And who are the women spreadin' 'em for this deadbeat?

"Hey honey, I make min wage and have to give up half of that to my baby mamas. How about you buy us a drink and then drive me to your place so you can get pregnant?"

"Sure! Sounds like fun!"

Sounds like an interesting family reunion.

the state requires him to divide 50 percent of his earnings among the 11 women, some of whom receive as little as $1.49 a month

A question for this is what is the state's/court's processing fees on this? Is it $10 per mother or $10 per child? Or is it just $10 for him.

There are some states that will screw the payer if you don't go through the child support system. This story is anecdotal, but I can see it happening multiple times -- I knew a guy that split with his wife for about nine months before filing for divorce. During that time he was sending checks directly to the ex/Soon To Be Ex (STBE) for child support of about $300 a month. Then when the judgement came down, because they weren't processed by the state, the money was a "gift" and he ended up a few $K in the hole for back child support.

The flip side of that is a woman had a baby with the guy and he had to pay child support. She later married him but was getting the money from him by child support still. The state took $100 from him and she was getting $90. The "processing fee" was $10.

I've never investigated how the processing fees are applied in my state, but that could have a bearing.

About the only thing I can find is that above $500 a year Tennessee will charge $25 and employers can charge up to $5 per payment.

He could be working his ass off 80 hours a week, but without that chunk of info on processing fees, he and the kids could be getting screwed.

I'm not defending him by any means, but it is a possible discussion point.

I have to say that this guy is a genius,from an evolutionary standpoint. His genes will be passed down and propagated far more then most men, which is essentially our only purpose in life. And since he has no money, he has nothing to lose by having even more kids. So give him a vasectomy, then give him a break. That's a win win for the state.

fathered (and I use that term loosely)

The term you're looking for is sired.

On the other hand, it takes two to tango. I doubt this guy had stellar qualities that made the ladies think he had potential to be father of the year before he knocked them up. How many other kids do they have, by how many other sires?

Assholio writes:
So give him a vasectomy, then give him a break.

I'm not so forgiving. Cut his nutsack off. Then send his ass to North Dakota, and make sure he gets a job with an oil crew. He'll be able to make enough that his kids can get more than $1.50/month.

>> Cut his nutsack off.

I thought you needed balls to work an oil crew.

This guy's monster. Do what you want with him, I don't care.

But years ago, this book convinced me that people get to cranked up about child support...Or rather, they get cranked up inappropriately. The problem isn't that distant fathers aren't writing checks, the problem is that if they're distant, they aren't fathers anyway. They've been removed from the love of their families just as the children have, so it's silly to expect free-flowing money from them.

As a rule, and I mean as a hard-and-fast, don't-bet-against-the-casino rule, guys who squeak about men's rights are all assholes. And the guy described in this blog post is obviously a psychopath.

Nonetheless, the words "child support" don't give me the pro-feminist boner that they used to. It's too obvious that the creation of impoverished children has as much, if not more, to do with their mothers.

Imagine spending an afternoon with each of those "11 different women"... Just one afternoon apiece.

Just spit-ball numbers here, but if each of those children cost society $500.00 a month (assistance, education, medical, etc.) that's $180,000 a year, or $3.25 million over the course of all their 18 years. It makes me wonder why am I working on this sunny Saturday.

Maybe the gov should split the 15 grand from the school who violated the soda policy amongst the baby mamas.

Point being, we enforce absurd junk food laws but some asshole can procreate with impunity and then not support his offspring. Oh, the humanity.

14 kids and 11 mothers, with twins being rather unlikely) some of them even after Jr was born and they fully knew the score, invited him back into their beds without protection. When you enter into an arrangement fully aware of the consequenses, you should be fully responsible for them.
When you decouple personal responsibility from actions you get more irresponsible actions.
WHat I would do is he becomes the custodial parent for all the kids, and the moms send him child support, none get any gov't assistance, until each goes under the knife. I figure each would agree to the knife within a month.

I find myself not caring at all about what that idiot wants. Plus a bit disheartened at the utter idiocy ratio. Eleven women were just as stupid as the man. Truly the bottom of society's barrel.

