Brisk beatings. (Not for the kids; for those adults, signatory and watching nearby, who thought contract law could cover this kind of thing.)

Gay marriage blah blah, I was right.

If men who are not bio-fathers should pay child support, why shouldn't she? If you sign a contract, honour it.

"Why spend $150,000 to create a baby who would otherwise never have been born, then mess it up like this?" asked Benardo. "It's disaster."

So says the man who makes a living from arranging surrogates and egg donors to do this very thing.

Remember when having litters of children was considered entertainment -- the McCaughey family, the "Jon and Kate" family, the "Octomom," and all the other multiple births that came about from the misuse of fertility drugs? The public finally twigged to the fact that there were real-world consequences to women whelping litters.

So now there's a baby coming whose adoptive mother no longer wants it because whatever, and whose birth mother was only in it for the cash. Awesome work all around, from the rent-a-womb lady to the baby buyers to the doctors and lawyers who made it all possible.

What do I think should be done? Damned if I know, but if Sherri Shepherd ends up paying out the nose for a moment of indiscretion and foolishness that resulted in a child, then she should have to pay for it, just like everyone else should. I hope the kid gets put up for adoption and finds a home with less selfish, vain people.

My favorite comment from the black boards when they got together:

"Whenever I see couples that look like this, I always think like "why are y'all together? it can't be because you're attracted to one another, as neither of you are attractive. at all."

If you are responsible for the creation of a child from scratch, whether or not your genes are involved, you are then responsible for the care/support of that child once said child is born. This was decided by the courts (a Cali case, I think) more than a decade ago. The would-be defaulting parent was a man, not a woman, in that case, but the principle remains the same. Are their exceptions? Sure -- the people who agreed to get involved only on the condition that they not bear legal rights or responsibility to any resulting child, including (in this case) the egg donor and surrogate. (Same with sperm donors who sign away their rights upon donation.)

I understand that Sherri feels deeply betrayed here...but there are plenty of men who have done a bad job picking their romantic partners who end up in the same boat. Maybe she'll be more careful next time.

Poor little baby. The best thing for that child would be for it to be placed for adoption with an adoring family at birth. The smart thing for Sherri to have done would have been to offer the ex a payout up front in return for that happening, and write it off as a stupidity tax.

(What would I do in that precise situation? I wouldn't be in that precise situation, because, as I told my husband when we started fertility treatments, I was fine with having a kid with 100% of our genes, and fine with having one with none of our genes, but didn't want to create one with just 50% of our genes. However, if I lost my mind and woke up in that precise situation, I'd raise and love the child, because I love babies and kids. Most people who spend a lot of money on high-tech babymaking feel the same way. It's too bad that Sherri didn't.)

Sigh. We have several late-stage embryos on ice; short of something terrible happening to our already-born kids, we won't be using them all. Which likely means we will be donating whichever ones we don't use. So I follow cases like this one closely, even if they're not identical to our prospective situation, Generally, people seeking donated embryos are stable, long-married couples....we're just going to have to do extra legwork to ensure that.

(Same with sperm donors who sign away their rights upon donation.)

Sperm donor get hit up all the time.

What should happen? Well given the court allow women to sperm trap men, on several documented occasions taking sperm out of the trash.

I think she should pay.

She also fucked up stating publicly she didnt want it. She'll have to and she wont be getting custody either

Yet another Hollywood idiot wanting to live life without ever taking responsibility for anything, and a layabout spouse looking for a lottery win at the expense of the Hollywood idiot.

The only thing that makes this case unusual is the fact that the genders are usually the other way around.

Lastly: What a great role model for the black community, which already suffers from a serious lack of familial stability.

Could Shepherd hire someone to have a surrogate abortion?

Keeee-riste!! Abject idiocy all around! That poor child.

BOTH of those idiots should have to pay for the child. BOTH of them.

Public humiliation abounds. Good. Asshats.

She consented; she should have kept it (her contract-signing pen) in her pocket. If she wasn't spilling her ink everywhere, she wouldn't be responsible. 18 years financial support owed! (She should be glad she isn't in the USA where it's 26.)

Obvious garble: She should be glad it isn't yet 26 in the USA.

Shepherd should work to get the child sent straight to adoption and ensure that he or she can never find out who it's sleazy gutter-rat birth parents are.

Sperm donor get hit up all the time

A relative handful of known sperm donors have been hit up successfully. Anonymous sperm donors have not, and most are anonymous. My advice: Don't act as a known sperm donor who plans to have some role in the kid's life unless you're comfortable with potential financial responsibility.

My first thought: This is Hollywood idiots doing what Hollywood idiots do. It has no bearing on reality. My second thought: Does all this mean that if I were a single man who wanted a child, and I could contract with a woman to bear it and an egg donor, I could have a biological offspring on my own?

"Anonymous sperm donors have not, and most are anonymous."

There are people in family law trying like holy hell to find a judge who will force sperm bank records open. They almost had a precedent in Massachusetts a few years ago, but the state supreme court reversed it.

Let me know when we force surrogates to live up to their contracts if they change their mind and opt to keep the child.

If you want to leave the backer-outer on the hook for the costs incurred by the other party, I'm OK with that. I'm pretty sure there is someone out there that will cheerfully adopt this child.

