Contraception Surprises
Amanda Hess writes The Sexist, a column about local sex and gender issues, for Washington D.C.’s alt-weekly, the Washington City Paper. She’s a feisty feminist, and I’m still suffering from that feminism hangover, so I won’t be getting into any intense debates with her. She’s got a good sense of humor, though.
A little pleased then, majorly bummed now
She had a recent column about guys and their ignorance of how contraception actually works. It’s funny enough that I had to share it with you. To be honest, I don’t think most women understand much of this either. We may know how to use it, but I think most of us are pretty weak on the science.
I recently overheard a group of young women having lunch together all trying to figure out how the Nuva ring works, and they expressed their amazement at how it just kind of “stays there.” I also read one account by a guy who pulled out during sex and found the Nuva Ring snugly positioned at the base of his penis. He didn’t even know his hookup or what it was, so he was more than a little puzzled. I guess if you’re riding the vag carousel you run the risk of catching the plastic ring from time to time.
From Amanda Hess:
Last week, I cornered some men into explaining their understanding of how birth control works, on camera. Results were mixed. Bonus: Guess which one is gay?
A recent study of unmarried men and women aged 18-29 by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy turned up some very odd findings about peoples’ attitudes towards contraception:
1. 30% say they know little or nothing about condoms. (Um, it’s not rocket science.)
2. 63% say they know little or nothing about birth control pills. (This means that some women taking them are in this group. Yikes.)
3. 56% say they have not heard of the birth control implant. (OK, I really don’t know what that is.)
4. 42% of men and 40% of women believe that the chance of getting pregnant within a year while using the birth control pill is 50% or greater (despite research suggesting that the pill is typically 92% effective). (Taking it every day might help.)
5. 38% of men and 44% of women believe “it doesn’t matter whether you use birth control or not; when it is your time to get pregnant it will happen.” (Because Zoltar says so?)
And here’s the real kicker:
6. 53% of men and 52% of women say they would like to be parents now “if things in their life were different.” For those 25 and older, it was 66%.
7. Even among those who say it is important to them to avoid pregnancy right now, 20% of women and 43% of men say they would be at least a little pleased if they found out today that they or their partner were pregnant.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can you believe that?
Back to Amanda Hess at The Sexist:
In order to gauge the “surprise fetus” reaction, NCPTUP researchers first isolated survey respondents who claimed it was “very important or somewhat important for them to avoid pregnancy right now.” Then, researchers asked them how they would feel about an unplanned pregnancy:
If you found out today that (you were/your partner was) pregnant, how would you feel: Very upset, a little upset, a little pleased, very pleased, wouldn’t care.
Results: Staggeringly gendered!
Forty-three percent of young men responded that they would be “a little pleased” or “very pleased” by the news; only 20 percent of women answered the same. Men also proved more comfortable with an unplanned pregnancy at an earlier age: Thirty-four percent of men 18-19 said they would be pleased. By the time they reach age 20-24, 42 percent of men said they would be pleased. And over 50 percent of men aged 25-29 would be pleased by the news. Remember: this is only among men who deemed it “important” that a pregnancy not occur at this junction.
Meanwhile, the percentage of women who would be “pleased” by an unplanned pregnancy stays steady at a low 16 percent all the way from age 18 to 24. By the time women reach the 25-29 age range, the percentage of “pleased” women soars to 29 percent. Despite the jump, women in their late 20s still lag behind their male counterparts by 22 percentage points.
Freya Sonenstein, a research professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies adolescent males, says:
Men and women are not that different. There’s a high value given to having children. That’s one reason why using contraception consistently is a hard job.
Color me very surprised by these findings! They don’t say anything about marriage, but they do say some pretty interesting things about the desire to procreate. Your thoughts?
Related posts:
Another survey:
http://tinyurl.com/ykw8kxz
…HALF of all women would lie to their husbands or partners to keep their relationship going if they became pregnant by another man, a survey said today.
Figures showed one woman in two would not tell her man that the baby she was carrying was not his – if she wanted to stay with him.
They also said four out of ten (42%) would lie about contraception in order to get pregnant, in spite of the wishes of their partner….
What I really want to do is ask three of my female cousins who got pregnant accidentally out of wedlock: what were you doing for birth control? You know, so I can avoid those methods. At least two of them went on to marry the father. Maybe they were using coitus interruptus?
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/reprint...
I'm 25 and I don't have a boyfriend. If I found out today that I was pregnant, the father would be someone I'm not serious with. Consequently, i think that could be the worst thing happening to me right now. However, if i had a long-term boyfriend, someone that I loved and who loved me back, i admit i'd be secretly a bit happy about the pregnancy. So in my case, money or lack thereof, the freedom to do whatever i want vs. responsibility of taking care of a baby, don't play a big as role as having a steady partner – and I'm being utterly honest here. However, when I was 22 and had a loving, two-year-long relationship, i had a pregnancy scare, and I cried for days and felt compeltely miserable until my period finally came. So i think something really shifts when you get to 25!
Very interesting actually. Finding out 'my partner was pregnant?' Shock & utter surprise. I guess no matter if the wife was involved either! [Bad I know...]
But these stats are telling for any number of reasons, including my fav, cognitive dissonance:
“And over 50 percent of men aged 25-29 would be pleased by the news. Remember: this is only among men who deemed it “important” that a pregnancy not occur at this junction.
Meanwhile, the percentage of women who would be “pleased” by an unplanned pregnancy stays steady at a low 16 percent all the way from age 18 to 24. By the time women reach the 25-29 age range, the percentage of “pleased” women soars to 29 percent. Despite the jump, women in their late 20s still lag behind their male counterparts by 22 percentage points.”
Ergo we've probably arrived at the point where most fertile women clearly do not want or desire to be pregnant or have children, especially 'unplanned' ones. And this does not change much up to the 2 min. warning buzzer (age 30 say), where in only less than 30% of women that age would be at all 'pleased'.
Cognitive dissonance? About half of all pregnancies are 'unplanned', & ditto (most likely) for actual 'live births' too. So it happens in most families, regularly. By some sort of venue or 'method'.
But clearly about 2/3 of all women herein described are very reluctant about bearing any 'surprises', probably unless & until the context might be 'just right' or 'perfect'. And anyone older than say 40? Might tell them (or try) that such perfection is seldom known or seen on this earth. Hence the delay & delay seen in their fairly reluctant approach to marriage and/or family formation, again perhaps ever seeking that 'perfect partner' or 'swell nesting situation' to be satisfied 'enough' to pull it all off. And that's another level of cognitive dissonance right there too. And Lori Gottlieb speaks to that too, again as a 40 something reluctant convert to this coupling & marriage deal.
The guys? Strangely enough, they seem to be there, waiting. Or at least 50% of them are willing to try and see the prospect of a surprise pregnancy through. Now the clear catch is that they may not be all that 'able' and their 'willingness' might have a time clock or other unfavorable limitations attached. But no matter, these are most likely the kinds of guys that many women are just not looking for. Mostly due to not enough of this or that, not tall enough, professional enough, rich enough in your profession, a lack of certain Ivy tinted educational creds, whatever. I strongly suspect that this 50% is heavily invested with those lowly beta types. Likely those largely well known 'happy go lucky' types who are happy anytime fortune smiles upon them. They'll take what they can get. It's perhaps a dwindling tribe, but this gives us some evidence that it's clearly not quite extinct yet. They're just well hidden, and not many are looking for them too perhaps! But once, they raised up generations of children, just the same.
But interesting stuff indeed. Cheers & Good Luck! 'VJ'
They say that there are small lies, big lies and statistics. Color me skeptic.
What the statistic says is not what people would feel if they discovered a pregnancy. What the statistic says is what people THINK that they would feel if they discovered a pregnancy.
Well, in fact, the statistics say what people TOLD an interviewer that they THINK that they would feel if discovered a pregnancy (my English is not good enough for this abuse of grammar, sorry)
Which gender is more interested in having children?
Which gender is more interested in baby showers?
Which gender get more enthusiastic when sees little children?
Why books and magazines about little babies or pregnancy are targeted to women?
Why are there books for single moms and not for single dads?
Which gender is more worried about their biological clock?
Which gender has “baby rabies”? (sorry to use this insulting expression).
Which gender is able to marry an unattractive person, because it is “my last chance of having babies”.
Think about the men in your life (family, friends, co-workers). Then about the women in your life. Who is more interested in babies?
Men more pleased than women when it comes to having children? Come on! Who are you going to believe: an statistic or your own eyes?
(I am getting “Hooking up smart” addiction. I should leave because I have lots of work to do. Sorry, Susan to write so much. I should leave room for other people).
Women get far more intensely excited about babies, but I'm 24, a guy, and the statistics line up with what I see in my male and female friends. All of the women I know, even the ones that want a family, are determined to put it off at least until their late 20s. Most of the men* I know want a family and would be willing to step up right now if their girlfriends got pregnant. The timing is less important to them.
*That is, the men who are actually pursuing relationships. The ones who hook up casually would be horrified to hear that some one night stand they know nothing about was pregnant.
What is it with those Brits?
Other findings from that article:
Half (49%) would “kiss and tell” to the media for '25,000 if they had a one-night stand with a celebrity, and 38% say they would marry purely for money. 23% would allow their man to sleep with another woman for '50,000.
Meanwhile, some 79% have got drunk at the office Christmas party, while a third admit to “getting off with someone they don't fancy” and 5% have ended up having sex with the boss.
An alarming 31% of all women say they would not tell a future partner if they had a sexual disease. This rises for 65% for single women.
Nearly half (46%) fake orgasms and more than half (55%) claim they are tired, have a headache, or feel ill to “get out of lovemaking”.
A fifth of women with a long-term partner (19%) say they have cheated on him by having an affair, while 30% of all women have had an affair with a married man.
BTW, the survey was conducted with 5,000 women in the UK, avg. age 38.
Interesting that pregnancy will occur only 4% of the time when coitus interruptus is properly employed. However, in my early back seat gropings, that usually turned into coitus “Shit, I just came.”
Never trust a man to be in charge of voluntary withdrawal.
That's exactly what I thought when I read this. I'm sure the guys in this survey usually don't give a crap about kids or babies…but would step up if they knocked up their girlfriend. I guarantee that's what you're seeing in this survey.
Well, that shift is healthy and natural! And you have plenty of company, since two-thirds of male and female 25 year-olds say the same thing.
Haha, yes the cognitive dissonance is fairly amazing. Interesting that your take on this is that women want to wait until it's “perfect.” The Lori Gottlieb phenomenon, in a nutshell, as you point out. And yet, those same women will go to a sperm bank in their late 30s, apparently, or find a willing if temporary stud, a la Peter Orszag.
Your observation about the guys is also interesting – perhaps many of them would see any pregnancy as a real opportunity to pass along their genes.
Good food for thought there VJ!
I'm wondering now if the discrepancy between the male/female reactions has to do with the fact that women usually start being involved with babies earlier than men. Teen-age girls are more often than not the ones hired as babysitters, while for most of the men, the very first time they come across a baby is when it's their own. I myself babysat my nieces and nephews when I was in my teens, and as a consequence I saw for myself just how difficult and time-consuming raising children could be. I'm thinking now that this might be a factor in why more women than men wouldn't be pleased with a surprise pregnancy, because most of them already have an idea just how hard it is to deal with a child, while most men are clueless until the reality of actual 3 AM feedings hit them over the head.
You make a very valid point here about surveys in general, and whether people are even capable of being honest when talking about their sex lives. There is some good evidence that they are not.
(Your English grammar is nearly perfect there, by the way.)
You raise some interesting points here about who really fusses over babies in our culture. By all accounts, the surveyors were extremely surprised by the results. I think it must speak to some desire men have to procreate, which they are able to express in the abstract. The statistics weren't massaged here, by the way. This is just a straight report of who said what, though it definitely falls under the heading of “watch what I do, not what I say.”
Also, with the laws stacked against guys wrt child support and enforcement of same, I was surprised more guys would even want to take the chance of turning into an ATM for 18 years.
P.S. Haha, I love it that you have been writing! I encourage all addictions to HUS!
Well, that makes total sense wrt the guys having random hookups. Being baby daddy to a stranger? Not a good scene.
It is interesting that you see that guys in their mid-20s are already game. I can't explain it – do you have a sense of why they feel this way?
My guess is that women would be less likely to be pleased than men because usually they would have to pay the higher burden in terms of all the physical issues that go along with pregnancy as well as the career costs getting pregnant entails. I think most women these days have a career to consider and would prefer to wait until they've gotten some years of experience under the belt, financial stability, and some form of job security (or a husband who can carry the financial burden while she becomes a stay-at-home mom) before having kids. When they're actually ready to have kids, I'm sure the numbers would be different. But for surprise pregnancies, I think that makes sense.
Well, being willing to step up is different than being pleased. The survey results imply an actual desire for this to come about, even if the timing isn't perfect. I don't get the sense that this was testing guys' “honor,” it sounded more like wish fulfillment.
There is probably some truth in this, though many young women (especially here in the U.S.) are woefully ignorant about the responsibilities of child care.
Come to think of it, I wonder how movies like Juno and Knocked Up affect men. The guys in those films embraced unplanned fatherhood pretty enthusiastically in the end.
That's a good & valid point Jade, and I suspect that's part of the dynamic here too. But it's also part of that 'perfect nesting' fantasy. 'I'll make everything just perfect before I a.) Start seriously Looking for prospective husbands and b.) even think about becoming pregnant or having kids.' Sorry, but every indication from the historical record just does not well support such comforting fanciful constructs on how most families are formed. We'd certainly like it to be true, (and it's largely a middle & upper class ideal certainly), but for an entire generation of women now unmarried & childless, the largest ever recorded, actually? Waiting endlessly for perfection in their lives will soon not be a great option as they age out of their fertility.
And again the timing here has to be quite exquisite. Suddenly, somewhere After age 30, at least the plurality(!?) of women have to come to a slightly different conclusion. Or they're being less than sanguine about having kids & wanting marriage, all along, right? Again, cognitive dissonance raises it's head! Cheers, 'VJ'
I totally disagree. I am also 25 and even in a steady relationship, I would NOT want to get pregnant without the correct plans in place for the baby and a big discussion about how my partner and I would raise the kid. I want to give my children everything I can possibly afford, and that includes the luxury of planning when and how best to bring it into the world.
That goes for even being married — without being financially stable, I still wouldn't want to get pregnant without having planned it first.
I agree with you — I definitely have that 'perfect nesting' fantasy. I guess because I've seen so many of my friends achieve it, I feel like it's not that far out of reach. But maybe it is, I don't know.
Most men aren't aware of the legal and financial burden (and lack of rights) that would result from a pregnancy with an unmarried woman. That's the other part of the equation here.
I think that knowledge of condoms, while important, is not the main thing impacting whether they are used.
When it comes to condoms, I know that their impact on guy's enjoyment is significant. Condom-less oral is arguably preferable to wrapped up sex in terms of sensations for guys, although at the margins it can vary depending on the girl and the condoms.
On the other hand, the impact of condoms is highly variable with girls (with several reporting not being able to tell the difference at all unless they are told and others becoming hooked up on the sensation upon discovery). Of the later group I've only met a few, so I can't really tell whether they pursued it for actual physical sensations or for psychological issues.
Typo “guys' instead of guy's”.
A birth control implant is a variant of the birth control pill. It is injected or implanted (often in the arm, if memory serves me right), and it releases hormones. The major advantage is that it isn't necessary to remember taking a pill, as the release of hormones is automatic.
