There should be a law...

[tater03]

I kind of get where you are coming from but in most situations there has to be a court order that states that they cannot see their children and it would have to have come from some reason the judge felt it was needed. Now in the case of a mother just not letting their child see the father because they are being vindictive and getting so called revenge is just plain wrong. I can see where the father might not want to pay child support but at the same time shouldn't that father go back to court if she is in violiation of a court order?

 

[framed]

I'm definitely not a lawyer, and not even having been married I can't say I have experience with how it exactly works. I'm trying to put myself in the mind of non-paying fathers and see what they might be thinking, since most people are inclined not to give them the benefit of the doubt. All I could come up with as legitimate reasons were:

1) This never should have been my problem - which is where my comment about abortion came from, and its a valid thing for someone who asked for an abortion to think, especially since men are required to defer all their rights in this area to women.
2) "She stole him from me." -I bet this is thought quite a lot, and in some cases its probably a valid since our legal system is biased towards women when it comes to parental rights.

Actually I bet both of these thoughts go through support-paying parents minds quite a bit, though realistically most cases its probably not valid. (Did you really tell her to get an abortion and she refused? Did you really do nothing to deserve loss of custody?) I only bring it up because non-paying dads get about as much sympathy as murderers, and in some cases they most likely deserve more than that.

The whole topic really points more to me about how broken marriage is in general. It seems almost routine that parents will have to decide custody of their kids at some point, and it will undoubtedly be nasty and leave bad feelings for both parents and the kids involved.

Maybe this is a consequence of the "looser" sex and easier-to-terminate marriages that came along with woman's lib. <pause> I can feel the hellfire coming down already so let me explain... I do not mean to say that women's lib is or was a bad thing in general, I'm rather saying that as women became less dependent on men, divorces became something they could realistically seek. Like any major social change it would naturally have both positive and negative effects. In this case the definite upside of getting women out of bad to devastatingly-bad relationships, but the downside of weakening the durability of families. (This idea just came to me while I was typing the previous paragraph, I'm not desperately attached to it. Anyone have any opinions? )

 

[Plumley]

2) By taking sole custody the mother is effectively saying "this baby is mine, not yours". If thats the case then the mother should be supporting whats hers with her own money.

Not at all. Custody is awarded by a judge and is a decision made in the best interests of the child. The person who has custody is responsible for making decisions about the child and providing a home but not having custody does not exclude a parent from a child's life. The non custodial parent is not legally cut off and usually has visitation with the child and input into decisions about him or her. Also, more and more, joint custody is being awarded to both parents and there is no longer a great bias in favor of awarding custody to mothers.

 

[tater03]

I would agree that it is easier for an independent women to get a divorce nowadays. I don't know if I would agree that womens lib made this possible because of the fact that nowadays a women 9 times out of 10 needs to work to help with the financial aspects of the home.

 

[framed]

Hmmm thats interesting. I have no idea what the cause and effect is there. You think the "traditional family" of old is economically not possible for most anymore, or do you think most families are buying more than they need, thus "need" the second parent's income? I'm thinking of things like flat screen TVs, 3 cars, vacation homes, etc. I know some people who go that route, but I also know some who live more modestly.

It seems odd to think that with all the efficency gains in the past decades that a family in the 50s could get by on 40 hours a week, whereas no they "need" 80. I'm not saying I'm denying it, but I'm wondering if/why its true.

 

[hokeshel]

I think our views on what is necessary have certainly changed. At one time I had no car, no television no phone and not even a vaccuum clearner for a while. People couldn't understand how I got by. Many people consider even television a necessity now. So, I think that although many families have to have two incomes, I think that they could scale back if they needed to. Once you are forced to do wihtout, it is surprising how your views change.

 

[Plumley]

I think women work for all sorts of reasons. Some work because their families couldn't survive if they didn't, some work for the fulfillment of a career, some work for achievement. There's no simple answer, really, and economics is only one factor.