I frequently read and hear anecdotes about non-custodial parents (usually fathers) being ordered to pay outrageously high child support – amounts that are impossible for anyone with an ordinary income to afford. No doubt some of these anecdotes are exaggerated, but I’m convinced that some are not. Unaffordable child support payments don’t benefit anyone – not even the children – and should not be imposed. Furthermore, some measures to help non-custodial parents pay child support – such as a tax deduction of some sort – would be reasonable.
However, some men’s rights activists (MRAs) use rhetoric which suggests that child support payments are often or typically outrageously high, or that child support has made single motherhood a profitable situation for women. Neither claim is true.
According to a recent U.S. Census Bureau report (pdf link), the median child support payment in the U.S. is $280 a month. The average child support payment is a little higher – $350 a month. That’s a noticeable amount – similar in scope to payments on a new car – but it’s hardly the crushing, slavery-like burden some MRAs seem to describe child support as.
Although the Census Bureau report doesn’t provide detailed income breakdowns, what information it has indicates that child support amounts are sensitive to income. For instance, among fathers who are below the poverty line, the median child support payment is $125 a month, compared to a median of $300 a month for those above the poverty line.
So despite the terrible anecdotes that we hear (and if you think about it, it’s those who are mistreated by the system who are going to talk about their experiences the most often), the evidence shows that typical child support payments are not ridiculously high. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be concerned about those outliers who are being ordered to pay unaffordable amounts of child support; however, I think the weight of the evidence suggests that while the system may need some tweaking, on the whole it’s not broken.
* * *
So the typical child support payment is $280 a month – put another way, half of custodial parents who receive child support get $280 a month or less. How does that compare to the costs of raising a child?
Again, the federal government compiles some good statistics on this (pdf link). For a single parent with an income of about $17,500, raising a single child for 17 years will cost about $10,125 a year, or $840 a month.
Of course, a single parent who earns $17,500 a year is pretty poor. What about single parents who aren’t poor? For better-off single parents – those earning an average of $65,000 a year – raising a single child for 17 years will cost almost $21,600 a year, or a little over $1,800 a month.
All told, the typical child support payment in the USA covers much less than half the expense of raising a child. Custodial parents – usually mothers – are taking on not only the majority of the work involved in childrearing, and the majority of the opportunity costs – they’re taking on the majority of the cash expenses, as well.
Therefore, I’d support a two-tiered reform to child support. Child support payments should be made more sensitive to individual situations, so that noncustodial parents are not saddled with irrational and impossible-to-pay child support orders, as has happened in some outlier cases. At the same time, typical child support payments are simply too low, compared to the cost of raising a child; therefore, most non-custodial parents should have their child support obligations increased. (This will also have the side benefit of reducing unwed motherhood.)
NOTE FOR COMMENTS: Please don’t post about how you have an income of $500 a month and the judge ordered you to pay $2000 a month in child support to your ungrateful lazy ex-spouse who spends all the child support money on dresses she can wear to the track and she earns more than you do anyway and the judge won’t even reply to your motions. Unless I know both you and your ex-spouse, and can verify for myself that she’d tell me the same version of events that you’re telling me, I don’t think anecdotal evidence of that sort is more useful than the federal data.
Horror stories? Check this one out. Fortunately he had enough money to appeal the judges decision. How can a person who makes $9,000/month be a pauper. Easy:
Martello v. Martello
On $9,000/month in gross income {by definition that is before taxes} he was ordered to pay $5,741 in spousal support and $2,372 in child support leaving him with $887/month to live on. {they failed to deduct his Federal, State, FICA, and self employed FICA taxes – approximately $2,500}.
Even if the court hadn’t been excessive, self-employed businesspeople can either make out like bandits if their business takes off or get into deep trouble very quickly if business slacks off.
At least that case was overturned. The same appeals court, on the same day, upheld this decision:
Lambert v Lambert
Case facts:
There are 4 children involved in this case. Three from a prior marrage (ages 14, 8 and 6) and one from the marriage aged 1.5.
The courts ruled that the man’s income was $3,363/month.
This amount was imputed using the $19.4/hour * 40 hours/week * 52 weeks/year / 12 months/year. {and that is ok}
The court is silent as to his tax burden. The Louisiana hired child support economists gross to net conversion for 2004 estimates taxes for this income as $756.16. (FICA $389.14; La $110.74; and FICA $256.28)
Estimated net income: $2,606.84
The court ordered the man to pay $505.56/month in child support; $611.00/month in spousal support; maintain health insurance on the family ($420.04 medical and $62.12 dental) ; and pay the monthly note on the automobile that the woman is driving ($347).
Net income less medical and dental: $2,124.68
Court ordered payments to mother:
Spousal support: $958 ($611 $347)
Child support: $505.56
Total $1,463.56
That is 56% of net income ($1,463.56/$2,606.84). The maximum garnishable amount for spousal support and child support combined is 50%. ($1,303.42)
Remainder for a family of four to live on: $661.12
None of the income/expenses listed account for the court costs nor for the attorney fees. Not many atty’s work pro-bono.
Any extended work period where weekly work hours are reduced to about 30/week would leave this family ZERO dollars to live on.
Note: The incremental amount for the father to raise this child, had the court awarded the child to the obviously fit father, per the child support tables is only $94/month. {Calculate the child support for four children and subtract the child support for three children}.
I found those two cases when I went to their site to look up the appeals court decision in this young mans case:
Pounds v. Spears
The judge had awarded the young man primary custody in large part because the mother had just married a scoundrel {drug record; DWI; pending drug case; and a failed drug test}.
The mother filed a new motion about three months later on other issues. At that hearing, the judge essentially swapped the custody back. The father appealed and won a reversal.
They just went back to court and redid the visitation per the appeals court ruling. The ink is not even dry on that judgment and the mom is suing for custody again.
No child support award horror story here as no child support has been set yet.
Louisiana has a lock on the best scandals. Now this is a case you have to read to believe.
La Supreme Court Opinion to remove judge miller
The evil judge has an affair with his friends wife; knocks her up; presides over the divorce; and makes the man pay child support for a child that was probably his.
The plan ultimately backfires on the judge.
The girlfriend leaves him {after five years} after getting tired of waiting for him to leave his wife. She sues him in federal court for harassment and wins $50,000. The judge is held in contempt for ‘paying child support’ for three months {because he was trying to establish paternity. the amount paid was only 1/2 of what an order should have been}.
The La legal system finally gets involved, and three years later the judge is finally removed from office.
Check out the rate that the child support arrearages are mounting up. It doesn’t matter what state. Take Louisiana. over a billion owed in arrears with the amount increasing rapidly each year.
Now, stop and think. How could that be possible?
Remember, the state is supposed to automatically garnish all new child support orders. So the payment is automatic for any person with a steady job.
According to the state, 70% of the arrears is owed by parents who make less than $10,000/year.
Louisiana child support tables are fairly typical. For an average income payor, they are designed to take 23% of the persons net {after tax} income for one child; 34% for 2; 40% for 3; 44% for 4; 48% for 5; or 51% for 6.
At the poverty level end; the minimum child support order is $100/month.
There is a self support reserve (SSR) built into the table to ensure the paying parent has sufficient money to live on at the federal poverty level for one person… from ten years ago… the amount is set at $551/month gross.
To smoothly transition between the SSR and the percentage amounts, they fit a straight line between the two points. The slope was set to ensure that the payors income always increases. They call this the ‘work incentive’ (WI). The WI is set so that 90% of the net income increase is paid as child support for one child; 91% for 2; 92% for 3 and so on up to 6.
Note: I have been saying ‘net income’ yet the La tables show ‘gross income’. This is correct. The state makes some assumptions about the income tax and converts the ‘net income’ back to ‘gross income’ for the tables.
Now the tables are the MINIMUM amount that the child support order should be set for. EXTRA’s are supposed to be added on by the judge for each specific case. These extras are DAY CARE and MEDICAL.
The ‘typical’ day care and medical amounts were deducted from the child support tables so that they could be added in on a case by case basis. The child care amount deducted was about 2% per child; the medical about 0.9%. In real dollars that works out to a $32/month reduction or $390/month for the year.
Unfortunately, day care costs $80/week for one child or about $320/month. So when these numbers are added back in based on actual costs, the child support orders balloon well above the percentages I listed above.
Garnishment for child support is limited by Louisiana to 50% of the persons net income. Unfortunately, awards can be higher than that amount. The protection is only minimal. The payor can be squeeze to cough up the rest of his money by license siezure; by tax refund siezure; by bank account seizure; by bad credit ratings; etc. I suspect, but cannot yet prove, that such persons are the main reason that people stop paying and become fugitives.
Going to jail is not an excuse – the courts consider that a voluntary act and they do not lower child support orders for a voluntary act.
Neither is losing your job. The courts can rule that you are voluntarily underemployed.
The static awards of the child support system do not fit certain industries – i.e. specifically the construction industry. The people in those jobs work a lot of overtime when they are employed and collect unemployment the rest of the time. The child support order based on an average income is undersized when the person is employed and oversized when they are unemployed.