Can we say she's a Bush voting Tea Party loving War loving gun toting Repub who is a 1 per center who should be tried for war crimes and then use her money to hire a village to raise her child along w/those from Central America?

Ideally, when two people are divorcing/separating before their baby is born, let alone attached, they should be mature enough to recognize that their baby would be better off in a two-parent home and find one of those to adopt him or her. There are plenty of happily married couples who would adopt.

But, since we can't force either of these parents to do that, legally, (and I wouldn't want the state to have that power), it's just like any other divorce while a baby is expected. Shepard is responsible for the baby's existence, period. If the baby is raised primarily or completely by her ex, she's going to have pay child support.

Gay marriage blah blah, I was right.

Curious, but what does gay marriage have to do with this? Or does my sarcasm meter need a coffee refill?

Pay up lady.

this should be treated as if it is biological... dunno on all states, but in mine if she is preggers you can't divorce. Separate, yes... but you will be on the hook for the kid.

The whole thing is super stupid, ultimately, and giving it up for adoption is best... boya should realize that he won't be able to raise the kid well w/o a job, and his hope to stay attached to Sherri will be in vain. It's better for the kid if a good adoption happens. That in itself is a very big IF, especially with the legal entanglements. This won't move fast, and the kid is coming regardless...

Ultimately, I think she should be able to walk away, IF a guy would also be allowed to, but we know that doesn't happen.

Sadly the kid will always be a pawn, now.

New Jersey doesn't recognize surrogacy contracts. I wish every state would take this approach.

U.S. state courts and legislatures are creating a group of second-class citizens by severing a person's right to due process by virtue of how the person was conceived.

Personally, I think that child support should not be a percentage of the non-custodial parent's income.

The father looks like he only wants the child for the child support income he can get from the mother. And I gotta tell you, growing up knowing you are mummy's little paycheck (or daddy's in this case) really messes you up. I know someone where the mother divorced the father after one week of marriage. Just after the cross showed up on the pee test. Now that kid is over 18. Her relationships with both her parents is pretty bad.

The truth is it doesn't cost that much to raise a child. You can spend as much as you like, but the minimum cost is fairly small. And turning a child into a financial resource is morally corrosive.

Child support should be a fixed minimal cost or voluntary at birth/separation. The money rarely goes to the child anyways.

> Curious, but what does gay marriage
> have to do with this?

Despicable assholes imagine their own petty, oblivious, and naive impulses are the planet's highest virtue: Without remorse, their solipsism devastates family architecture, brutalizing the defenseless ones whose well-being is their purest responsibility.

And when they've done this, when the children are weeping in the streets and squandered treasures are tallied in the courtrooms —all during the full blossom of their adult authority and power— the assholes will go on blogs and whine that it's a policy problem... As if they were children themselves.

Seriously... Sofi... Look at your question again. Could it be more obvious that all gay marriages involving children are stories of "surrogacy" like this, contract or no?

Really? That didn't come to mind for you?

Well.

"The truth is it doesn't cost that much to raise a child. You can spend as much as you like, but the minimum cost is fairly small. "

What the hell are you talking about? I mean is this really what the proponents of fixed or voluntary child support think?

The reason single mothers are so burdensome is because a child is financially draining in every aspect that it is not feasible for 1 person to do it. It's barely feasible for two people to do it, ironically hence the divorce rates.

You stick your dick in a woman and cum inside her don't come complaining to me that a large percentage of your income is taken away. That is what having a kid means. That's the very definition of a child. Someone you sacrifice every resource for including the kind that looks like green dollar bills.

It's also why you're supposed to stay married because it's nearly impossible to separate your money and not feel the burn.

Ppen,

Do you see the inherent sexism in what you wrote?

And I don't speak for anyone else. Just myself. But like many things in life, money is not the answer. And in many cases it is part of the problem.

And another thing, women initiate divorce 2/3 of the time. How is a financial penalty almost exclusively on the man going to encourage them to stay married?

Talk about a miscarriage of justice! You must feel the burn because someone else made a decision?

As I said, very sexist.

It's a ludicrous thing to say:

> But like many things in life, money
> is not the answer.

Thoughtful people should hate single parenthood merely for disrupting the a child's perspective of intimacy and the difference between the sexes... Whatever those may be for the child's parents, and whatever the child will make of them in his-or-her own character in adulthood.

But people aren't thoughtful enough.

Nonetheless, in study after study and in personal example after personal example, we see that fractured families almost always mean poverty, abbreviated education, and firm patterns of bitterness.

Money doesn't have to be "the answer" in order to be fundamentally important, and it's a asshole who'd lowball the argument with such a gooey sentiment. The stability and cohesion that money in good marriage represents IS the answer. Even when things go wrong... Children can be shown that responsibilities for mutual support and affection don't vanish just because of a bad harvest or a failed first career.

Could it be more obvious that all gay marriages involving children are stories of "surrogacy" like this, contract or no?

But the couple in this story is straight. Pretty sure they'd have done what they did, even if gay people weren't getting married. Because they're selfish. And selfish people behave selfishly. Gay selfish people and straight selfish people. And surrogates are willing to carry selfish people's babies for boatloads of money.

