'No, child support can’t be a choice'

Choice for me (the woman) but not for thee (the man).

Isn't that the standard feminist approach to gender equality?

I am still new to MRA. I have seen this issue before. And I am not so sure it is wise to embrace it. I hope not to antagonize anyone, but I am going to put out my ideas and I would like to hear arguments if I am wrong.

I think it is quite clear that if a woman is pregnant, she cannot (and should not) be forced to get an abortion. She, alone, has the right to proceed to birth or termination. It is her body.

If the man also wants the baby, the only issue then is parental rights.

But does a man have the right to opt out of fatherhood?

At face value, I would agree. But there is another facet to the story.

Fathers play a significant role in the life of children. My daughter, who is now 12, is totally crushed when she loses my attention (my wife says she is seeking me and even my wife cannot help).

My son, who is now nine, is slowly gravitating toward me and orbiting me. This is giving my wife time to do her things as I step up more than I have ever done in the past.

So I very cautious about "allowing" men to step out of father hood. There is a child born into the world. And children need women and they need men. And if the argument to "step out" is that easy, then so, too, is the argument that fathers are not essential.

This leaves me with a conunudrum. I am beginning to feel that despite my strong dedication to MRA, that this issue should be really thought through. And I remain, for now, of the opinion that it is a woman's body. And she decides (although I must add taht I am also coming to feel that abortion is wrong -- but this is a totally different issue). And if a child enters this world, it obligates the man to be a father. And that is the end of that.

I think what we need is not an argument to get men off the hook, but to teach them how critical it is to be a father, and to approach intercourse with a greater measure of caution.

I am open to hearing disagreement.

I appreciate your thoughtful comments.

I have looked at this issue and concluded men, like women, should not be compelled by the state to be parents. Eventually, compelling men to pay child support, for example, leads to the state using its police power to jail men who don't pay. It costs about $30,000 a year to jail a man. We'd be better off if the state simply gave the custodial parent $30,000 a year. Jailing a man means he can't pay child support and makes it harder for him to get a job when he gets out.

The true analog here for me is adoption. A woman can place a child for adoption without the father's consent. In doing so, she completely eliminates his financial obligation to the child. He, however, by law cannot make this decision for himself. Why should only the woman be able to make this choice? Is the man less human?

The solution for me is fairly simple: the father simply signs over his rights and responsibilities to the mother just as she does when she places the child for adoption. The mother could also do the same, if dad agrees: sign over her rights and responsibilities to the father. In fact, the first option if a woman wants to adopt the child should be to find the father and offer him the option of raising the child on his own. I'm not sure that's even possible under today's laws. Even if she turns over the child to the father, she may still have to pay child support. Better for her to place the child for adoption.

Also, I increasingly favor another solution: Eliminate child support by giving the child to the father to raise. In that way, he can meet his financial responsibilities to his child directly. The mother could offer whatever support she wishes. This solution has a lot of advantages. For one, it eliminates the need for child support enforcement. And it reduces the need for public support, as single fathers usually make more money than single mothers. It also ends bickering between divorced couples; he has no reason to deny her visitation if she doesn't pay. And no jail time for failure to pay a debt. Yes, it's unfair mom doesn't have to pay--but it's better than the alternative.
And it won't work in all situations. But I think everyone would be better off if dads had custody 85% of the time instead of mom. I also suspect it would change the behavior of both men and women, likely reviving marriage as the best way to raise a child. Marriage is a good thing--except under today's divorce laws.

(And to be more specific, what I prefer is joint custody with the father having primary residential custody without obligatory child support paid by either party. That way, the children are provided for and yet still have two parents in their lives. There would be exceptions, of course, such as an unfit father.)

Thomas, I do not support "paper abortion". I think I am the only one here, but occasionally on reddit I come across other MRAs who find it to be contradictory like I do, but we are definitely the minority.

I had written quite a bit about it, but my computer crashed recently and I lost many documents. But here is a collection of some of my thoughts

Women and men do have the same rights. When the judge ruled on Roe V Wade, he based it on constitutional rights. The right to liberty (some refer to this as bodily autonomy) and the right to medical privacy (which I guess is written somewhere in our constitution). Based on these two rights the judge concluded that the state could not block a woman's access to abortion. Men have the same right to liberty and medical privacy. Many pro--abortion people refer to a fetus as "tissue" or "mass of cells"; if a man wants to remove tissue or mass of cells from his body, he is legally able to do so.