Surely Child Support and Alimony should be taken as a % of your wage to a maximum required to support a child, and garnish your actual wage by this % rather than working on imputed or real world numbers that may be horridly unfair to a payer?
I am thinking this because if the payer was a cp then the family would be affected by wage ups and downs similarly, where as as an ncp this wage fluctuation is being forced onto the ncp rather than the family unit.
Chris, the imputed rule is designed to prevent high income earners from becoming low income earners out of spite.
It also applies to women who are asking for child support payments. If the mother has a degree in marketing and was making 40k / year several years previously then the father can ask the court to impute that she can make 40k / year when it calculates the payments.
I know of one case (a friend of mine) where this is exactly what happened. (fwiw shortly after the judge said that she could find a job making 40k she was hired by a company at 42. At least according to my friend. )
Well, I’ll actually back Nick up a little bit.
While I think most child support orders a relatively fair, I very much think the system is broken, having seen it first hand.
Here are a few reasons why…
It is very hard to modify a current support order. My husband left a job last year, and tried to get his support lowered to match his home business income–which was about $1500 a month gross. Minus expenses it was more like $500, but we figured he could afford the higher payment.
His ex is a chronic mover, which poses huge problems for courts, and as many people know. People often move around to avoid paying child support or to avoid custody orders. Long story short he filed some time in April in one (Syracuse) jurisdiction. That case was thrown out in July because according to the judge it was the wrong jurisdiction. That was 4 months and two court dates later. The judge could have said this on the first court date, and saved everybody time and money.
Then he tried to refile in the court where we live (NYC suburbs), and they said no you have to file in the place where the child lives (Georgia). So he called Georgia, which doesn’t even have online forms that a person can download, to get the forms. But the people in Georgia would get him the forms because they said you have to file where you live. So for about 1.5 weeks he had to go back and forth trying to get one of these courts to take the case. Eventually, the court in metro NYC took the case, they went to court several times (I think 3), and in January the judge ruled that the current amount of $530 should stand.
At that point I took my personal savings to pay down the several thousand dollars of arrears that had accumulated over the 9 months he were in court.
The point I’m making is that it is very hard to modify an order, and there are cases when a person’s income is lower or the person is unemployed and they still will not modify. Moreover, in many places it takes months revise an order, during those months arrears accumulate.
There is also no fact checking system….people can make arguments and bring forged documents, lie about their income, lie about paying for child care, lie about where they live, lie about any number of things, and the court doesn’t have the time or the personnel to check any of this.
I think lower income non-custodial parents do get unfair deals in many cases, while some really rich people get off with paying fairly low % of their income. There was a huge debate over P-Diddy’s child support. He was paying one ex who was paid something like $30,000 a month, and he had another ex who he paid $10,000 a month. Both had one child. That same year on his taxes he said he made $16 million dollars. The law in NY is 17% for one children and eith 24-25% for two. 24% of 16 million is 3,840,000, which translates into a $160,000 a month for each kid. People thought the amount was outrageously high, but in reality he was getting a steal.
I’m starting to think that, as a dyke, I want my tax-payer contribution to the offspring of heterosexuals to be a fuckin’ box of condoms. Damn but ya’ll eat up a lot of money when you breed.
Rachel:
To play Devil’s Advocate, the problem is that that a variable child support order (like high tax rates) reduces the incentive to work in a high-paying job, especially when your wife brings home a decent paycheck. A fixed payment has the advantage of not penalizing higher earnings or rewarding lower ones. I’m not saying that your husband would quit his job just to reduce his child support payment, but his actions are not easily distinguishable (to a judge) from the actions of a man who would.
The problem, of course, is that men do sometimes experience drops in income that are beyond their control or in everyone’s long-term best interests (e.g., starting a business which will eventually make a lot of money). But designing a system that doesn’t pervert incentives while still allowing flexibility for legitimate hardship seems like a really hard problem to me.
I can’t see any reasonable justification for forcing someone to pay $30,000 per month, or even $10,000, no matter how much he earns. Child support should be about making sure the custodial parent has enough money to take care of the child, not about rewarding the custodial parent or punishing the noncustodial parent. $2000/month strikes me as a reasonable hard upper limit for one child. Maybe $3,000 if the custodial parent is incapable of working.
Edited to add: I think that a person making millions of dollars a year should contribute more than $2000/month towards the cause of raising his child. But I don’t think it’s something the government should enforce, particularly not in a way that leaves the use of the money up to the custodial parent’s discretion.
In my husband’s case, he’s fortunate that he was married and didn’t lose a job.
He quit voluntarily, but I also think he has slowly come to the realization that he will not be able to take time off to start a business as long as he has a child support obligation.
But he’s realy in good shape because he had me, but for a single person, a lower income person, or a person who loses a job, this is a much different story. Plus, navigating the court system really requires money, time, and a pretty good educational background, which is quite difficult for lower income people.
QGrrl said, “I’m starting to think that, as a dyke, I want my tax-payer contribution to the offspring of heterosexuals to be a fuckin’ box of condoms. Damn but ya’ll eat up a lot of money when you breed.”
LOL!!
But wait until gay marriage is legalized. Well, actually you dont have to wait because with the increasing number of lesbians and gay men adopting and getting in vitro, surrogates, and other assisted reproductive technologies, y’all are going to get as complicated as we are. :)
Those numbers look suspiciously low.
For one child, the income levels for those orders are $1,600/month and $2,100/month. If the typical additions of daycare/school and health insurance are added on, then the income levels required to generate these orders would be even lower.
For two children, the required income for those order levels falls to $900/month and $1,200/month. Again, if the ordinary adders are included, the income levels are even lower.
For three children. its $900/month* and $1,050/month. Lower still if there are any adders. Yes, the reason the number is close to the same is the self support reserve amount has been reached. This means that the payor is being left with $551/month gross to live on. The SSR protection can and is be breached with the adders.
For four children five and six children it remains close to $900/month and $1,060/month.
The median income in Louisiana is close to $2,000/month. This means that the medium minimum child support orders are $337/month for one; $522/month for two; $655/month for three; $737/month for for; $805/month for five; and $861/month for six or more.
The census report you cite does show the overwhelming bias against men as parents.
Mothers have primary custody at rates ten times higher than men.
Mothers with legal and physical custody were 28.1% vs. 2.4% for the men.
Mothers with joint and physical custody were 20.1% vs. 2.7% for the men.
At least shared custody is up to 12.8%
NOW demands ‘equality for women’ in all things EXCEPT in child custody. For that, they claim that the courts are biased against women and women should get custody at even higher rates than they currently do. They are now suing the U.S. in the O.A.S. human rights court for human rights violation on that very premise. They are claiming that there is domestic violence in up to 80% of all divorce cases.
This census article refutes that claim and shows that the courts are still heavily biased against men. We have a ‘Title IX’ program in the colleges to fix the gender bias in the court system. Where is the ‘Title IX’ program for men to have equal access to their children?
Ah, I think I see what they are doing. The numbers must be on a ‘per child’ basis.
See page 8, they list the median support paid by men for 1, 2 and 3 children respectively. The amounts are $3,000; $5,232; and $6,000 respectively per year or $250; $436; and $500 per month.
The median amount works out about 76% of the minimum orders by Louisiana law. This is essentially the same difference as you reported between the ‘median’ amount and the average amount – 250 vs 350 respectively.
There must be a serious reporting error in the type of custody arrangements further down on page 8. The child support orders for the ‘joint legal and physical custody’ were paying the same amount of child support as for those with out joint physical custody. The child support orders for shared parenting cases should be much lower and close to zero.
For the average child support order to be that much higher than the median child support order, it indicates that there some very high child support orders skewing the data. They should have excluded the ultra-rich from the analysis or analyzed them seperately.
Rachel, here is Louisiana’s history on ‘voluntary’ unemployment.
See page 53 of 310 of the DSS/DA Child Support Review 2000 document on our site.
The history section of that report was written by Vincent J. Lobello.
So based on Louisiana law, and we are typical of most of the states, your husband would not be entitled to a reduction in his child support order. They would consider him underemployed and base his support level on his prior demonstrated income. They would also consider your income to the extent that it offsets his expenses.
A person ‘going to jail’, for any reason, is considered fault or neglect and thus the court will not order a reduction for that act.
Now for my favorite quote. For the source for this one, see page 25 of 50 of the scanned report titled 2001 Report of the Task Force. See bullet number 3.
The problem with these statistics is that they don’t distinguish between contested and unconstested custody cases. If, as I suspect (although I can’t point to any statistics to support my suspicions), in the majority of uncontested custody cases, the parents agree that the children will live primarily with the mother, we would need to see the statistics on contested custody cases to determine the extent, if any, of any gender-based bias on the part of the courts.
Q Grrl writes:
Yup.
I have gay and lesbian friends who are childless who go off on all kinds of trips and cruises and fancy vacations. And they wonder why I can’t afford to go off on all kinds of trips and cruises and fancy vacations, and I’ve only got the one child.
