:

Within some of the last half dozen or so comments lives an ignorance of the facts.

1. “Deadbeat dads” are a myth and the statistics and documentation thereof are ironclad. Virtually all non-payers are well below poverty level. Many are in jail…collecting not a dime of income. The percentage of dads who do not pay when they can is in the low single percentages. Why? You go to jail if you do not, and believe it or not, dads love their kids. “Child support” is an American institution, as wrong-headed and utterly fiscally asinine as it is. It gets paid.

2. Child support IS welfare, tens of billions of wasteful dollars of it folks, and it REALLY costs like it, underperforms like it, and fails like it. Title IV-D comes from the Einsteins that gave us the $700,000,000,000 Department of Health and Human Services, Welfare, Social Security, TANF, and VAWA. It’s also remolding society and not in a good way.

3. Please stop failing to therefore make the enormous distinction between private responsibilities and federally enforced programs. “Child support” is radically fiscally different from one to the other.

4. Child support, once paid, is untaxed and unaccountable. It has nothing in it whatsoever that ensures it supports children. Evidence is thick on the ground about support going to anything everything BUT the children. Come on, crack mothers care for their kids? Those kids are paychecks, folks. Why would it be any different for child support than we KNOW it is for much of welfare?

Nov 14, 2007 - 6:30 pm 86. Looking Glass:

The child doesn’t get the money. The mother does, unsupervised. A woman willing to trick a man into unwanted fatherhood is unlikely to make a good mother. Nor is she likely to be fiscally responsible if she uses the government to extort money from him.
Going out of her way to have a child out of wedlock does not speak to her concern for the child either.

If it’s really “for the children”, let the father choose what is to be done with the child. The mother thinks he’s a good provider and a good father for the child. She’s proven herself unfit by her actions.

The father can have the child put up for adoption, foster care, adopt it himself, or even have the mother raise it.

This will restore the necessary balance between authority and responsibility. It’s in the best interests of the child.

Nov 14, 2007 - 6:58 pm 87. Mike L:

cubanbob said:
“No form of male birth control is absolute.”

I beg to differ. NO woman I have never had sex with has become pregnant with my child.

Yeah, it sounds a bit utopian, but if you don’t want to be a dad, then Keep It In Your Pants!!! Similarly, I have never suffered from a STD.

Lack of self control, accompanied by a lack of self respect, leads to unintended, yet all too often predictable consequences. The fact that those ‘consequences’ many times result in an unwanted living, breathing human being is tragic and is something that we, as a compassionate society, should strive to minimize.

I don’t really think there is any such thing as an “involuntary” father. “Reluctant” yes…”Regreting”, yes… When YOU ‘volunteer’ to have sexual relations with a member of the opposite sex, YOU have to be ready for the consequences.

Nov 14, 2007 - 8:01 pm 88. Synova:

But if we’re talking about what is good for children… I’m not at all certain that forcing child support in cases of fraud… not just irresponsible sex or freaky acts of God or faulty contraceptives, but FRAUD… is in the best interests of the child.

Because best interests are not just financial.

Men or women should both be held responsible for children they create. I sometimes talk about “legal abortions” for men, but generally it’s to make a point that asking women to be responsible for their choices isn’t unreasonable.

But when it’s *fraud*, when there is good evidence that conception was deceptive and deliberate, I think that a father should have some choices. One of those choices should be full custody with the mother’s custody fully revoked. NOT up to her. If he wants it (and isn’t an ax-murderer,) he should get it. Another choice available should be giving up all parental rights and responsibilities. Another choice should be child support and *joint* custody.

HIS choice.

Firstly, because she should not be rewarded for fraud. Secondly, because if she wanted so badly to have a baby *herself* she ought to be prepared to support it.

Because we aren’t talking about irresponsibility. We’re talking about deliberate, pre-meditated, actions. What’s best for the *child* in this situation is probably NOT having a mother who got away with it.

That the child needs to be cared for is also the reason that laws require a husband to pay support for a child or children that are not his.

This should also change.

It made sense in a different time when paternity was impossible to determine. It doesn’t make sense *now*.

The law should still pick the child, but the law has the ability to identify the father and there is no reason not to do so when it comes to support.

Because guys who don’t keep it zipped SHOULD be responsible for children they father, if they wanted to father children or not.

Or if their girlfriend was married or not.

Nov 14, 2007 - 8:47 pm 89. keelyellenmarie:

Okay, so here’s the thing.