There's another (straight) couple in the news, who just abandoned their baby (carried by a surrogate) because it had Down Syndrome:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2716211/No-law-stop-convicted-child-sex-offender-adopting-surrogate-babies-overseas.html

So... straight couples don't have a great surrogacy track record either.

Maybe you're arguing that gay marriage makes society more flexible about people buying babies they wouldn't have been able to produce naturally.

But I'd substitute "gay marriage" with "technology" in that argument. And let's not forget, straight couples have been having babies irresponsibly for generations, abandoning them, and using them as blackmail against lovers and former spouses for just as long. Technology just makes things more legally complicated and allows more couples (gay, infertile) to join the fun.

> Maybe you're arguing that

Goddammit, YOU DON'T HAVE TO TRANSLATE.

Grrr. This has been going on for YEARS. Wanna know why?

Because people know what arguments they want to have. (See yesterday, when Amy wanted to pretend my thoughts about the death penalty concerned deterrence.) They don't want to trade, or even present, actual opinions. They want to shimmy through cartoon narratives to simplistic victory. ('And then, Casper the Friendly Ghost banished that sharp-clawed bear back into the forest!')

> Maybe you're arguing that gay marriage
> makes society more flexible

Riiiiiiiiiiight... You think human nature is a plaything, like a child's fiddling with pipe cleaners or Legos: 'This will be the FLEXIBLE part!'

I have no such delusion. Human nature sucks: Building people who're decent and capable of happiness requires discipline and stoicism, not the endless submissions to impulse of a fast-food consumer culture.

Your comment makes my earlier point handsomely: You think our problems are all about policy, not weakness.




Nonetheless, I think your suggestion that children don't feel pain when their parents divorce is really trite and cruel.

" How is a financial penalty almost exclusively on the man going to encourage them to stay married?"

In what world do you live where the financial penalty is exclusively on the man? Is it the same world where a man should only be required to provide the bare minimum of financial needs to his child lest the woman he chose to have said child with mismanage the money?

Because the burden and financial penalty is on me too. Every time both parties go to court to quibble over the resources that good little mommies and daddies should pull together but can not because they need things like personal fulfilment. It is up to the public courts to sit and tally who should pay for every little minutia a child needs and then hear as both parties complain that it isn't fair! Mothers feel they spend too much time and fathers feel they spend too much of their paycheck.

But that is what mothers and fathers do.

A child has a right to your income even if you choose to divorce your wife. You don't get to choose how much, you lost that right when you involved the courts and asked them to split up your child's needs as if it could be done in a fair manner where every penny is counted.

Mothers dont get enough child support and fathers can't live off the little money that is left over. You know why? Because you're not supposed to be able to, that's not how the system was designed since the beginning of human history.

For every man paying too much child support there is a woman getting too little and requiring my public funds in the form of welfare.

☑ Ppen

Crid,

Your response to me refutes itself. Stability is important to a child. But no, money does not always bring stability. If it did Hollywood stars, big name athletes, and lotto winners would have the most stable lives around. You talk about the stability money brings in a good marriage, but we are talking about child support. The marriage has already ended. How does the threat of a large financial penalty increase the stability of the marriage when the person receiving the money is the one ending the marriage?

And Ppen, from the US census women get custody 83% of the time. And 87% of support agreements are to women. Is that close enough to Vegas odds for you?

You said "You stick your dick in a woman..." I don't know many women with dicks, but hey. Maybe you run in a different crowd than me. To me that sounds like men are responsible and women are victims. I.e. sexist.

You also mix how much someone should morally feel obligated to spend with being legally required. So you feel that men won't spend money on their noncustodial children unless the government forces them to? Seems like a pretty cold hearted group to me.

"For every man paying too much child support there is a woman getting too little ..." Talk about a non sequitur. There is never enough money for everything we want. And this says nothing about how much is fair. You really think he can't raise a child on less than $250k/year? What hope is there for the rest of us?

Which is all even beside the point I was making. What do you want to bet if there was no child support in this case the father would be dumping this unborn child like a sack of hot potatoes. This baby is not a son or daughter to be. It is a revenue stream. It is an 18 year business plan. I find that personally sad. I've seen this type of situation far to many times. It isn't good for anyone involved including the child.

> But no, money does not always
> bring stability.

Who, for the love of Christ, said that it did? That's not a rhetorical question, m'kay? Ben? Who said 'money always brings stability,' or even implied it? Go to the top of the page, and find the part where that happened.

You're apparently unable to take a point in the proportions by which it's offered.

> How does the threat of a large financial
> penalty increase the stability of the
> marriage when the person receiving the
> money is the one ending the marriage?

You're describing a guy who, by happenstance of employment, is eager to threaten a woman to whom he'd promised devotion. And her child. And *his* child. Because Hey Man, the checks are written in my name....

In such a case, the threat to stability is pretty obviously the controlling, manipulative wage-earner. It's not that money won't protect his family from instability, it's that he won't let it.

The courts have seen this before.

> Gay selfish people and straight
> selfish people.

Gays have no access to reproduction beyond surrogacy and its cousin atrocities, legal and otherwise.