I’m friends with a single gay man who makes prolly 20% less than me (I know what he makes because I used to be in the same pay grade as him :) and he lives in a house that’s about 2 1/2 times as expensive as mine, he vacations all the time, flies around the country, buys fancy cell phones, computers, toys, blah, blah, blah.
I could do the same things he does if I didn’t have the kid. On the other hand, when I’m a gray haired old dyke sitting in a rocking chair, I’ll prolly have grandkids playing at my feet.
Yeah, I’m going to have to agree with Paul here. Many men don’t even apply for custody. So a large proportion of the imbalance is not because of any kind of outright discrimination against men; it is because men don’t contest or disagree that (edited to fix typo) their children should go with the mother.
For the record, I don’t think there is some overwhelming bias against men in family courts, but I do think the courts are overburdened, inefficient, and unfair to both custodial and non-custodial parents.
Ah, here we go, See the 2004 DSS/DA Child Support Review. Caution: this is a cut and paste of a scanned document. I did not catch all the scanner errors. Sorry about those errors.
Note: Not all states are as anal as Louisiana in regards to their prisoners. Louisiana doesn’t usually jail them, just keeps the huge burden over their heads and occasionally rounds a few of them up for show.
I will answer these together.
The vast majority of fathers with custody occur because the mother did not want custody and gave the child to the father without a fight.
It is difficult to separate ‘contested’ cases from ‘uncontested’ cases. The classic line in Louisiana courts is your own attorney comes out of a private meeting with the judge with your ‘deal’. They tell you that ‘this is the most the judge will give you, if you take it to court you will get less’.
You don’t get very far in court when your sword (your attorney) bends like a wet noodle and will not represent your interests. Oh most of the attorney’s talk a great game when they are persuading you to part with that huge retainer. But after that, many of them just roll over and play dead.
Men tend to stay in bad marriages because they know they will lose the kids if they divorce. This is why 80+% of all divorces are initiated by women.
A good read on this is
Cynthia McNeely’s report
Let’s concede for argument’s sake that the line between uncontested and contested custody suits can be pretty blurry. I would still be interested in knowing whether anybody has any statistics on the percentage of fully contested custody cases where there’s an actual hearing before the judge (or judge and jury) in which the ruling favors the mother vs. those where the ruling favors the father.
If the law honest to donuts does not allow exemptions for the unemployed, then that is just plain wrong. I do think that there is a systemic bias in custody cases against fathers. I do think fathers too often are given too little respect, be it in a court of law or on weekday afternoon boob tube.
But I’d think, Nick, that the reason that this bias exists is that the courts automatically assume the mother to be the better ‘natural’ caregiver – even to sometimes ridiculous extents such as giving working wives custody over househusbands. Do you agree that women are more naturally inclined toward a caregiving capacity, or don’t you? If you do, then why don’t you expect the courts to rule accordingly? This is the whole premise behind opposition to Affirmative Action, isn’t it? “I don’t care if you’re white, black, orange, or purple, so long as you’re the best man for the job” – and that this trumps the need for any sort of numerical balance or equality. Aren’t mothers the best – well, not men, but people – for the job?
I can easily picture an MRA going, “well, I believe men make better ____ but the law forbids the law, employers, institutions, etc. from acknowledging it… the law should at least be consistent”. I’m sorry, but this has all the moral weight of a happy stain on a priest’s robes. The “law” is not the only thing that should be consistent, so if the MRA himself violates the spirit of the equality that he wants the law to uphold – let’s say by voting against those same equality measures, writing angry letters to the editor about Title IX, mocking women’s rights in casual conversation, etc. – then the law doesn’t owe him anything in this regard. Not to mention that there’s something problematic about requiring a disempowered group to play war of attrition for privileges with the privileged group, and something vindictive and unsavoury about the privileged group requiring the disempowered group to relinquish the one institutional privilege they have in order for any ‘dialogue’ to go forward.
This is all hypothetical, of course. In real life, MRA’s do not hold the keys to dialogue and exchange in this manner, and are mostly just yammering on the sidelines, for which I and rest of the non-misogynist-loser population is very thankful.
Note that I made a number of assumptions about your general political identity, Nick, that may or may not hold true. If they don’t, then consider this all a general reply to your ‘NOW’ comment.
Paul,
There’s more to “contested” and “uncontested” than “the parents chose what to do or not”.
There are costs associated with contesting or not contesting custody. I don’t know the average cost of a custody suit these days, but my guess is that the decision to contest or not contest is primarily made as a short term economic decision. The last attorney I spoke to, for a fairly simple custody and support modification, wanted a $7,500 retainer. The economic decision was pretty easy — there was no guarantee of any particular outcome, and spending $7,500 was an immediate bar to filing suit.
If you assume a 50/50 probability for receiving custody, the person with the SMALLER income has the greater incentive to contest (because the potential payout if they lose custody is smaller than the potential award if they receive custody) custody, and the person with the LARGER income has less incentive to contest. In simple risk/reward terms, income differential creates a strong bias against the higher wage earner contesting custody because the reward is lower. Which is the better financial decision — pay $X,XXX in legal fees to receive $YYY per month or pay 0.80 x $YYY (where 0.80 is the ratio between men’s and women’s wages from the US DoL), or pay $X,XXX in legal fees to receive 0.80 x $YYY or pay $YYY. The lower wage earner, in a 50/50 award situation, would receive 0.20 x $YYY on average, while the higher wage earner would pay 0.20 x $YYY on average (where $YYY is the average award based on state guidelines and income). In simple economic terms, one is a better decision than the other.
If you look at the language that’s used to justify mother’s receiving child support, it’s clear to me that much of the justification for support orders isn’t “best interest of the children”, it’s “economic status of the mother”. In particular the assertion, “Father’s contest custody to reduce child support payments”. If child support orders are based on the child(ren)’s living expenses, there should be a direct relationship between periods of possesion and amount of support paid, and the logical outcome should be that if father’s contest custody, and an increase in the period of possession is ordered, the amount of child support that’s ordered should be decreased.
Yet, few to no states include the number of hours or days a child spends with either parent in the computation of a child support order. In Texas, for example, the guidelines (and the Texas Family Code should have been linked earlier in this thread by me) make no mention of parental share of time of possession in the calculation of a child support ordered to the custodial parent. This creates an additional disincentive for the non-custodial parent to have increased possession. Any additional expenses — the need for additional food, clothing, larger or better living spaces, increased transportation and entertainment expenses — do not result in a proportionate reduction in the amount of support ordered to offset the increase in expenses with the non-custodial parent. The result is a decrease in the child’s standard of living (as well as the non-custodial parent’s standard of living) when the length of possession by the non-custodial parent increases.
Mind you — none of what I wrote above requires that there be any bias against fathers, it only requires that men earn, on average, more than women. Indeed, until there is a bias for fathers, rational men will continue to make the decision that contesting overall custody, and filing a petition for an increase in time of possession, is not in their (or the child(ren)’s) best interests.
Joe, my point was that in a normal family the families standard of living would alter with these changes thus making an imputed income rather unfair.
Also what if you want a less stressfull job, better working conditions etc, you trade down from being a doctor (£100K+) to a grocery store clerk (£6/hr) because of the stress and life changes. You are technically underemployed but you are making a choice in your life, and there are lots of people who support kids on a grocery store clerks wages.
Also a % is a lot more fair because it does alter dynamically, and with a cap there is an incentive to earn more money. Even a millionaire should not need to pay more than is required to keep a child in relative comfort, while $30,000 a month may be a tiny percentage of his income it is not reflective in the cost of actually raising a child (if it was many normal people could not raise children).
FCH said, “If child support orders are based on the child(ren)’s living expenses, there should be a direct relationship between periods of possesion and amount of support paid, and the logical outcome should be that if father’s contest custody, and an increase in the period of possession is ordered, the amount of child support that’s ordered should be decreased.
Yet, few to no states include the number of hours or days a child spends with either parent in the computation of a child support order. ”
I agree with. This is a big problem. As it stand right now the courts are set up with an eye toward full custody for one parent with very limited visitation (i.e.–every other weekend/one day a week/one weekend a month.
If a couple truly had a joint custody type arrangement (i.e. every weekend and the week days during the summare with one parent, and weekdays with the other parent during school, and weekends with that parent in the summer), the support should be lower and based more on who earns more.
But the bias right now still seems to be toward a big imbalance in visitation with one parent getting full legal custody.
And I can’t even begin to tell y’all the tremendous legal and financial barriers to modifying an arrangement once it is made. This is why it is incumbent upon divorced people to try their best to get along. I don’t think they realize how much money in legal fees and emotional distress they could save themselves if they did not dig in their heals. If you can get along with each other, the arrangement will work much better.
The family court system is indeed broken because it focuses on serving the greedy and not the needy. The system was originally put into place to recover the expense of the nation’s welfare system. Now the system is largely focused on a revenue generation tool for the states.