Child support belongs to the child not the mother. So there are no legal grounds for the mother to negotiate this away. it certainly is not in the best interest of the child. The actions of the mother should have no effect on the chil's right to care from his/her father.

Children do (or should) have an inherent right to their fathers. MRAs frequently argue that children have this right, so I find "paper abortion" to be contradictory.

Often the argument used is that women make all the choices, therefor should have all the responsibility. Well then, that means all children fully belong to mothers. Men will have to ask permission to be given fathers rights for every pregnancy. There will be no need to require a fathers consent for adoption as the child will not even belong to the father unless the woman has granted him this role.

Currently mothers do not have the right to put children up for adoption without fathers approval. I have many adoptions in my family (my siblings and I are all adopted, as well as some of my cousins, aunts, uncles, etc). In my immediate and extended family we have had birth father's block adoptions. There are some loopholes that should be closed up, but it is difficult and often outside of the law for a mother to surrender a child for adoption against the father's wishes.

Safe Haven laws are a fastrack to the adoption procedure. They are well published so any potential parent can come forward to claim the child. It is assumed the father has already abandoned, or he can come and do a DNA test and claim the child. Laws like this are in place to protect the child, not as a convenience to the mother. Safe haven cases are rare, if they were the default or increased in numbers, then adjustments would likely be made, as I don't thin society wants to be a dumping ground or default for irresponsible parents.

How many fathers will change there minds? I know plenty of cases that have been posted here about adoption and single motherhood by choice, where the bio-father seems to be changing his mind after he made a decision before birth. How many men will claim they didn't know what they were signing or that it is in the child's best interest.

Paper abortion would be impossible to implement. A potential father (male sex partner) would have to prove that he left contact info, the mother would have to send notice of pregnancy, etc. Each party would have to have proof of sending and receiving documents. There could be incentive by both parties to dodge notification, so record keeping would be a concern. If paper abortion did become a thing, then I am sure pre-sex contracts would become a thing. A man would have to agree to certain risks and responsibilities before a woman would have sex with him.

With financial abortion men would have an unfair bargaining advantage. It would run many good and willing fathers out to the perimeter, as the benefits of paper abortion are too good to pass up. If they choose financial abortion, it is more likely than not they will eventually get the benefits of paternity (they obviously get to pass on their genes). It would be impossible in many situations to stop a father-child relationship from forming. In a dating situations the couple would likely live in close proximity, know each other's families, etc. In some situations the father might live in the home, or the couple may have other children together. Parenting is like an investment, the hardest work is in the beginning and the payoff is in the end, a father can skip the hardest parts and then show up later, have grandkids, etc.

It would really turn society into a ghetto, where women are the matriarchs of the family, the fathers are in and out or on the perimeter, taxpayers foot the bill, and it is far worse for boys then it is for girls.(drop out rates, depression, jail, etc).

I am in full support of improving the current system. I do think women need to have more financial obligations towards their children in unplanned situations, and fathers deserve equal custody and parental rights. I'm all for doing away with child support as long as children are cared for and parental rights are protected. Child support money seems to be the biggest concern when men speak about paper abortion, but I think MRA's should come up with a better plan, then trying to argue that babies only belong to mothers or that men have no responsibility to control their own sperm, woman should just have to abort, or that adults can make babies and then after birth dump them on to taxpayers to foot the bill.

Not only do children need their fathers, but fathers need their children. Society is much better when we have fathers.

I understand the argument that you are making, but the problem is that it applies a standard that is not applied to both sexes. If the government is not willing to enforce the need for father involvement, by enforcing visitation, requiring fathers be informed upon the birth of a child, requiring mothers to have a father involved through sanctions of some sort, than it is unreasonable to force the relationship onto fathers.

Yes, the impact fathers have on their children is enormous, and yet, despite the proven consequences of fatherlessness, what exactly is being done to ensure women aren't having children with unwilling men? This is ultimately the problem being addressed by legal parental surrender, and it needs to be acknowledged. If the man is unwilling to be a father, forcing him to pay child support isn't going to change his lack of involvement. It isn't going to make him want to be a father. It will only develop a resentment to that child. So forcing child support on him still doesn't address your complaint with the opt out option. What it DOES do, is incentives women who want a child anyways, to have it with whomever happens to be available... after all, the government will make him pay her anyways, so what does it matter if he's willing?