Hold him (and the moms) accountable. Stupid ought to hurt. I just want it to hurt them and not us.

Do you really think a person like this would be affected by a stigma? If you can go out and sire 30 kids with 11 different women, maintain only a minimum wage job and then go before a judge requesting a break, I don't see any stigma in the world being large enough to make a difference.

This is getting scary, but again, I agree with Crid. I do blame the mothers of these kids as well. There is no way they could have spent even a minutely appropriate amount of time with this man to want to have several kids. I wonder what his line was, "Hi, I'm Joe and I have 17 kids and a minimum wage job. Want to get busy?" Jeez!

guys who squeak about men's rights are all assholes

I know, equality in application of civil/criminal law is for pussys, right?

I think this guy is a genius and has beaten the women and feminists at their own game of more rights and no responsibility. He is the idol for most men who are probably fed up of being held responsible for the crap that women of the country dish out. Hopefully, his male kids will be as smart as him and help the rest of us dumbasses who are screwed by American sharia get a better life.

> equality in application of civil/criminal law
> is for pussys, right?

Yeah... When "equality" is merely simplistic whining, it's hard to take people seriously, male or female.

Joe J...I completely agree with you. In fact, that should be the logical thing to do in any divorce and not just this one. As Tim Leykis said, the only way to abolish alimony is to make women pay it. The same goes for child support or any other thing involving responsibility.

> the only way to abolish alimony is to
> make women pay it

There are other ways, better ways.

F'r instance, we could marry well.

"F'r instance, we could marry well."

So tell me why that should applicable to only men and not be applicable to women and why women should have laws to fallback upon if all their due diligence fails while men have nothing to fall back upon in case of anything going wrong?

> So tell me why that should applicable
> to only men

It shouldn't and doesn't. What made you think it did? Did you see the comment about mothers from 12:29pm?

See, this is that "simplistic whining" thing. People who think it's us against them are usually warming themselves up to decide that it's me against everyone else.

One reason the Men's Rights guys are no fun is that they're so obviously lonely, yet they can't imagine the problem is anything but policy... Because it couldn't be that women are sensing something fearful and undercooked just under the surface of their conversation, right? And so...

> why women should have laws to fallback
> upon if all their due diligence fails
> while men have nothing to fall back upon

And so we get these legalistic, interpersonally-detached scenarios where men execute "due diligence" instead of thoughtfully selecting a mate (or, Heaven forbid falling in love)... As if throughout the first encounter, courtship and marriage, they're building a dossier to prove to some imaginary Daddy-Judge that they did their chores and finished their homework.

I haven't been in a successful marriage, but I can't imagine defensive sensitivities are what make them go.


"in case of anything going wrong...."

>> This guy's monster.

You have no concept of what evil (as implied by your description of him as a Monster) truly is. This guy is a dumb, but handsome and gifted charmer who does not like condoms. He also has a gift for picking gals who are not on the pill, and don't care. These are not the criteria for a "Monster". You are a fucking moron. Or a complate bigot, I can't decide which.

>>F'r instance, we could marry well.

Nice pie in the sky argument there. Would that we all could, for certain, "marry well." And if you guess wrong, pick the wrong partner and make more money then thay do... well you are leagally screwed then. Most likely.

>>And so we get these legalistic, interpersonally-detached scenarios where men execute "due diligence" instead of thoughtfully selecting a mate

You have no concept of a reality where everything is not ultimately discernable to you. You have no concept of what it means for some to not be as infallible as you. These limitations mean you are ultimately completely clueless in these types of situations. Never been fooled, well clever you. Or so you think.

"yet they can't imagine the problem is anything but policy"

you mean you have a surefire way of skirting the law and making sure that it will not apply? Please let me know...most people like me and Mens Rights activists are eager to know. And if the law is so insignificant that it is not even a problem, why do people spend millions and billions lobbying for it to be changed in a particular manner?

> You have no concept of a reality where
> everything is not ultimately
> discernable to you.