The Federal Government needs to bring Title IV-D back into compliance with its original intent (recuperate money expended through TANF/AFDC) and improve the program for needy families not streamline it for state revenue generation by including affluent middle and upper-class families at the expense of taxpayers.
Supporting budget cuts will improve the availability of services for child support enforcement to low-income families, since the current focus of the programs is on revenue generation for the state not on collections for lower-income needy families.
Currently the state-run child support enforcement services have little to no focus on lower-income families due to difficulty in actually collecting from under- or unemployed program participants.
State provided child support enforcement services focus on higher-income families, which gives the appearance of program success through the use of use of income withholding orders to facilitate collections.
Because there is a significant level of overparticipation from wealthier families that should not be receiving benefits the lack of collections for lower-income family are going unnoticed while the program is being labeled a success.
Taxpayers should not be required to foot the bill for collection services for individuals that would not otherwise qualify for welfare services when those participants can afford to provide services for their own domestic relations disputes.
There are an ample number of private collection and law firms that provide services to both lower-income and higher-income families to make up for any alleged reduction in state collections as a result of reduced funding. The private collection and law firms are notably more successful in their outcomes as they focus on their clients, not on maintaining caseloads for state budgeting purposes.
Why should taxpayers be footing the bill for a broken system? The answer is: THEY SHOULDN’T!
I completely agree with FurryCatHerder that not everyone who decides not to contest custody does so because she/he really believes the children are better off with the other parent. Custody battles can be extremely expensive (both financially and emotionally) for both parents, and it would be irresponsible to themselves and to the children not to consider that in deciding whether to contest custody.
That being said, my point was that since in the majority of cases, custody is uncontested, the fact that the mother gets custody more often than the father does not necessarily indicate a pro-mother bias on the part of judges. And even in those instances that Nick referred to where the judge basically strong-armed the parties into an agreement, I would need to see some evidence that the judges are more likely to do so in favor of the mother than the father (and that this apparent favoritism isn’t based on which parent has been the children’s primary caretaker).
And Rachel is absolutely correct: it is very difficult to modify custody unless both parents are agreed. Judges tend to be extremely reluctant to modify a custody order that is already in effect because of concern that the change will traumatize the children. So, they have to be convinced that the change will be a positive improvement that will outweigh this traumatic effect. However, my impression is that this reluctance applies just as much when it’s the mother who seeks the modification as when it’s the father.
As for child support, my biggest problem with the Texas child support guidelines to which FCH refers is that they are based almost entirely on the income of the non-custodial parent. There are other states (like Hawaii, if I’m not mistaken) where both parent’s income is considered in calculating guideline support.
The Texas Family Code does provide however that the custodial parent’s resources, as well as the amount of time the child actually spends with the NCP (which addresses FCH’s objection to a limited extent), are factors the court is to consider in deciding whether to deviate from the child support guidelines.
However, any unfairness in the Texas guidelines affects NCP mothers as much as NCP fathers.
It doesn’t.
The reason, well put the shoe on the other foot. Unless we enter another great depression, the unemployed person is hopefully going to get another job real soon. So how does the support get reimplemented when this happens.
The current process is the custodial parent must find out about it; initiate a suit; go to court; etc. etc. etc. That is a cumbersome, expensive and slow process.
If the system granted the reprieve for the duration that a person is on unemployment. Automatic qualification when starting. Automatic reinstatement when kicked off. That might work.
Or if we went back to a system where a percentage of income is taken. So that when income goes up – the support increases. When it drops, it decreases. Just like your federal taxes. That would also work.
Just how did men and women let lawyers and politicians talk them into this horrible system? I mean, you don’t sue someone to get married. The government doesn’t sue you to pay your taxes. You don’t sue someone to walk your dog.
Yet families that get caught in the ‘divorce system’ have to sue for everything. They have lost their authority on many aspects of their life.
Just this year I had to go back to court and get a QMCSO. My company, after covering me and my daughter for ten years, decided that she was not a qualified dependent for the years that I could not claim her on my federal taxes. Therefore, I had to get a ‘Qualified Medical Child Support Order’ for the years that she was not a dependent. Strangely enough, both the ex and the court cooperated for a change; the company did not. First, they failed to provide any information on what they wanted in the plan; Second, when I used a standard plan for the state, they pitched a hissy fit; Third, as we worked through their objections, most of them we were able to dismiss because THEY WERE REQUIRED BY LAW.
No, they are not.
This is a TWO person job. Each gender has their strengths and their weaknesses. A child needs both of their parents to grow up to be complete.
When one parent, either the father or the mother, is missing the child grows up unbalanced and has problems forming stable relationships; etc. etc. etc.
The best solution is for the parents to remain together in a committed relationship. That way as the child’s needs change, they naturally move from the mother to the father and back to the mother as they need to.
There really is no good solution for a child of divorced parents. The best solution of a bad lot is ‘shared parenting’. But as it is implemented, even that is fairly rigid and overly legalistic. The natural movements of the child between parents is interrupted and replaced with a fixed schedule.
No reliable numbers exist. Most cases, even the heavily litigated ones, usually end up with a ‘stipulated’ judgment that is coerced upon them by the judges and the attorneys. The studies that have done that have ended up with less than 4% of cases to consider from.
Furthermore, judges are given ‘wide discretion’ to decide a custody case ‘in the child’s best interest’. This basically means the judge can do whatever they want to the couple before them. Sometimes the man gets screwed. Sometimes the woman gets screwed. Often they both do. The only parties that make out are the lawyers children – they get an excellent child support settlement.
If you are charged with a crime, your attorney gets to voire dire the jury to ensure that the jury is not biased against you.
NO SUCH PROCESS EXISTS for divorcing couples. They are stuck with the judge that is assigned to them.
An excellent reform would be to require that the courts maintain and publish the statistics regarding each and every judge who presides over divorce cases. If that particular judge is identified to be biased against men or women, then the parent should be able to get that judge recused.
Why two? There are cultures where it’s a job for many more people.
Why two? There are cultures where it’s a job for many more people.
Barring a relative handful of immigrants, Westerners don’t belong to those cultures, and so don’t have access to their social capital. For better or for worse, and certainly for the time being, we’re stuck with a model of raising our own get, or at most raising the children of our chosen partners. I’m not gonna raise your kid, in other words, so making social plans that rely on me doing that are doomed in advance.
Very few parents in the U.S. raise their children without any assistance. They rely on other’s labors to produce the food their children eat and the clothes they wear. While home schooling is becoming more popular, most parents still rely on schoolteachers to educate their children. If their children become ill, they rely on doctors, nurses and other health care providers to heal them. Hillary was right, it really does take a village.
Yes, Paul, we have an interdependent society. I depend on a hundred different people to do my job, but that doesn’t mean I’m not an independent contractor responsible for my own living; I am. Similarly, I depend on a lot of other people to raise my daughter, but it isn’t their job. It’s mine and my wife’s.
Even assuming that your assessment is completely accurate, all that shows is that judges and lawyers handle family law cases poorly. It doesn’t show that judges are inheritantly biased against one sex or the other.
Actually, in some states (including Texas), you can ask for a jury in a divorce case. However, for many people the extra expenses involved make it cost prohibitive
My point is that two is an arbitrary number. If you’re going to say “2 is the right number!!!!” then you should be prepared to back up the argument that two is the only functional number.
Unfortunately, it can’t be backed up, on account of being bullshit.
“No, they are not.
This is a TWO person job. Each gender has their strengths and their weaknesses. A child needs both of their parents to grow up to be complete.”
There are many things that are far more damaging to a child than growing up with one parent. Growing up watching his parents fighting. Growing up with parents who are distant. Growing up in the same house as an alcoholic deadbeat (of either sex) because of laws that punish people for trying to obtain a quick, no-fault divorce.
But in any case, it’s a foregone conclusion in our hypothetical that the parents are getting divorced, so the parents staying together in a committed relationship is not an option – unless you are prepared to advocate a return to forced marriages, which you have not yet done and I presume you are unwilling to do.
You do not strike me as a run-of-the-mill Right winger, not least because you sympathize with something a pre-Senate Hillary Clinton has said. (Har har.) But most on your side of this debate are, so I think I’ll just throw it out there one last time for the hell of it. You can believe that all else being equal, women are better suited than men to be nurturers and domestic types. You can believe that it is not the business of the government to enforce ‘equality of outcome’. And you can believe that fathers should get a better hand in divorce and custody battles. But you cannot believe all three simultaneously; something’s got to give.
“Even assuming that your assessment is completely accurate, all that shows is that judges and lawyers handle family law cases poorly. It doesn’t show that judges are inheritantly biased against one sex or the other.”
But doesn’t this lower us to the level of assuming we must have mind-reading capabilities to prove that someone is *truly* prejudiced, biased, bigoted, or whatnot? We’ve seen those sort of apologetics used before elsewhere. If the numbers are slanted, isn’t that evidence – though not proof – that those responsible for them are slanted as well?
My point is that two is an arbitrary number.
Right. Because our reproductive biology is based on “N” partners. We never know how many people created a child. It’s a totally arbitrary mystery.
