Re: 400 ?Deadbeat Dads? but not ONE with a Decent Job?
- From: wrat@xxxxxxxxx (the wharf rat)
- Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2007 00:32:37 +0000 (UTC)
In article <MPG.2078631a234a5bd99898aa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Darling Regan <pennyforyourfoam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hey hon, show me where it said the mothers are not. It's a given that
they are, since the dads are too busy jacking off & being jobless.
Listen, sweetheart, you're the one who thinks "show me
where it says that" is good logic. And I'm *sure* the kids
are always being taken care of and not locked in the car while
mom plays bingo or left alone in the flat for three days while she
goes on a crack cocaine binge or just left in a dumpster behind
some Burger King somewhere. Because mom would never do that.
"What kind of parent wouldn't want to give his money to
his children"? The kind of parent whose parental role is reduced
by law to that of indentured servant, a kind of nonhuman inanimacy
whose sole purpose is to offload the financial burdens of the state.
You and me have a one night stand (As if! To quote my worthy
opponent, **cringe** Anyway...). You get pregnant. You make the
decision not to terminate the pregnancy. You get WIC and AFDC.
You decide not to give the child up for adoption. You get the
joy and rewards of raising a child. I get...the bills. If I'm
very lucky and you decide to cooperate I may get to visit the child
one or two days a month. Maybe. And the bills depend on my income,
as if it costs more to raise a child if her father's a plumber than
if he stocks shelves at Walmart. Or as if she can't decide to spend
the money on nail polish and crack cocaine instead of the kids.
Maybe if men were allowed to participate in a parental
role that included something besides mere financial support they'd
be more committed to the process, hmmm?
Oh, all right, I'm playing the devil's advocate to a large
degree. I realize the decision to bring a pregnancy to term can't
be reduced to simplicities like this, and that an honorable man
would support his erstwhile partner as much as he could. The real
problem is that the system is broken, and the male parent - even if
related to the woman by marriage - is relegated to the role of
"wallet", as he is in so many other venues. It's a way of trying
to prevent the State from being saddled with the costs of a broken
system, which tries to assign ownership of children in some quasi-
Solomonaic fashion. ("Cut them in half, and give him the bills")
The real problem here I think is that the patrilineal system
is a distortion of natural human social organization. Humans are
naturally patriarchal and naturally matrilineal (think of the way
the ancient Welsh societies are reported to have been arranged).
Children should be supported by the mother and the mother's blood
relatives, uncles and aunts and so on. Problems like paternity fraud
and the need to maintain the putative father as an indentured servant
for 21 years disappear.
.
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