I see everything with spotless clarity. I host international symposia on metaphysics every summer here in Los Angeles at a hotel near the airport, usually the Hyatt... This year's confab sold out in Jan 2009. In particular, the Sorbonne's Theology department had hoped to send a contingent of humble grad students to pick my brain about some problems they've been having with phenomenology within the continuing collapse of post-structural theory... But we're out of space, even in the night sessions! They're brilliant young minds, wonderful kids, but what can we do? It's a shame, but we had to send them away.

> or some to not be as infallible as you

&

Did I say that? Or was my own divorce pretty much implicit in these comments, as it's been so explicitly mentioned in many others? (Duzzen madder: I know what part I played in the failure.)

Again, I think that more than anything, Men's Rights guys are horny to throw blame and be defensive. They can't even read anything that doesn't cohere to their polished, steely anger. Those words fade on the page, the pixels go blank on the screen.

> Please let me know

Is there a level of irony happening here that I don't see, or are you further conceding that you think this is all about quibbling in conflict...

> people spend millions and billions lobbying

...and how to pull a clever trick...

> a surefire way of skirting the law and making
> sure that it will not apply

...to get your needs met?

I just don't think that's how happy marriages work. (If any happily married people want to speak up now and say that it is, Amy will provide as much disk space as you need to make your point.)

If you're that sure that the world is against you, DON'T GET MARRIED. No one who fully appreciates the depth of your distrust will regret your escape from the marketplace.

And for fuck's sake, isn't this blog post about a guy who was completely untroubled by law and stricture?

I mean, Jesus Fuck on a stick. You all seem to have ignored the subject of the post... It's those fading pixels again.

Rereading, I was mistaken... The M.R. guys are here to praise their champion!

> I think this guy is a genius and has beaten
> the women

(He actually used "genius" twice.)

and...

> These are not the criteria for a "Monster".

30 children without a father is not the work of a monster?

Ok! It's good to have these perspectives on record, even anonymously!

I see everything with spotless clarity.

I've got a homebrewed porter that will remove such burdens. Dr. Yeastman in the house.

Exactly!

People are envious, y'know? But at this level of refinement, my awareness is an encumbrance....

I prioritized finding a man who is ethical, and that's exactly what I have. I spent a number of years largely alone while looking for him -- about eight. I paid close attention to what a man said and did and drop-kicked a whole lot of men before Gregg. (A few were okay men and it just didn't work.)

And thats great, but when a man does the same hes labeld, childish, PeterPanish, shallow, comitment phobic.

I'll agree with crid that many MRAs can be whiney bitches, but that doesnt mean they dont have a point, and a very valid point that the law goes out of its way to protect women from their bad choices and goes out of its way to punish men for theirs.

> when a man does the same hes labeld, childish,
> PeterPanish, shallow, comitment phobic.

1. Not really.

2. When a man does it, he doesn't care how he's "labeld."

"It's called being responsible for your choice of woman"

Wish the same thing could be told to women who end up with not so good husbands and no 911 services for women who come up with cooked up charges. Your comment once again says that men should rely purely on their capability of due diligence while for women, they should have something to fall back on if their due diligence fails for any reason whatsoever. And even if you did not say that women should have laws to protect them, the fact is that laws are there to screw the men and your comment completely ignores that fact and does not acknowledge the fact that no amount of due diligence can protect a goat from a tiger completely.

I agree with Amy about taking responsibility and using your brain to choose wisely. Both men and women need to act like rational adults, think things through, and not let things 'just happen'.

I wonder how many of the same men who critize women for picking losers are the same men who scream bloody murder about women being the 'gatekeepers' to sex whenever a woman turns them down.

anyone with a penis and a blindfold

So, am I the only who got a mental picture of a penis wearing wearing a blindfold standing before a firing squad smoking his last cigarette?

To borrow from Crid, actual men don't care how they're "labeled."

That is only true insofar as the person doing the labeling, while the opinions of people you dont know or care for may not bother you the opinions of people you respect might.

But I will agree that a man wouldnt show it.

> while the opinions of people you dont know or
> care for may not bother you the opinions of
> people you respect might.

You're begging the question. People worthy of your respect don't have bad judgment, do they?