Nuthin'...

Zilch. Zippo.

Empty set. Null.

Nada... Nadia, Comăneci....

> U.S. state courts and legislatures are
> creating a group of second-class citizens
> by severing a person's right to due
> process by virtue of how the person
> was conceived.

No. A thousand times no.

Courts weren't put into our culture —and the love of justice wasn't put into our hearts— just to enable a 24 x 7 x 52 rock & roll sex party, where anything you do has a safe outcome for every involved no matter what.

This is not a new problem. M'kay? People who conceive badly have always made things shitty, both for the children and for those who (eventually) have to deal with their problems.

This is not a policy issue.

"So you feel that men won't spend money on their noncustodial children unless the government forces them to"

That's exactly how I feel. Go to any Latin American country where single motherhood is common and child support non-existsnt and you'll see that fathers can only be trusted to provide what they feel is adequate (hint: not much).

The state has such vested interest in child support because the cost of single mothers is a burden on the state. It isn't doing it out of the goodness of its heart. It is aggresive in the matter because it costs a shit ton of public funds to support single mothers.

You accuse me of sexism and fail to notice that I keep repeating single mothers are a public financial burden.

A child is entitled to how much money he would be receiving if he lived with both parents not some arbitrary number either party feels is fair.

Yes, some people have children for cash cows SO WHAT? It's not up to the state to determine the psychological reasoning behind a child that is already here.

Women don't get enough and men pay too much. What both parties fail to understand is that in no point in human history has anyone been able to afford living on their own and having kids. It's a brand new phenomena that people feel entitled to.

Ppen,

"You accuse me of sexism and fail to notice that I keep repeating single mothers are a public financial burden." And this line is sexist. You don't talk about single parents. You only talk about single mothers! Being a financial burden does not remove a gender bias.

Did it even occur to you that maybe splitting the kids up between the parents would be better? You appear to have an iron clad belief that the woman should always get the kids. You keep talking about single mothers and ignore single fathers. Which is not surprising considering how rare they are. But is that how it should be or merely how it is? Would it be better if fathers actually raised their kids or is there just something magical about women? Is the only value a man brings to a relationship financial?

In a related vein, why is the second child worth so much less than the first one? Just using Texas law (which I know doesn't apply here) baby A is worth $200k/year. But baby B would only be worth $50k/year? And baby F would be worthless? Talk about your high marginal tax rates. Or severe valuation discrepancies if you prefer. Thats enough to give me an inferiority complex if I was a second child.

"What both parties fail to understand is that in no point in human history has anyone been able to afford living on their own and having kids. It's a brand new phenomena that people feel entitled to."

Do you not see how the policies you advocate are driving this phenomenon? It wasn't that long ago that marriage was the norm and out of wedlock birth was rare. What changed? Government policy. And how ever well intentioned this is a clear consequence.

Apologies Crid. I didn't realize you were agreeing with my point when you called it ludicrous.

Nonetheless, in study after study and in personal example after personal example, -crid

Sorry crid, you ignore every study that doenst agree with your preconceived notions and ridicule people who bring them to your attention. You dont get to use the to bolster your argument now

Look, a big part of the problem today is that divorce tends to reward the irresponsible spouse, whichever one it is. The hit-and-run men, and the women who want to milk the system -- they make out like bandits. The fathers and mothers who try to step up to the plate and take responsibility -- they get screwed. That's the way it works nearly every time in a contested divorce. Until we fix that, the problem is only going to get worse.

Our young men and women are both perceiving that there are few advantages to getting married, and a whole lot of disadvantages. We can argue all we want about whether the perception is correct or not, but that doesn't change the fact that it's out there. That's what needs to be addressed.

Nonetheless, I think your suggestion that children don't feel pain when their parents divorce is really trite and cruel.

On what plane of existence did I say that? My point is that selfish people (of all creeds, races and sexualities) have been causing children pain for centuries, and it's awful.

I know you really (really) want to make an article about a wack-job View host and her POS husband about gay marriage and grind your ax, but I think the original point Amy was trying to make with this article (about surrogacy) is far more interesting.

So, getting back to the original topic: I know three couples who have kids via surrogacy. For one, the surrogate was the woman's sister. Things went great (no drama). For the other, the surrogate was a close friend at the couple's church who volunteered (and wasn't paid any more than medical expenses -- she kept a blog about the experience, so that's how I know). For this particular surrogate, she felt that god compelled her to help this couple after she had several easy pregnancies of her own. The third and final couple happens to be two men (my dad's coworkers). One of their sisters acted as surrogate. She volunteered (after their attempt to adopt fell through when the birth mother changed her mind) -- they didn't ask.

So I wonder if using total strangers as surrogates is the root of a lot of these nightmare stories. When someone close to you volunteers as surrogate, it becomes less about "hiring" someone and then feeling like you can "fire" them when things don't work out.

"just to enable a 24 x 7 x 52 rock & roll sex party"

That sounds like fun!

"You don't want people who don't want to be mothers raising children, and children seem to have the best shot in life when raised in stable, together, intact families."

Look out, Amy – Crid spent years insisting you thought that gay parents were better than hetero parents (even though you promoted conventional marriage in the Tarika Wilson case), and he is liable to start whining again.

> On what plane of existence did
> I say that?

Well Golly!

Turns out, YOU don't like being translated either!

Iddi'nat sumpthin'?

> Apologies Crid.

Non-responsive, incoherent.




> You dont get to use the to

I'm not your alcoholic stepfather.




> divorce tends to reward the
> irresponsible spouse

Exactly. It's what happens when people are allowed to pretend that policy, rather than decency, is the reason they can't indulge their impulses.




> spent years insisting you thought
> that gay parents were better than
> hetero parents

Got a cite for that? Just one?

Should be easy enough, if I've "spent years"...

You got nuthin'. It's a pathetic lie.







Love you kids! Totes adorbs!

"This is not a new problem. M'kay?"

Neither is slavery, but the Thirteenth Amendment still has import.

As does the Fourteenth Amendment.

Michelle--

You want to MAKE people do stuff, right? Your point, indisputably, is that law means more to us than decency.

People in the law business often feel that way.

"Import"!

Turns out, YOU don't like being translated either!

Fair enough. However read my post again. I said "maybe you're arguing." Not "You are arguing." If I could write it over, I'd have written "Forgive me if I'm incorrect but by any chance are you arguing that ..."

My post was a good-faith attempt to understand why you were trying to drag apples into a post about oranges.

*Re-reads Crid's post*

...Actually, make that "durian fruit into a post about oranges."

> My post was a good-faith attempt
> to understand why

Or— It was the response of a typical American policy-drunkard, absently tippling the contemporary spirit of Politik Über Alles: Rather than alertly spotting the patterns of cruelty to children which simpleminded gay activists seek to appropriate from their more numerous and proficient straight siblings, you're blindly presuming that every impulse in life can be atomized, and thus set free, through law and regulation.





Hey! That was good! Somebody write that down!

Crid, you are one crazy fruit salad. But I guess every party needs one.

While I support your goal Cousin Dave you need to be careful to not lie to people. When you argue for fixing the perception of marriage it sounds suspiciously like a propaganda campaign. Too many people have too many personal anecdotes for a pure propaganda campaign to be effective. No one listens to the government on illegal drugs just like no one pays attention to MADD anymore. Too many blatant lies that anyone with a tiny familiarity with the subject know to be lies have poisoned the communication stream.

Like Ppen claiming there wasn't a sexual bias to family law and courts. For me that just doesn't pass the smell test. When 87% of the time one gender receives support that looks like bias to me. 66% I could believe, but 87% is just too much for me to accept without significant supporting evidence. It is certainly a larger bias than most dispirit impact lawsuits are based on.

No longer incentivising divorce and child abandonment would be a huge step towards increasing marriage length.

One example was requiring child support to be a fixed inflation adjusted amount instead of a percentage of income. This may be a different amount based on local cost of living. After all Duncan, OK is a lot cheaper to live in than Manhattan.

An alternative is to eliminate the gender disparity in custody. An 87% chance of winning the 'baby lotto' is very different from a 50% chance. Judicial selection in the case of an unfit parent is still fine as long as it is not abused. The reality is in the vast majority of cases neither parent is significantly more fit than the other. Parents usually travel in the same social circles and have similar values and habits.

I know that most of these policies were put in place with the best of intentions. But good intentions are not good enough. You must have good outcomes too.

Talking about the "gender disparity in child custody" is like talking about the "gender disparity in wages" aka "the pay gap/why a woman only makes 75 cents for every dollar a man makes". Women retain custody more often because they usually provided more childcare before the split. It's the same reason they earn less, as a population---they're at home with their kids a lot more than comparable men. While some judges and some employers are sexist, most of these "gender disparities" are perfectly reasonable and explained by the career/family choices men and women make.

While one parent may not be more or less fit than than the other, usually one *situation* is more suitable for the child/children. Awarding physical custody to the parent who was already the primary caregiver usually suits the child's needs best. 50/50 custody sounds "fair" to the parents, but it's usually a nightmare for the kids once they are school age. It can be done, with a considerable amount of sacrifice on the part of both parents, but most of the time it's a pretty bad deal.

> I guess every party needs one.

Totally! I mean, if the comments meant so much to you that you were compelled to misrepresent them...

> Like Ppen claiming there wasn't a sexual
> bias to family law and courts.

Quote the part where she said that, OK? Like where I quoted you, just now.

Men who whine this way aren't old enough to get married.

Because to Hell with the Titanic, u'know? Those deck chairs were hideous....

"One example was requiring child support to be a fixed inflation adjusted amount instead of a percentage of income"

When you are still married and live with your wife and two kids do you use the average lifetime cost of raising a child in your area and ask her to budget accordingly? Then why are you expecting that right post divorce?

Your child has the financial right to live as if his parents were still married. Just because you think women are harpees bent on divorcing their husbands for the pittance that is child support doesn't make that right go away.

And it is a pittance. Men can't afford it. You are right. But you know what else is true at the same time? Women can't support their children off of it.

Just because men give money to women doesn't mean single mothers as a group are doing well in any respect including financially.

The reason this is a clusterfuck is because in no point in human history have two people been able to live apart and properly distribute the resources for a child. Nobody could afford it in the caveman days with berries and carcasses and nobody can afford it now with green dollar bills.

And you think 50/50 custody is a feasible solution to this mess? Well actually it is possible for one group --the still married because they live under the same roof!

You have this idea that government policy & child support feeds into the ego of women so much that they'll seek divorce. If this is true men must be starry eyed hopeless romantics for marrying them.

And here I thought that part of manhood is knowing that having a child can either make or break you.

> Then why are you expecting that right
> post divorce?

☑

God, I love that.




> And here I thought that part of manhood
> is knowing that having a child can either
> make or break you.

Listen to this woman SING! ☑ ☑

"When you argue for fixing the perception of marriage it sounds suspiciously like a propaganda campaign. "

Sorry, wasn't clear... words and I are not getting along this week. That's the opposite of what I would advocate. Government already tries to paper over all the problems it creates, and that never works. Marriage, or rather the law aspect of marriage, needs to be fixed. Some cultural aspects too, but there is little that government can do about that.

"Women retain custody more often because they usually provided more childcare before the split."

But is that necessarily the best basis on which to decide custody? An argument can be made that custody should be decided on the basis of which parent has more resources and can better provide financial support.

"50/50 custody sounds "fair" to the parents, but it's usually a nightmare for the kids once they are school age. It can be done, with a considerable amount of sacrifice on the part of both parents, but most of the time it's a pretty bad deal. "

That's essentially the arrangement I grew up in. It had advantages and disadvantages, but it did allow me to experience real life with both parents, which I am grateful for now. It does require that the parents not move too far from each other. I wouldn't have too much heartburn with making that a legal requirement; I am sick to death of hearing about custodial parents who move with the children to the opposite end of the country just to spite the other parent.

It's not always in the best interests of the child to stay with the parent who provided the most care before the divorce, but, yeah, I do think it usually is. The idea is to minimize the amount of upheaval in the kids' life. If the kids can stay in the same home, and have the same caregiver as before, that's better than forcing them to move or immediately begin daycare/afterschool care while they're already experiencing so much change (unless the previous situation was abusive or inappropriate, of course). If the parents already spend a nearly-equal amount of time caring for the kids, it's not a huge issue. I'm not saying the parent who spends 2 hours a week more with the kids is definitely the one who should get custody, but if the kids are used to spending nearly all their waking hours with one parent (as is the case with nearly all young kids I know) it's pretty cruel to force them to switch to a babysitter/daycare/latchkey arrangement AND live apart from that parent if it's not absolutely necessary.

Tl;dr : consistency is good for kids, and kids' well-being trumps parents desires

It only makes sense to use income as a measure for determining physical custody if you presume that the parent without physical custody won't share his/her income with the child, which is silly. Well, it should be silly, anyway. Besides, the parent with the higher income probably got that higher income by not taking time off when the kids are sick/daycare is closed/etc. If that parent now deals with all those demands, his/her income will likely drop anyway.

I'm glad 50/50 custody worked for you, but it has been a shit show for everyone I know between 5 and 15. For it to work at those ages, the parents have to do more than just live in the same city; they have to maintain pretty similar house rules/schedules (try dealing with a kid who has an 8 pm bedtime the first and third week of the month, and a 10pm one on the other two weeks), live in the same neighborhood if they want to use public schools (elementary schools are small and have tiny enrollment areas) and talk to each other only slightly less often than most married parents of young kids.

When you are still married and live with your wife and two kids do you use the average lifetime cost of raising a child in your area and ask her to budget accordingly?

Unless you want to lose the house, yes

Then why are you expecting that right post divorce?

Becuase we did it pre divorce

Your child has the financial right to live as if his parents were still married.

Bullshit. If the kids parents were still married and dad got laid off the government wouldn't throw him in jail. Also post divorce the main earner has to now support two households on one salary where one there was one.

You want jr to have the same life post divorce? Make it so neither parent has to leave the house after divorce.

Props to commenters Kevin and Ppen…

…Who seem to understand, perhaps on the basis of personal experience which is none of our beeswax, that the proper context for questions of surrogacy is What the fuck are you talking about?!?!?!?!

You are my peeps. We are few. I treasure you.

Crid,

Your reading comprehension issues are not my problem.

Dont be bashful! You've made yourself perfectly clear.

Jenny,

I did not advocate 50/50 custody of each child. That would be very impracticable for many in our current society. It ties a divorced couple together for the youth of the child. I said to end the gender disparity in custody. If there are two children, each parent gets one child. Yes, you may never see your brother or sister again. But you are not going to see your father or mother again already. The parents are divorced. The family is over.

In the case of an odd number of children flip a coin.

A parent should still retain the right to give up a child without moral condemnation. Some people (of both genders) are not parenty. Recognizing you are not a good parent or perhaps the best parent and giving the child over a better life is a good thing. But if that happens they should still provide financial support. I am not advocating legal abandonment.

Coin flips. For family composition.

That is a thing that you said, just now, in a blog comment.

Woekay then!

> In the case of an odd number of
> children flip a coin.

…Because some men really love their kids!





This approaches a nearly Biblical poignance, right?

Best thing about flipping a coin?

It's "practicable!"

Know why?

Because it doesn't "tie a divorced couple together for the youth of the child."

For sheer, animal savagery, that sentiment has few contenders.

Now and then someone drops the mask and speaks with such concision and clarity that all we can do is marvel.

Ppen,

"Your child has the financial right to live as if his parents were still married." As lujlp said, bullshit. The marriage is over. It is time to move on. In addition to the loss of job case, not every parent spends the same amount in the same way on their children. After divorce non-custodial parents certainly do. They have to. Its the law.

"The reason this is a clusterfuck is because in no point in human history have two people been able to live apart and properly distribute the resources for a child." Well, at no point in human history has "part of manhood is knowing that having a child can either make or break you."

What you are saying means men don't have children. They have financial liabilities.

"You have this idea that government policy & child support feeds into the ego of women so much that they'll seek divorce. If this is true men must be starry eyed hopeless romantics for marrying them."

To an increasing degree men aren't marrying them. Currently ~11% of men will have never married by age 45 in the US. In 1980 that was 5.5%. By 2000 it had gone up to 7%. I don't expect the extrapolation to be accurate on this number, but that would be ~15% by 2020. Only time will tell.

And just to be clear I don't think greed and irresponsibility are solely female traits. The surrogate father above is a perfect example of a mam being greedy. But for most greedy irresponsible men divorce would be idiotic. For greedy women it is a perfectly rational choice.

Interestingly I don't take women initiating divorce ~66% of the time as heavily financially motivated. This ratio is quite strong (around +/-15%) across cultures, finances, and time. But if you use education as a proxy for income, as income goes up the ratio drifts further female peaking out at ~90% female.

Also, you asked about budgeting. I am a small business owner. I get paid monthly based on an hourly rate. And some annoying people don't pay their bills for up to 3 months. I tend to make between $0/mo and $15k/mo. And there have been a lot more $0 per month than $15ks. So to survive I have to budget. My wife and I sit down each new years and do a formal budget and accounting for the year. Children understandably are not invited. We spend around $500/mo/child. This includes food, medical, housing, clothing, and education. Toys and games are not accounted there since they are discretionary. I don't recommend others do a formal budget like we do, although it can't hurt. But if we didn't plan things out like this we would be homeless.

Jeez, I stopped reading too soon!

> A parent should still retain the right
> to give up a child without moral
> condemnation.




Now I think the guy's just fuckin' with me.

That's YOU, right Raddy?

Clever!

Totes… Hook, line and sinker.

Really Crid? A man raising a child is equivalent to killing one? As you said, "For sheer, animal savagery, that sentiment has few contenders."

No Crid. I am not Radwaste.

I personally would never willingly give up my children. As a man legally I have no claim. But if I had one I would never give it up.

But not everyone is like me. Under the current system women who realize they are not the best parent and willingly send their children with the father have committed a great mitzvah. They put the interests of the child above their own.

Really? Children who are having one parent torn away from them should also have their siblings torn away?

You're cruel and/or insane.

Do you really not get that the entire point of parental rights/obligations is that they are not simply "over" until the child reaches majority, except in extraordinary circumstances? That is the entire point. It takes a serious act of the court, with the child represented by his/her own lawyers, to sever a family in the way you're talking about.

Child of divorce should never be told "you're never going to see your parent again" so long as that parent is alive. That is the entire point of parenting! Good golly.

Hey let's just shoot the kids' dog when the parents decide to split the sheets, too. It was gonna die sometime, after all.

Jenny, When daddy lives in Arizona and mommy lives in Nebraska how much personal interaction is possible? People have to move for a variety of reasons. Are you going to ban people from ever leaving a city after divorce?

The current reality is many non-custodial parents have minimal interaction with their biological children. The courts may not explicitly tell this to children but it is the reality in America today. Is this only important if the non-custodial parent is a woman? Is the only value a father brings to a child financial?

My husband has 50/50 custody with his ex. The youngest of 4 are now 19. We have had this arrangement since 2000. And the divorce papers stipulated both parents to stay in the neighborhood.

Now I would have loved to be able to move out of NYC years ago. We will when the youngest are 22 (CS goes to 21 in NY or 22 if child is in college FT). When you have kids, you make sacrifices.

I may be biased but my husband was the fitter of the two parents. Kids don't want to have to choose. I think if we pushed the issue it would have caused irreparable harm to the kids.

One of the kids does stay with us full-time as of a couple months ago, she did get tired of the moving back and forth. She can still say that there was no better alternative growing up and that we did our best to keep the peace.

Even if women are the primary caretakers before the divorce, most fathers still see their children more than every other weekend. And I have seen many cases of men who were primary caretakers prior to the divorce still not getting custody.

I do think one of the main reasons my husband did get 50/50 was he did not move out of the house. Many men do that to try to keep the peace, or are forced out. Also, he filed the divorce.

Of course the noncustodial parents value isn't purely financial; no one here is saying that. In fact, I stated specifically that no child should be told upon his parents divorce that he's not going to see his Mommy/Daddy again anyway. When Mommy and Daddy live in separate states (which should be avoided whenever reasonably possible), there are still plenty of non-financial ways to be a decent parent. I've lived 500 miles away from my dad and still been closer to him than to my mom. There's this magical thing now called a phone, and I hear-tell about some sort of internet enabling communication between loved ones.