If you’re going to say “2 is the right number!!!!” then you should be prepared to back up the argument that two is the only functional number.
Why? Those are two separate propositions.
“Barring a relative handful of immigrants, Westerners don’t belong to those cultures, and so don’t have access to their social capital. For better or for worse, and certainly for the time being, we’re stuck with a model of raising our own get, or at most raising the children of our chosen partners. I’m not gonna raise your kid, in other words, so making social plans that rely on me doing that are doomed in advance.”
That is an incredibly white centric view of our “culture.” MANY African American families rely on an extended family base to support raising their children – from uncles who play a very active role in a child’s life to grandma’s who babysit etc. Same with Latino families, etc. Oh, and all those European immigrants – Italians, Poles, Russians, etc. And even a generation or two removed from the immigration that kind of family focus for child rearing remains.
Not to mention, plenty of white, middle class families I know (yes annecdotal) are relying on the help of their parents for babysitting/daycare while the parents work. We may have an ideal of the nuclear family being independent from extended family, but I don’t think most people really meet that ideal, and I think in a lot of ways that ideal is counterproductive.
I think there’s a difference between getting help from my parents and the general expectation that my parents are responsible for how I raise my children. No one does it all alone. But they’re not considered responsible for helping.
US society generally expects the parents to do the work. We hold them responsible and look down on people that don’t live up to those responsibilities. We don’t have the same expectation of siblings, aunts, uncles, and grand parents. When my folks watch my daughters on Friday it’s babysitting they’re doing us a favor. When I (or my wife) take care of our daughters it’s parenting and we’re doing our jobs. If my folks don’t help raise their grandkids they’re not judged. If I don’t help raise my kids I am.
I think that’s what Roberts was getting at.
I’m not claiming that this is optimal, just that it’s what we’ve got today. Are there large segments of the US where an aunt or grandma would be expected to care for nieces and grandkids? To the extent that they’d be judged badly if they did not?
“Are there large segments of the US where an aunt or grandma would be expected to care for nieces and grandkids? To the extent that they’d be judged badly if they did not?”
In many minority (for lack of a better word) communities, yes. Which is why I called the assumption white centric.
Kate’s point is right on the money. Which is why I find it disturbing when individuals make sweeping generalizations about what “Americans” think, or how “Americans” behave. What they usually mean is how they and people like them think and behave. This is a failure of imagination widespread in the “white” community.
OK, the point is valid – there are lots of people for whom blood kin also play a substantial role in raising a child.
Is that the form of extended community childraising envisioned by the proponents of it-takes-a-village thinking speaking here? If so, I yield the point. If not, then what’s the relevance?
The point is that we are living in the end product of one the most stupendous social engineering projects in human history. One which has effectively destroyed the extended family as it existed for the greater part of that history in favor of the nuclear family. Our entire economic and social structure is now predicated on this model. This massive transformation has occurred within living memory and has produced some very negative effects.
Our current options are limited. We can continue to drift wherever this innovation may take us, attempt a return to the older, extended model or develope new structures. In the first case, we will simply have to accept the negative consequences such a choice entails. In the second we would have to completely restructure our current economics, which depend upon a degree of mobility and flexibility incompatible with the stability that the extended family requires. The last option would require an activist policy agenda which would be anathema to conservative and reactionary impulses.
Look. Someone said that 2 is the right number of people to raise children. That’s an arbitrary (yup, arbitrary! Because the dominant American culture’s way of looking at things isn’t the only way) number, because it is not the only number that functions well across the world. So if you’re going to say “CHILDREN DESERVE 2 PARENTS” what’s to stop someone else saying “CHILDREN DESERVE 10 PARENTS?”
This is another exsample of someone trying to shoehorn all families into their concept of what a family should look like — ALL FAMILIES SHOULD HAVE TWO PARENTS. This is being leveraged against newer* kinds of family formations, such as single parents.
However, the argument is assailable because there are plenty of places and times in which two parents would have been considered unsuitably few. It’s susceptible to other people arguing, with the weight of tradition on their side, that families should be shaped differently.
It’s a bad argument.
–
*Sort of newer. Of course, there have always been single parents. But the American political debate frames the construction as newer.
Exactly right, Mandolin.
I think that there are arguments to be made that ‘X’ is the right number of people to raise children . . . but then these arguments need to be actually made, rather than relying on the weight of tradition.
Hey, maybe I’m wrong, you know? Maybe 2 is exactly the optimal number of people, and more or fewer is bad for children. I doubt it, though. Convince me.
—Myca
Yes it is a bad argument. Unfortunately, it’s one that has the weight of current economics and social policy behind it. It’s difficult to argue that single parenting is not a less than optimum choice in the US, considering the withering of the single income family and the absence of effective public services for single parents. The whole debate about child support is symptomatic of this.
Other developed countries don’t penalize single parenthood in the fashion of the US, choosing to treat it as an emergent practical reality requiring a policy response. Such countries recognize that leaving large numbers of children at the mercy of the vagaries of social and economic tides isn’t a sound approach. Consequently, single parenthood is a supportable mode of family life.
The US, in contrast, behaves like an ostrich, having no real family policy whatever, outside of rhetorical nostalgia for a model whose social and economic supports have all but vanished.
As a society, we do not value children as some other nations do.
The problems confronting families in the US are bound up with the structural realities of US society far more than they are a matter perception or definition.
So if you’re going to say “CHILDREN DESERVE 2 PARENTS” what’s to stop someone else saying “CHILDREN DESERVE 10 PARENTS?
Because a child is the result of the actions of two people, not one, three or ten. It’s not so much that every child must absolutely have two parents or perish, it’s that being responsible for the children we bring into the world is expected. It doesn’t matter if our children can survive without us.
Yet, in other cultures, the two pepole who helped create the child may or may not be the ones responsible for is well-being. Which is to say, the mother usually is. The father ain’t necessarily.
Children DESERVE matrilineal descent patterns! It’s traditional!
“Because a child is the result of the actions of two people, not one, three or ten. It’s not so much that every child must absolutely have two parents or perish, it’s that being responsible for the children we bring into the world is expected. It doesn’t matter if our children can survive without us.”
So, you’re not in favor of adoption? That seems counterintuitive to what I believe your stance on abortion is. Cause those parents had nothing whatsoever with bringing that child into the world – it’s not just about biology! The point is that children are raised by people who are NOT their biological parents all the time – sometimes MORE than just their biological parents, sometime not by their biological parents at all – BIOLOGY is less important in child rearing than a sense of responsibility, common sense and various other resources.
Yet, in other cultures, the two pepole who helped create the child may or may not be the ones responsible for is well-being. Which is to say, the mother usually is. The father ain’t necessarily.
Are you speaking of these other cultures as examples of a better way? Do you mean to say that we should explore the social acceptability of not requiring fathers to be responsible for their children, while requiring mothers to be?
No, I’m saying that arguing “this is the way we’ve always done it, therefore it’s the right way” is assailable, and a bad argument.
So, you’re not in favor of adoption? That seems counterintuitive to what I believe your stance on abortion is.
People who wish to adopt should do so. I believe it’s dangerous to weaken the basic assumption that we are responsible for the children we create. Millions of people are engaging in procreative and potentially procreative acts. The extent to which they believe they are or are not the responsible party in dealing with the consequences will affect their tendency toward either rashness or caution.
No, I’m saying that arguing “this is the way we’ve always done it, therefore it’s the right way” is assailable, and a bad argument.
You’re right. Defending tradition because ‘it’s tradition’ indicates a serious lack of critical thought and can close your mind to better ways. That said, I tend to think traditions that last a long time have earned some credibility. Bear in mind that these traditions are directly linked to the human life cycle and touch upon vital areas of our social fabric; the assumption that in childhood, sickness, poverty or age, our families will take care of us.
… I tend to think traditions that last a long time have earned some credibility.
I tend to think that traditions that last a long time deserve to be examined to see why they have lasted a long time. I don’t think that being a decades or centuries or millenia long tradition means that it is a good thing (see corporal punishment, for one example). However a long existence is certainly worth examination to see if there are good and valid reasons for its continued existence.
children are raised by people who are NOT their biological parents all the time – sometimes MORE than just their biological parents, sometime not by their biological parents at all
These other contributors, while their influence is a welcome addition to the child’s development, are not the ones changing diapers, cleaning up vomit, shaking them down for drugs or weapons or sitting up late in emergency. Their role is secondary. None of them are expected or required to take upon themselves the complete tapestry of a parent’s duties.
But there are many conflicting traditions. If the argument is “X should be the way we do things because it’s tradition” then the response can easily be “Y and Z are also traditions, so we should do things THOSE ways instead.”
Also, I begin to wonder whether Christian actually knows any families.
This is untrue, especially in the context of Kate’s post that you’re responding to.
This is untrue, especially in the context of Kate’s post that you’re responding to.
This is untrue, especially in the context of Kate’s post that you’re responding to.