"I think what we need is not an argument to get men off the hook, but to teach them how critical it is to be a father, and to approach intercourse with a greater measure of caution."

I think we need both. No amount of "fathers are critical" messages are going to make a man who doesn't want to be a father, and really doesn't like the mother for deceiving him, and who resents the child brought into the world against his wishes and who is the reason for forced obligation (not to the child, but to the mother who deceived him. no matter how often women/feminists insist child support is for the child... it isn't, and we all know it)... no message is ever going to get through all that. And that needs to be acknowledged. And it needs to be addressed from the other end... If those men are never going to be willing to be fathers, then lets figure out how to avoid making them fathers in the first place.

Let me ask you this... if men are given the option to opt out, the pregnancy trap becomes a thing of the past (I know two guys who fell victim to it, at least. It still happens today). Pregnancies stop being monetized. Do you believe we would still be seeing the number of pregnancies to single mothers that we see today? Sure, we'd still see some. But women would again start looking for men who WANTED to be fathers.

Without taking up the paper abortion issue (you already know where I stand on that so I won't re-argue it w/ you), I just want to mention that the Con'n doesn't say anything abt the "right to privacy" in any context. It does mention these two important rights, however: the right of the ppl to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, and the right against unreasonable searches and seizures (amend. 4). Between these two rights the courts have inferred that the FFs meant to guarantee that the ppl would not have their private lives intruded upon without compelling reason by state officers (e.g., execution of a valid search warrant or intrusion into a home in a sincere "hot pursuit" based on reasonable cause). Another protection that can be considered a basis for this inference is the prohibition of quartering troops among the ppl except in wartime (amend. 3). Having soldiers in your home during peacetime whom you are expected to feed and house: can you imagine a more intrusive state presence in your home? Hard to. [Arguably, amend. 10 also supports an inferred privacy right since it basically says: Anything not mentioned herein is off-limits to the fed. gov't's regulation. But in Roe v. Wade, the law in question was a Texas state law, so amend. 10 doesn't quite enter into it here.]

But the matter of privacy as even addressed implicitly by the Con'n is limited to the relationship the citizen has with the gov't; Roe v. Wade wasn't about the question of the gov't having, for example, a claim of right to know one's medical records' contents. It was instead the question of whether or not a particular medical procedure could be categorically outlawed if that procedure is voluntarily undertaken with informed consent. The pro-choice contention was that the state of Texas had no right under the Con'n to do so, and in fact the 14th amendment's due process clause enabled the individual's "right to privacy" that precluded the state's involvement with it. (Notice that there's nothing in the 14th amendment mentioning "privacy"; as with the amends. mentioned above, the judiciary is filling in the blanks.)

The SC sided with the pro-choice argument, but conceded the state could regulate to a reasonable degree the enabling practice of medicine or other relevant terms of its permission, hence the permissibility of the "first trimester" limitation (which was later modified in a subsequent case). The state's pro-life argument was that it had a compelling interest in keeping abortions from happening insofar as they could based on the belief that human life starts at conception and that as such, the fetus is essentially an unborn citizen who has the right to the state's protection from harm (several legal principles at work), as well as to protect the mother from the procedure's risks. As legal history shows, the state lost the case.

So what it all boils down to is just this: "privacy" isn't mentioned once in the US Con'n anywhere, yet it nonetheless is, like the common law right to be left in peace, an absolutely critical component to the essential concept of liberty as the western mind generally conceives of it. In fact it is these two "mundane" rights: privacy and solitude (both in the classic sense of solitude and in the going-on-about-your-business-unharassed sense) -- that underpin liberty itself, as tyranny requires that these two rights be fundamentally abrogated. But with these rights in place, liberty can then flourish, since in tyranny's absence, liberty usually grows, as people naturally seek to live lives in liberty instead of tyranny. With the secure feeling of a definition of personhood that privacy brings people, together with an absence of interference in their private, lawful actions, the population is pretty good at looking after itself. (Now whether you agree that the 14th amend. was justification or not for the Roe ruling: different matter.)

Next question is this: How much do modern people have of these two things, the right to privacy and the right to solitude? Guess that's also a different matter. >)

The bottom line for me is this: as long as the government can take kids from their father, give them to the mother, and force dad to pay for it all, the government will continue to do so. The divorce rate will continue to be high and the percentage of single mothers will increase. These are all made possible by compulsory child support. And by denying fathers the rights to their children.