"Labeling" is this weird new fantasy sin that's cropped up over my lifetime... Nobody used that term when I was a kid. I think it took root because cowards in the 1970's didn't want to bluntly accuse other people of being wrong. They needed some wiggle room. It was easier just to accuse them of "labeling". It sounded so churchy and sanctimonious that they got away for it for awhile.

Who cares about being "labeled"?

anyone with a penis and a blindfold

So, am I the only who got a mental picture of a penis wearing wearing a blindfold standing before a firing squad smoking his last cigarette?

Not any more.

Bitch.

You're begging the question. People worthy of your respect don't have bad judgment, do they?

Some do, for example I respect your opinion on a few subjects, gay marrige and your treatment of people with physical/mental imparments not being among them.

I respect the guy my aunt married as he is the type of guy I would like to see more christians emulate in their behavior, but I dont respect his belief in god

And you are also failing to account for people whom you respect noticing a flaw or defect in your personailty that you are unaware of, or aware of choosing to ignore and hoping noone else notices

A bit OT, maybe, but here's what I wrote elsewhere:

What it all comes down to is that we Americans decided, years ago, that it was just plain wrong for out-of-wedlock children (or children of divorce) to get kicked to the curb, if only for the selfish reason that poverty breeds crime.

This meant, of course, that eventually society would start demanding that BOTH parents be made to pay child support whenever possible and not the taxpayers.

Does anyone really have a problem with that? Especially since even men's rights' activists (MRAs) would pay less in taxes if they weren't supporting other men's children? Sure, they'd still have to pay for their OWN children, but who cares?

Or, to put it another way, once you're born, you have rights, whether your father wanted you or not. (Of course, women shouldn't be able to give up kids for adoption if the fathers want custody, but very often, they don't want it anyway.)

BTW, even women who don't WANT child support are often forced by U.S. law to accept it, so it's not necessarily about "women's rights" coming first.

> And you are also failing to account for

Naw, I see everything perfectly all the time.

> people whom you respect noticing a flaw or
> defect in your personailty

So, then, like, you deserve to be brutally, savagely labeled, amirite? You seem to want a world without friction, and you want it to happen through policy...

Fat chance.

Check this out, too, re MRAs:

http://jezebel.com/5910953/the-sneaky-plan-to-breed-white-ladies-out-of-existence/

By Erin Gloria Ryan

A Clever Plan to Breed White Ladies Out of Existence

> His name's Fred, but you can call him Max.

?

> Does anyone really have a problem with that?

Yes. If child support worked, it would work. The reason it fails isn't merely that men are expected to pay it disproportionately. It'd be a surprise if any of them use that as an excuse, even when drinking beer with their similarly-dismissive buddies. Their complaint isn't high-falutin' or noble... They wanna keep their money, and they're pissed off.

> BTW, even women who don't WANT child support
> are often forced by U.S. law to accept it

Y'know, I bet there aren't too many women who are compelled to deal with this longer than a check or two.


> Be nice; I need my nap.

Dream beachy dreams... But what does it mean?

Crid, you seemed to have missed my point entierly in an effort to be 'right', which is a flaw you should work on

My point wasnt that I think people should or shouldnt be labeled. My point was that while a man might not show it, he does care about what his friends think of him

Also

> BTW, even women who don't WANT child support
> are often forced by U.S. law to accept it

Y'know, I bet there aren't too many women who are compelled to deal with this longer than a check or two.

Case, while not on point in the very near vicinity.

My mother was getting CS from my youngest brothers father, couple hunndered a month for neccessities. State decreed all such payment must now flow thru it. Net result, he paid 225, she got 175, 600 dollars a year in fees to 'make sure he paid what he owed her' according to the DCFS.

300 a year taken from him and from her, at nearly 10 yrs is $60,000 that the 'child welfare' people stole from my brothers parents. Money which could have gone to pay for a few years of college stolen by the government

And my mother had no choice in thevmatter at all

I paid child support to my ex (damn her eyes) for thirteen years, and then sent it directly to my son until he was out of college, per our divorce agreement. Except for filing the decree with the court, the state had nothing to do with it, exercised no oversight, and got nothing from us.

Maybe that's just an option in Oregon. I guess had I stopped the payments she could have had the state step in and enforce the agreement, but we never went that way.

