An essential point that not everyone has yet absorbed: Sometimes there is no fair solution.
Case in point: This week in Newsday, Glenn Sacks and Dianna Thompson argue that life is unfair for fathers. Well, I agree; life is unfair for fathers. It’s not as unfair as Sacks and Thompson think it is – for instance when they claim “when a woman wants a child and a man does not, the woman can have the child anyway…” Of course, this isn’t strictly true – a man could insist on using birth control. Or get a vasectomy. Or even refuse to have sex with women. Sacks and Thompson are so eager to show that men are pure victims that they refuse to acknowledge any of the choices men do have.
What bothers Sacks and Thompson is that women have one choice men don’t – women can choose to have an abortion. This is unfair (although Sacks and Thompson don’t acknowledge the many ways in which this unfairness benefits men), but it’s an unfairness inherent in biology, not in law. So the question becomes, what can be done to remedy this unfairness? Well, according to Sacks and Thompson, the solution is giving unmarried men the right to walk away from all their parenting obligations. In other words, unmarried men shouldn’t pay child support unless they want to.
But their logic is shaky. According to Sacks and Thompson, “On average, every day 17 [U.S. workers] die – 16 of them male. Couldn’t men who work long hours or do hazardous jobs – and who suffer the concomitant physical ailments and injuries – argue that their bodies are on the line, too? Where is their choice?”
Well, unless they’re independently wealthy, they have no choice but to work. But although the news doesn’t seem to have reached Sacks and Thompson, nearly everyone in the US has to work. It’s not as if unmarried fathers are forced to work while childless or married men (or women for that matter) spend their days drinking brandy by the fire. Sacks and Thompson say that for unmarried fathers to need to work is a injustice, because it violates “my body, my choice” – but since when is it such a horrible violation of bodily integrity to have a job? And if it is a violation of bodily integrity for unmarried fathers, then why isn’t it a violation for all other workers, as well?
Sacks and Thompson are right that occupational injuries are too frequent – and too sex-biased – but workplace injuries aren’t caused by paying child support. It’s not as if 100% of mine shaft workers are unmarried men with children; nor is a mine worker magically safer on the job if he has no children. No feminist objects to protecting workers – but Sacks and Thompson seem to believe that workplace deaths are caused by inadequate father’s rights. The real problem is inadequate workplace safety – and the real solutions have nothing to do with eliminating child support payments for unmarried fathers.
Finally, although “16 deaths a day” sounds impressive, is this really a figure that tells us about the average working man’s life? Of the approximately 73 million American men who worked in 2000, 5,467 – which is to say, less than one-hundredth of one percent – died on the job. It’s tragic that they died, of course – but we can acknowledge that tragedy without pretending that men typically face such dangers in order to pay child support.
* * *
What all that really indicates, of course, is that Sacks and Thompson bend over backwards to perceive men as victims. So they say that men have absolutely no choice – ignoring that men aren’t being forced to have sex against their will. So when unmarried men get jobs, that’s a violation of “my body, my choice” equivalent to being forced to bear a child against one’s will – even though the rest of us have to get jobs too. So when one out of every 13,433 male workers dies, that becomes an example of typical male experience. Logical consistency takes a back seat as men-as-victims settles in behind the wheel.
But just because Sacks and Thompson are male-victimology junkies, that doesn’t show that they’re wrong about the larger issue – shouldn’t men get a choice equal to women’s? Contrary to Sacks and Thompson’s view of men as victims first and foremost, men have plenty of choices until pregnancy happens. But once a pregnancy has begun, Sacks and Thompson are right – in our legal system, for the first two trimesters of pregnancy, women have a choice and men don’t. And that, they say, is unfair.
Well, I agree. It is unfair. But their solution would actually make things worse, not better.
Any genuine discussion of “fairness” has to consider what’s best for all the parties involved – but Sacks and Thompson never consider anyone’s rights but the father’s. What about the other parties?
For instance, they propose giving fathers a right to cut and run – but they don’t propose giving mothers the same right. So let’s say I have a one-night stand and learn, eight months later, that the woman is pregnant with our child. Under Sacks and Thompson’s proposal, I – as the man – would have the right to sign away all my obligations to the child. But what if I want to keep the child, which the mother wants to give it up for adoption? Well, under the laws of most states, I’d automatically get custody – and the mother would be obligated to pay me child support (although Sacks and Thompson seemingly think only men ever pay child support, the truth is noncustodial parents of both sexes pay). So men get to cut and run, but women don’t. How is that fair?
My guess is that Sacks and Thompson would concede this point, and be willing to modify their proposal to give women and men equal rights to flee their obligations. But there’s still an important party whose rights haven’t been considered: what’s fair to the child?