As much as we would like them to be, because it would make things simpler, men and women are not equal players in sex. The woman always has more to lose than the man. Not only can a woman get pregnant, women’s reputations are far more likely to be harmed by sex than a man, they are more likely to get/be seriously harmed by many sexually transmitted diseases, and so on. Guy’s are much more likely than women to be able to just get up and walk away from a sexual encounter and forget about it forever.

Society’s response to this has been to try and make men and women more equal by pushing some of the penalties off on the man. The idea, I suppose, is that the vulnerability and cost of sex should be spread around.

The problem with this, of course, is that it just doesn’t work. It’s artificial, clumsy, and it allows women to act like they haven’t been given (biologically) a greater burden.

The solution? People need to face reality. Women need to realize that they have more to lose, and therefore need to be more involved in protecting themselves. There was a time when culture and technology didn’t make this possible, but now it is. Of course, we don’t live in a perfect world and a lot of girls still don’t have the education and/or confidence to protect themselves, but ideally, women have the ability to protect themselves. And men need to realize that every time a women has sex with them, there is probably more at risk on her side of things than his.

Of course, we can’t count on everyone to be good responsible people, and we can’t legislate proper casual-sex ethics. But we can get rid of the stupid laws that are easily gamed and put some better ones in place that truly protect women AND men from victimization without infantilising either party. The goal of these laws shouldn’t be to make things fair, because things are never going to be fair. The goal should be to prevent serious harm and punish those responsible when it occurs.

And we can also encourage more sex-education and frank discussion about the manners and consequences of casual sex. Because it is going to happen, and being all uptight and stupid about sex is what has got us so screwed up in the first place.

Nov 14, 2007 - 9:06 pm 90. Vanguard:

My father died when I was 10. I spent two years in an orphanage and was shuffled from foster home to foster home.

I put myself through college and earned an Associate of Applied Science in Electrical Engineering Technology with a cumulative GPA of 3.4.

The mother of my child possesses a bachelors and an associates degree.

I began investing in real estate and securities in my mid twenties.

Through hard work and wise investing my net worth most certainly would have been between $1.5 and $2 million by age 55.

I’m 40 and bankrupt. My child support and medical support order total $1130/mo despite the fact that I have my daughter 50% of the time.

I consider myself fortunate. Many Fathers regularly pay their child support yet are prohibited from seeing their children.

I can’t afford to heat my home in winter, drive a “beater”, am behind in all of my bills and am once again facing foreclosure on my home.

My mortgage company will debit my checking account on November 30th.

Should there be insufficient funds, they have informed me that a foreclosure action will be initiated against me.

My take on those sanctimonious persons posting to this thread who in complete ignorance defend the present child support system, yet no nothing about Title IV-D, E, TANF, and the hundreds of billions of dollars in profits by the states at the “EXPENSE” of our children?

“Simple minded.”

The ignorance of those dispensing their overvalued opinions regarding a child support system whose corrupted and deceptive architecture they no nothing about is very entertaining to me.

Those who honesty don’t believe one can be incarcerated and have their assets seized absent a trial and without committing a crime are simple minded people.

Their perception of reality is more than mere illusion, it’s pathological.

I’m facing foreclosure again and honestly don’t care. What can I do? I owe thousands to family members, have no credit and emptied the IRA’s long ago.

Even more funny is that for the first time in my life, I owe the IRS and lack the ability to pay. What are they going to do, take my house?

Why do I find this amusing? First and foremost I still retain my most precious and invaluable treasure. A 50% visitation schedule with my wonderful daughter.

Since I still have access to my daughter (for now), I’m bankrupt, can’t pay my bills, am facing incarceration “again” (because I can’t afford to make court ordered payments) what do I have left for them to take? Absolutely nothing.

Do I mismanage my money? Absolutely not. I simply can’t pay my bills with a child support order that nearly equals my mortgage, and steals almost half of my net monthly income.

Life has become very simple for me. First, pray to God that I will continue to be fortunate enough to see my daughter. Second, stay out of jail.

If I am incarcerated for contempt I will lose my job. That would create a small problem as the “felony clock” begins ticking.

With my support order set as high as it is, in a matter of months I’d officially qualify as a “deadbeat” and a felony non-support warrant for my arrest would be issued.

If that happens, logic dictates but two choices. Go on the lam, or be incarcerated UNTIL I can pay my arrearage.