Just sayin'. Not available in all areas, void where prohibited, and taxes are the responsibility of the winner.

> My point wasnt that I think people should
> or shouldnt be labeled.

Then why did you introduce the matter into our discussion?

Saying things you don't mean or even care about is a flaw; I think you should work on it. Set up a large white board in your living room, so you can record your progress in a series of dry-erase entries. Upon inspection by one of Amy's case officers, these notations can be wiped away, freeing space on the board for new entries.

As an alternative, use an old-style felt board in your kitchen with an arrangement of easy-to-read yellow stars and light-blue checks on a deep-green background, allowing at-a-glance review which even the youngest children will be able to comprehend.

A sophisticated option would be to run a series of Google Document spreadsheets with intricately-contingent calculations measuring the relevance of the topics you introduce against the dates that you introduce them. This third alternative has the advantage of inexpensive, worldwide datasharing through the internet "cloud," allowing all of us to consider whether improvements to your behavior are happening with sufficient speed and sincerity.

Or, lastly, you could just GFY.

> My point was that while a man might
> not show it, he does care about what
> his friends think of him

And my point is that if these people are his friends, they're going to expect and even want him to kiss a few frogs before finding the keeper (as Amy suggests from her example). They will not be taunting him as "childish, PeterPanish, shallow, comitment phobic" in any case.

Like I said above, Men's Rights guys seem to want to turn everything into a scenario of me-against-the-world. If these fellows had better friends, they wouldn't be fucking things up as badly anyway.

To borrow from Crid, actual men don't care how they're "labeled."

Gregg is a frequent example of this, and I admire the hell out of him for it.

Posted by: Amy Alkon Author Profile Page at May 20, 2012 10:50 AM

Oh horse manure. All people care about how they're labeled when the label will put them in jail if they don't kowtow to the legal/social line. What about those folks who are labeled "drug traffickers" just for having cash in TN that you posted about today?

Steve, I'm fairly sure Oregon requires non custodial parents to pay for college (with some stipulations, its been awhile since I heard about this from a relative who lived in WA but his kids lived in OR aka PDX & Vancouver) so if it hadn't been in your divorce agreement, you'd still be on the hook for college. You know, because kids of divorce are disadvantaged. Single moms are still venerated as awesome people/parents by default though.

They will not be taunting him as "childish, PeterPanish, shallow, comitment phobic" in any case.

Like I said above, Men's Rights guys seem to want to turn everything into a scenario of me-against-the-world. If these fellows had better friends, they wouldn't be fucking things up as badly anyway.

Posted by: Crid [CridComment at gmail] at May 20, 2012 3:54 PM

Tell that to all the women who complain about "no good men available" and their various enablers in media, government and religious venues. I think my favorite whingers on the plights of women these days are besides Crid here, Bill Bennet. Bennet being a former sec. of education under Reagan and a nation drug policy wonk, when he wasn't gambling his money away.

Crid: "They can't even read anything that doesn't cohere to their polished, steely anger."

I love this hackneyed argument too because you could say the same damn thing about feminists and even your average moderate/conservatives who goes along to get along because it ultimately benefits them (in the short run at least).

I grew up in the sensitive new age guy era 80s-90s with all the PC baked in from childhood, not just college. I know the almost all the arguments by heart. I used to spout them, especially after I watched my mother get a raw deal in divorce court. Then I grew up and saw that the world isn't like what the schools, media and even my parents said it was like, in oh so many ways.

Of course its tiresome Amy. Men and women could (should) do as you suggest but that won't change the laws, as too many vested interests benefit from the current system. Men (and some women) who have done that in the 1960s to now, yet where has it got us? An incredibly biased system that claims its about equality but isn't.

You have to kill the welfare/golden parachute mentality for all and make marriage count for something (straight or gay, it don't matter) by getting rid of concepts like no fault divorce and courts that blindly trust spouses who lie about serious crimes like abuse/molestation just to get a leg up in court.

I had him because I am very much for accountability. By all.

That still dosen't change the fact that women are unaccountable under the law thereby giving them the power of a tiger while men just have the power of a goat due to the excessive accountability they have under the law.