—Myca
Not to mention that slavery, torture, and mass murder are able to claim a much longer and more widespread tradition than democracy, emancipation, the ideal of an egalitarian society, and respect for human life.
—Myca
Myca, I *heart* you :)
;-)
Thanks!
Mandolin, Myca, as I said, I don’t accept the argument that simply being a tradition justifies it.
Myca: This is untrue ad infinitum
While all of these things happen, none of them can be assumed in our culture. Even if they can, they do not excuse the parents from primary responsibility. If it does, the father or mother you permit absentia to today will not be available as a non-parental contributor to make up for absent parents tomorrow. It is an unsustainable pattern.
Not to mention that slavery, torture, and mass murder are able to claim a much longer and more widespread tradition than democracy, emancipation, the ideal of an egalitarian society, and respect for human life.
And I disagreed with you where?
When I offer the idea that it’s a good idea for parents to take care of their kids, crimes against humanity enters the picture, while if you argue parental responsibility shouldn’t really be an obligation per se, I get Norman Rockwell.
This is pretty shabby. What was being addressed was your defense of “tradition” based soley on longevity. Behaving as though the comment was aimed at your general argument only emphasizes your failure to respond to the point actually raised: that the longevity of a tradition is no reliable indication of its virtue.
What remains to be explained is why you ignored the point.
“What remains to be explained is why you ignored the point.”
I’m noticing a pattern. I also find it amusing that he/she has yet to respond to my comment on the abortion thread, but instead, jumped into this debate. Interesting.
Christian, higher order social mammals, particularly primates, raise their young in harems. Your ideal would have us closer to blue jays than Homo sapiens. Yes, the nuclear family is ingrained in our culture. So what? Can culture never be changed? I bet you think our current culture, which last I checked 5 minutes ago contains a show called “G Spot” on Bravo!, can voluntarily shift to one of abstinence until marriage. In light of this, do you think that a shift to broader based child care is that far fetched a proposition?
That being said, I’m not too gummy about the prospect of extended families myself. I thought the whole point of adulthood is to be able to avoid your relatives. I agree people could benefit from closer knit communities and social networks, but extended families aren’t the only route we can get there. Having existing nuclear families intermingle to a greater extent would be a simpler and perhaps even a more pleasant solution.
FTR, I don’t think anyone is arguing for a mandatory return to the traditional European mode of extended family care. But the new-fangled nuclear family is not necessarily better than what people want to craft themselves.
WB: This is pretty shabby. What was being addressed was your defense of “tradition” based soley on longevity. Behaving as though the comment was aimed at your general argument only emphasizes your failure to respond to the point actually raised: that the longevity of a tradition is no reliable indication of its virtue.
What remains to be explained is why you ignored the point.
Sorry for the delay in responding, I can only pay attention to this between projects! That last response came late in the day and I apologize for it’s tone.
WB, and others, I didn’t ignore the point. I said clearly that I don’t regard longevity as a reason to assume the validity of any tradition without applying continuing critical thought to it. I said longevity lends credibility, particularly in the absence, the UTTER absense of ever being supplanted by a working alternative. So I would not dismiss a tradition just because what appears to be an alternative presents itself. The tradition I am defending is that family is expected to take care of family, beginning in particular with one’s children. The alternative that is often mentioned is the cloud of community supporters that contribute, but this has been true for many thousands of years yet no culture (to my knowledge, correct me if I’m wrong) has managed to make parental obligation optional and survive.
Please, if you’re going to remind me again that throughout history, lots of people have failed to take care of their children, I know, I know. Show me a culture where this has been considered ‘normal behavior’ that was not also suffering from significant social chaos.
Kate: I’m noticing a pattern. I also find it amusing that he/she has yet to respond to my comment on the abortion thread, but instead, jumped into this debate. Interesting.
Apologies again, but I can’t be in regular attendance. You mean your link to Guttmacher? I read it. I don’t disagree with it. There’s nothing in it that appears to differ from my perception of married couple’s situation. I think we are arguing more than we have to. The only thing I have been trying to argue is something your post mentions clearly:
“Despite the problems that married people encounter in trying to avoid contraceptive failure, unintended pregnancy and abortion, there is no question that married people are more successful than single people on all of these fronts.”
As far as abortion goes, I think it should be safe, legal and rare. Marriages contribute to the rarity of abortion (and decrease the cost of providing it, which contributes to both quality and availability of treatment) and because of this and other benefits that are not the subject of this post, I support marriage, support monogamy, and encourage it as the way to raise a family (and FOR raising a family).
Mandolin: I wonder how many families Christian has seen?
Many, Mandolin. I’ve watch parents turn into great-grandparents and childhood friend’s children having children. Some fight but never think of abandoning each other. Others are great while the sun shines and fold at the first dark cloud. Some have vital personal connections with one another through five generations, others scarcely know the names of their children. Which ones go on to become a culture? Which set of actions become ‘traditions’?
Slyphead, and others, if I”m correct you seem to regard my position as being one of ‘only parents can take care of their children’. It’s not. I don’t want to be divided into tidy four-or-five person units that never cross-care. A true family is a huge and changing thing, and a community is something else. Community and culture comes from taking care of your family and helping other people take care of theirs. I don’t believe you can generate community and culture and allow parents to opt out of primary responsibility for their own children at the same time.
Mandolin: the new-fangled nuclear family is not necessarily better than what people want to craft themselves.
What concerns me is that the nuclear family, for all of its problems, at least assures two parental guardians for each child. What people want to craft themselves could be anything. I don’t have a clear idea of what you consider the minimum acceptable contribution.
This question is hopelessly self limiting. Our present culture, in terms of current mores, can hardly be described as being more than 100 years old, if that. Other cultures survived as singular, identifiable entities for far longer periods before passing away, yet the structure of your question excludes them from consideration. This without even stipulating a causal relation between their eclipse and their differing family structures.
The fact is that cultures of far greater longevity than our own simply didn’t conceive of parental obligation as you describe it. To take a conspicuous, if negative example, Roman culture didn’t base the family on your notion of parental obligation. On the contrary, since the children in a Roman family were considered the property of the father to dispose of as he saw fit, family obligations ran in the opposite direction. The entire household was obliged to serve the absolute authority of the Domus or father.
The practice of infanticide, widespread throughout human history and culture, underlines the parochial character of your assumptions as well.
Now I don’t think anyone would want to return to such practices, despite their far longer track record as compared to our current standards. I cite them only to give a stark rebuttle to the complacent presumption that your preferred notions of proper family structure are reflective of timeless standards.
Frankly, that you would entertain such an assumption leads me to believe that you don’t possess the requisite knowlege of the actual developement and diversity of family structures in human history and anthropogy necessary to make this discussion fruitful.
Then it becomes a question of why you distorted the meaning of the orginial post by responding to it as though it were addressing your general argument.
To take a conspicuous, if negative example, Roman culture didn’t base the family on your notion of parental obligation.
I am aware of the Roman example. They didn’t last, did they?
Frankly, that you would entertain such an assumption leads me to believe that you don’t possess the requisite knowlege of the actual developement and diversity of family structures in human history and anthropogy necessary to make this discussion fruitful.
My only education on the matter are the observations of my lifetime WB. I have a lay knowledge of human history from it’s beginning, and I am aware that many diverse formats exist. I’m not arguing that the nuclear family is the only workable model. I speak to the general theme apparently common to all of them, that parents are expected to see their children to adulthood, who, upon adulthood, contribute then to the welfare of their parents. Of particular note, I am ignorant of any example of of a culture that permitted parents to fail to contribute to the welfare of their children and simultaneously developed a stable and healthy civilization. I’ve relied upon those with more explicit knowledge to enlighten me about them if they exist or had existed, but though I have been probing this issue for some time, no one has yet brought any to my attention. Considering what I’ve observed and the lack of historical examples to the contrary, I consider it unproven that this tradition is invalid.
Then it becomes a question of why you distorted the meaning of the orginial post by responding to it as though it were addressing your general argument.
Because it wasn’t the first time my general argument had been ignored in favor of returning to accusations that I am mindlessly embracing anything traditional, then linking my alleged mindset to the worst examples of human behavior in history. I was getting tired of it, but it was uncalled for.
sylphhead: I bet you think our current culture, which last I checked 5 minutes ago contains a show called “G Spot” on Bravo!, can voluntarily shift to one of abstinence until marriage. In light of this, do you think that a shift to broader based child care is that far fetched a proposition?
I think staying closer to that theoretical ideal is preferable to moving further away from it. I support a shift to a broader base of child care, but the argument that single parent families are a valid alternative reduces that base, doesn’t it?
How long do you think we will last?
This is a good example arguing for the pointlessness of attempting a dialogue with you. I’ve already pointed out that your question was designed precisely to give you an opportunity for this rejoinder. Evidently, you aren’t able to see that plowing ahead in this fashion simply makes you look sophmoric. You’re the one who insisted that longevity was a legtimate marker for the value of an institution. Certainly the roughly 900 years run of Roman cultural mores dwarfs the record of our own culture. You simply want to include the past when suits your bias and exclude it when it does not.
