Child Support and the Forced Father

The Opinion ^ | 20 Jan 03 | Angelica Haycook

[Mr. Silverback]

It goes now, and always has gone, that the father of a child (if absent from the child's life) is to pay child support in order for the mother to better care for the child conceived by the two people. This is a good idea, for many women have a hard time holding down a full-time job that pays well, while taking care of a child. Also, the father should have a responsibility towards the child they conceived together.

However, some cases have come to my attention in a personal incident, and I cannot help but think that the legal system is overlooking something important. There are women, who are in a relationship with a man, who have promised the man that she is on some form of birth control. Then the man comes to find that she is not, in fact, on birth control or, the woman stops taking her birth control without informing her partner.

The man, being in a relationship, feels that he can trust his partner and then finds that he has been deceived. The woman has become pregnant without his knowledge or consent, therefore inflicting the responsibility of a child upon herself. The man, feeling hurt and angered by her deception, leaves the relationship and later receives papers for child support.

The courts overlook the fact that the man had no knowledge of the woman's failure to continue the said birth control she was supposedly taking. He has been forced to be a father without his consent. They just look at the fact that he had unprotected sex with her and force him to pay child support. They forget that he was deceived and, if one cannot trust a person with whom they are in a long-term relationship, who can they trust?

Should this child truly be his responsibility or should the mother, who inflicted the pregnancy upon herself, without her partner's consent, have to take on the responsibility of raising the child on her own based upon the fact that she wanted the child in the first place and the man did not? In saying that she was on birth control and never telling the man that she had discontinued such medication, she has essentially promised him that he will not be having any unwanted children. So, any children that result from her negligence to take the birth control she informed him she was taking, should be solely her responsibility.

[goodnesswins]

P.S....you're WAAYYY behind on your reading, aren't you?.....lol.

[Mr. Silverback]

If your comments were directed at me, hold your fire. I only posted this article. It was written by an empty-headed twit named Angela Haycook.

It is my own personal belief that any man who dips his wick is consenting to support any resulting children by the very act. Don't want to pay child support, keep it in your pants.

[Mr. Silverback]

Never trust a woman.

So...Do you distrust every Black male because one robbed a convenience store? Every white male because a white male robbed some other convenience store? Every Asian male because of Pearl Harbor? Every Hispanic male beause of Santa Anna being a scumbag? How about distrusting only white women, because of Susan Smith and Andrea Yates?

Grow a brain or get off FR. DU has a place for you.

[Mr. Silverback]

WHY can't the MAN make sure conception does NOT happen via a condom? WHY is that overlooked?

Who cares? This guy the author describes dipped his wick and now won't pay child support. Well, if he was wearing a condom and it broke, would he not have to pay child support? The guy is a first class weenie trying to ditch his legal and moral duty, and no fact regarding who did or should have used birth control and what type is going to change it. You don't want to pay child support, keep it in your pants, boys.

[cyborg]

If the man doesn't want a baby then don't have any sex. Period.

[Mr. Silverback]

I would have thought that the responsiblity would be shared by both parents.

True, but the responsibility in question is financail, and is specifically this particular man's. If he didn't want to write the checks, he should have kept it zipped.

[cyborg]

LOL!!!!! You've expressed that sentiment to your wife I am sure.

[Mr. Silverback]

If the man doesn't want a baby then don't have any sex. Period.

Roger that!

[NeonKnight]

Just Dam!! I was reading thru this thread...and saw a comment with my handle. I thought...how did someone steal my handle? Then I noticed it was from over a year ago.

[Mr. Silverback]

If his wife behaves irresponsibly, it's still his fault because he didn't choose her wisely enough. Is any part of this her responsiblity? Or am I missing something?

Apparently you are. Recommending that someone choose their mate for life with due care does not equal alleging that they have responsibility for that mate's moral failures.

Let me give you an example: If I said to a hiker, "Be careful of bears on the trail," am I blaming him for any mauling he might receive? No, I am warning him to exercise due care in an activity that is mostly safe, but can hold grave dangers. Proverbs 17:12 says, "Better to meet a bear robbed of her cubs than a fool in his folly." Was Solomon blaming his readers for the conduct of fools, or giving fair warning?

[Mr. Silverback]

I think support of the child should of course be a given --- however custody shouldn't be guaranteed to the mother --- what if custody was given to the better parent and the father was awarded custody and the mother had to pay him child support?