"Not because you're a man but because you're a whiner who does somersaults and cartwheels to try to avoid any notion that men should be accountable"

Why on earth should men be accountable when women are not? That is just plain double standards and hypocrisy. My demand is about equality, plain and simple. There are two ways to go about it. Either make the women as accountable as the men or make the men as unaccountable as the women. Period. Till then, nice try things are going to be harmonious not just for me, but for the majority of the people.

The macro and micro cannot be isolated and treated as separate things whether it is relationships or trade or industry or economics. Till things are set right in the macro perspective, nobody has the right to expect things to go right in the micro scenarios.

> the label will put them in jail if they don't
> kowtow to the legal/social line.

Lawbreaking and derision are differing things: Legal and social are different "lines", and it means something when you need to weave them to make your point.

> Single moms are still venerated as awesome
> people/parents by default

They're not venerated in my house. "Default" isn't a human being with whom you can argue, nor is it an argument.

> Tell that to all the women who complain

Well, despite my comment 12:29 comment yesterday, foolish women aren't the topic today, are they? Foolish men are the topic, and there's a lot to discuss.

You shouldn't offer your best argument to the responses of the women you'd describe as the worst.

> when he wasn't gambling his money away.

Don't much care about Bennett; he can do what he wants with his money. If I remember Ken Layne's description of this misbehavior correctly, Bennett liked to play lonely hands of machine poker, a few dollars at a time. So what? Who exactly did he harm? I've seen people spend more money for less amusement.

> it ultimately benefits them (in the short run
> at least).

Zip your coat, button your pockets, tether your sunglasses: We've crossed the border into Conspiracyland!

> courts that blindly trust spouses who lie

The men I know and like have protected themselves from those hazards. Are you getting this?

Here's how it works... For men, for children, for the severely retarded, anyone: When the rules are stacked against you in such a way that you're further compelled to do the right thing, the thing you'd do if you're living at your best and most courageous anyway, then you've probably got better ways to spend your time than complaining about it.

There's a world of hurt out there... Pick your battles.

> thereby giving them the power of a tiger

Anything in your own nature that's putting you at risk with this animal? Anything at all?

I have a label for you. How's pedophile work?

Labels don't matter - until they interfere with your ability to get a job, or live where you'd like.

I have no dog in this fight,but it's funny to read such a passionate defense of injustice. Hey, how about locking up all black males between 16 and 35, since they commit a disproportionate amount of crime? Those unjustly imprisoned should just suck it up, because it's for the good of society.

You care about equal rights under the law, or not.

> How's pedophile work?

That conflates gossip and accusation, but there are separate remedies for each.

> they interfere with your ability to get a
> job, or live where you'd like.

What Men's Right's advocates have been fired or sent to bad neighborhoods?

> You care about equal rights under the law,
> or not.

Simplistic. There are things that matter more to us than other things. Men's Rights guys say we all need to be terrified, but it's not true. Most men aren't at risk for this, because their judgment protects them. Women in my generation were hounded by fearmongers who screeched that a single unprotected encounter or titty-squeeze would poison them with AIDS... But the great heterosexual outbreak never happened, and was never going to happen.

Yeah, OK; divorce laws need to be fine-tuned... But we got priorities. The first concern of people who want to improve our society's bonding habits will be the defenseless children, not clumsy grown men, because there's only so much attention and energy to give. This is as it should be.

Your fight is not our fight. And from the tone of every advocate for Men's Rights heard on this blog in the last 8 years or so, the battles & failures & circumstances at the root of these conflicts are intensely personal.

The MR boys never concede that their own character had anything to do with their problems, but other guys are ready to offer some humility. Sorry to pick on Mr. Daniels here, but he offered a brilliant example at 3:31pm:

> (damn her eyes)

That's a kinda poignant way of saying his own feelings about this woman were part of a problem. It's the first thing he mentions to strangers about the reason for the divorce. Hell, it's the ONLY thing he mentions to strangers about the reason for the divorce.

He doesn't say it could have happened to anyone, he says it happened to him.

> Does anyone really have a problem with that?