Do I still find this humorous? ABSOLUTELY! Why?

The day will come when all will not only see, but be forced to acknowledge the truth. By then, it’ll be too late.

If Stephen Baskerville’s newly released book, “Taken Into Custody” doesn’t stop this madness, this country will rightfully implode.

Regards,

Vanguard

Nov 14, 2007 - 10:02 pm 91. David:

What about the guy in Florida (I tghink it was Florida) who was locked up for years on a rape charge. When the powers that be finally got the verdict changed they let him out and he was paid a settlement by the state of over $300,000.

His former girlfriend sued for child support and got over half the money.

Nov 15, 2007 - 1:24 am 92. jw:

I look at this starting with the men who have ZERO choice.

Start with the most serious female offender / male victim rapes that result in pregnancy. For Canada & the US together we get three or four of these every year. The man is, by force of law, a biological cash machine he MUST support both baby and rapist.

Move down the level of violence to where she grabs a used condom and uses the semen to get pregnant. He has only the most minor of choices, but is still a biological cash machine. He must by force of law support both baby and thief.

How much more violent and discriminatory will it be when he has more choice?

A LOT more!

The law must change. Males must be considered human beings. Males are NOT ATM’s with legs!

Nov 15, 2007 - 1:30 am 93. TexasRainmaker:

I took a similar position in an unpopular paper in law school a decade ago (prof. was a woman). The class was called “Religion, Ethics and Law” and I was to take a controversial position on a subject and explore it from religious, ethical and legal views. I reprinted it on my blog a few years ago: http://www.texasrainmaker.com/2005/10/31/113077152519252047

Nov 15, 2007 - 5:20 am 94. CG:

Wow, why don’t we go back to the dark ages!

There was a time in history when women had no rights at all and were considered the property of their husbands. For years in western countries, especially after laws changed in the 1900s, women were usually not financially able to raise children alone. There was no family allowance, no child support, women didn’t even have the right to vote or own property.

These days in western countries women are considered full citizens and have the same rights as men on paper. Yet there is still generally an income gap between women and men and single women are disproportionately taking responsibility for unplanned children, taking 100 per cent of the blame if a pregnancy occurs.

We don’t have safe and effective birth control yet for women – in fact if a woman goes on the Pill for eight years or more she is at a high risk of developing cancer. Many women cannot tolerate the Pill. Depo Provera is dangerous for women’s health so are IUDS. The female condom is difficult to use, it’s hard to find a doctor these days who will fit the cervical cap or a diaphragm. It’s shocking with all the information available about AIDS and STIs (STDS) that condom use wouldn’t be automatic but there are still men out there who refuse to use a condom. There aren’t enough birth control methods focused on men. I think we need better sex ed for both women and men and we need to teach younger women and girls especially how to advocate for themselves better.

In New France (1534-1763) men were obligated to pay for any children they created whether they were married to the woman/girl or not.

Judging from what Amy is saying, since men have carte blanche to use women for sex and then refuse to acknowledge any children they help conceive then women should point blank refuse to have sex with men unless and until the men sign a legal agreement beforehand.

Whatwith hormones and emotions and such I don’t know how realistic that would be, but it would sure save a lot of women from derailed careers and poverty and save a lot of children from the pain of being abandoned by their fathers.

Nov 15, 2007 - 8:45 am 95. Ranba Ral:

What I’ve seen personally of the child support system and the behavior of at least half of the women I’ve known over the years makes me want to keep it in my pants forever. Granted, a lot of deadbeat dads deserve what they get, but I’ve seen too many good guys get screwed to really believe the system works. It wouldn’t be so bad, but the system is apparently stacked in favor of not letting the man act on his responsibilities.

Take, for example, my uncle. He got married just before being shipped to Vietnam. Got his wife pregnant before he left. Upon his return, she divorces him; telling him point-blank that she only married him for the life insurance payout she would inevitably get for him getting KIA. She gets the divorce on the grounds he beat her the entire duration of the marriage. Child support ensues and he is ordered to have no contact with his daughter (he’s infantry, therefore a killer, and he beats his wife magically over thousands of miles of separation), despite wanting to help raise her. The ex-aunt uses my cousin as a pawn to try to get him in trouble throughout the next 8 or so years by dropping her off at my uncle’s house at random, often while he’s at work. After it became obvious he would follow the law and call the social worker and police every time this happened, she stopped and we don’t know what happened to my cousin to this day. All attempts to get joint custody were denied because of the cross-world beatings.