You have a good point, but I think it's more a matter of guys (of the type who aren't going to marry or live with the mother) having a dip-the-wick-and-move-on instinct and the women (of the type that don't immediately head to the abortion clinic) having a maternity instinct. It's not that the court prejudice toward mothers is all that heavy, it's that the fathers seldom ask for custody, and are willing to just write the check and suck it up for 18 years.

In the mind of a single male slut, the equations work this way:

Baby + Custody = Time monopolizing Chick repellent

Baby + Child Support payments = Eating Top Ramen more often but getting a lot more casual sex from the next few conquests.

[Mr. Silverback]

Just Dam!! I was reading thru this thread...and saw a comment with my handle. I thought...how did someone steal my handle? Then I noticed it was from over a year ago.

Yeah, all of a sudden there were comments on my "My Comments" page castigating me for leaving some woman with a child I wouldn't support, and I'm like, "What the..."

Last year sometime I pinged my pro-life ping list to an article that was exactly one year old. I didn't notice the year, and thought, "Hot off the presses!"

[NeonKnight]

Maybe this should be moved to breaking news.

[Mr. Silverback]

Maybe this should be moved to breaking news.

LOL! Well, Saturday is usually a pretty slow news night...

[whereasandsoforth]

Any man who has sex with a woman is subject to making a woman pregnant. They are both responcible. Where's the rubber in this? A woman can't force a man not to wear a condom. But then, that's not a 100% idea either.

But I do have a problem with the child support game. The woman and child often go on to live a fancy life with the second husband, who really finances the child, while the dad lives in a Roach Motel because he has to pay child support to stay out of jail.

My brother divorced his wife. They had two kids. He had to pay $100.00 per week. Their best friends broke up and brother married the wife, who had two kids. Best friends wife's ex-husband had to pay $100.00 per week. Then first wife married a divorced man with two kids. He had to pay $100.00 per week. I suggested my brother send his ex-wife's husband's ex-wife $100.00 per week to save on postage.

True story.

[walden]

The laws in Texas must have changed since I was divorced in '91. At the time, my husband was making over $70k, I was making maybe $45k (maybe less, can't remember exactly), and I got $700 per month in support for my two daughters ages 5 and 6. We split all property right down the middle (we're both accountants, so at least THAT was easy for us.) But, to lessen the trauma to my children I kept them in the same (expensive) Montessori school until they started first grade and stayed in the same (moderate, but pricy for my income alone) house. The monthly support amount was adjusted upward by the inflation rate each year, so it's a bit more than that now, but in the face of the actual costs of raising a child, it helps but it's much less than half. Aside from the ordinary costs of food, clothing, housing, daycare, you have to figure in all the extras over the years-- YMCA camp, band camp, Outward Bound, out-of-town band trips to places like Chicago, karate, two clarinets, swim team, tennis team, prom dresses (Yikes!), more kinds of private lessons than I can even remember, etc. etc.. It just goes on and on. Now my youngest is struggling with physics and I can't help her, so that's $40 a week to the physics tutor (he's really good, though!)

Fortunately, my income rose over the years and I'm a good money manager. I also was given a wonderful man who LIKES to contribute to raising my children (I say "given" because I'm certain that God sent him), so it hasn't been particularly difficult for me. But it easily could have been. I know another woman who has twin seventeen year olds, a boy and a girl, who is filing bankruptcy. She's an excellent mother, always given her children what they needed and was good for them, like extra-curriculars. She lives and spends money sensibly and has always worked as a teacher. But her ex has NEVER paid support, and on a teacher's salary, it just finally got to be too much. There, but for the grace of God, go I.

The moral of the story is that there are two sides to every coin-- for every injustice in one direction, there's an injustice in the opposite direction.

[walden]

"The state estimates that a custodial parent spends 72 hours more per year with the child than a non-custodial parent."

Depends on the parents and the age of the child. I divorced when my children were 5 and 6, they're now 17 and 18, and I can say that, over the course of the years, that "72 hours" is absolute bovine excrement.

[walden]

"What's more valid, the *his* drive to have sex, or *her* drive to reproduce?"

Hmmm. Good point. I never thought of it like that before. I was always responsible about reproduction, but I've known MANY men who weren't even slightly responsible about sex. And, we're all people of the same type-- intelligent, educated, etc..

[teldon30]

Quit using logic....you may give someone a headache ;)

[FITZ]

Plus many of them are pretty good losers who know there are ways out of paying for their children. There is a guy here who earns $6 an hour --- but brags about siring 7 illegitimate children with 6 different women --- he believes that makes him a real stud. Another guy has 4 with the same woman but all the children are on welfare but he feels real macho all the same --- he and the mother are illegal so they don't actually get their own welfare check but they of course handle the children's checks.