Yes. If child support worked, it would work. The reason it fails isn't merely that men are expected to pay it disproportionately. It'd be a surprise if any of them use that as an excuse, even when drinking beer with their similarly-dismissive buddies. Their complaint isn't high-falutin' or noble... They wanna keep their money, and they're pissed off.

> BTW, even women who don't WANT child support
> are often forced by U.S. law to accept it

Y'know, I bet there aren't too many women who are compelled to deal with this longer than a check or two.

Posted by: Crid [CridComment at gmail] at May 20, 2012 2:24 PM
__________________________

Not sure what you mean, since you seem to contradict yourself today.
__________________________

Yeah, OK; divorce laws need to be fine-tuned... But we got priorities. The first concern of people who want to improve our society's bonding habits will be the defenseless children, not clumsy grown men, because there's only so much attention and energy to give. This is as it should be.

Posted by: Crid [CridComment at gmail] at May 21, 2012 7:12 AM
__________________________

Amen. I never said there weren't still problems, such as making sure the child support money actually gets spent on the kid or saved for the kid's future schooling/training. Nor did I say that a mother shouldn't have to pay child support when the father wants custody, even if she'd prefer to give up the kid for adoption. Just that children, once they arrive, should be supported, and that the support should come from the parents whenever possible, if only so taxpayers don't have to pick up the slack. Not to mention that if men were allowed to abandon their out-of-wedlock children on the grounds that "she lied and tricked me into fatherhood, your Honor" any man could claim that, true or not.

Again, does anyone really have a problem with that?

(Obviously, convincing dimwitted adults not to breed even when they WANT to breed is a very different and complicated matter.)

Finally, while I can't imagine single men, especially, flocking to their doctors' offices once RISUG becomes available in the U.S. (after all, they're already under a lot of pressure to use condoms), it'll be very interesting to see how this affects judges' decisions in family courts.

> you seem to contradict yourself

You don't say how, and I bet there's a reason for that.

> children, once they arrive, should be supported

No one will ever care as much for children as those who are supposed to, which is why orphans and bastards are so pissed off.

> such as making sure the child support money
> actually gets spent on the kid

Can't prove it; got no data points; no real reason to think it's true: But it's at least POSSIBLE that the reason the broader public isn't concerned with the mechanics of child support payment is that it believes a child whose father isn't loving enough to live with the mother and/or stick around and/or cut the checks is probably pretty much fucked anyway. ('Imagine the mothers who spread their legs for such monsters', they might reason.)

> you seem to contradict yourself

You don't say how, and I bet there's a reason for that.
___________________________

MUST I spell everything out?

The contradiction you made was in my last post, when I quoted you twice. First you implied that you had a problem with the fundamental idea that children should receive child support because the present system isn't working, then, on the 21st, you suggested that you didn't have a problem with the basic idea, since all we supposedly need is fine-tuning.

> in my last post, when I quoted you twice.

I'm trying to love you enough to read you closely. Frankly, Lenny, it's a slog... Even when it's my own stuff that you're offering.

> you implied that you had a problem with the
> fundamental idea that children should receive
> child support because the present system
> isn't working

We're quibbling here, right? Because if you aren't quibbling, that's a pretty deeply-extrapolated reading.

Here, now, my compelling counter-quibbles:

It's not that children shouldn't receive child support, nor even that they too often don't. The first concern of people who want to improve our society's bonding means the problem isn't the mechanics of divorce, it's that too many people approach divorce as a remedy rather than as a failure. And I think divorce is a failure.

(That includes my own [childless] divorce, which is arguably the best thing that's happened to me in adult life, and that's almost certainly how the other party enjoys it as well.)

> I never said there weren't still problems

...good...

> such as making sure the child support
> money actually gets spent on the kid
> or saved for the kid's future
> schooling/training.

(Bzzt!) Look... Poverty sucks. But poverty is just one of the problems that divorce brings to children. As I've seen in my own life, poverty is something that you might climb out of without having deep wounds cut into your immortal soul. (In most of human history, men made babies to have some help gathering food, not because they wanted to pony up the dough for a Bachelor of Arts.)