Women don't want to share the burden of 'equality' and don't like the message, but
“sex is consensual, choosing to bear and birth a child is a choice only women have”
Her body, Her choice, Her re$pon$ibility. The women's movement promoted the first two at the exclusion of the third. It is long past time women stepped up to the 'equality plate' and recognize that they alone are responsible for unwanted pregnancy and birth and accept the responsibility that goes with that choice. Men are not sperm donors and walking ATM's, women spread their legs knowing the potential choices that only women can make – let them face the consequences of their choices.
Vera, funny thing is I agree with everything you said. After that pregnancy scare i have always been a contraception freak, and I do everything i can -an science have provided- to avoid an unplanned pregnancy. If i had a steady partner, i would behave the same way. I WOULDN'T WANT to get pregnant. NO, not at all. But IF i get pregnant ACCIDENTALLY, i wouldn't be as miserable as when i was 21. I think I would have mixed feelings, i would be shocked, confused -what failed??- , worried, a bit embarassed – with my very religious parents- but also, in the end, a tad happy about having a baby. I've thought about it before since a couple of friends have gotten pregnant accidentally.
Jade, this is a very important factor, I think. Sex has always been a greater physical risk for women, which is why they are generally much more selective than men are. Pregnancy is enormously stressful in every respect. Furthermore, there is more social stigma attached to a woman with an unplanned pregnancy than to the guy. Guys tend to be viewed as victims in this scenario, and the woman is blamed for not having taken care of the birth control properly. So it's much easier for the guy to view it as a novelty or adventure, a general positive in theory, than it is for the woman.
I find this perplexing. With all the Men's Rights stuff being discussed online, and with many guys presumably acquainted with someone who has fallen into this legal swamp, why are so many young men completely unaware of the risks?
Il Capo, in the early days of this blog I wrote a post called How Do Penises Really Feel About Condoms? and I was surprised to learn how much guys dislike them and how much they affect sensation. They seem to be a necessary evil in this era of STDs, regardless of the pregnancy question.
As for women being able to sense them, I seriously doubt this is even possible. Imagine how uncomfortable those women would be wearing a tampon! The vaginal canal has limited nerve endings for some very good and practical reasons. I think synthesis mentioned an experiment where blindfolded women could not even distinguish among one, two or three fingers being inserted into the vagina. That says something pretty significant not only about condoms for women, but also about penis size/width, which is something men worry about quite a bit. So yeah, I'd have to say a dislike of condoms is all in a woman's head. Which is fine too, if you're in a relationship where you can proceed without risk.
I'm impressed V! You definitely win the award for most informed here. You even outdid the well-informed gay guy in the video! I wonder if the implant is more popular in Europe than in the U.S? I have never met a woman who has one.
3dshooter, color me not at all surprised that you would leave this comment! I am not a supporter of Roe for Men, I have studied it and find that it does not meet standards of fairness, so I don't believe it's the solution.
However, if a woman you loved had an unplanned pregnancy, would you be a little bit pleased? Or is that not going to happen, either b/c you won't love a woman, or will be super cautious about birth control?
Well, actually it was a very unscientific pr0n clip, but you're free to do an experiment with your husband. About the condoms, maybe it's a matter of lubrication?
http://sexademic.wordpress.com/2009/12/29/condo...
As for women being able to sense them, I do not have definitive evidence that it's possible. It's just that the few times when I was in a relationship and the transition to condom-less sex happened, they were the ones demanding it stay that way the following time. It could be about the feel good substances they got as a result from the experience or just some psychological reason. Luckily, they did keep their promise of using other contraception methods.
33 comments already? Your blog is moving on up!
Haha, well I think we'll have to discount that finding then. I'd forgotten that was porn.
Re the sexademic piece, she advised using lube on the inside of a condom. Wouldn't that increase the likelihood of it's slipping off? Seems like a risky move.
Suppose a man has sex with a woman he knows has herpes. Three months later, he starts breaking out. Does the woman have an obligation to pay for half of his herpes related medical expenses? After all, she chose to engage in an act she knew could give him herpes.
Of course not. A man is responsible for what goes into his body. The woman didn't cause him to get herpes, she merely gave him an option that might cause unwanted changes in body.
In the same way, a man cannot be held responsible for changes that happen to woman, even if he chooses to have sex with her. If a woman doesn't want to get pregnant, it her and only her responsibility to stop that from happening.
(Regardless of your views on abortion, you really ought to make sure you and your partner are on the same page. Every couple should discuss what they would do if the the woman got pregnant.)
Come on. A baby is a little different….
The laws are completely out of the realm of logic. See the following:
http://tinyurl.com/paternity-laws
Examples:
A boy molested by an older woman may be required to pay her child support.
A husband of a woman pregnant by another man is financially responsible for that child once he/she is born.
An invalid man who is sexually molested by a woman is financially responsible for her child should she become pregnant.
There could still be some truth to it.
About using lube on the inside of the condom, the condom's already lubricated, so maybe you just add a little extra on the head of the penis. It's probably more useful if you're uncircumcised.
…especially if almost half of them would be pleased with an unplanned pregnancy.
Agreed. Let's rephrase the question to…”if your partner got pregnant *and* gave you the child to raise.” Babies are fun…when you can hand them back when they aren't fun anymore.
More than a little different. Accommodating a painful virus into one's life is certainly a drag, but it's not a human being that will require 18 years of nurturing. What often gets lost in the conversation about child support is that the laws will always favor the child. Period. The law does not concern itself with the question of fairness to the parents. There are many cases where men have been treated unfairly; the Bradley Amendment is just one example. There are also many cases where bio dads go AWOL the minute they learn the woman is pregnant, this post notwithstanding.
I will say that in any case where a woman deceives a man re birth control, that man has a valid fraud claim and should not bear any financial burden. However, the courts will not ever see it that way, because that puts the well-being of the innocent child at risk.
Isn't it great? I am super psyched about all the great conversations taking place here! Good to see you GudEnuf!
That's a good link. An excerpt re the case of Stephen K. vs. Roni L. (1980)
And this:
And a very interesting ruling on the question of a boy molested by a woman:
Here's the freakiest story of all:
The conclusion states: to all men who complain about paying child support for children they did not want, the simple advice is, “Shut up and put on a condom. And dispose of it yourself.”
These cases are 30+ years old. Why don't guys know about them, when they have so much to lose?
Susan, remember that article I wrote about how women cheat within a relationship a lot more than they admit, and that somewhere around 15-20% of families across cultures have cuckolded husbands?
I'm doing this part for memory, so I'll approximate it: Women who have lovers and husbands at the same time have sex with their husbands something like 40% more, but they have more and stronger orgasms with their lovers. Additionally, they are something like 60% more likely to have sex with their lover while ovulating. The kicker is that even though they're having more sex with their husband, they are more likely to get pregnant by their lover.
Emotions are nature's way of getting us to do things that don't make sense. On paper, having children doesn't make any sense at all. It's brutal on a woman's body, and lowers her mate value — which means she can no longer attract the highest value men if something happens to the one she's with. Children are effectively parasites for up to 15 or 16 years. They just take resources without contributing any back. By adding one to a family of two, you're effectively reducing everybody's standard of living by around a third.
And when we really stop and think about it, what's so special about “continuing the name” or creating new life? There are six and a half billion people, and there's not enough renewable resources to go around for all of them. New life is all over the place. Nothing unique or special about it.
But the moment the oxytocin kicks in, all bets are off. That ugly little thing is the most beautiful creature in the whole world, and suddenly, no sacrifice seems too great. Sleeping in… yeah, it was nice, but getting up six times a night and living on four hours of sleep a night… nah, it's worth it. No more margarita fridays? No problem. Etc, etc.
It makes perfect sense, evolutionarily, that there would be lots of cognitive dissonance in the young and childless. We're capable of logic, and logic tells us DON'T HAVE A BABY FOR PETE'S SAKE!!! But we're dominated by hormones which tell us HAVE BABIES NOW WHILE YOU'RE THE MOST FERTILE!!!!
And of course, we all know that in humans, emotions tend to win over logic.
We're only a couple of generations out of the culture that taught us “Men have families.” When McCarthyism was at its most fervent, 30 year old bachelors were seen as deviants and malcontents… not stable or reliable enough to have a family of their own. Young men grew up in a society that saw children as a right of passage from boyhood to manhood.
I have noticed (through observation) that as we move down the socio-economic ladder, we see an increase in the belief that children = manhood. And we all know that the fastest and easiest way to manipulate a man is to threaten his sense of manhood. So I don't have any problem believing that a large number of men self report being happy about becoming a father.
I have only recently learned that sperm donors are sometimes sued for child support.
Really?!
That's appalling to me. Isn't the whole point of a sperm donor that the woman is admitting she doesn't want or need a man?!?
Seriously! Who ever thought men might commit fraud to GET women pregnant, haha!
I do remember that, and it strikes me as highly believable, especially since it confirms what studies show is likely to happen based on bio.
I think I've mentioned before too that I have a good friend who is a bone-marrow transplantation surgeon. As you can imagine, he needs to do a great deal of screening of family members to find good matches. I don't know the percentage, but he frequently learns that one or more of the children has a different bio father than the others. He is nearly always certain that the husband is unaware of this, and of course, he never reveals it. There was also an early episode of House where he can tell by the eye color of a patient that the father could not possibly be the father, and he does confront the woman as I recall. Of course, a woman may know she can't be certain of paternity, but most would probably rationalize the doubt away.
Yes, there is a really big difference in sensation for men, and I agree that oral without a condom is generally better than sex with a condom. FWIW, I'm not really a random hookup kind of guy, but when the opportunity has presented itself, I almost always try for swapping oral. Not only is there less risk, but it just feels better, and frankly, anytime I've been in that situation, there's alcohol involved, and alcohol reduces sensation. So… there it is.
I do have some good condom advice though. Female Condoms. They're still hard to find, but most major drug store chains carry them. They're more expensive, but in terms of sensation, its' much, much better for the guy. The condom stays put in the vagina, and the man's bare penis goes in and out of it. As long as the inside is lubed up, it's far, far more pleasurable than a sheathed penis in a bare vagina.
I had to laugh, this is so, so true. Although in truth I never gave up Margaritas…we just learned to make good ones at home
Really? Well, since we can probably agree that sensation during thrusting is far more important for a guy, that sounds like the way to go. However, I have heard that they're difficult to insert – I have never even seen one, so I can't say. It doesn't sound like they're catching on, but they might if men promote their use.
Susan, I think the real sticking point in the child support debate is the abortion debate. In America, there's a very large percentage of people who believe that a little clump of cells on the uterine wall is the equivalent of an adult human. This belief has a huge impact on the decision when an ill-advised pregnancy happens.
I'm sure I'll get some hate for this, but I'm not just pro-choice. I'm pro abortion. I think that a woman has an ethical obligation to have an abortion when it's something like what's being discussed here. Yeah, I know it's her body, but is it really ethical to impose 18 years of child support on a man for a random hookup? When a ten dollar pill and a couple of glasses of water will take care of the whole thing in an afternoon?
Of course, there's a difference between ethics and law, and somebody's got to pay for children. So yeah, when a woman does the unethical thing and has a child despite not having a committed, enthusiastic father, it's still the father's responsibility. It's just one of those gender inequalities for which there's no easy answer.
That's why I got a vasectomy.
Whoa, I could never support women being forced to get an abortion, just as I do not support forcing a woman to carry an unwanted child to term. You may disagree with a woman's view about choice, but choice it is, and many women sincerely believe that clump of cells is sacred. That is why I have always warned my son that he will have no choice whatsoever, and to act accordingly. That means not having sex without a condom (of either variety) no matter what the girl is telling you.
There is much unfairness innate to this question, it simply cannot be solved to the satisfaction of both sexes, and the courts have made it clear they will not get into the business of whose fault it is that pregnancy has occurred.
So you believe a fetus is a human being?
For 30 years, the Supreme Court has held that a woman's right to control her body trumps a fetus's right to live. If you're going to argue that a man has an obligation towards the fetus, then a woman does too. In which case we should criminalize abortion in all cases.
All I'm saying is that whenever a woman's rights trump the fetus's right, so to should the man's.
“Whoa, I could never support women being forced to get an abortion, just as I do not support forcing a woman to carry an unwanted child to term.”
So you support a woman's right to abort, and the right not to abort, regardless of whether it's good for the fetus. But you don't think a man should have a right to abort, or stop a woman's abortion, because you think a fetus's right comes first. Sounds inconsistent to me.
(kind of off-topic)
Hamby, what has been working recently for me is a Japanese brand, called Crown. Thickness is 0.00181″ (lowest in the market). Its endorsement is that they are used in porn (ever seen those pink-colored condoms that are kinda short in porn flicks?). Better than your “thicker than a sock” average gas-station brand, but still worse than the real thing.
I am not saying a man has an obligation towards a fetus, just to a child that is born. Also, please note that I am not addressing what is fair, just what the court's priority is.
Women assume greater risk having sex than men do. That's what the court rulings come back to again and again, pointing out that the system is nature, not designed by man.
Again, I am not arguing this position, I just think it's pretty clear that this is a very thorny issue with no easy solutions. Young men need to be made aware of this – I would support this being part of sex ed. That's why I was so surprised by so many guys being “secretly pleased” by an unplanned pregnancy. That seems naive at best.
If you do not wrap it up, you will be at the mercy of the courts, and aside from the financial cost, which can be considerable, for the rest of that child's life you will be the bio father who may be contacted, so there is potential emotional cost as well.
Finally, a young man with a child by an ex, or a random hookup, loses a lot of his mating value. Most young women would prefer to start a family with a man who does not already have children. There are exceptions, obviously, and older women will often embrace a “first family,” but among young people in their 20s, this is a distinct disadvantage.
Although I doubt the accuracy of the survey, I would point out that men (in my experience) tend to have a much greater disparity in their feelings about other people's kids as compared to their feelings about their own. In other words, while men (for the most part) don't fuss over other's people's babies to nearly the same degree as women (by a factor of about 100), our feelings about our own children are much much different. Women seem to have more of a communal instinct regarding children. It's also possible that women are socialized to pretend to be more excited than they are about other people's babies, but IMO there is almost always some strong underlying predisposition that reinforces and/or leads to that type of social construct.
Ah, so in reproduction, women alone have to bear the burden? I suppose then, that you unilaterally endorse public welfare programs for women and children?
I can tell the difference. No condoms = less chafing probably because of more natural lube from him.
I remember an uncomfortable moment riding in the car with my parents as a teenager. I was learning about genetics and discovered that the ability to curl your tongue into a tube is genetic, therefore one or both of my parents would have to have had that ability. When questioned, neither one could do it.
Thankfully I demonstrated the talent and my mother was able to show the trait came from her. But there was a long pause there while we all contemplated things.
That said, in reality, I'm the spitting image of my father in almost all ways, including the recessive genetic trait of green eyes.
Has to be at least as common as women emptying used condoms into themselves.
I don't think that the drive to reproduce is illogical. It's a need basic to human existence, right after basic survival. I get a lot more out of my children than just a surge of oxytocin: I get my change at genetic immortality.
Besides that, creating life is just pretty frikken cool in general.
“Again, I am not arguing this position”
But you said you don't favor mens' abortion rights. So what position are you advocating?
“Women assume greater risk having sex than men do.”
That's true in the wild, but not under American law. Women have two chances to stop pregnancy: abstinence and abortion. Men have one.
It's America, you can sue anybody for anything. I can sue you for not being Christian…it just won't get very far in the court system. The laws in that link above are old caselaw pre-dating laws addressing reproductive donors. Further, that link does not include more recent caselaw that is more representative of the legal climate in the courts right now.
Susan: Yes, they're a little difficult to insert, but you get the hang of it pretty quickly. Basically, it works the same as the nuva-ring. It's a flexible ring in the end of a wider, looser condom. You just twist it up into kind of a collapsed figure 8, insert, and then it pops back into place. And yes, the sensation during thrusting is where it's at for a guy, and it is substantially better with a female condom.
Aldonza: Yeah, I've found that my partners get more sore more quickly with any kind of condom than without. I am told by informed sources that girls who do kegels regularly can feel the difference inside. They can feel the “natural” ribs and ridges and so forth, where condoms kind of smooth everything out.
Il Capo: I haven't tried that brand, but I'll look around and see if I can find it. I've had reasonable luck with Trojan Ecstasy, probably because they're extra lubed on the inside. It's a little… um… scary, or something, for a guy to pull out a female condom on the first go round, so yeah. Definitely need a backup plan.
Actually the finding above did not surprise me about men being secretly pleased. Even in this hookup culture, where women freely give sex without asking much in return, women still control the reproductive pursestrings. Who they sleep with is very different from who they choose to breed with.
In any mating strategy there are always more men than women who lose out on the chance to reproduce. I think most guys realize that at some level.
“That's true in the wild, but not under American law. Women have two chances to stop pregnancy: abstinence and abortion.”
I'd say they have 4. Abstinence. Proper use of the pill (which, if used properly, is more effective than stats show, IMO). Morning After Pill. Abortion.
They also have the effective choice of adoption to avoid being burdened by a child. So, in a sense, that's five. Men can choose abstinence or a condom (which is pretty effective, but greatly inhibits meaningful bonding between the couple, IMO).
So, you're proposing that women be forced to take “Plan B” contraception after every act of intercourse?
Once that clump of cells is created, it's mine until it leaves my body either by my choice or nature. It may not be fair, but since when is biology fair?
You don't want to trust me with the fate of your potential children? Then don't f*ck me.
Oh, no, I don't believe in forcing abortions. (Well, maybe in the event of severe deformity or something like that, but not in any ordinary situation.) I believe in the morality of having them.
That's why I tried to make a clear distinction. I think it's morally wrong for a woman to have a child in that kind of a situation. When it's a casual hookup with a guy who clearly isn't interested in impregnating her, imposing 18 years of child support when an abortion is less than a thousand dollars — especially if the woman uses an abortifacient or morning after pill — that's just immoral. It's grossly disproportionate cost for the guy compared to the casual nature of the sex.
I'm a firm believer in a woman's choice to have a child or not. I also think there are moral implications in the choice, and all other things being equal, I find it morally stinky to have a child in that situation. The bottom line is that I don't believe laws are there to enforce morality. They're there to protect society and individuals. After a woman has done the immoral thing and forced a man into indentured servitude for 18 years, the law protects the child. And that's the way it ought to be. The child shouldn't be punished for the sins of its mother. Honestly, I think it would be great if there was a way to hold mothers accountable for this, but I can't think of any way that wouldn't punish the child.
Think of it this way. Moral and immoral refer to the fairness of an act, or its positive or negative impact on others. There are lots of things we can do that are immoral but not illegal. For instance, it's immoral for a guy to make out with a girl in the bathroom while his girlfriend is standing in the next room. But we don't send guys to jail for that. The punishment for that, if it comes, will come from the girlfriend, friends, and others whose opinion of the guy will change dramatically, and will change the way they act towards him.
I cannot condone a woman having a child that was clearly an accident with a guy who clearly doesn't want a child. That's wrong. And if asked, I'll tell her so. But she is free legally to make any choice she wants, and if she makes the immoral choice, the law still protects the child, who was not at fault in the situation. But my opinion of her will change, and not for the better. I will be called judgmental for that, and I accept. I do judge it to be an immoral act, and it's my right to believe so.
The morally good thing to do is for a girl to have an abortion when she discovers she's been accidentally impregnated by a guy who doesn't want children. But she can — and should have the right — to do the immoral thing.
GudEnuf, I don't think she's talking about the fetus' right. I think she's saying the woman's right to choose supercedes the man's right to choose. And I agree. It's her body, not his.
And for the record, giving personhood to embryos is legal insanity. There really shouldn't be any talk about the “rights” of a fetus to be born or not.
That finding would be supported by research that shows that women are more attracted to alpha types when they are most fertile.
I suspect most guys are philosophically accepting of the notion of supporting the child and paying their share of the cost of raising it – and they assume that the guys who complain about these things are deadbeats who don't want to support their kids (since that's the narrative that propogated by government and the media). What they don't grasp is that the child support is way out of whack with the basic cost of having a child and is really a disguised annuity for the mother in most cases.
If child support was limited to actual necessary costs (i.e., more or less what the state pays foster parents to take in a child), I doubt you'd hear complaints from all but a few men, especially if they were not denied access to their kids. In fact, they'd probably voluntarily pay more in most cases. But 20% of pretax income (but yet not deductible for his tax purposes and not taxable to the woman) for EACH child is unbelievably draconian.
And yet somehow “your” clump of cells becomes your partner's responsibility when it leaves your body?
http://www.glennsacks.com/new_report_on_materna...
From the article:
” According to the Post’s numbers, there are about 100 documented murders of pregnant women in the United States each year. Yet according to the Centers for Disease Control, nearly four million women give birth each year. One out of 40,000 is not an epidemic. The Post speculates that the true number could be significantly higher but also notes that 30% of these killings are not related to childbearing, but instead involve drug dealing, robberies, errant gunfire, or other causes. And some pregnant women are killed by other women, as in the recent Missouri murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett by a woman who cut her live baby from her womb.
St. George and others point to a Journal of the American Medical Association article which states that in Maryland a “pregnant or recently pregnant woman is more likely to be a victim of homicide than to die of any other cause.” This sounds alarming until one considers that there are an average of eight murders of pregnant women each year in Maryland–alongside 75,000 live births.
St. George also cites a study by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health which allegedly showed murder to be the biggest cause of death for pregnant women and new mothers. When this study was released the Boston Globe summarized its findings as follows:
“Murder is the leading cause of death for Massachusetts mothers in the 21-month period from when they become pregnant until their babies reach their first birthday, according to a state review that shows domestic violence today is more dangerous than medical complications from childbirth.”
However, when public health specialist Ned Holstein of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine examined the report, he found that murder was well down the list of alleged causes of maternal death. According to the study's own data, the leading causes of death of pregnant or recently-pregnant women over a 10-year period were Medical conditions (152), Motor vehicle accidents (21), Domestic violence homicides (20), other homicides (10), and Miscellaneous (29). The epidemic of domestic violence-related homicides sweeping Massachusetts consists of an average of two deaths per year.”
All I'm saying is that man's responsiblity should be in porportion to his rights. Currently, a woman has 100% autonomy in deciding whether to get an abortion, and a man gets 0%.
I have to believe the number in reality is much much higher than 50%. These are just the women who would acknowledge up front that they would lie about it. As to other half, when faced with the reality of saying nothing, on the one hand, or opening up and breaking up their marriage/relationship on the other hand (and therefore raising this child solo), I have to believe almost all would say nothing. They could easily rationalize it by telling themselves that it's probably really their partner's baby, and they would recall the time they had sex that, in their mind, probably led to it. I mean, really, could you reasonably expect any woman to say “You know, this baby is probably yours, but I did have a torrid unprotected orgasmic afternoon with so and so that month and he really blew a huge hot load into me (twice, in fact!), so we should test just to make sure it's not his. I came home and had sex with you later that night too, and the next day, so chances are it's yours. Don't be too upset, okay hun?”?
The whole concept of voluntary withdrawal is preposterous. You might be able to do it once or twice, but c'mon. Nobody is rational or in control at that precise moment. The urge to finish the job is overwhelming. Also, the stuff that leaks out well before that is said to have a fair amount potency too.
Once a child is born, I believe it to be the responsibility of both parents (as well as society at large) to take care of.
In an ideal world, every child would be created responsibly and consciously, with the full, informed consent of all parties in advance of the action. But we don't live in an ideal world, now do we? We do our best to deal with the cards dealt by biology, intent and luck and be fair to all parties, including the child. That means sometimes somebody is getting screwed…and not in the fun babymaking way.
“Women assume greater risk having sex than men do.”
Yeah. Biology. Medicine. CDC. Morbidity & Mortality reporting. Weekly. Will tell you this. It's simple, & it's the sad truth. At each and every stage of pregnancy, actually carrying a child to term is at least 9-10 Times more dangerous & deadly than an abortion in any of same. The risks for most STI/STD's are more marked, varied, common & serious in women. Then we can get into the well freighted issue of intimate violence too. More pregnant women are killed and/or injured by this than any other single cause. Not all are happy or 'welcoming' about the prospect of a child or a pregnant partner. Now you can go ahead & pretend this reality does not exist, or you can ignore it or 'rationalize' it away. Either way? It's still there. Cheers, 'VJ'
GudEnuf, you are interchanging “child” and “fetus.” A woman's right to abort, or not is the law of the land, obvs, which puts her needs ahead of any rights the fetus might have. The only fetal rights recognized by law apply to late-term abortion. This prioritization of the mother's needs originates from her physical investment, and risk, in carrying the child to term. It's a recognition of biological reality.
A man cannot force a woman to abort or continue a pregnancy because he has no right to determine the needs of the mother. It has nothing to do with the fetus.
“Then we can get into the well freighted issue of intimate violence too. More pregnant women are killed and/or injured by this than any other single cause.'
Not true.
“Then we can get into the well freighted issue of intimate violence too. More pregnant women are killed and/or injured by this than any other single cause.”
Not true.
If a clump of cells, as defined by Aldonza, leaves the mother's body, it's via a spontaneous or induced abortion. If that clump of cells matures over a period of 40 weeks into an infant and leaves her body, it becomes the responsibility of both bio parents, unless adopted.
You're sort of right. Surprisingly, nobody tracks stats of homicide of pregnant women. However, homicides are the second leading cause of death for all women 15-24, the 5th leading cause for women 25-34 and the 9th leading cause for women 35-44.
http://www.cdc.gov/women/lcod/06_all_females.pdf
Further, almost a third of all homicides of women are by an intimate partner.
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d02530.pdf
“GudEnuf, you are interchanging “child” and “fetus.” A woman's right to abort, or not is the law of the land, obvs, which puts her needs ahead of any rights the fetus might have. The only fetal rights recognized by law apply to late-term abortion.”
Okay, so we won't treat a fetus like a child then. A fetus is part of the woman's body, and it is her right to determine whether that part of her body devolops into child.
And since she has 100% autonomy over that decision, she should have 100% responsibility for the consequences.
“This prioritization of the mother's needs originates from her physical investment, and risk, in carrying the child to term. It's a recognition of biological reality.”
That's a thin rational for abortion, considering how “risky” abortion is for the fetus.
No, the reason abortion should be legal is because a woman has the right to control her own body. Preserving this right is FAR more important than being charitable to fetus.
Likewise, perserving a man's rights is far more important than being charitable to a fetus or anyone else.
“A man cannot force a woman to abort or continue a pregnancy because he has no right to determine the needs of the mother. “
Men's abortion rights doesn't mean forcing women to have an abortion. It means gets the man signs away his rights as a father, in exchange for relinquishing his responsibilities as a father. It's the same right we already give to women.
She has a right to her body, I have right to my money and time. If she wants to use her body to create a child, that's her right. But she demand my money and time to do it.
GudEnuf, there is no single solution that is fair to all parties. It is impossible. Prior to birth, the law favors the needs of the mother. After birth, the law focuses exclusively on the needs of the child. Neither parent's needs are important in law after the birth of a child.
I am not claiming the status quo is fair. I do not believe that it is. However, what you propose would also create immediate cases of unfairness. For example, let's assume a woman and a man, unmarried, agree to have a child together. They are both excited about the prospect and consider themselves long-term partners. When the woman is 7 months pregnant, the man leaves her for another woman. He no longer wants any role whatsoever in the child's life. Under your proposed solution, he would bear no responsibility. It would be impossible for the courts to accurately determine what was agreed upon and when, even if they were so inclined, which they are not, as they have ruled that govt. involvement in mating decisions violates the Constitutional right to privacy.
It's messy, it's ugly, it's unfair. I support changes in laws that throw men in jail when they fall behind in payments due to circumstances beyond their control. I support changes in laws that force a man who is not the bio father to provide for the child. Those laws put the child's needs ahead of every other consideration, even beyond a standard of reasonableness, in my view.
That's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it. MRA supporters will not ever get Roe for Men. It's not a realistic goal, so there's no potential strategy.
It's funny you should say that Passer By, because that's the way I feel about kids. I thoroughly enjoy my own kids, but have little interest in other people's children. Obviously, close family members are excepted, but when I see a baby out and about, I feel completely indifferent. If I get the chance, I might give its chubby thigh a squeeze, but that's about it.
The link provided by PJay below includes a court case where a nurse offered a hospital visitor a BJ, but insisted he wear a condom for her protection. He agreed. She offered to dispose of the condom and yup, you guessed it. The courts ruled that he was responsible for child support.
I do not agree with forcing a man to take responsibility when he has been actively defrauded, but the court ruled that he knowingly engaged in sexual activity with this woman, and that sexual activity always carries the risk of pregnancy.
Agreed. It's made very clear in sex ed that the first clear drop is full of sperm. I'm actually surprised the number is only 4%.
PB, it has been my experience that the women who get excited about other people's babies (except for relatives) are those who have no kids of their own.
Interesting. ARE YOU SURE YOU'RE A WOMAN?!!
Ok, I should have said, “On average, women seem to have more of a communal instinct . . .”
Whoa. And I thought I was anal!
I was totally surprised how clueless Inspector Climate was when it came to birth control – well, except condom use…
In Australia, they have the implant but they don't have the shot or the patch which I find really interesting. Although the shot totally terrifies me in general. While I find that periods are annoying, I'd much rather have one and know 100% that I am not pregnant than not have one for months and then find out I was preggers – it's very rare, but it's happened…
I have not seen a solution, including current law, that is fair to all parties. Therefore, I am unable to advocate for any particular position. I believe at the most basic level that once a child is born, its needs trump all others. How society goes about getting those needs met is open to debate.
However, you can't force women to choose between abortion or signing away all claims on the father, b/c half the women in this country fervently believe that abortion is murder. There is a strong moral dilemma here, and you simply cannot say to women, “Too bad, don't care what you believe. Get rid of that fetus or take care of it without help.” To go further, you cannot tell women they have to give the child up for adoption either, because women are biologically programmed to bond with a fetus, and forcing a woman to give up a child she wants would certainly qualify as mentally cruel.
Well, we can take abstinence off the table, because it takes two to disregard it (other than rape, let's not even go there), so in the case of unplanned pregnancy, both parties have assumed the risk of pregnancy.
The Pill: has many side effects for women, affecting both physical and mental health. This is not true for all, but many women find that they cannot take the Pill. I took it in my 20s and developed neurological symptoms that I learned were the precursor to a stroke, a fairly common problem. I was told never to take it again.
The Morning After Pill: This must be taken within 72 hours, but its effectiveness is not guaranteed if taken more than 12 hours after unprotected sex, as it diminishes rapidly with time. It also means that the couple has to be aware that contraception failed. Many times this is not the case. It is extremely strong, and should NOT be used by women as a “just in case” every time they have sex.
Abortion: The moral quandary here is obvious as I stated above. Many women believe that abortion is murder.
Adoption: Another moral quandary, as women bond with their fetuses. Many women who choose to give their babies up suffer permanent distress over the decision.
There is no easy answer. This is not simple, it is not straightforward. Of all your proposed solutions, the best by far is the inhibition of meaningful bonding, IMO, tragic as that may be.
“I believe at the most basic level that once a child is born, its needs trump all others. “
Even accepting that fact, the intellectual slight of hand that is played is equating “needs” with “wants” or “nice to haves”. Taking 20% of a guy's pretax income but without a corresponding tax deduction (which can effectively amount to about 35%-40% of his after tax income) for EACh child goes way beyond “needs”. If people want to talk about “needs”, then start with his share of the base amount paid to foster parents. Of course, if we do that, you can watch the amounts paid to foster parents go through the roof as women's group advocate for that as a clandestine way to raise their child support annuity.
Anyway, the point is that the required child support payment amounts go WAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY beyond “needs”. They are crippling to a lot of guys whose incomes should allow them to live much better than they do.
The morally good thing to do is for a girl to have an abortion when she discovers she's been accidentally impregnated by a guy who doesn't want children. But she can — and should have the right — to do the immoral thing.
That is a radical view, hamby. You define abortion as moral, and do not allow for difference of opinion here. I personally share H. Clinton's view on the matter: abortion should be legal but rare. It's a heinous solution to a problem.
The woman in that case says that they did have intercourse. The man says, “No, she stole my sperm.” There seems to be no evidence of that and my guess is that the judge chose to believe that the sound of hoofbeats was in fact, horses and not zebras.
However, it was a horribly written decision that has been cited many times over in men's rights arguments, but doesn't seem to be replicated in case law anywhere else.
“Prior to birth, the law favors the needs of the mother.”
Before viability, a woman never has to prove she needs an abortion to get one. After abortion, she technically has to prove she needs one, but practically any reason will qualify as a “need” under the law. Really, it has nothing to do with a woman's needs, only her rights. The role of the courts is to enforce justice, not charity.
“After birth, the law focuses exclusively on the needs of the child.”
Again, it's not about needs, it's about rights. Whenever a person creates a need in another person, they have an obligation to fulfill that need. Example: if X beats Y, and Y needs to go to the hospital, X has a moral obligation to pay for that need. But Z, who played no role in creating that need, has no obligation pay for Y's need.
In the case of child bearing, there is one person responsible for creating the child, and she is female.
“When the woman is 7 months pregnant, the man leaves her for another woman. He no longer wants any role whatsoever in the child's life. Under your proposed solution, he would bear no responsibility.”
And what would you be saying if the situation were reversed?
Let's say the woman and the man agree to have a child. When the woman is 7 months pregnant, she decides she doesn't really want a baby anymore, so she has an abortion.
Now this situation has probably happened more than a few times. Do you think that because women abuse their right to abortion sometimes, that women should have no right to abortion at all?
Do you even think that the law should deny this particular women an abortion?
“It would be impossible for the courts to accurately determine what was agreed upon and when, even if they were so inclined, which they are not, as they have ruled that govt. involvement in mating decisions violates the Constitutional right to privacy.”
The government is already involved in mating decisions. See marriage and pre-nups.
It certainly has happened. When I was in college, one of my good friends just sort of went home one day without explanation. We learned she'd had a baby. No one knew she was pregnant. Apparently, she didn't even know till she was well past five months. Amazingly the story had a happy ending. About five years later, she dated the bio dad again. They married and had three more children. They've been married close to 30 years by now.
I agree with you about periods. Some women are irregular, and every month they have to go through a pregnancy scare. OTC pregnancy kits must be a goldmine.
I agree with this 100%. And I can't understand why a woman EVER should receive alimony.
Oh, sure. I allow for difference of opinion. Anyone else has the right to believe that abortion is immoral, and I don't presume to impose my view on them. Like I said, I don't believe in legislating morality. I believe in doing it because it's the right thing to do. If someone else believes differently, all I can do is try to persuade them.
Careful, ladies. Three times now I've said I am not in favor of imposing abortion on anybody. I'm saying I believe it's the moral thing to do. In other words, if a woman gets pregnant by accident on a random hookup and then has the child, I think she's behaving immorally towards the man. I don't think she's behaving illegally, and I fully support her right to do the wrong thing.
And no, I'm not saying a woman should take plan b after every intercourse. I'm saying that if the condom breaks, or if she screws up and has unprotected sex, it's probably a good idea. But I have no qualms with abortion, and would fully support abortion pills as well as those like plan B that prevent implantation. Various kinds of abortion pills work for several weeks. Yeah, they're illegal in the U.S., but that's a legislative issue, not a moral issue.
Aldonza, you've read enough of my blog to know I believe we're animals, and that there isn't any magic about being human. Animals all over the animal kingdom commit infanticide regularly. Abortion is far more humane than infanticide. I think it is far less moral to bring a child into a bad situation than to scrape a thimble full of cells.
Well, for the record, I do oppose abortion at 7 months. Women shouldn't get to change their minds once the baby is viable, IMO. While I support choice, I favor laws controlling late-term abortion, and parental consent as well.
When I say needs, I am referring to the health of the mother, and after birth, the health of the child.
When I said mating decisions, I meant the act of mating itself. In other words, the govt. has clearly stated that it won't go into the bedroom. Of course, this is what struck down the laws prohibiting same-sex marriage. Lots of consequences to go around, some intended, some not.
GudEnuf, I think we'll have to agree to disagree here. This is a conundrum indeed and I am sympathetic to men's rights, though perhaps not sympathetic enough for you. I'm not a knee-jerk liberal, or feminist, I've thought about this quite a bit.
Assuming that's accurate, how do homocide rates against women compare to those against men in the same age groups? And by that I don't mean “Is homocide the second leading cause for men also?” Men may just be dying at higher rates – in fact, they undoubtedly are. I'm curious if the rate of homocides per 1,000 individuals is meaningfully different.
” Of course, this is what struck down the laws prohibiting same-sex marriage.”
Not to get all technical here, but, no, that's not right. The “privacy” notion is what struck down the anti-sodomy laws. The marriage laws were struck down on equal protection grounds – very different logic. There is nothing less “private” than demanding the state recognize your union and afford it benefits.
I knew that, but I thought the striking down of the anti-sodomy laws for privacy totally got the ball rolling on gay marriage. My mistake.
“I'm actually surprised the number is only 4%.”
So am I, though if I read your prior comment correctly, we are only talking about one incidence of intercourse. If a guy did this for a whole year, I suppose his odds wouldn't be too good. Nor would his satisfaction level. lol
Haha, this cracked me up. Yeah, it's definitely a game of Russian Roulette. I've always felt that I dodged a bullet, having used this approach badly back in the day. I actually feel very, very fortunate that I've never had an unplanned pregnancy. Only when I was married would I have felt “a little bit pleased.”
In a sense, Iguess you're right about getting the “ball rolling” – although conservatives were lambasted at the time for being paranoid by suggesting that the anti-sodomy cases would start a slippery slope to gay marriage.
I think the common thread is that, once you sort of accept the fact that some people are just gay for whatever reason (and other people by and large just aren't), the government's interest in promoting heterosexual behavior over homosexual behavior starts to look a lot more specious. Whether an equal protection right or a privacy right is being impinged, the second part of the analysis is always going to be “So, what's the government's counter interest in regulating this and does it appear sufficently compelling” (or whatever standard applies). In both cases the government's interest started to look a lot less compelling as social norms and understanding of homosexuality changed.
All you need is a few drops, enough to just fill the reservoir tip. It won't slip off unless pour in a solid tablespoon of lube. Try it! Fresh lube on the inside and outside of a condom makes a world of difference.
Spread the condom-lube gospel. Amen.
Jessi, thanks so much for clarifying! Welcome. I love your blog – I'm thankful that a reader linked to it. I recommend to all readers the blog Sexademic:
http://www.thesexademic.com/
Thank You Susana! (I really dig your writing style.)
Err, proving I can be anal too, I meant “homicide”. I guess “homocide” would be a combination of homicide with gay bashing.
I've been using Noristerat shots for four years now, and so far it's a good match for me. I get a shot every three months, hubby gets condom-free sex, and we both have no worries about having another pregnancy. I didn't have any weight gain or the palpitations I hear some women with implants get. My OB says it may help prevent ovarian cancer, and it also lessens the severity of menopause in some women, though that's something I still have to find out for myself.
Aldonza, that is untrue. Laws vary state by state and there is ample recent caselaw in many circumstances that demonstrate liability for child support by sperm donors.
Also, it is enshrined in case law throughout the country (and federally enforced) a woman who herself subsequently bears a child as a result of molesting a young boy is eligible for child support from that victim if she ends up on welfare ( which is often the case if she is listed as a sex offender).
Also, in many states, a child of a married woman that results from an affair between that woman and another man (not the husband), is the financial responsibility of the husband of the marriage. Conversely, the biological father of such a child has no visitation rights to that child.
These issues and many others in the link I provided have been the subject of recent cases over the past 5 years.
Your statement that the cases cited are no longer relevant is not true.
Yes, I agree. You've got dads who were divorced by their wives (66% of the time), having to find a place to live large enough to accommodate the kids for visits, paying a large sum for support. It's financially ruinous. And the children, who need their father intimately involved in their lives, are denied proper access to him. If the father suffers a setback of any kind, the courts will be as merciless as his ex is. It is draconian.
I just want to say I was very troubled by the courts finding against underaged boys molested by women, and forcing them to pay child support. They highlighted that the boys often undertake these sexual liaisons with some enthusiasm, but that is not the point. Underage = child. When the horrific history of sex abuse in the Catholic church was revealed several years ago, it came out that some of those sexual relationships were “consensual.” That excuse did not fly. A person in a position of authority has no right to “offer” sex to a child, period. All fault lies with the adult.
Well, it's not that they want to have a kid right now. It's more that most men that I know, maybe 80%, would like to have a family at some point, under some circumstances. They hope it's later, after they're married, have an established career, etc. but if it happens now, they'll deal with it.
I'm not just talking about attitude or opinion either. I know 4 guys whose girlfriends got pregnant while they were dating, including my brother. 3 of them were at least somewhat happy about it. They were scared, anxious, and so on, but also a little bit excited or pleased.
I can't give any good psychoanalytical reasons that this would be, but that's what I've actually seen.
All the guys I've talked to about this were from rural areas, with fairly old-fashioned families and I'm sure that makes a difference as well. However, I don't think that culture can introduce something that isn't there; culture can skew the ratios, and push values and priorities in one direction or another but there has to be something fundamental in human nature to work with. To some degree this is going to be present in all men, and I think that's what showed up in the survey.
In my opinion, the real aberration isn't that the male numbers are high, it's that the female numbers are so low. This is probably the result of cultural pressure for women to have a career to prove that they can take care of themselves and so on. I doubt that there are more women than men who don't want any children, it's just that many women are determined to delay having kids until they've established a career. The numbers probably even out by age 35-40; unfortunately female fertility is in serious decline by 30 and craters after 35.
Very interesting. I agree with you re the female numbers. I would have expected much more of a yearning for motherhood to show up in the numbers. I also agree re the cause — career goals. Many of my friends, some older than me, have daughters well into their 30s who found the guy, but are now undergoing round after round of IVF in hopes of having one child. Why can't women figure this out?
Fine guys. I'm not going to get into a silly flame war over the stats that you'll pretend to ignore. Let's say 'It's a Leading cause of death & injury', and leave it at that (perhaps behind motor vehicle accidents). And yes, I'd certainly include the first year of life in the stats too for obvious reasons.
But here's a CDC slide show on it:
http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/violence/...
I'll quote from that:
“Facts About Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)
*
Affects approximately 1.5 million women each year
*
Affects as many as 324,000 pregnant women each year
*
May be more common than conditions for which pregnant women are routinely screened
*
Possibly associated with unintended pregnancy, delayed prenatal care, smoking, alcohol and drug abuse
Notes:
The facts about intimate partner violence and its effects on women’s health are alarming. Each year, approximately 1 and a half million women in the United States report a rape or physical assault by an intimate partner.1 This number includes as many as 324,000 women who are pregnant when violence occurs.2 These numbers probably underestimate the true magnitude of the problem because we know that most incidents are never reported.
Violence during pregnancy may be a more common problem than conditions for which pregnant women are routinely screened.3 Studies have found possible associations between intimate partner violence and unintended pregnancy, delayed prenatal care, and behavioral risk factors such as smoking and alcohol and drug abuse.3,4,5
Reproductive health care services are used routinely by millions of women each year and can provide an important point of contact during which screening for intimate partner violence and appropriate intervention or referral can occur. The purpose of this presentation is to suggest ways that you as a clinician can play a vital role in this effort. “
But of course non clinicians & radio talk show hosts like Glenn Beck or Glenn sacks just know better than the CDC. Because they're MRAs, and they've Got to be Right! Yeah. That's the ticket. You can also take issue with ACOG here:
http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/violence/...
But remember, science perhaps is not your friend. Cheers, 'VJ'
And I've noticed that people who say they despise children are themselves the most childish.
“…doesn't seem to be replicated in case law anywhere else.” Not true.
When Oral Sex Results in a Pregnancy: Can Men Ever Escape Paternity Obligations?
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/colb/20050309.html
And VJ, you can throw around vague conditional statements, call them “statistics” based on shoddy data referred to again and again, and cite that as a reason why women should get attention, resources, and legal entitlements, while avoiding the reality that the legal definition of domestic violence often doesn't extend to partner violence done by a woman to a man.
Because you are a woman, and a feminist, so you must be right.
Let's hope you never have a son.
The woman I loved and was married to for 24 years did have what I thought was an 'accident' at 40 years of age. Needless to say I was not thrilled at that prospect at that point in life. Turns out she had been pilfering my father's estate account for a tidy six-figure amount, running up tens of thousands on credit cards that I didn't know about and produced a child-support get out of jail free card. She's done everything that she could to run me out of their lives and when that failed – done everything under the sun to alienate them.
Don't dare speak to me of love and commitment – I've seen the worst that women have to offer. That is why I firmly endorse Her body, Her choice, Her re$pon$ibility! Women raise the 'for the children' argument to line their own pockets – it is time to change that social dynamic.
Yes, I am against public welfare programs. They have subsidized women's bad behavior and bad choices for decades and undermined the basic precepts of the family unit as a viable social structure. Next question . . .
Gee, I could count the ways your wrong here, but I knew that the ideologically committed would prefer to either ignore the yes, scientific established facts or pretend they don't exist. Which is fine. But kid? If you try to turn me into a woman? Then it'll get really personal too.
And again, science is not your ally here, right? Cheers, 'VJ'
Most of the erroneous studies (including the slideshow you cited) source data from this JAMA study (http://tinyurl.com/y8wp59j – Enhanced Surveillance for Pregnancy-Associated Mortality—Maryland, 1993-1998).
This is an interesting study, and like many “scientific” papers regarding domestic violence, it relies on data derived from unusual and misleading definitions for key terms.
For instance, the article cites…”the term “pregnancy-associated death” was introduced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in collaboration with the Maternal Mortality Special Interest Group of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, to define a death from any cause during pregnancy or within 1 calendar year of delivery or pregnancy termination, regardless of the duration or anatomical site of the pregnancy.5 Pregnancy-associated deaths include not only deaths commonly associated with pregnancy such as hemorrhage, pregnancy-induced hypertension, and embolism—which are captured in the WHO definition—but also deaths not traditionally considered to be related to pregnancy such as accidents, homicide, and suicide. The term also includes deaths occurring 43 to 365 days following termination of pregnancy. Since cause-of-death information on death certificates cannot identify deaths from nonmaternal causes or deaths occurring 43 or more days following termination of pregnancy as associated with pregnancy, additional sources of data must be used for complete ascertainment of all pregnancy-associated deaths.”
So “pregnancy-related death” means, in this key study, death from any cause during pregnancy or within 1 calendar year of delivery or pregnancy termination, regardless of the duration or anatomical site of the pregnancy.
A woman getting hit by a car or having a heart attack (see Table 2) one year after having an ectopic pregnancy or a live birth or an abortion is considered a “pregnancy-related death” here.
The term is rather meaningless, given this extremely loose definition.
Most folks would not consider a woman with a one-year old child to be “recently pregnant”, but this key study would consider her so.
If you have any other primary sources for your “data”, VJ, please share them.
Something substantive other than the usual self-referring daisy chain of secondary and tertiary publications that you cite would go a long way towards finding out the facts about domestic violence and its foggy, vague connection to pregnancy.
That implant has been some times in the news (and we have a reasonably good sex education, here, although my memory may also be important), but I don't know whether it is more popular in the U.S. or in Europe.
Neither have I (knowingly) met a woman who has one – I think that if you were able to ascertain that with your own eyes something has gone quite irritably wrong, or you're a gynecologist who has injected it.
For abortion to be rare, anticonception must be plentiful, which, judging from the survey you cited in the post, is somewhat problematic.
Umm, evidently you can't read either, right? I already referenced this bit of terminology, which is standard & typical in my prior answer. But your ideological blinders probably prevented you from seeing it.
So this canard? Is irrelevant: “Most folks would not consider a woman with a one-year old child to be “recently pregnant”, but this key study would consider her so.” You just don't know how to commonly measure morbidity & mortality events in the context of illness, surgery or treatment.
Similarly, the idiocy of asking for 'primary sources', is like producing a string of battered women for you to question. That's a primary source. The rest of us? We do science the usual way, by accumulating data, using scientifically agreed upon theories, research parameters, definitions & yes, terminology. The rest? You can and will mis-characterize, misunderstand & mis-comprehend it still.
You've still not placed before us any legitimate or realistic complaints about the data, or where they come from, how they're likely interpreted or understood. You've whined about the definitions of same. It's the same definition though they've been using for decades. Now you can deny this, or you can tell everyone that you don't like or agree with it. That's fine. But again, it's not really a valid scientific critique w/o a serious competing scientific theory on how the data should be gathered, treated or interpreted differently. Why should we take your word for how you would interpret the data? Have you done the research? Familiar with it or the collection, treatment of same? No? Yeah. You're just whining about what now?
Now go ahead and re-read that again, so you won't miss anything this time, K? Cheers, 'VJ'
The implanted birth control they are referring to I believe is Norplant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norplant
Little sticks are implanted into the arm and they last several years. This was hugely popular when I was in junior high in the early 90s (because in my hometown, sex as young as elementary school was extremely common, and many of my peers had children in junior high).
I'm shocked by this study simply because of Maury Povich! But no really, only about 50% of child support obligations are ever collected and single parenthood is now the norm, so who are these stand-up guys and can they teach seminars to their peers? As an aside, my GBFF just represented his step-sister today on a Maury Povich-style paternity case where they tested the 4th gentleman who did in fact turn out to be the father (a shock to everyone in the room–and we still haven't heard the story of how she managed to have sex with so many people in such a span of time…). Neither party was pleased, and the sister was taking oral birth control when she got pregnant. So, I gotta go with the court on this one: unless you are verifiably, medically infertile (i.e. you have no ovaries or you got a vasectomy), when you have straight vaginal sex, pregnancy is always on the table. I myself am a miracle baby–my Mother had been told her entire adult life that she did not ovulate and had to take birth control to have any sort of menstrual cycle. In her late 20s, her doctor wanted to take her off the pill to see if maybe her body had learned to do its job, and she was pregnant 2 months later. Of course she was shocked, and my father pulled a “you lied to me and said you were infertile, whore!” and was only found 11 years later when the state tracked him down for child support. So, moral of the story, take as many precautions as you can, but understand that biology can outsmart medicine so if you make it, you buy it.
And I would like to reiterate to the posters here, especially the objecting men, that child support is for the benefit of the child who has a right to support. 20% of your income is not “taken away” and therefore shouldn't be subject to tax, you are paying it to your child for its support (which is also why it is not income to the parent). Think of it as a bill, like any other. You generally can't deduct the expenses of raising your children for income tax purposes in this country, whether you raise them yourself or pay child support. And trust me, if anyone should be able to deduct some child-rearing expenses, it would be poor single parents.
Where exactly are you from? Sex in elementary school?!!?
That sucks, what a horrible woman. I guess I'd feel the same way in your position, so I really can't fault you. I fear your story is not really uncommon in the MRA community.
LAC, thanks, I was hoping you'd weigh in here, as you have experience with this issue both personally and professionally as a lawyer who's done work in this area.
Indeed, that is the crux of the problem. Abortion is used primarily as de facto birth control. In fact, this stat was perhaps the strangest of all:
38% of men and 44% of women believe “it doesn’t matter whether you use birth control or not; when it is your time to get pregnant it will happen.
OK, here's a question for the men here–and I'm not asking this to start an argument, merely to find out how your minds work–supposing your partner does get pregnant and chooses to have the child, and supposing you do object to supporting said child on the basis that you did not want to have the child anyway, and you refuse to have anything to do with him/her. Eighteen years down the line your child meets up with you and asks, “So where were you when I was growing up?” What do you say?
Here is a good article on child support, and the lack of remedy men have in the event of paternity fraud.
From a 2006 issue of Family Law Quarterly: http://defaultpaternity.org/pdf/flq-0706.pdf
I think the problem some people have with the 20% is that the amount that actually is spent on the kid is usually much less, and the rest becomes de-facto alimony. The system grants one of the parents full control of said funds with no checks and balances. It's like a trust-fund in which the administrator can dip into the jar at any time no questions asked.
I think most guys would be happy to pay for the child's stuff if the money is spent entirely on the child, he gets to visit the child regularly (without the woman having the option to move away just to get rid of him) and if the child is informed that daddy is paying for his stuff. On the other hand, if the guy is paying for mommy's new boyfriend's beer or mommy's new shoes, you can't expect him to be so happy.
I think the tax issue is about claiming a dependent, which has a few tax benefits:
• The exemption for the child.
• The child tax credit.
• Head of household filing status.
• The credit for child and dependent care expenses.
• The exclusion from income for dependent care benefits.
• The earned income credit.
The child lives with the mother and the father lives elsewhere and the parents file separate tax returns, so in these cases only the mother can claim the child.
Child support is for whatever the recipient uses it for. It is illegal for the obligor to require child support for use in “supporting a child” as a condition of providing that support. The recipient can use it for whatever they want.
In many states, child support can reach or exceed 50% of gross income of the obligor. That is hardly equitable, by any stretch of the imagination.
And by the way, a good “amount” of child support is imputed to men who have lost their jobs, become disabled, or could only find low-paying jobs after getting laid off from higher-paying ones. Many states do not allow for downward modification of child support in those events, and the obligor is then considered to be in default.
The vast majority of child support in default is owed by indigent fathers who are not legally allowed to modify their payments downwards.
Throughout the country, child support payments lost through fraud or deception on the part of the recipient are not refundable to the obligor, either. He can only file a civil suit against the woman who defrauded him and hope to recover some of those funds.
“Irons disputes Phillips's claims and asserts that she conceived her child in the ordinary way. For purposes of this column only, however, I will assume the truth of Philips's allegations.”
How is this different?
If you're not married, as an unmarried father, you have no right to see your child. That right is solely at the discretion of the mother.
Here's an answer – in many states, the mother of the child can seek child support retroactively for the 18 years I wasn't there. And it's the maximum, since she had 100% custody all that time.
You will ultimately support that child whether you want to or not.
If the child asks me that question, I'd tell the truth, which might very well involve his or her mother keeping me away from the child I would have liked to parent, because she is financially rewarded for doing so.
Or, as many women do, she could place the baby up for adoption even if I petitioned to parent the child. See http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705320176/Ad...
I'd also want to make sure that was my child – http://kdka.com/kdkainvestigators/child.support...
You are aware that child support laws came about as an anti-socialist measure against welfare? There have been unwanted children as long as people have been having sex. How do you propose we, as a civilized society, care for those children?
http://www.cdc.gov/men/lcod/04all.pdf
Looks like homicide as a percentage of deaths is higher for men of similar age groups.
It appears from the arguments here (and those I've seen elsewhere) that men would like child support payments to be on net (after-tax) income and would like them to be deductible like alimony payments are. If the child is not living with you, I don't know why you would feel entitled to dependent status when the child is not in fact dependent on your care.
PJay, are you a lawyer? Just curious.
Additionally, most of these arguments are in somewhat irrelevant because, again, child support is the right of the child, not the parent. So, while I can't disagree that it's kind of ridiculous to attempt to squeeze blood from a stone, the Mother would also be required to support the child, indigent or not. This is why your child will be taken away by the state if it doesn't have adequate shelter (like homelessness) or in other similar circumstances.
You don't think 50% of income is equitable? How much of the Mother's income do you think goes to supporting a child, out of curiosity? I think 50%, given that there are two parents, is probably the most equitable number imaginable unless you're BIll Gates. And in practice, as I've mentioned on this blog before, downward modification of child support after an event that affects income happens all the time, and the court is especially sensitive when the obligor has a low income.
How can child support payments be lost through fraud or deception if paternity has been established?
PJay, seriously where are you getting your information?
As any sort of father, unless your parental rights have been terminated by a judicial body, you have an absolute right to see your children. I have never ever heard of a court order establishing visitation rights at the “sole discretion” of the custodial parent, and in fact there is no way a judge would allow that sort of thing. I drafted custody agreements for a living, and they were all very specific. Did they all offer completely equal time? Often, no. But this was something that the lawyers or parents negotiate and the court orders. In fact, if the custodial parent doesn't surrender the child on a visitation day, she is violating a court order and will probably be sanctioned.
I'm not against statutes of limitations for child support. I think if a woman chooses not to pursue it, she shouldn't be able to change her mind 10 years later. And even if she does file a new claim later, she shouldn't be able to claim back support for a time when the man had no reason to believe he was accruing a debt.
I'd love to see a time when technology can solve some of these issues. I'm in favor of paternity testing for all child support orders (including those resulting from divorce) and automatic vacating of orders where paternity was later found to be incorrect.
I believe adoption should always require the consent of both parties, or at least, the proof that attempts were made to notify the father. I believe any adoption process should be halted immediately if the father is found and does not consent.
I hear you on that, and I sympathize for sure. But, again, the court is reticent to find that argument compelling because public policy favors the child having a parent and being supported. THIS IS WHY THERE ARE PUTATIVE FATHERS. The Mother's actions before the child is born are irrelevant simply because it is not HER rights the court is concerned with.
I would heartily oppose after-tax calculations. My ex is a sole-proprietor who has a great deal of control over what his after-tax income is.
Aldonza, I think these are very reasonable solutions (provided the correct father can be found and support established before the other order is vacated if the mother is low-income).
I agree with the adoption solution to, provided that the parent who wants the child can prove that he can be a successful parent (i.e. he can support the child, he's not a drug addict, etc.).
Sorry, *too*
The amount I get in child support doesn't even cover my childcare expenses, never mind housing, food, clothing, extra-curriculars, etc. My state's calculation takes into account the salary of both parents, who is paying for health insurance and any childcare expenses. I do know of guys who've gotten hit hard because their wives were not working at all when they divorced. Even in those cases, the support amount was in the 33% range.
I stand corrected, but maybe they do want the child living with them?
Toledo, OH. My county, at the time, I believe had one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country. I'm sure it had to do with culture and poverty because we had very comprehensive sex ed, every year, between 4th grade and 11th grade.
The kids having sex in the bathrooms at school in elementary school (usually 6th grade) usually went to (ironically?) Catholic school. But, in junior high, I'd say at least 50% of kids were sexually active. Losing your virginity around 13-15 was the norm (and I believe 15 is still about the norm nationally now–Durex did a global virginity survey a few years ago that found that 45% of Americans claimed to have lost their virginity before they were 16), and I myself was in 7th grade when I became sexually active. As a result, by the time I got to college, I'd gotten through my sexual experimentation phase luckily unscathed (as well as my drug experimentation phase) and I'm pretty happy about that given that I avoided hook-up culture (which was just emerging) and drunken trysts with people I barely knew.
If she is actively interfering with the right of the child to have two parents (or even one, in the case where she puts the child in foster care), she faces no penalty under the law, and the father seeking to be a parent to that child has no remedy.
And regarding the term “putative fathers” (!), the rocedures to legally appoint them, and dun them for child support are bizarre and incredibly lax.
There was a case in New Mexico a few years ago where a woman (Viola Trevino, I think her name was), kidnapped a 2-year old off the street in a desperate attempt to show the court she had a child, when in fact she had no child, and was fraudulently collecting child support. That support was from her ex-husband, who had a vasectomy long before her claim.
After a long, drawn out legal battle, the ex escaped this hunt for a “putative father.
From the story in the Albuquerque Journal:
“Court records show Trevino had a tubal ligation in 1978 and Barreras had a vasectomy in 1998. In December 1999, Trevino was in court asking for child support and told the judge she had given birth to Barreras' child in September. To persuade a Children's Court judge to order the child support payments, Trevino concocted fake DNA evidence and forged documents to obtain a Social Security number and birth and baptismal certificates, court records show.
They also show that both DNA tests ordered by the courts were done by a friend of the couple's daughter, who might have provided the DNA for the paternity tests. Because of the DNA matches, the Child Enforcement Division garnisheed Steve Barreras' paycheck for child support. In December 2004, state District Court Judge Linda Vanzi ordered Trevino to physically produce the child in court.
But instead, Trevino picked up a 2-year-old girl and her grandmother from a South Valley street, promising them a trip to see Santa Claus, lunch and $50. Trevino took the child into Vanzi's courtroom, leaving the grandmother in the car. When the grandmother followed her into court, Trevino had to admit that the child was not hers. Vanzi ruled Stephanie Trevino did not exist.
Bernalillo County District Attorney Kari Brandenburg said Thursday her office is waiting for more information from other state agencies involved in the case in order to file charges.
In April 2005, Gov. Bill Richardson said child welfare workers must sign affidavits saying they have actually seen the children they work with. Richardson called this “one of the most egregious examples of a bureaucracy abuse and negligence” he had ever heard of.”
There are countless stories out there like this. In some cases agencies assign paternity to a man in the same zip code as the mother during the previous several years, if he has a similar last name to the mother.
It's about bureaucracy and money, not about any facts. There's no due process in family court, so good luck defending yourself, if you're “picked” as a “putative father”.
Look at the Manuel Navarro case, as well – it's about lawyers' fees and bureaucracy, not about children's welfare:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/aug/18...
The LA Times had a great series a few years ago called “Failure to Provide”. You can read excerpts here: http://www.ejfi.org/family/family-40.htm
The system fails children and their parents, at the expense, most often, of a father's well-being.
Great post, Aldonza. I never understood why there was a perception that children were better off in foster care than with a father who loves them.
I cosign this.
Further, it isn't just animals that have committed infanticide. Infanticide has been practiced by most cultures throughout our history and it's still practiced today in some cultures. I think we can all agree that abortion is preferable.
LAC, where have you been? Paternal rights (aside from the “right” to pay child support) vary state by state. Time or some CLE seminars…
There are huge procedural barriers to unmarried fathers being able to parent their children. See here: http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_14318924
The bill referred to is here: http://le.utah.gov/~2010/bills/hbillint/hb0074.pdf
Effectively (from Glenn Sacks' blog:
“mother, from anywhere in the world can go to Utah to give birth and place the child for adoption. Notice of that proceeding will be placed in, say the Deseret News. The father, who may live in Florida, Belgium, Turkey or indeed anywhere, then has as little as five days to assert his rights. And, as in the O'Dea case, he may have no idea that the mother of his child is in Utah. After all, the newly-passed House Bill 74 needn't include her name. “
The way the system is set up now, a convicted felon mother with a drug abuser boyfriend living in Utah has more custodial rights than a protective father who resides outside of the state (see here: http://www.wlbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=12057444).
LAC, where are *you* getting your information?
I have no idea what your experience was personally, but it seems as if you've had one from the tenor of these posts.
Of course laws vary by state, they all do. I never argued they didn't. Where am I getting my information? From practice. I have practiced law in three states, took 3 bar exams, have 2 law degrees, and have friends who are family law attorneys and prosecutors all over the country. I also practiced family law: I represented foster children and handled custody disputes.
First of all, a woman cannot “put” a child in foster care. The state must come in, investigate, put the child in foster care (or place it with a willing relative), then go through a bureaucratic process that lasts generally around 2 years that attempts to reunify the family. I worked in foster care as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for children.
Additionally, you are absolutely incorrect–ANYONE, regardless of gender, who violates a court order of any kind including those regarding visitation schedules is absolutely liable for sanction and has broken the law. Period. It's not even arguable. So, if you are a father and the mother of your children is screwing with your visitation (or vice versa), you should notify the court immediately so that it can be dealt with. That is the procedure.
I will not dispute that fraud (because this had nothing to do with anything but fraud in the case you just presented) happens, as it does in all aspects of the law. However, to present this as a typical part of family court is more than specious and incredibly misleading and inaccurate. We all know that these cases exist, I read a ton of them in law school to illustrate the state of the law, which is that children have a right to support that trumps most other considerations, sometimes including genetic paternity. The most common scenario involving putative fathers illustrates the principal that if a man is married to a woman, any children born of that marriage will be deemed his children (even if they are not biologically his).
And the law is certainly not about money because, in most instances, no one but the parent sees a dime (you cite the argument of one lawyer in the article above for this contention). I worked for legal aid, I certainly wasn't getting higher fees for drafting custody agreements. And when I was a child, my Mom received $141 a month in child support for me–she was not getting rich, and neither was anyone else. In fact, the bureaucratic cost of having to enforce child support orders is astronomical, especially given that only about 50% owed is ever collected. Given that singe parenthood has become the norm, arguing against child support enforcement is neither practical or logical.
Additionally, in the Manuel Navarro case discussed in the article you cited, the last line explains directly the public policy of the law: “[M]any child-support officials are not sympathetic to the men, contending that losing a putative father's support is likely to be detrimental to the children. 'At what point should the truth about genetic parentage outweigh the consequences of leaving a child fatherless?' Paula Roberts of the Center for Law and Social Policy asked in a 2003 paper.”
Furthermore, no one is arguing that the law doesn't favor women. Statistical realties of parenting bear out that conclusion in general. For instance, you don't have to determine paternity for a mother unless there was some sort of egg implantation fertility treatment. I don't know why you would think the Utah law you cited is unreasonable in that context–of course you would have to apply for custody in the state the child resides in. I skimmed through the bill, please point to the subsections you object to if you'd like me to address them. And notice by publication is very common, you should know that. How would you have the notice take place? What resources would you employ?
I can't address that last case you cited because the link is dead.
You know what? I'm not even going to require a burden of proof on the father. People leave hospitals with babies everyday without providing proof of being an adequate parent, why should those fathers be held to a different standard?
Well, I'm assuming in that instance that there is a direct adoption (i.e. the new adoptive parents are taking the child fairly immediately). So, because the adoptive parents have proven their worth and ability to care for the child, I think it would certainly be fair to inquire as to the relative ability of the father, given that the best interest of the child is the crux of the matter.
Also, assuming, the father isn't heinous, I would certainly rather the child go to him or another family member if the alternative is foster care or waiting 15 years in an orphanage.
It wasn't the father's fault that the adoptive parents have to go through a screening process. I think he, like almost all parents leaving the hospital, should be presumed fit to parent until proven otherwise.
Of course, if he has a known history of child abuse or neglect, the state can refuse him custody even at the hospital and that standard can apply here too.
I think it would be unfair to compare any new parent against a successfully screened adoptive parent, most of whom, at the very least, have economic resources to pursue adoption.
I gotta say, PJay, quoting anything from Glenn Sack's blog reduces your credibility with me.
Why? I always thought he was very fair-minded. His group has recently helped a woman on deployment in the Middle East stop her ex-husband from unfairly taking her son away from her.
He also has a balanced perspective on gay marriage and uses a recent lesbian custody battle as an example of why fair-minded custody laws are good for all parents, gay and straight. Do you disagree with those positions? How do you think his blog could improve?
The letter of the law is different from enforcement and practice of the law, especially in family court, where Constitutional protections often do not apply to fathers, and procedures create barriers to fathers trying to actively parent their children.
See Jeffrey Elkins v The Superior Court of Contra Costa County (http://caselaw.findlaw.com/data2/californiastat...) and subsequent issues dealt with by the Elkins Task Force here in California for more information.
Good point, Alonza. Maybe there is some middle ground which would serve the best interests of children.
If child support is the right of the child, then the monies should be accounted for for upkeep of said child. That's not how the law is structured.
50% of gross income with no acconting of where the dollars go is not equitable, by any stretch of the imagination, especially in a climate where states are raising income taxes to make up for loss in taxes on businesses that have gone under or slowed down.
Downward modification of child support varies state by state. For instance, it is very difficult to obtain in New York state. For a man who is out of work or disabled to have to shell out thousands of dollars in legal fees so he doesn't automatically go to jail is unconscionable. See “Fighting Over Child Support After the Pink Slip Arrives”: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/nyregion/29su... .
For the record, I don't think the current system serves anyone well, least of all the children at hand, and I have several friends in a mom's group I used to be a member of (I know, I know) when my kids were little who got completely hosed by the system and the men who abandoned them.
But everywhere you look, the single mother story is the only one that is told. Most people are ignorant of family law as it's really practiced and enforced, and assume a man who can't make his payments is a “deadbeat dad”.
In the big picture, as well, being a “good dad” often seems to mean making payments – that's it. There are plenty of sites out there that smear fathers seeking joint custody of their children as abusers, and that's a position that seems to be endorsed by many women's groups, with the hearty support of their respective state governments. It's sad.
Yes, it's sad. And 20% of Americans believe the sun revolves around the earth.
America is a weird place.
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/17/local/m...
From that story:
Father, Child Sue Foster Care Unit
After the mother lost custody, the girl spent 10 years in foster homes before L.A. County acted to contact her dad.
“Melinda's parents were not married when she was born in 1988, but her father, Thomas Marion Smith, agreed to pay child support in 1989. He saw Melinda often, he said, but when she was about 4, her mother moved and left no forwarding address. Two years later, in 1995, after the county had received two complaints of suspected child abuse, Melinda's mother turned the girl over to foster care officials.
Meanwhile, Thomas Smith continued to receive monthly bills and make support payments to the county for several years, while Melinda was — unbeknownst to him — being shuffled through a series of institutions and foster homes.
The Department of Children and Family Services — required by law to use “due diligence” to locate a foster child's noncustodial parent — never notified Smith that Melinda was in foster care and never gave him a chance to claim her, the lawsuit alleges.
The department listed Smith's whereabouts as unknown in court documents filed a decade ago, even though department records indicate that Melinda's caseworker knew that Smith was paying child support through a separate county agency and his address was on file there.
“He's a registered voter with a valid driver's license and an open child support case,” said his attorney, L. Wallace Pate. “All they had to do, at any time during those 10 years, was pick up the phone and ask the L.A. County Child Support Services Department, 'Do you have a contact on this man?' “
Ultimately, Smith was located last spring by retired social worker Peggy Crist, who was brought in to help the Department of Children and Family Services launch a program to find permanent placements for teenagers who had spent years in foster care.
After meeting Melinda — who told Crist “the most important thing she could think of … was that she wanted to find her father” — it took the social worker one day to find Thomas Smith, who was living with his wife in a comfortable two-bedroom home in Pine Valley, east of San Diego.
…But the promise of a new family cannot undo the damage of 10 years in foster care, said Pate, who filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking unspecified damages against Los Angeles County, the social workers who handled Melinda's case and the private agency that provides attorneys for children in foster care.
If proper procedures had been followed, the lawsuit contends, Melinda would have been placed in her father's custody after her mother relinquished her, rather than languishing in foster care.
Instead, social workers misled Melinda and family court officials by portraying Smith as a “deadbeat dad,” the lawsuit said, even though they knew he was paying child support and had received “no notice that his daughter was being detained.”
Melinda grew up in seven different foster care placements. For five years, beginning at the age of 7, she lived in a residential treatment center alongside older children convicted of criminal activity because social workers decided her emotional issues ruled out placement with foster parents.
Agency records cited in the lawsuit detail a litany of behavior problems: She threw toys, punched windows and walls, and was frequently restrained by staff members when her tantrums escalated into kicking and biting attacks.
When Melinda was 8, her social worker reported that she refused to speak, suffered from extreme depression and was so “oppositional and defiant” that she was “not appropriate for adoptive placement.”
“She feels hopeless and helpless, as if the world is against her,” the social worker noted. She was ordered to take Prozac and remained on the medication — at steadily increasing doses — for more than seven years.
The lawsuit says social workers knew that Melinda was deteriorating in the county's custody, care and supervision, yet insisted that her father be stricken from Melinda's case plan.
…Until recently, little was done to find relatives of unclaimed foster children because the search process was difficult and tedious, social workers were untrained and overworked, and there was an inherent bias against family members of children in foster care.
There was a presumption that the father was probably unsuitable or uninterested, Campbell said. “The attitude has been 'the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.' If one parent has problems, the other relatives are probably not worth searching for.”..”
?????!!!! I'm from the Midwest. I had no idea Toledo was such an outlier in the past. Why was the situation so out of control?
My mistake, I momentarily mistook Glenn Sacks for Glenn Beck. I am familiar with the Father's & Families movement and his role in it and have no real quibble with him. Still, I carefully avoid posting anything from what could be construed as a biased source and appreciate it when others do the same.
I'm going to assume you're not a lawyer because you keep referring me to FindLaw and news articles instead of giving me citations.
Again, no one is disputing that the law in practice is not necessarily as written in legislation. That is why we have children prosecuted under kiddie porn statutes for sexting.
Local rules are common and often unfair to a variety of people and contexts (for instance, some judges require women to wear skirts to their courtroom).
The case you cited illustrates nothing except that trial courts of every stripe very commonly misapply the law. I worked for an appellate judge in law school writing opinions and I routinely overturned trial court decisions and adjudications of administrative bodies when they were legally incorrect. That is why we have an appeals process.
As to downward modification, I have answered that point several times now, and refer you to my previous statements. Again, child-focused system.
As to the foster care system point, I did that job. That system is royally fucked. And trust me, not as it pertains to fathers specifically. The fathers on all of our cases were heinous, MIA, or had a really hopeless number of illegitimate children. The mothers were no better. I could go on and on about that one, but that discussion is not relevant to the one at hand.
I don't think it's the system necessarily that causes the disservice, though no one can argue that it doesn't have flaws. I think it's cultural. The “I'm not responsible for my actions” mentality (which btw has permeated every facet of American life) which makes it okay for men and women to have children they have no ability or desire to care for, and which makes it socially-acceptable for men to indiscriminately father children and disappear and feel only contempt when they are expected to financially provide for the children they sired. When I was a CASA, there was a famous judge in Northern Kentucky that started to administer desperate measures to chronic deadbeat dads (meaning those with a lot of children they refused to support). In one particular case, the man had fathered something like 8 illegitimate children, none of whom he was paying child support for. At his delinquency hearing, the judge said “you have two choices: you can go to jail or get a vasectomy.” I can honestly not disagree with the judge's argument: these children are indigent, you continue to impregnate random women and not support the children, and at this point your penis is a drain on the state's resources and a potential source of future crime. You refuse to be a responsible human being, therefore we must make sure that this doesn't continue. Frankly, I would do the same with women who have 10 children, all of whom are taken away for abuse/neglect. I'd require her to get an IUD unless and until she can demonstrate an ability to be a parent because the people hurt here are innocent children and society at large. When things like this become the norm, it's no longer an individual issue.
Trust me, as a lawyer and a child of a deadbeat father, I would love nothing more than for men generally to be actual parents, not just sign some check–or at the very minimum send the check so Mom doesn't have to work 5 jobs to pay the bills. Especially for women born to single parents, it harms society at large to raise a large percentage of children without any sort of positive male role model. I just disagree that it is unfair to ask the father to support his child's household when the mother is doing the heavy lifting of actually raising the child. I refer you to aldonza's situation as typical, and I'd say the mom who uses the check to buy Prada every month is a super exception to the rule.
As to Toledo, I don't think it's particularly “crazy” for sex to occur at such ages. They coincide with puberty, which causes a hormonal surge, and the cycle begins. I think the pregnancy rate there is mostly due to poverty (condoms and birth control aren't cheap or freely available, and abortion is expensive) and the teenage brain. I was a smart cookie and got comprehensive sex ed, but I was also a teenager, which meant I was inherently stupid when it came to that type of decision-making. So, I didn't practice a consistent level of safe sex until college (I didn't use condoms at all until college; birth control started in high school for me though it had nothing to do with actual contraception). I'm just lucky that I didn't get pregnant like so many people I knew or get an STD.
(bold emphasis mine.)
So, we have a case of a child that fell through the cracks of social services. it's heinous and shouldn't have happened, but the law here was clearly on the father's side. Other than more funding for more social workers and lighter caseloads, what would you suggest be changed in this case?
My question would be, what did the father do to find the daughter? Presumably if he was paying into the system, those payments were going somewhere. All it would take is a court order to get that information (unless there was some order of protection in place to protect the child.) I don't know about you, but I'd move heaven and hell to find out where my child was.
“Due diligence” is not defined and there is no penalty if no effort is followed through on to locate the father. The law is on the father's side in name only.
He was completely unaware for a long time that she was in foster care.
Here's a good publication that lays out the reality for a huge number of fathers in California:
http://www.fatherhoodqic.org/chapter5.pdf
“Nonresident fathers rarely appear in child welfare proceedings.1 Several reasons
stand out: the father is hard to locate, the mother is ambivalent about
engaging the father, the caseworker devalues fathers, and the father feels
outside the process and does not want to participate. The list goes on….”
Interesting. But for myself, even with an accident, I would be completely and utterly devastated and miserable. No upside, no secret smile. Just depressed. I'd feel like a failure on behalf of myself and my child.
This is the EXACT same argument you repeated in an earlier blog entry (see Sex is Chemistry and It's Never Casual) — same words & everything, I mean you honestly probably cut & pasted it. You couldn't respond to any of my arguments then and I'll bet you can't now. If you really feel so strongly, why does your argument fall apart when tested / prodded just a little bit and why do you insist on reposting old ideas in yet another entry? It's ridiculous.
That's because it's not HER child, it's YOUR child too. You don't get something for nothing. Something in this case is fulfilling your biological prerogative to reproduce. The courts rule that it's more favorable to the child that YOU BOTH created that YOU BOTH contribute to its well-being. If you don't want to take the chance that it'll be an issue, either don't have sex with women you wouldn't want a child with (no sex if you don't want a child) or get a vasectomy. Period. Stop complaining about the way you wish things would be, deal with how they are, and do something about it. Jesus.
It's like some feminists & some of my friends that are mad that men aren't attracted to their money & career accomplishments. They can wail about it all they want, but the fact is that they should really be focusing on their appearance since that's the way things are.
What a great exchange. I laughed at your last line. Bravo, very well-argued, VJ.
I'm not sure if you're referring to some of my prior comments in the thread, but if so I think you've misinterpreted them. I was merely putting the 20% per child number in context, because the number is much higher when measured pretax and takes a much bigger hit out of his post-tax income.
Also, as to whether he should be able to claim the dependent, that's a separate issue. I actually don't know whether he currently can or can not – but I suspect not for the reason you cite. I hadn't really thought about it. But reciting what the law currently is is not a policy argument. You're being circular. It would be like someone in 1970 saying that women should not be allowed to have abortions because the criminal code of their state prohibits them. If he is providing all or most of the financial support then he ought to get the dependent deduction.
“So, because the adoptive parents have proven their worth and ability to care for the child, I think it would certainly be fair to inquire as to the relative ability of the father, given that the best interest of the child is the crux of the matter.”
Why? You would never require that of a mother – even a single mother. I mean, we have lots of prospective adoptive parents who want to adopt white babies (sorry, that's the reality) and have already established that they meet every requirement you could throw at them? Should we require every white mother who gives birth (particularly single ones) to establish that they are better than these willing adoptors if she wants to take her child home from the hospital and keep it? That's what you're basically doing to the guy here. The fact that you can't even see that shows where you are coming from with respect to male parenting.
If the child stays with the mother anything over half of the year, only the mother can claim the child as a dependent. Now that I think about it, any tax benefits of claiming the child will only benefit the parent monetarily, so if the father is providing all of the financial support he should get the benefit, as a tax return is not going to give the mother her time and energy back.
I'm confused, does the payer have to pay tax on the amount that goes towards child support? No, right? It's as if his pre-tax salary is smaller.
A deduction reduced one's adjusted gross income, which is money you would have at your disposal, except that it went to something specific (like putting it in a traditional IRA) and you don't have to pay tax on that amount.
“I'm confused, does the payer have to pay tax on the amount that goes towards child support? No, right? It's as if his pre-tax salary is smaller”
Incorrect. My understanding is that his taxable income is unchanged – the child support payments are not a deduction for him (contrast this with alimony or spousal support).
So, yes, the payor still pays tax on the amounts that go toward child support.
I'm not suggesting that they should be deductible as a matter of tax policy (I don't get a deduction on the amounts I spend raising my kids). I'm simply saying that when we evaluate the 20% number, we have to really view it as, say, 35-40% of his actual (after tax) take home pay. In other words, it's way too high in most cases and, given the lack of accountability as to its application, often results in disguised spousal support for the mother.
Yes, the payor does have to pay tax on the money that goes towards child support.
That's not how the world works, and in reality there are about 500k children available for adoption in the US RIGHT NOW. So, yes if I had my way, people would not be allowed to reproduce until all of these kids had a home, and people would have to prove they could be decent parents in order to care for children.
Working as a CASA, I know firsthand what abuse and neglect does to children and society, and it is too important a thing to just allow anyone to be able to because they're fertile.
But I don't run the world, so it's kind of irrelevant.
Wow. No potential for abuse in that system, no sir. Talk about the cure being worse than the disease.
So, yes if I had my way, people would not be allowed to reproduce until all of these kids had a home,
Wow, that is just nuts. You had me going for awhile. I thought your contract idea was pretty wacky, but overall you seemed pretty reasonable.
This borders on insane. As of right now, I don't want children. I have no desire for the parental experience, but if I did I would want my OWN BIOLOGICAL children. Maybe this is just a male thing that is tied into the instinct to avoid cuckoldry (not exactly the same but same concept) but I don't want to raise some other man's spawn. I would want the fruits of my labor and toil to support my genes, not some total stranger.
I've got nothing against adoption, and I commend people who are altruistic enough to do it, but to mandate that people can't have their own biological children until all the children of irresponsible people have homes is just crazy.
I make that mistake periodically – sucks for Glenn Sacks. I guess I don't know for sure whether he is a good and fair guy or a loon, since I haven't paid that much attention to him. But, from what little I've seen, I get the impression that he is trying to be straight forward. However, the natural tendency to associate his name with Glenn Beck's must be a real drag on his credibility.
Really, insane? I think it's the merely the antithesis of selfish. If you want kids, then you should want to raise children, the biology of which should be irrelevant if it is purely about raising children. A super-majority of the prison population was in foster care/were abused as children, and so if we made sure that all the children orphaned or removed were taken care of by decent, loving parents, the benefit to society would be immense. Mostly because this is the next generation of society which will be running the joint.
And the contract idea, by the way, is pretty popular in NYC already, as I mentioned.
Are you saying that, in a perfect world, you wish you could waive a magic wand and have all these kids be taken in before anyone else reproduces? Or are you actually wishing someone would allow you to implement a legal scheme that attempts to impose this? If the latter, then, yes, that would be pure insanity at a level that would exceed the worst horrors of communist systems. Maybe (hopefully) you just mean the former.
Really, insane?
Yes, absolutely. I would be absolutely shocked if more then 1-2 commenters agree with this position.
If you want kids, then you should want to raise children, the biology of which should be irrelevant if it is purely about raising children.
Hmmmph…..honestly this sort of comment almost gets my blood boiling. WHO ARE YOU to tell me or other people what they SHOULD WANT or even worse have it mandated by the state. And yes, BIOLOGY matters. Again, this might be a difference between men and women but I can absolutely guarantee that 99.9% of men agree with me her. I suspect most women do as well.
and so if we made sure that all the children orphaned or removed were taken care of by decent, loving parents, the benefit to society would be immense.
Ahhhh….yes, the “benefit to society” which of course absolutely trumps the individual's right to self-determination. Reproductive freedom has to be near the top of the list of freedoms intrinsic to human beings and the human experience. The idea of limiting it for the “benefit of society” is just preposterous. No…that isn't the right word…it borders on some sort of Orwellian nightmare.
And how exactly would you enforce this? Couples who become pregnant would be arrested and the women forced to have an abortion. Couples with adequate financial resources would be forced to take in children and raise them. Seriously, this just gets really crazy really quick.
Nothing terrifies me more then people who have some sort of utopian vision of what they believe is the perfect society and have zero qualms in destroying any remnants of individual liberty to get there. The scariest part to me is you really believe in your heart and mind that you are right that this is a perfectly rational, reasonable position. Maybe Shakespeare was right. Just kidding on that one.
Yes, of course, the implementation of such a principal would be a nightmare. Obviously it rings of eugenics, and while eugenics might have some benefit in theory, it almost never does in practice.
As to adoption, you have to be loving, capable parents because you must prove their worth and have to really want a child in order to go through the time, expense, and arduous bureaucracy of adoption. There are no unplanned, accidental, unwanted kids in those equations by definition. I often wonder why, in order to take care of a child who no one wants you have to prove your worth, but you can just get knocked up and then it's irrelevant when the principal is the same: you're raising the next productive member of society.
I myself could not imagine bearing biological children when I know there are so many just waiting for parents to love them. And yes, when couples go through fertility treatments and the like to try so hard to have biological children, it makes me angry knowing that they could just help one of the kids I advocated for in foster care whose only crime was being born to someone who could give a shit about them. And no actually, the majority of my friends are probably going to (if they have not already) adopt in lieu of having biological children.
And yes, I'm a young, idealistic humanist lawyer who thinks that society should do things that benefit the whole not just myself. I like those societies–the ones that care about each other. And you're wrong, I think that people should be able to do whatever they want so long as it doesn't hurt anybody. When people hurt other people, there should be consequences, either legal or cultural. Individual liberty should not come at a serious cost to other individuals.
Yeah, I've got a friend in IT who says it's 40% of his paycheck after withholding.
So the father pays tax on child support and the mother doesn't, but the mother gets to claim the child as a dependent. It seems like things should be more equitable, but the current system is either/or.
And you're wrong, I think that people should be able to do whatever they want so long as it doesn't hurt anybody.
And who is hurt when a couple in love decide they want to have their own biological child? The orphan in foster care is “hurt” by that decision. If so, that is very specious reasoning. Harm or hurt has to be a direct causal effect, not some 20 steps removed indirect level.
When people hurt other people, there should be consequences, either legal or cultural. Individual liberty should not come at a serious cost to other individuals.
Right. If I walk over and punch you in the nose I should be arrested and prosecuted. But are you really going to postulate that my decision to have my own biological children is infringing on the rights of children in foster care or waiting for adoption?
Individual liberty should not come at a serious cost to other individuals.
This is great stuff here. Truly Orwellian.
And yes, I'm a young, idealistic humanist lawyer who thinks that society should do things that benefit the whole not just myself.
Society or government? The two are not equivalent. That said, government has a legitimate role to play. This isn't the place, nor do I have the time, but the fact is many of the societal pathologies we are seeing unfold over the last 30-40 years are a result of government trying to “benefit” society. Maybe as you get older, less idealistic, and more realistic you will realize that, and then again maybe not.
Yeah, I was responding to your contention that I was trying to take someone's individual liberty away and that a benefit to society as a whole is some sort of dirty notion, not applying the rubric of adoption to that ideal. But good try, nonetheless. I think it's cute that somehow giving a damn about a needy part of society and valuing other people is now considered a personality flaw.
You're right this is not the forum, but I could not disagree with you more about the state of our current society. I made public policy research a huge focus of my graduate career and can assure you that countries with high levels of social spending (which I assume is what you are referring to when you say “societal pathologies?”) have much happier, healthier, more culturally-caring, smarter, and more peaceful societies. Our American selfishness has brought us nothing but harm, which could not be better illustrated by the current economic state of affairs. The older I've gotten, the worse this cultural narcissism has become and it is well-illustrated by the youth of our nation, often the kids who are the subject of this blog. I believe that this is the root of most of these problems: deadbeat parents, throw-away sexual partners, and general douchebaggery. It all comes from a “it's my life and I can do whatever the hell I want no matter how it affects other people” mentality. Not only is that sort of mentality personally abhorrent to me, it offends my sense of justice and equality, as it should.
Sorry to disappoint you but the older and more educated I've gotten, the more militantly idealistic I've become.
That is because my position has not, and will not change. I don't entertain the entitlement feminist logical fallacies you attempt to present as idea's. To engage the 12 year old mentality you present would be pointless.
Well, it shows exactly how much he cared if he didn't even bother to try and see her once in 10 years, which is when he would have found out she was in foster care and not with her mother. He wanted to be a paycheck, nothing more. Not that he had to be more than that, it wasn't required, but I don't think he should be painted as some innocent victim who would have gladly claimed his daughter because he loved her so much like some very involved fathers would have.
I agree with this part of your argument: “I believe that this is the root of most of these problems: deadbeat parents, throw-away sexual partners, and general douchebaggery. It all comes from a “it's my life and I can do whatever the hell I want no matter how it affects other people” mentality.” I totally agree that a lot of people have no sense of accountability or morality or “doing the right thing” anymore — comes from the narcissistic “I must be fulfilled in every way at the expense of everything else” idea my generation has.
I do think it would be nice if people would adopt more children as well, actually my mom and dad tried to do just that when I was four. We took in a 8 year old, and I don't really remember it, but apparently, the kid tried to set fire to the house, physically assaulted both of my parents multiple times, was generally angry, loud, and out of control. The breaking point came when the kid actually scratched me on the nose to the bone. It was so deep I had a scar for 3 years. I don't resent that kid at all, I'm sure he had a terrible upbringing and was very mentally scarred, but I think that if my parents (my mother is a therapist) couldn't handle a disturbed foster child, I'm not sure many families could. I think the key is getting them into a good system when they're young before the damage is done. I would wholeheartedly support increased tax monies to help these children as wards of the state. Who raises them is less an issue than what's done to them at a young age. At a certain point, they're too difficult for most people to want or even consider dealing with IF they even have the inclination to help non-genetic offspring in the first place.
Not having an argument that works (what a surprise, just like last time) and resorting to namecalling (yet again) does not equal refusing to engage in an intellectual discussion. But I think you knew you didn't have a leg to stand on last time. I'm just telling readers to read that entry from before and see that you still don't this time around.
And it's ideas, not idea's, sugar.
Thanks Vera, But if you mean by 'we' that you work for or with the Onion, you get serious cred from me! I just love the place, but reality is constantly trumping it, sometimes by minutes not hours any more! Sad but true Cheers, 'VJ'
I do work there, and you're right, the truth is always stranger than fiction. In fact, we were going to do a piece on Sarah Palin getting speech cues in increasingly ridiculous ways (laid off = guy walking across the stage in a hawaiian lei) and then she one-ups us by writing crib notes on her hand!
I'm with you re giving a damn about the needy part of society (I was a volunteer lawyer as well), but you lost me where you'd prohibit people from procreating until every orphan is adopted. Why must one exclude the other? If two responsible adults wish to have their own biological children, why must they be punished for other people's bad decisions?
I'm one of those couples. I went through infertility treatments many times to conceive my two children. My ex and I decided at the time that if that didn't work, that adoption was probably not for us. We did want biological children, which is part of the drive to reproduce. To reproduce our *own* genetic material.
Further, if I did adopt, I was even evil enough to want one of those rare “healthy infants” that have couples lining up for them. I would not have chosen to take in an older child or special needs child from the system. My need to be a parent was not strong enough for that. I have friends who have taken the adoption road to parenthood. They feel blessed and are happy being parents to their children. However, most of them also privately adopted infants, or went for international adoption because they also chose not to take the additional stresses of raising a child from the system.
I resent the assumption that just because I was unable to have children without help that I'm somehow more obligated to adopt unwanted children than say…you.
I don't know how it is elsewhere, but divorce agreements in my state typically have parents trading off declaring the children on their taxes.
While we are at it, and for the benefit of society, why don't we force single women to hookup with underserviced men? I mean that would also benefit society, right? [/sarcasm]
Not quite true. The laws will favor the state collecting, and sitting on paid child support to fund other operations with the accrued interest. Those priorities trump the “welfare of the child”.
See what happened 10 years ago in LA County. The county sat on $25 million in support payments, while pursuing a huge number of people for “collection” because they were considered deadbeats.
http://articles.latimes.com/1999/feb/20/local/m...
The state also gets federal reimbursement for TANF payments in exchange for cash credited for in child support awards. Right now in California, if my wages are garnished, the money goes first to the state accountant in Sacramento, then to the recipient. Bank of America is handling the contract with the state for a fat fee.
If the money does not reach the recipient, you may still be considered in default even though you paid.
The outdated accounting/treasury function in California almost resulted in huge fines and loss of federal welfare dollars (http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/07/news/mn...).
Not a coincidence that the system was beneficial to the state treasury…..
There is no question that my perspective is clouded by my experience.
To AT: I don't think that adopting in lieu of adding another person to the population when there are needy children available is in any way punishment. I don't know any personally who has this crazy drive to continue their lineage, especially with technological advancement as it is today. I can't even imagine a state of being where adoption is anything but a win-win for everyone.
To aldonza: I'll refer you to the reproductive point I just made. Since I see it so rarely in my own cohort, maybe it's the whole career first kids second mentality, or maybe we feel like it's an antiquated notion, or maybe I know too many gay couples, or maybe I know too many liberals who would rather help others than get knocked up, or maybe the people I know aren't interested in being pregnant. I don't know. Maybe it's all of the above.
No one said you were obligated to do anything. I just *personally* feel like it's a selfish move to make. If you have enough money for outrageously expensive fertility treatments that may harm the body in ways we won't be sure of for decades, then you have enough money to run to the local foster or adoption agency and pick out a baby. And, for the record, as I mentioned, I *personally* feel obligated to adopt myself, and I am lucky in the sense that I am also infertile so the choice is easy. I have a pact with my GBFF that, in the event I ever miraculously got pregnant, I would give the baby to him as he will also need to adopt.
Sorry, I have this apparently strange ardently unselfish personality. I don't do things unless I consider how they affect other people at large. That's probably why it's so amazing to me to see people constantly doing the opposite. Do what you want. My opinions are just that.
You're right for the most part.
When I was a CASA, the best-behaved kids where the ones who 1) suffered less abuse/neglect; 2) were taken at a very young age; and 3) were fostered to a great parent almost immediately. Unfortunately, most of the children who'd been in foster care only developed more problems the older they got. But it wasn't necessarily a lost cause.
The behavior you just described was, as I'm sure your parents recognized, reactive attachment disorder. Most of my kids had it. When people constantly throw you away, after awhile you assume everyone will do that. So, as a defense mechanism, you abuse people to test their loyalty. Unfortunately, the caregiver has to have a really thick skin for a long time to get through that phase, and alot of people just don't have the ability to deal with it no matter how good their intentions are. So, they give the kids back, they feel abandoned again, and the cycle continues. It's just self-sabotage. The irony is that after most parents get through that heinous stage, after they've proven that they're not going anywhere, the kid will calm down dramatically and has a chance to work through his issues. But, that phase can last a long time. And I completely understand why people don't wanna sign up for that.
Like I mentioned earlier, the system is so overloaded because people don't care enough to be decent parents or are themselves part of the cycle. Then, there's no one willing to take “damaged goods.” And then, the kids get so damaged that they become criminals. Starting at the root would be nice, but spreading the word about adopting these kids is also seriously important. And you can't have a “me first” attitude if you want to be an adoptive parent.
For the record, I don't think it's appropriate to judge anyone's choices re adoption, IVF, or even interest in having children in the first place. A true humanitarian may spend her life working for others, yet still choose to reproduce biologically. In general, I have to believe that very few couples capable of having their own children would go the adoption route instead, but perhaps LAC's friends will do that. I do have two close friends who have adopted children, both due to infertility issues. The first one adopted two children, one of which is fine. In the other case, they knowingly adopted a baby whose mother smoked crack. It's a terrible story – he's now about 18, and has violently attacked his parents many times. The police have had to intervene repeatedly. The public schools expelled him, a rarity, but the city won't pay for the kind of facility he requires, so his parents foot the bill for a school that costs 60K a year. He will probably never live a life free of pathological behavior, nor will his adoptive family.
The second friend privately adopted a baby from an evangelical teen in the Midwest. Much later they learned that the bio father was in the state penitentiary for armed robbery. They had hoped to adopt more children, but from the start David's needs have overwhelmed the family. He has also been expelled from public school, and now attends a day school for kids who are oppositional. It's not enough, he's doing poorly there, but the town won't pay for more and the parents can't afford the super expensive route. He was sexually active and extremely promiscuous from the age of 13. He's very good looking, and has no sense of right or wrong, so he has a steady string of sexual partners, all underage. At home he stays shut in his room unless he is angry, in which case he punches holes in the walls and generally destroys the house. His parents are in a constant state of fear and heartbreak.
In both of these cases, the marriage has survived, which surprises me.
Some people parent noble reasons, and others for selfish ones. This is true whether the children are genetically related to the parents or not. There are reasons why people are reluctant to adopt, and both of my friends feel strongly that they would have made a different decision if they could have seen what the rest of their lives would look like, which is tragic.
I can't disagree with you there. And these problems with kids also happen to biological kids whose parents were good people. Stories like these are the ones that discourage people from wanting to adopt. When I was a CASA, my most well-behaved teenager ran away from his sister's house, was missing for months, and was found when he robbed a man at an ATM at gunpoint for $8. This was the first time he'd ever been in trouble, and he had been in foster care all his life. He was 17.
I have a lot of personal experience with crack babies, and I'm happy to say none of it has been bad. But that of course doesn't mean another side doesn't exist. In my GBFF's family for example, the adopted crack baby is the most well-behaved, and the bio middle child we're pretty sure is a budding sociopath.
The point is, 90% of the time you can't see these things coming.
In any case, it's the selfishness that I'm concerned with. I think if we all bled ourselves a bit of it, we would all be in a much better place.
I will take your comments on this with a grain of the salt you just provided.
(emphasis mine)
I'm rather surprised at your casual depiction of the adoption process considering your first-hand knowledge of the system. It's not exactly like browsing a catalog, picking the baby you like and putting down a deposit. Even in the “Cadillac” of adoptions: the private adoption at birth from a healthy, white mother, there are major emotional and economic hurdles. I know no less than 3 couples who had adoptions fall through when the mother changed her mind…in 2 of those cases she changed it *after* the child had been placed. Similar issues happen in system adoptions, particularly if the system is pursuing termination of parental rights. The limbo can last years. Call me selfish, I'd rather live child-free than have my baby taken from my arms.
I also happen to live in a state that has mandated health insurance coverage for infertility treatments. I would not have been able to afford it otherwise.
I can respect what you do and where your sentiments come from. Children in the system are a heartbreaking problem of our society that we *all* should feel obligated to address with comprehensive solutions to unwanted pregnancy and the conditions that break up families as a whole. But please, do not compound the heartbreak that childless couples feel by telling them that they alone should have to take on the immense personal commitment of adoption. People who adopt should be called to it. Anything less is doomed to fail.
“Melinda's parents were not married when she was born in 1988, but her father, Thomas Marion Smith, agreed to pay child support in 1989.
He saw Melinda often, he said, but when she was about 4, her mother moved and left no forwarding address. <—–
Two years later, in 1995, after the county had received two complaints of suspected child abuse, Melinda's mother turned the girl over to foster care officials.”
Also see:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,203954,00.html
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/DAD,+DAUGHTER+SEP...
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/...
Choosing Foster Parents over Fathers
Jeffrey M. Leving and Glenn Sacks
July 27, 2007
In the heartbreaking Melinda Smith case, a San Diego father and daughter were needlessly separated by the foster care system for over a decade. Last week, Los Angeles County settled a lawsuit over the case for an undisclosed sum. Yet a recent Urban Institute study found that the Smith case typifies the way the foster care system harms children by disregarding the loving bonds they share with their fathers.
Smith was born to an unwed couple in 1988. Her father, Thomas Marion Smith, a former Marine and a decorated Vietnam War veteran, saw Melinda often and paid child support. When the girl was four, her mother abruptly moved without leaving a forwarding address. Two years later, Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services found that Melinda’s mother was abusing her. Though the social worker for the case noted in the file that Thomas was the father, he was never contacted, and his then 6-year-old daughter was placed in the foster care system.
Thomas–whose fitness as a father was never impugned nor legally questioned–continued to receive and pay his child support bills. Authorities refused to disclose his daughter’s whereabouts, and didn’t even inform him that his daughter had been taken by the County. Smith employed private investigators and attorneys to try to find Melinda and secure visitation rights, but he eventually ran out of money.
Rather than allowing Smith to raise his own daughter, the system shuttled Melinda through seven different foster care placements. An understandably angry child, her outbursts led authorities to house her in a residential treatment center alongside older children convicted of criminal activity—when she was only seven years old.
Melinda says that during this period she was told that her father was a “deadbeat dad” who had abandoned her. When Melinda was 16, she told an investigating social worker that the “most important thing” for her was to find her dad. Moved by her story, the social worker began searching for Melinda’s father–and found him in one day. In 2005, Thomas and Melinda were finally reunited.
Unfortunately, the Smith case is no aberration. When a mother and father are divorced or separated, and a child welfare agency removes the children from the mother’s home for abuse or neglect, an offer of placement to the father, barring unfitness, should be automatic. Yet in the report What About the Dads? Child Welfare Agencies’ Efforts to Identify, Locate, and Involve Nonresident Fathers, the Urban Institute presents a shocking finding: when fathers inform child welfare officials that they would like their children to live with them, the agencies seek to place the children with their fathers only 15% of the time.
Fathers can offer their children a sense of permanence, security and emotional support that a foster family (or a succession of foster care placements) cannot provide. Many foster children are pushed out of their homes and into a tenuous existence when they turn 18 and the foster parents no longer receive state subsidies. Fathers could be a valuable source of long-term resources and sponsorship for these young adults.
Child welfare agencies often operate on the assumption that the fathers of the children they’ve taken away from their mothers are, like the mothers, unfit or uninterested in parenting. Yet many of these men are loving fathers who have been forced out of their children’s lives by mothers who denied visitation, moved away and/or hid the children, or employed spurious abuse charges.
What About the Dads? makes it clear that many child welfare workers treat fathers as an afterthought. The report found that even when a caseworker had been in contact with a child’s father, the caseworker was still five times less likely to know basic information about the father than about the mother. Just as with Thomas Smith, 20% of the fathers whose identity and location were known by the child welfare agencies from the opening of the case were never even contacted.
These policies are harmful and misguided. One shudders to think how many little Melinda Smiths are lost in the foster care system right now—being raised by strangers, and denied their father’s love.
This column first appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune (7/11/07).
Jeffery M. Leving is one of America's most prominent family law attorneys. His website is http://www.dadsrights.com.
Glenn Sacks' columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of America's largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at http://www.GlennSacks.com or via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
That must be about the most fun job in the world (other than, perhaps, Susan's job in running this blog).
You have disproved nothing! You are a 25 year old little girl – who doesn't know shit about life, politics or political philosophy. You troll out argumentum absurdum as if it were an idea and expect a debate. When you grow up a bit you might have the experience necessary to separate emotional opinion from fact – until then, child, you should be seen and not heard.
We as a once civilized society care for children by women being forced to take responsibility their choices – and they alone choose.
And in correction to your comment, child support is very much a Marxist policy, not a response to socialism. The bible thumping crowd in amerika jumped on the feminist/marxist/progressivist bandwagon when they felt it could be sold as 'family values' oriented legislation.
An angry, emotional response from 3dshooter. Shocker.
Need I remind you that you are posting on a blog that is about and for women in my age demographic: 18 to early thirties women? You qualify in neither of those categories. So, even barring the fact that you yet again can't explain yourself beyond attacking me and yet again have devolved into ranting, that fact alone makes my opinion just as relevant as yours, probably more so.
We are in a period of turmoil, where there are no definitions between men & women, and change is happening so quickly that people can't keep up. No one has answers at this point, not young people, and not old. This blog is trying to help solve some of those problems, and everyone has a valid opinion. Stop trying to silence the very people who are going through it every day.
Age definitely doesn't always come before experience, as your platitude-spouting, blustering speech as shown. You are angry and bitter, but it's not my job to be your whipping boy. Either get some facts and discuss the issues rationally or stop posting. Stop spewing hatred when you can't explain your own opinions, it really doesn't help anyone.
Oh, I see. The cut text made it sound like the mother just moved & he gave up trying to see her because he couldn't be bothered trying to find out where she went. Reading the full story, I can see he did everything he could: hired private detectives & everything. It is a ghastly failure of the system, and I'm honestly shocked & appalled that only 15% of fathers are awarded custody of their children when their mothers are unfit to parent. That is horrifying and definitely needs to be changed.
As usual, childish drivel from you. At your age, I was probably just a clueless and obnoxious as you are.
I'm well aware of the demographic of this blog and by posting here – I hope to educate men in that demographic to be very wary of women such as you are showing yourself to be. You, as an individual woman, are a very real threat to men – narcissistic and screaming to be heard when you have nothing to say. Are you naive enough to think these issues are new? Also, I think it is useful for women to see what they have become why they are being devalued in society for their own behavior – though in most cases that's a real stretch.
We are in a period of unprecedented government expansion – you play the role, as Marx described, of the useful idiot. Lacking sufficient knowledge and experience, yet willing scream your ideology 'du jur' from the rooftops.
And even in this latest whine-fest you cannot avoid the fallacies of Ad Hominem, Causal reduction and Attacking character. That is why you are a child mind not worthy of debate.
You want facts, how about you describe the role the lobbying organization PSI played in formulating the current child support guidelines through the 80's and early 90's and speak to it's spin-off private child support collection agency that has gone on to become a multi-million dollar company? How about you speak to the fact that the 1996 HHS mandated that states adopt federal guidelines, completely out of the scope of federal legislation, or lose federal funding? How about you speak to the fact that the federal OSCE in its own report has indicated that states are setting child support awards too high because they are making huge profits from it? How about you speak to the fact that state child support agencies view federal funding based on child support to be “an open ended source of federal funding”? This is just the tip of the iceberg that you can't even see.
You can't because you are most likely sitting in a dorm room somewhere still sucking of mommy & daddy's financial teat and expect society to provide for you in the same way. Grow up, do you research and quit your screeching.
That is not legit. I welcome anyone who is interested in productive and fruitful debate, but if you are here to work actively against me you are not welcome. I had to ban someone this week after he acknowledged that he was really only here to foment disagreement and recruit male commenters to his own blog.
Honestly, I squarely resent it. I am trying to build something real here, and you stop by to tear it down? It's beyond selfish, if that's the case.
Please let me know where you stand.
My position is quite 'legit' as one who has experienced first hand the full gamut of feminist/gov't abuse.
My position is to inform men in all demographics that the state of family law is such that given the current state of federal law and the law of the various states places them at extreme disadvantage when dealing with women of the feminist ideology. It would also be desirable that women could actually step back and take an honest look at what they have become in current society – but, as stated earlier, that's a bit of a stretch.
The poster Verie44 is a child and does not have a grasp of the political implications of the 'entitlement' philosophy she promotes. She has no valid position. She has no logical arguments. She has only emotion, hyperboli and fallacious argumentation. She deserves the comeuppance she received at my hand.
I have deferred to you both here and on other blogs because I am left with the impression that you 'kind of get it' as your opinions seem to have indicated. However, if you wish to play the sisterhood card and shut off opinion that is too sharp for your delicate readership – so be it.