There is an undeniable harm to noncustodial parents of forcing them to pay child support – they have to give up money that they’d otherwise spend as they want. But there’s also an undeniable harm of saying parents have no legal obligation to support their children. Child poverty is already a bigger problem in the US than in other wealthy nations; releasing noncustodial parents from the obligation to support their kids would make this worse.
Any honest appraisal of “choice for men” has to weigh both these elements. Which is the worse harm – the harm to noncustodial parents of having to pay child support, or the harm to children if child poverty is increased? “None of the above” isn’t on the menu; as a society, we have to choose one harm or the other to live with.
The moderate loss of financial freedom to noncustodial parents is obviously the lesser harm, and thus the harm we should choose. That is unfair; but increased child poverty is even more unfair. We can only choose which unfairness is easier for our society to live with.
Children have an unambiguous right to the material support of two parents. Under Sacks and Thompson’s theory, parents have the ability to sign away their children’s rights before the child is ever born – but that’s not the way the law works. Once the child is to be born, it has rights, regardless of what it’s parents signed before it was born. A parent can’t sign away a future child’s right to support, for the same reason that a parent can’t sign a contract selling his future child’s liver. The future child’s rights aren’t the parent’s to sign away.
There is no chance that “choice for men” will ever become law. It’s “fairer” only in the most facile analysis – an analysis that has eyes only for the rights of the father, ignoring mother and child entirely.
Is our current system unfair to noncustodial fathers? Yes, of course it is. It’s also unfair to custodial mothers that they have to do virtually all of the work and pay most of the expenses (child support payments typically cover less than half the child’s costs). And it’s terribly unfair that some children grow up without two parents who love each other and want to be together. Life is unfair.
But Sacks and Thompson’s solution doesn’t relieve unfairness, it just transfers it. Rather than all three parties sharing the burden equally, the father is relieved of all unfairness while the costs to mother and child are increased. How is that fair?
Update: I’ve taken the liberty of correcting a significant typo. The number of male workplace fatalities in 2000 was 5,467, but when I originally posted this blog entry I accidentally typed 3,467..
Begone, spamming poopyhead.
I was once forced to face the though decision of choosing life or death for my unborn child.
My ex and I just started dating and she got pregnant. I told her that I was going to support her decision no matter which way she would decide to go. I said this knowing that ultimately the decision was hers, and I wouldn’t able to do much, if we didn’t agree. In the end, she decided to get an abortion – and truth to be told ““ I felt off the hook. We went our separate ways two years later.
But I have been wondering for a long time now: what would I have done had I been given the choice to raise my child as a single parent, only if she had been willing to give birth, or been forced to do so by law.
If there is a willing father to choose life instead a medical-waste dumpster for and unborn child, why should the woman alone be in the position to make that choice.
All I know, that I may have gone for it, and she’d be five years old by now.
There’s plenty o’ black babies needing adoption.
Is child support really less than half of what it usually costs to raise a child?
I have talked to guys who have to support children from a former marriage, and the numbers just don’t add up. Somehow, other “whole”? families seem to get by on a lot less per kid.
“…Somehow, other “whole”? families seem to get by on a lot less per kid. ”
Errr, even single and childfree by choice, I can vouch for the fact that living alone often costs more than living together. Look at rent/mortgage and utilities, just for starters. It’s a lot cheaper to live since my partner and I consolidated under one roof. Why would that be different for a single parent with a child (or several) ? The kid can’t go to work, after all. At least not in this country.
Bald Eagle: nature gave the choice to women, once there is a pregnancy. And permit me a little schadenfreud here: we women learn about advantages nature and “nature” give to men our whole lives, so now you have an idea of how it is for us.
Childcare alone is a huge cost. If a woman works 40 hours a week and tries to get the least expensive legitimate childcare out there, it often runs anywhere from 3.00 to 5.00 an hour. That alone is 100.00 to 200.00 a week – 400.00 to 800.00 a month. Childcare costs are something single mothers agonize over, and of course you want to not put your child with the bargain basement under the table care-givers.
It’s always amazing to me. Either deny women choice, or blame them for it. Ain’t it grand?
I have talked to guys who have to support children from a former marriage, and the numbers just don’t add up
Have you talked to any of their ex-wives for their take on how the numbers add up?
how could a reasonable humane sensible MAN EVER and I mean EVER suggest that a woman be forced to carry a pregnancy to term against her will?