But having your father leave you when he's supposed to be the King to his beloved Princess daughter, or being GLAD your father left because he was an asshole, or having your father leave after a few years of bitter argument with Mother (or the psychological distortion of simmering white-people tension at dinnertable conversation), or seeing your King starting a new family with a new Princess down in Florida while he never sends money for birthday gifts, or being left alone with an overwhelmed, or incompetent, or tragically-lonely, or control-freaking mother... Well, all that stuff can SCAR you...

...As it can also scar a father. We've all seen that guy in line at the grocery: Middle-thirties, in clothes a few years out of fashion and distressed by a gut which they were not cut to contain, under excessively-coiffed hair in the style of a previous decade, behind a cart full of frozen entrees, eyes on his shoes throughout the transaction. The guy's had his heart ripped out by the woman, by the children he loves but can't approach, or both.

Money isn't the solution to this. Administration of divorce isn't the source of the failure, it's a consequence.


I felt bad for that first comment (12:29 PM), y'know? It was really stupid of me. Amy's blog post was about a monster of a man, not about the manipulations of women.

But I needn't have worried! The zombie hoards of Men's Right's masculinity were, even at that moment, preparing to flood this space with their usual stupidities and bitterness.


We 'bout done here? OK!


We shouldn't look too hard for perfect symmetry in life, no matter how certain we are that it should be there, or how convenient it would be when we lose our way. (See equality and simplistic whining, above.)

But in this case, the case of children of divorce, I'm pretty sure source of the horror is found in close statistical coherence to the percentage of each gender required to make a baby. Men think they can irresponsibly fuck their way to paradise. Women think they can make distant people supply the care their children need from an intimate father.

They're both full of shit.

Thank you for your continuing attention to these matters. Vote Republican, and be sure to watch the Monaco Grand Prix on teevee this weekend.

OK, fine. So it's frivolous DIVORCES that bother you most. Understandable. Not to mention that of course divorced mothers shouldn't be able to keep fathers from seeing their children for purely spiteful reasons.

Only quibble left: I hope you weren't suggesting, here, that

"being GLAD your father left because he was an asshole, or having your father leave after a few years of bitter argument with Mother (or the psychological distortion of simmering white-people tension at dinnertable conversation) ......Well, all that stuff can SCAR you..."

it would be better for such parents to stay together if they're never going to change their awful ways in front of the kids. There are MANY adult children who will tell you they don't regret their parents' divorces - and often wish the divorces had happened earlier - just as many otherwise brilliant young adults will muse "if my parents ever get back together" even when the exes only communicate through their lawyers.

> So it's frivolous DIVORCES that
> bother you most

Not just frivolous ones, and it's not just about the things that bother me most. Again, Lenona, whatever your gender... Why are you trying so hard to distill this into some smaller form, or translate it into something completely irrelevant?

> I hope you weren't suggesting, here, that [...]
> it would be better for such parents to stay
> together

Try to understand how much of a prick you're being. You're being a real prick. "Here."

1. I can suggest whatever I want, and will thrive without your (implicitly requisite) support. As will everyone else. Free country, etc.

2. Seemingly bloodthirsty 'parents' have, through sheer, robotic repetition, made 'It's better for the children if you divorce' into a bedrock principle of family composition (and decomposition). It's a motherfucking lie, of course.

3. The howlingly loud, blindingly bright truth —which clumsy adults won't allow themselves to comprehend— is that what's better is for babymaking men and women to marry well, and to not regard failure as forgivably inconsequential.

> There are MANY adult children who will tell
> you they don't regret their parents' divorces.

Capitalization in lieu of a meaningful, defensible, statistic? Or are you just blowing smoke? How MANY children of divorce would reply, if asked, that they'd prefer their parents had been foresighted, loving, and stable personalities, adults fully capable of looking beyond their own petty impulses before making babies?

And what the fuck are "adult children"?

Word choice speaks volumes.

Know what I hate? I hate when the most repellent, simplistic, bombastic, hurtful and cowardly expressions of political correctness are presented as if they were daring, righteous truths. I HATE that. Makes my blood boil.

PS- Any of you silly bitch-men still reading?