Maybe you're getting confused about the difference between legal custody and physical custody. I firmly believe that parents ought to have joint legal custody except in extreme circumstances, but physical custody is another matter entirely, which can only be decided on a case by case basis. Usually, though, the kid should be allowed to maintain as much stability as possible. Coin-fucking-tosses are not going to achieve that, and gender disparity is not more important than healthy kids.

I guess we could use coin tosses to fix gender/race disparity in other courts, too, though...why limit it to family court? Let's just declare all the odd-numbered cases on the docket to be plaintiffs win, and decide counter suits by coin toss. Let's throw darts to decide prison sentences!

> I personally would never willingly
> give up my children.

vs.

God... It's just s

Here it is again:

> A parent should still retain the right
> to give up a child without moral
> condemnation.

!

☑

Crid,

You can't tell the difference between having a right and exercising that right?

Kinda like you have the right to move to Alaska, but you don't have to.

So flipping a coin with two heads is more fair Jenny?

Parking ticket - death.
Farting in public - death.
Check fraud - death.
Voter fraud - the comfy chair?

Keep talking!

Tell us more about your reasoning for all of this! Describe your insights in fulsome detail… Preemptively defusing challenges while welcoming new adherents to your view!

Post as much text as you possibly can!

Thanks.

@Ben what a way to double down on a crap argument! Not only are you wrong, but now you look like a giant asshole! Way to go dude!!

@Ppen and Crid: I think I am just a little bit in love you both. You guys get the larger implications of these "policy" decisions. Good rules don't always make for good society. You will always have people who will ignore the rules or twist them for their own selfish ends and Ppen and Crid get that it's the kids who usually pay the price for that selfishness.

Jenny,

You say "Of course the noncustodial parents value isn't purely financial; no one here is saying that." But you are wrong. Ppen had made it quite clear that she views men primarily as a resource to be exploited. I can't say what Crid truly thinks.

My main concern was the monetization of children. I think children should be something parents spend money on, not make money from. When a child becomes a revenue stream it is corrosive to the parent-child relationship.

I offered two options to demonetize children.
1. Directly. Reduce or standardize child support costs.
2. Increased risk. Remove the guarantee that gender provides of getting custody.

If you have another proposal I am all ears. But I will understand if you don't put one forward. It is far riskier to suggest change than to tear down others.

In the end I do respect you Jenny. I even respect Ppen. We have irreconcilable view points but you argued your opinions well. Though the opinions of a crewel madman probably don't amount to much.

I can't say what Crid truly thinks.

No one can. Thats why he builds his arguments into a Rubik's cube of bullshit, jazz hands, and misdirection.

That way he never has to take an unequivocal position, and no matter which way anyone tries to interpreters his byzantine prose he gets to whine like a petulant 3rd grader about how put upon he is that none understands

I don't have a different proposal from the status quo. I think the status quo (parents are both required to support their children, legal custody is usually shared, physical custody/visitation is almost always decided by the parents themselves with the question going to a judge only if the parents require it) isn't perfect, but it's definitely better than your half-baked "tear siblings apart and flip coins" proposal.

You seem to be concerned mostly with this idiotic notion of gender disparity and your philosophy that children shouldn't be "monetized". Meanwhile, I'm more concerned with what actually is good for children. The one thing you haven't argued with me on is this: Children's well-being trumps gender disparity concerns. Do you agree with me, there?

As it happens, I agree with you that children shouldn't be monetized. I think that does happen, though it's rare. I think it's happening here, with these two idiots in the post. But the vast majority of divorcing parents seeking child support aren't coming out ahead, by any stretch of the imagination.

So, since we agree that parents oughtn't monetize their kids, let's talk about what else parents oughtn't do to their kids. They shouldn't abandon them, financially or physically. That happens a lot, and it's happening here, too---Shepherd is seeking to abandon her kid. Your half-assed proposal seeks to allow---even require---parents to abandon their kids. Parents oughtn't tear their kids away from their siblings. Your proposal allows or requires that. Disrupting the attachments between siblings or between a parent and child this way has been shown repeatedly to damage the child's ability to do well in school, learn appropriate social skills and form lasting healthy relationships. But according to your plan, we should favor gender-based bean counting over that concern.

You keep bringing up this idiotic idea of a gender-based guarantee of custody. It doesn't exist. Most divorcing couples decide on physical custody themselves, without a judge. When a judge does decide, the fact that the mother gets custody more often is easily explained by the fact that mothers do the bulk of childcare. Likewise, a gender-based guarantee of a higher wage does not exist; Men make more money on average because men do the bulk of the paid labor. There isn't a race- based guarantee of an NBA career, either, see?

Jenny,

I agree with you that children's well being trumps gender disparities. But I disagree that they are exclusive. I also don't think the monentization of children is rare.

The gender based guarantee of custody does exist. Claiming otherwise is delusional. Men don't fight it because there is no hope. And that has the unfortunate consequence of many men not bonding with their children because from a legal perspective they aren't really theirs.