My godfather had a child with his ex also. His military duties kept him bouncing around the nation so direct contact was limited, but he kept in touch with his son by phone and mail and paid above and beyond what he was supposed to because he thought it the right thing to do. The ex-wife sued him shortly before he died for back child-support after their son was over 20. Court defacto finds in her favor because he doesn’t show up (he had cancer treatments where he lived on the other side of the nation), despite the fact that the military automatically garnishes wages for child support and sends it.

This one doesn’t fall into the wanting to be a father to the child category, but further shows me it’s bad news to get too seriously involved with anyone: a buddy whose fiancee at the time gets knocked up. He’s very devout, and was thus waiting until his wedding night for his first time. Turns out the fiancee was being ridden about as often as the Sydney Harbor Ferry by nearly everyone but him. He’s stuck working two jobs to pay child support for a child that isn’t even his, while she doesn’t work (she mooches off her current sugar-daddy) and continues whoring around the clubs. Last time any of the crew saw her she was on child 3 and male money-target number 5.

Nov 15, 2007 - 10:08 am 96. crystal therese:

Looking Glass- Women don’t really have much of a choice when it comes to accepting the consequences of sex. If we get pregnant by accident we HAVE to do something about it, whether that’s raise the child, give it up, or kill it. None of those is an easy choice. WE don’t have the luxury of just taking off the way men do.

This whole idea that men should be relieved of their responsibility because they are not more careful about where they put their dicks is just another symptom of what is wrong with our society. What kind of country do we live in that we place some man’s bank account over the welfare of an innocent child?

While I am sure there might be some instances of women who get pregnant on purpose so that other people- while it’s the welfare system or the baby daddy, those instances are RARE. Of course, losers who seek to shirk their responsibilities are a dime a dozen. This article, however, insinuates that women are lining up to entrap unsuspecting men to a lifetime of lost income. It just gives ammunition to the losers who can’t keep it in their pants to do as they please and then turn around and cry foul when the consequences catch up with them.

Nov 15, 2007 - 10:48 am 97. Edward Lunny:

If a man doesn’t want children, or the responsibilty for them, there are tworules to remember.

1..Never marry.

2..Never engage in vaginal intercourse.

Hew to those rules and the issue will never arise.

Nov 15, 2007 - 10:55 am 98. Looking Glass:

Crystal Therese wrote, “Women don’t really have much of a choice when it comes to accepting the consequences of sex.

Abortion – as long as that option’s on the table arguing “it’s for the children” is fatuous.

The father’s on the hook for the cost of the abortion, no more. Simple, cheap. Everyone’s happy.

Otherwise we’re back to government authority being used to subsidize unwed mothers. Even Bill Clinton didn’t think that was a good idea.

Nov 15, 2007 - 12:24 pm 99. Joe:

14 years ago my wife of a year and a half died of a congenital heart condition. Needless to say I was distraught and an emotional mess for a bit. A few months after that happened I got a call from an “old girlfriend”. I confided to her the recent tragedy. LSS after several long phone conversations I went to her city to spend a weekend. Looking for some affection and familiarity I ended up in bed with her. In the midst of the deal I managed to gasp “is it safe?” to which she replied yes “I’m on the pill”. The relationship didn’t last more than a few weeks. I met my wife of 13 happy years shortly after that relationship ended. You guessed it, I got the call from old girlfriend 3 months later. Having no intention of marrying her nor ever indicating such I asked her if she wanted to have the child anyway and put it up for adoption. Clearly this was not her plan. So I’ve been paying child support for 13 years now. It’s as much as the mortgage on our house. But I was stupid and weak and I look at the monthly support payments as a reminder of the cost of actions based on emotion and thoughtlessness. My wife and I live in a smaller house than we could afford without the CS payments but other than that I have no emotional scars and the “mistake” only costs me money. The other individual has to live daily with her actions.

I failed to note that it came out during the paternity action that she had planned my visit to coencide with her ovulation and intended all along to get pregnant. I was one of several “targets” she had had sex with over a one week period of time.

Bottom line, I’m a lawyer and know full well the lack of justice in the laws and our legal system. I’m sure that the child support statutes could be different and more fair. I know through experience the current laws award a windfall to the unscupulous in the name of the children. But I don’t know how you would fix that without damaging the truley deserving or needy. Was I pissed off at the idea of paying out $180,000 to a whore? You bet. But I made my bed and I’ll teach my kids to be smarter.