All of this will continue to happen unless men are given the right to opt out of parenthood and its legal obligations, just as women are given the options.

And I also observe that the sex with the most reproductive options--women--usually end up with the kids. The sex with the fewest reproductive options--men--usually end up without the kids.

Thank you for shining a light on this.

I had never considered these issues.

I agree with what I have read.

(And continue to regret what an ass I have been.)

A confession: the first time I heard of this idea I thought it was a really bad idea.

Ultimately, I changed my mind and began to advocate for this idea. But I didn't start out a true believer. It took some convincing.

Don't feel bad, Thomas. The point you made gave me pause.

Ultimately, I feel that parents do not have the right to abandon their children, whether male or female. However, this will never be reflected by law. As such, I feel that the only fair way to deal with the situation is to afford both genders equal options when it comes to reproduction. That is, if you are going to give one gender the ability to opt out of parenthood with no real negative consequences, it should be given to the other gender as well. Either that, or neither gender should be allowed to opt out. I'd be happy with laws reflecting either of these, although ideally parents should not be allowed to abandon their kids, period. I include abortion in my definition of abandonment.

where is that dam male birth control pill? an easy solution for all concerned.

excuses I have seen so far for not having one:

1. science couldn't come up w/ one?
yeah, right. got multiple ways to make it hard tho.

2. its not economically feasible.
yeah, something 1/2 the population might need? no $$ in it for pill companies? again yeah, right.

3. men won't take it.
that one is laughable.

4. men can't be trusted to take it and thereby cause women to ...
so foolish, does this one even need a comment?

5. it would be bad for women wanting children.
isn't that part of the argument here?

6. married man could deprive his wife of having children.
right back at ya. could you imagine the lawsuit? yo honor, he takes that dam pill and I can't get no check from uncle sugar!

also, keep in mind one thing, men don't get the same respect for their bodies now women get. many married men find out the hard way (in many states) they can only get a vasectomy w/ wife's approval. even where not required, some dr.s won't do it w/o an approval agreement signed by his mistress in charge, just in case.

From http://goodmenproject.com/newsroom/are-men-legally-required-to-ask-their-spouses-permission-for-a-vasectomy/:

'Well, according to Janet Crepps, a lawyer at the Center for Reproductive Rights, while there’s absolutely no law requiring men to obtain their partner’s consent, it can be imposed on a case-by-case basis at a clinical level.

"Doctors can impose requirements in a private setting in order to protect themselves legally. It’s their choice that they want to do that. While it would be pretty difficult for a wife to successfully sue a doctor for doing a vasectomy on her husband, it wouldn’t surprise me if their legal counsel insisted that they would be better off getting that consent. That said, nobody I know is imposing that kind of requirement."

In short, doctors are given license to decide on whom they perform surgery based on medical judgment and experience, but most of them seem to be conducting themselves reasonably and ethically.

But what if the genders had been reversed? What if we took out the words “urologists” and “vasectomy” and replaced them with “gynecologists” and “tubal ligation,” or even “abortion”?'

Looks to me like it's not too much unlike abortion; it's legal, but many MDs simply won't perform it for whatever reason(s) they have. While in this case urologists are not categorically saying they will not do a vasectomy, many do seem to be saying they simply don't want to be part of a marital blow-up. I suppose I'd be more sympathetic if MDs who perform tubal ligations had the same trepidations, too. I have never heard of that being the case, though. Has anyone?

Whenever the topic of needing wives permission for vasectomy comes up on various boards or blogs, someone always comments about it being the same for female tubal ligation, and they often provide sources.

There are no laws which requires men or woman to have "spousal permission" for sterilization anywhere in the USA so the few doctors which have such policies are doing so out of personal reasons. I would suggest finding another doctor if anyone comes across this.

One quick google search will tell you that some woman have come across doctors requesting spousal permission for tubal ligation. IMO These are examples of doctors implementing bad and unneccesary policies. There is NO LAW requiring this for men or women, and most doctors dont require spousal permission for either procedure.

I once spoke to a doctor informally about a vasectomy and he told me point blank that the law required me to have my wife's permission. I believed him. Why would a doctor lie to me?

Turns out, he was lying to me. The law doesn't require it. But some doctors fear being sued by the spouse, so they engage in CYA.

Later, my then wife had a tubal ligation without my permission. I was given no consent form. She just did it. I didn't mind too much because we had all the kids I wanted. But it was decision we should have made together.