With all due respect, I would suggest that something more than subjective impressions and a “lay knowlege” of human history are required when making sweeping generalizations about the “theme common” to all family structures. A basic working knowlege of comparative anthropology on the subject would seem to be the minimum expertise required.
If you possessed such knowlege you would know that in patrilineal, matrilineal and clan based societies much of what you describe as the role of the parents is often superceded by other relatives. I find it ridiculous, since you are the one making the positive assertions, that you’d expect others to supply examples disproving your bias. Particularly when you try to dictate the criteria for such examples in a manner intended to render proof impossible.
You’ve asserted that a common theme runs through all human family structures which places primary responsibility for offspring on the biological parents. The onus is on you to prove this contention. The very least you’re obliged to do is to demonstrate a rudimentary grasp of how many different types of family structure your thesis would have to account for. If you can’t do this much, you’re in no position to demand anyone provide a refutation of what amounts to an ungrounded prejudice on your part.
The most that I can see anyone feeling obliged to provide you with, is a referral to a solid text on the comparative anthropology of family structures.
I am adoring W.B. Reeves more and more as time goes by. That is all.
A) W. B. Reeves, you rock.
B) Some of those examples you mention have already been brought up, in this thread. (which apparently makes no difference to Christian…)
They have. Only 10 – How about the entire state?
Remember Nicolae Ceausescu, the communist? He imposed a massive population increase program; Abortion was banned; Contraception was banned; Each ‘family’ or was it woman had to have FIVE children.
Many of the kids ended up abandoned to ‘orphanages’ where they were horribly mistreated. More than 1/2 of all the children in Europe with AIDS come from that one country.
So color me extremely cautious about any approach put forward by corrupt power hungry politicians and bureaucrats of any political persuasion. You end up like the New Orleans teachers union, having to go mass on the capitol steps to beg for crumbs. Every year they promise them, but they rarely deliver.
I happen to like active grandparents and also support grandparents rights. Troxille v. Granville, however, was correctly decided because that law was so expansive it allowed any person to sue for parental rights. We were able to keep them from taking Louisiana’s laws more tightly written laws backwards as a knee jerk reaction to that ruling.
But TWO is the right number of parents for a child – one dad and one mom.
Argh. Nick, you’re employing the word “right.” Once again, you leave yourself open for attack by anyone who understands the breadth of human variation throughout time and history. Children have been raised by many diverse groups, which may or may not include the original two gene donors, and they’ve done just fine.
So if your argument consists of nothing more than a fallacious appeal to “rightness,” then it’s time for you to acknowledge you’re standing on quicksand and find something else to argue.
WB Reeves, you are truly articulate. I echo Jake’s sentiment. Although you bitchslap me with almost everything you say, I consider it a chance to improve myself.
I’m not trying to trap anyone with impossible conundrums, or tunnel your responses to serve my agendas. Not deliberately! And I never tried to claim that contributors other than parents don’t exist. I am not making a claim and demanding proof from others, I’m responding to claims by others that because family structures other than the nuclear exist, single parent families are therefore acceptable. In other words, that only one parent’s contribution is acceptable, even when it is perfectly possible to harness the resources of two parents. It is their positive claim that I am asking for proof of, not mine.
Although you have illustrated many examples of differing family formats, you cite no examples of formats that have allowed one of the parents to voluntarily make no contribution. Or have you? You referred to cultures where the “traditional” parental roles have been done by people other than the parents. Does this mean the parent did nothing for them, and that was okay? Or were they obliged to contribute, but in a non-standard way? I would be open to that idea.
My understanding of both history and contemporary culture, primitive as it is, makes seem clear that parental absence has been linked more with hardship and suffering than good health and stability. Is that impression the result of bias, subjective observations and incomplete historical knowledge?
*splurt*
What year is it Christian? Oh, nevermind.
Children have been raised by many diverse groups, which may or may not include the original two gene donors, and they’ve done just fine.
I do not dispute that at all, Mandolin, but the assumption is that these children will be raised by someone. That in general, a family or community will care for them. My problem is that if single parenting is okay, the blood father or mother is not obligated to be part of that care package, even if they are perfectly able to. Does not everyone, uncles, grandparents, in-laws, have the same option to bow out? How do you assure this network of caregivers will exist if the expectation is that their attention to this matter is not required?
I’m sorry Q Grrl. I meant it jokingly. I’ll refrain from more colorful language.
Phrasing the question this way assumes that the only reason any adult would assume any parental responsibility for any child is because of either social or legal responsibility, not out of love for the child or a desire to parent. That seems silly to me.
Furthermore, we actually do require a certain level of financial responsibility from the 2 genetic parents right now, unless they both choose to give the child up for adoption.
—Myca
“This thread has not had a lot of responses, but I would be curious to know if anyone found my circumstances in my post a few above to be out of the ordinary, or unfair, or completely just. I just decided to find out what percentage of my gross goes to child support, and it’s 38.7 percent. Is this common? I would really appreciate some honest responses.”
Texas (which I will brag on in this respect) uses a formula based upon a percentage of net monthly income (which is gross less payroll taxes, medical insurance for the kids, SS, and union dues). One kid is 20%, two kids is 25% and so forth. There is a further adjustment if the NCP (non-custodial parent) has other children, so you aren’t robbing Peter to pay Paul. As for unemployment, in my experience child support for those periods is typically calculated as for a minimum wage earner, unless there is fairly blatant evidence of voluntary un- or under-employment (i.e., someone quits a $25/hour job to flip burgers the day after being served with a suit). I have represented both NCP’s and CP’s over the last 15 years or so and it is far more often the case that an NCP is simply refusing to pay than the CP is being unreasonable in the amount requested for child support, which again almost always follows the formula. Ironically, at least in my experience, it is far more likely that female NCP’s will simply refuse to pay anything than male CP’s, though again that is purely anecdotal on my part.
The men’s right’s groups do have a few valid points; for example, custody fights are nearly always stacked against the father due to the (decidedly un-feminist) prejudices of most judges and lawyers. Unfortunately, their good points get buried under twelve tons of crazy (like allow men to “opt out” of child support if they offer the woman money for an abortion and she refuses to take it).
Phrasing the question this way assumes that the only reason any adult would assume any parental responsibility for any child is because of either social or legal responsibility, not out of love for the child or a desire to parent. That seems silly to me.
I don’t believe everyone who assumes responsibility for a child does so because ‘they have to’, of course, but nevertheless, ‘someone has to’ and not everyone who creates a child ‘wants to’. If no one wants to, who does the buck finally stop at if not at those whose actions created the need?
we actually do require a certain level of financial responsibility from the 2 genetic parents right now, unless they both choose to give the child up for adoption.
But if being a single parent family via sperm donation is valid, there aren’t two parents to get support from. If only one parent’s support is considered good enough, how can you justify demanding support from an equally-unmotivated direct donor when the only difference is that he didn’t go through a sperm bank?
“If only one parent’s support is considered good enough, how can you justify demanding support from an equally-unmotivated direct donor when the only difference is that he didn’t go through a sperm bank?”
Isn’t the answer here obvious? If a woman gets pregnant through a donation from a sperm bank and CHOOSES to be a single mother, then she is making a conscious and deliberate choice. She could have avoided having a child by not going to the sperm bank.
If a woman gets pregnant because of failed contraception or lack of contraception, then the end result (a child) is the responsibility of both parties who contributed, since they both presumably had a choice or chance to eliminate the possibility of pregnancy (or at the very least both agreed to take the risks associated with the possibility of failed contraception – assuming of course the sex is consensual). Even if a man claims that “I thought she was on the pill.” he has a choice to use a back up/barrier method.
Now, that being said, I don’t disagree with you that more men should take more responsibility for the children they father. I think that’s a good thing. BUT, I don’t think that making room for single parent families necessarily negates the idea that men should take responsibility for fathering children.
In other words, I agree with the basic concept – people who bring a child into this world – unless they give that child up for adoption – have a responsibility to care for that child in the best way they can. Morally, it’s the right thing to do. HOWEVER, taking care of that child doesn’t HAVE to mean marrying one another. It doesn’t mean that a single parent isn’t CAPABLE of taking very good care of a child on his/her own – not that it’s EASY, but it is POSSIBLE, nor does it negate the idea that families of same sex couples, extended families, communal families etc are also perfectly fine groups to raise a child. We don’t HAVE to have one standard by which to measure everything against. Children can thrive in multiple family forms – as has been discussed at length.
I don’t especially think anyone disagrees with your basic premise – that people who create a child have a certain moral obligation to caring for that child – be it through arranging for other caregivers (adoption) or doing it themselves, or getting help from extended family members. I think people are objecting to the idea that there is only ONE way to promote responsibility to children and only ONE family form that is GOOD for children. The whole of human history tells us that there are multiple ways to raise children that work.
I think that, to be honest, this is sort of a silly concern, along the lines of John Howard’s fears of the coming Gattaca-style genetic fascism.