Nov 15, 2007 - 1:17 pm 100. D:

so, what gets me after reading much, commenting and reading some more, is how the options seem extreme one way or the other. Is it SO very hard to go back to the moment of the deed, and take equal responsibility?

Some keep repeating “If he has does the deed, he has to pay!”

OK. I’ll take that.

Why doesn’t she, then?

From that moment everything should be halvsies. Support, visitation, AND/OR the abortion question. Period.

She did the deed TOO. It takes two to tango TOO.

It takes TWO to tango

so the responsibility for the child should be divided EQUALLY.

This only makes sense. It’s not fair if you get to pick and chose what things you want.

Sure the guy can take off, and the chica can have the abort without telling. These are people who wouldn’t follow the law in any case. the people who ARE impacted are those that stay to do the right thing for the kid.

It would never be perfect, because the physical truth is that we are NOT equal in terms of carrying the child before birth. But before the eyes of the law we are supposed to be equal, otherwise we call that discrimination.

I am not advocating a return to the dark ages here, that is the most foolish argument I’ve heard. Why should I pay the sins of my grandfather’s generations, or long before?

Why not make it fair moving ahead?

or are the femmes afraid of making it fair? Think on it this way: guys who will take off… already do. Guys who stay… already stay. Same with the women. Why not make it so that those who seek to do right are not punished for doing so? BOTH women AND men.

Nov 15, 2007 - 3:03 pm 101. Alec Leamas:

“Under the safe harbor laws in most states she can simply drop the child off at a hospital or firestation and walk away no questions asked. Totally anonymous. The child is then a ward of the state, and the mother has no financial obligations for the child.

The father effectively does not have this option, nor does he effectively have any capacity to prevent the mother from availing herself of this option.

How is it that the mother can abandon her parental responsibilities even after birth, while a father cannot?”

I would like to see a test case where the father drops the kid off at the firestation “no questions asked.”

I surmise that the Court would find a tortured way around saying “babies are the property of women” but yielding the same result, and landing the man’s ass squarely in jail.

Nov 15, 2007 - 6:44 pm 102. rosignol:

While I am sure there might be some instances of women who get pregnant on purpose so that other people- while it’s the welfare system or the baby daddy, those instances are RARE.

Rare, my @$$. Out of a circle of a dozen or so close friends, no less than three have been targeted- successfully- by women like this.

Seeing the hell (financial, legal, and emotional) these gold-digging, blood-sucking harpies have put my friends through has dramatically changed my opinion of if prostitution should be legal. As near as I can tell, it already is- and it comes with an 18-year financing plan.

Nov 15, 2007 - 8:52 pm 103. cubanbob:

KoryO: if a woman does not want to get pregnant she can either get her tubes tied or abstain. Spare me the taxpayers argument. unless your in the top 20% your not a net taxpayer.

Mike L: if a man is supposed to keep it in his pants are you saying a woman should not be held to the same standard by keeping her legs crossed?

A kid is better of being adopted by parents that truly want him or her than being raised by a woman alone who let herself get pregnant by a man who did not volunteer to be daddy.

All too many woman confuse child support with mom support, sixteen years and six hundred thousand dollars later I know than story all to well. And mom earns 45k a year with full benefits. No need for a pity party for her. As a previous commenter put it so well: the woman have all the rights and none of the responsibilities and the men have all the responsibilities and none of the rights.

Nov 16, 2007 - 12:00 am 104. jw:

The venom from some women!

Are males human beings? Or are we not?

Answer that yes and we can talk. Continue with NO and we cannot talk.

The distrust from some men!

Talk about what you want and what you fear, don’t project.

I fear women’s attitudes in regard to male victim/survivors of sex assault: I’ve GOOD reason to so fear. Women’s attitudes tend to be fairly sexist. I do not have the right to project that women WANT to destroy male survivors.

Nov 16, 2007 - 1:29 am 105. Dee:

The purpose of sex is to make babies. Anything else is just fun.

Even taking all the precautions available, a baby might still be the result. So, if you don’t want a baby and the resulting twenty years of serdom, don’t have sex.

Nov 16, 2007 - 9:37 am 106. Crystal Therese:

Looking Glass- “Simple, cheap, and everyone’s happy?” Oh yes, because having an abortion is soooooo easy. *eye roll* Please! Even if a woman decides to have an abortion, she has to deal with the monetary cost (unless the guy chips in), the physcial pain- oh, and she also has to live with that decision for the rest of her life! Same goes for adoption. Of course most men would not understand that. It’s all so easy for them to just make their “deposit” and run.