Amp, I’m playing devil’s advocate somewhat here but bear with me, where in ‘natural’ law does a child have the unambiguous right to support from both of it’s parents? In most legal systems the child does however we allow sperm / egg doners to be released from that requirement and also allow single parent adoption as long as the household meets adoption requirements. That would seem to indicate that it is ‘legally’ supportable and justifiable to allow the pre-(or post)birth severing of these rights.
Also surely the most fair system would be for the child to not be born without the consent / support of two parents? Then there is no financial harm to either party, no child to be harmed, and ‘relatively’ minor (as far as minor surgeries go that is) to the pregnant party.
That fairness though gets into what happens if the pregnant party doesn’t wish to undergo the procedure in which case we either go full circle or treat the other party as a sperm / egg donor.
In terms of unifying the law to make it simpler that makes sense surely, one set of laws that cover almost all situations.
Where I have ever claimed that there is such a thing as “natural” law? I don’t even believe in natural law.
(I’ve said many times that if we had a generous enough welfare system with stable funding, I wouldn’t object to C4M. Obviously that means that I don’t think there’s a natural law right to financial support from two parents.)
Your analysis seems divorced from practicality. You can talk about adoption or sperm donors all you want, but the practical truth is, parents who make use of sperm donors (or egg donors) and single-parent adoptions are, on average, a self-selected and unusually educated group who rarely fall into poverty. They’re also a very small group. From a practical perspective, “what are we going to do about impoverished children resulting from single-parent adoption and sperm or egg donors” isn’t a very pressing question.
In contrast, “what are we doing to do about impoverished children of single parents generally” IS a pressing question. And “let’s let the fathers off the hook” is an answer that will do a lot of harm to those children.
Surely you’re not suggesting that the government should force women to have abortions against their will?
However, without the element of force, it’s not a useful policy to say “women should have abortions.” The questions isn’t what they should do, but what they will do. In practice, a large number of women won’t have abortions.
How are children of single mothers better off under a C4M regime than under the status quo? If you can’t answer that question in a reasonable way, then you don’t have a reasonable argument in favor of C4M.
Thus why I was playing devil’s advocate. By ‘natural’ law I mean that there is nothing fundamental across all of humanity or most of it such that biological parents are responsible for their children. In many cultures it falls on either an extended family group or other situation such as children falling under the care of the maternal uncles or similar.
I would agree that typically (imo at least) the set of people conceiving either as a single parent or through gamete donorship would appear to be a group that doesn’t fall into the poverty trap that often. However their existence as an exception to the default rules indicates that society’s law isn’t fixed.
I suppose really what I want to see is a theoretical acceptance (not from you Amp since you have given it already) that choice for men and parenthood from sex isn’t or shouldn’t be a binding contract unless both parties are either willing to accept it alone or as a group. That this might require more social support is a sensible compromise.
No I wouldn’t mandate women having abortions, that’s a road we don’t want to travel down. At the same time if the choice rests solely with them then the responsibility should as well (thus my support for opt-in).
Children of single mothers won’t be better off under C4M in financial terms under any schemes I can see. They might be better off mentally as indicated in the other thread or in other ineffable ways. What is best for the child is again an argument that is hard to make because we have a lot of kids in situations that aren’t the ‘best’ for them however we would never consider removing them from it and even supporting them through it is difficult.
Force? Hell no.
Incentivize? Hell yes.
Would you support that move?
I assume the goal of “incentivizing abortion” would be to reduce the number of poor single mothers.
However, the proposal I was responding to would actually increase the number of poor single mothers, by removing one of men’s incentives to use birth control. There’s strong evidence that this increases single motherhood; in contrast, there is no evidence at all supporting the idea that weaker child support laws leads to a decrease in single motherhood.
I can certainly think of “increase abortion” laws I’d favor, however. The low-hanging fruit would be to make abortion much more easily available and affordable.
Also:
Why is that the defining question? I don’t agree that that is the appropriate assumption to begin the argument, nor that this is the sole factor which should be considered. I don’t think your limitation is reasonable.
I’m focusing on two limited issues: kids who aren’t supported to a general subsistence level, and kids whose support causes significant distress to people that never wanted kids. (Obviously, those can also overlap.) It’s bad for kids to wish they were never born, and it’s also bad for OTHER people to wish that a kid was never born.
A poor single mother or father who can afford to raise a kid on their own wouldn’t be affected, whether or not they and their child rely on normal social services available to the poor.
(Why not just apply this to poor people generally? The eugenics problem. It’s true that as a purely economic issue, incentivizing abortion and sterilization for the poor makes economic sense: it’s expensive to provide social welfare. But nobody ever seems to go that route without becoming evil or otherwise doing something horribly wrong. It’s better not to go there at all IMO.)