When you say:
The difference is that in a case of artificial insemination, the plan from the very beginning is for one parent to take full responsibility. There’s a huge difference, not a minor one, between that and one parent unilaterally abandoning their responsibilities.
—Myca
PS. Or, in other words, everything Kate L. says.
Also . . . if we want to expand this concept out, to where more people than just the two genetic donors have some sort of legal/financial responsibility to the child, well, isn’t that what public education, AFDC, CPS, etc., is about?
We collectively support that stuff through our taxes. As a culture, we have legal responsibilities to children that aren’t ours.
Now, since these responsibilities are shared across many adults and many children, there’s not nearly as much individual responsibility from a specific adult to a specific genetically unrelated child, but the basic principle is sound. The responsibility for a child’s welfare does not lie solely on the shoulders of the genetic donors.
—Myca
Local Crank said, “Ironically, at least in my experience, it is far more likely that female NCP’s will simply refuse to pay anything than male CP’s, though again that is purely anecdotal on my part.”
I would really like to see a study that compares child support payments and orders for non-cusotdial parents that accounts for gender differences. Since women are generally paid less than men, I would not be surprised if child support is more of a financial burden on non-custodial mothers. However, I also suspect that non-custodial mothers have a strong overrepresentation among the unemployed.
Ironically, the only person I know who was jailed for not paying child support is a female cousin (by marriage) of mine. She is a drug addict and an alcoholic, and has no real viable employment. She got picked up on drunking driving charges, and then there was apparently a warrant out for her because she owed around $6000 dollars (I don’t have a clue how many moths that is.) in child support. I do have a little sympathy for her because until she gets clean. she won’t pay able to pay the support or keep a job. But I’m also really ticked that she is choosing drugs over her kids.
The Local Crank said, “The men’s right’s groups do have a few valid points; for example, custody fights are nearly always stacked against the father due to the (decidedly un-feminist) prejudices of most judges and lawyers.”
I think that’s what people forget. The ideology that men are breadwinners and women are caregivers is a patriarchal ideology that permeates the court system. So when they act like this is some anti-men conspiracy, it not. It’s an ironic (and I think negative) effect of an ideology that has generally been anti-woman.
Right, which is part of what drives me up the goddamn wall about MRAs. I feel like it’s so much a failure of anger and pain over communication and rationality, because . . . dude, Feminism Didn’t Cause This.
I do think that men get a raw deal some of the time, but not only did feminism NOT cause it, 99.9% of the time, feminism is the solution!
Grrrr. We don’t have the be on different sides. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.
—Myca
Kate: nor does it negate the idea that families of same sex couples, extended families, communal families etc are also perfectly fine groups to raise a child. We don’t HAVE to have one standard by which to measure everything against.
Kate, if I conveyed the idea that because I desire both parents to contribute (in some dependable, reliable way) that I am trying to force every peg into a uniform hole, it was not my intention. The only standard I desire is that everyone who cobbles together a child will support it. Given the diverse habits, intentions, desires, and sympathies of men and women, how can we ensure this will be true for all children unless we adopt a common framework reflecting our most minimum standards, and then require that they be met? (I envision a framework which is compatible with all of the alternative structures you mention, Kate. I am only unconvinced of single parenting, since it is the only one that suggests reducing the responsible adult base below two is okay).
Myca: The difference is that in a case of artificial insemination, the plan from the very beginning is for one parent to take full responsibility. There’s a huge difference, not a minor one, between that and one parent unilaterally abandoning their responsibilities.
Agreed, the former assures that there was at planning done, and it at least has the dignity of reflecting the desires of both parties. But there is also a huge difference, not a minor difference, between the resources of one parent and the resources of two. You and Kate are both saying that the (father, usually) is free from burden if the (mother, usually) expressly waives their rights to their support. I can accept that this could be legal, but surely she has less of a safety buffer. If the frequency of one parent families rises, how can you not expect the incidence of childrearing-related tragedies to also rise? Is her and his freedom in this respect worth the risk? I read stories of single parent families that keep me awake at night.
[edited to add]
Kate: Isn’t the answer here obvious? If a woman gets pregnant through a donation from a sperm bank and CHOOSES to be a single mother, then she is making a conscious and deliberate choice. She could have avoided having a child by not going to the sperm bank.
With respect, I think there are problems here though. Assuming a man who wants a sexual relationship but doesn’t want to enter into a child support situation brings himself to ask his partner if she would be okay with him staying out of it in the case of an accidental pregnancy that she chooses to carry to term, would that private agreement have the strength of law and free him from obligation even if she changes her mind, or will it be declared invalid by the courts and thereby risk resentment, dispute, evasions and hostility from a man who feels entrapped, or lied to. I don’t ever want a child’s life to begin in a battle over support.
Myca said, “feminism is the solution!”
Yep, but most MRA’s will never admit it.
Christian,
There are FEWER single parent families today than there were at the turn of the century. And yet, single parent families have the opportunity to do MUCH better now more than ever, because woman are gaining in employment and pay, because alternative care arrangements exist so a woman CAN work(daycare), because we are a much more interdependent society and don’t have to produce every item of clothing, every vegetable we eat, etc.
Generally speaking, will two people be easier than one? Two incomes better than one? etc? Yes, of course, but that doesn’t mean that the single parent is doomed to a fate worse than death! Single parents have help and support from friends and family members, they are able to work and spend time with their children and raise them to be intelligent and capable people. Is it BETTER if the non custodial parent plays a role in that child’s life – by providing some financial assistance, love and interaction? Usually, presuming the non custodial parent is not an abuser or a loser or … you get my point, right? In cases where the non custodial parent is a less than stellar person, I should think it preferable for him or her to not have anything to do with the child, KWIM?
I don’t know, it’s HARD, and to tell you the truth I personally wouldn’t CHOOSE that life, but it’s not impossible, nor is it something to look down upon necessarily. I can think of 100 reasons it might be better for a child to grow up in a single parent family than a two parent family.
Generally speaking, will five people be easier than two? Five incomes better than two? etc? Yes, of course, but that doesn’t mean that the two-parent family is doomed to a fate worse than death! Nuclear families have help and support from friends and family members, they are able to work and spend time with their children and raise them to be intelligent and capable people. Is it BETTER if the community plays a role in that child’s life – by providing some financial assistance, love and interaction? Usually, presuming the community is not abusive or full of losers or … you get my point, right? In cases where the community is less than stellar, I should think it preferable for them to not have anything to do with the child, KWIM?
:->
Polyamory for the win!
—Myca
Yeah, but I have to wonder why.
I mean, look, I’ve been just as frustrated and angry as they have, about a lot of the same stuff. I’ve felt the pressure to conform to what’s acceptable and expected for my gender, and it’s hurt.
Why is it that I see patriarchy as the cause, and they seem to see feminism/women/hairy legs/pantsuits/whatever as the cause?
Honestly, I see a strong parallel to the way that the Republican Right exploits the poor-but-white by blaming their economic situation on immigrants/communists/godless atheists/taxes/gay people/brown people/etc. It’s a good way to keep them from examining the real reasons they can’t pay rent this month, and it’s a great way to keep them from questioning the capitalist system.
—Myca
ps. This is a total off-topic digression, and sorry about that. I figured after ~200 posts, it would be cool, but if you want to move this back towards child support, Amp, just say so.
Perhaps I can be content with the increased interdependency of society and the hope that single parent families remain few in number, Kate. But I’d like to address the last point: If women can choose to be single and absolve the father, it opens the option for men to stipulate in advance that they don’t want to be childcare providers for children that occur as a result of having sex. They can ask that if a pregnancy occurs accidentally and she intends to keep it, whether she intends to demand that support before they begin the relationship. If they then procede and a pregnancy occurs which she does decide to keep, is their agreement effective?
If it is true that women can absolve the father, it risks leaving her without support if she made a hasty decision or her condition changes. If the courts can overturn it, it invalidates the idea that women can choose to absolve the father, and in addition can result in a very angry man. Either result worries me.
IANAL, but that has never mattered before, sooo:
I think the deal is that a woman cannot absolve the father of a child from any obligation, because his obligation isn’t to her, but to the child itself (I can’t clear you from a debt you owe Ampersand, in other words) and failure to pay child support is a criminal matter (and I can’t give you permission to break the law).
However, if before the pregnancy there’s some sort of legal agreement made that the woman will bear 100% of the financial obligation resultant from any pregnancy, then I think that there’s a good case for a civil suit by the man for child support expenses.
What’s the lesson here? Don’t sign legal papers declaring dumb stuff.
This is a pretty darn hypothetical hypothetical, also. I’d be surprised if we’ve seen a case like this even once.
—Myca
This is a pretty darn hypothetical hypothetical, also. I’d be surprised if we’ve seen a case like this even once
I don’t think so Myca. I doubt very many men will bother to ask that question, but I think many women have been harmed by men because of a myth that sex is consequence free, that it presumes no commitment, who make assumptions about the reliability of contraception, and the expectation that women have the power of decision about whether or not to require the father’s support.