Rosignol- The people you know. Now there are some scientifically gathered numbers.

In fact the original article has no data on how often this happens. Why? Because it doesn’t happen that often. But OMG we better have some legislation to protect the wallets of the stupid!!!

This whole discussion is so reminiscent of the Reagan era, when they tried to do away with welfare by painting all women on welfare as lazy,money-grabbing “welfare queens” and conveniently overlooking that the mojority of people on welfare are not like that.

Salted Slug said “The statement that “chivalry is dead, and women killed it” is rather old. I wonder what’s being killed now?”

hehe… Right now? My desire to ever get involved with another man so long as I live.

Nov 16, 2007 - 11:24 am 107. masterwindu:

My Body.
My Choice.
OUR SHARED RESPONSIBILITY.

Who wants it both way.

Nov 16, 2007 - 12:35 pm 108. masterWindu:

So let me get this straight. It is the women right to choose if the man will be the fater or just sperm donor, but somehow, resposiblity for an action that is totally hers is shared by someone that has no input into the decision!!! As far as I am concern, if there was not intention what so ever, its no different than the woman going to the clinic and getting impragnated. I can see that many posters believes what I heard many times but would have been too affraid to say in most circles. Men always pay for it. If the man does not want to concequence of her choice too bad, you had sex, so you pay, next time go on the street where the price are cheeper. And yes, it is her choice, pregnancy does not imply birth any more, (about 20 to 25% of pregnacies are aborted).

Nov 16, 2007 - 12:54 pm 109. Melissa:

All u people say that a man is responsible no matter what because they didn’t use a condom. What about if the man thought she wasn’t going to get pregnant because she said she was on birth control? I’m sorry for all u against me, but if a woman lies in order to get pregnant, then no the man shouldn’t be financially liable to that child. She wanted it so deal with it. Our system is so screwed up that it does not matter what a woman says or does, men have no say in it. If they are the father, they are going to have to pay. How is it fair to try and bring a father into the life of a child after 8 years because that’s what the woman wanted? That will take a toll on that child years down the road. To all women, think before u decide to lie about birth control. It’s not just ur own lives ur screwing up.

Apr 23, 2008 - 1:07 pm 110. LJC:

This is a tough topic because I am in somewhat of a similar situation. I recently had gotten off of the depo provera shot (which I have been on for a number of years) and was told that I would be sterile for a year. It just so happened that four months after getting off of the shot I ended up pregnant. We have discussed this and I actually thought that I was okay because I would be sterile (well supposed to be). With this issue I agree with Melissa. I do not believe in abortions at all unless it is required by the doctor to do so. Now if the man does decide to eventually to do for the child financially or be in the child’s lifr then that is when you can do the things that you need to make it happen. If the man feels that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with the child financially or physically then I feel that I you can not force it upon that man. It takes to, but it takes one to be the smart one in the situation. I am not making him obligated to do anything for my child if he does not want to do anything for it, and I will not be upset with him for his decicision either. This was an actual mistake on my behalf for actually believing that I was sterile after getting off of the shot.

May 11, 2008 - 4:33 am 111. cam:

It take two to make a child it should take two to rise
The child. This is so far from the truth. As many fathers can’t get custoy. Even when their fit, willing and able. It’s not 50/50. The woman could have 5 kids with 5 diffrent fathers and still have all power to their up bringing. What a shame!

Jun 20, 2008 - 3:07 pm 112. Daddy Nobucks: When Involuntary Fathers Are Forced to Foot The Bill - antimisandry.com:

[...] Goddess,

Oct 1, 2008 - 6:42 pm 113. Anonymous:

Child support is and has always been a scam to cheat men out of their money and create a legal way for women to extort it from them and continue to receive a free ride through life. As a woman, I feel only contempt for other women who choose not to stand on their own two feet and suck up their philandering ways. A woman physically is the baby making machine, therefore it is her sole responsibility to raise and pay for the little monster she spits out.

Nov 16, 2008 - 10:18 am 114. Colin Timberlake:

Interesting post. Definitely a complicated issue…

Jan 21, 2009 - 10:35 pm

Write a Comment

Name:	(required, displayed)
Email:	(required, not publicized)
URL:	(optional, displayed)
Comments: