Leveling the Playing Field: Child Support

This entry is part of a series. The introduction is here. The first two suggestions are here.

Suggestions:

3. Opting out of fatherhood after intercourse. Child Support Compliance offices have been established by local governments, distinct from their District Attorney and County Counsel offices. As long as they are going to have this bureaucracy, why not allow men to publicly register with them, pre-conception, as not wanting to be fathers? Women can check the registry before they choose whether or not to risk getting pregnant by such a man. Then she will be assuming the risks of financial obligations to any child she chooses to birth and keep. Currently, the moment even a single sperm leaves a man’s body, he loses all ability to avoid the legal responsibility of being a father. Women, however, not only have many forms of contraception they can use, but pills that cause early abortions, surgical abortion, and even “safe surrender” of a newborn with no strings attached. Why shouldn’t men also have a post-ejaculation choice? If we are a pro-choice society, shouldn’t men also have a choice, just as women do? Any man who fails to register as not wanting to be a father would retain the obligation to financially support any offspring he produces.

4. Child support standardization. Speaking of child support – if it really is about meeting the child’s needs, then why isn’t it standardized based on half of the cost of raising a child? Who are we fooling when a wealthy person is paying five or six figures a month for a child’s support? No child needs that amount of money, barring some sort of unusual medical condition. That is really going to the lifestyle of the custodial parent. My father, married to my mother, used to make it clear that if he ever won the lottery, we would not be living a lavish lifestyle. No court could have forced otherwise. Yet if he had won and my mother divorced him, the court could have forced him to give me a lavish lifestyle. What kind of sense does that make? I should note, that, conversely, a man should still have to support his offspring’s needs even if he has a lower-than-average income – this standardization would work both ways. Since it is about the “needs of the child” (or so we’re told) the man's income level shouldn’t make a difference.

More suggestions in subsequent posts, as well as my advice to my fellow men given how things are now.