Divorce Support Forums: Father Knows Best

[quote]Not to ignore your response, but I was listening on the AM radio this am. The show is basically a run-of-the-mill news show. The discussion at hand had nothing whatsoever to do with divorce, custody, support, etc. I can;t recall if it was one of the DJ's, a guest, or someone calling in, but a guy basically said he had the "average rural Texas" values and if could do nothing else, he'd bring all the fathers who are behind on child support to the town square and "hang 'em all." He didn't have an angry tone and I guess he just had some beef about it from something he's read (or maybe has a female relative who isn't getting CS), but it REALLY made me think of just how out-of-touch a lot of people - EVEN MEN - are about the whole child support issue. Yes, there probably ARE *MEN* (notice it was "MEN" and not people) who have the means to pay CS but purposely don't. But that's a VERY, VERY small percentage of not only divorced fathers, but of men who are behind, period.

A'las, such a long way to go.

EDIT: I remember now, the topic on the show was what you would do on Father's Day if you could. That's when the guy made his statement. [/quote]

You know, there are men out there who are deadbeats, purposely. And those men probably should be strung up in the town square by their thumbs and humiliated. They are NOT "men", in my opinion.

One of those sites that you referred to says that ... I think I added it up and found that it was about 3% of all children are being raised by single men. That's PATHETIC. It needs to be more than that. Now, there's a difference between men who impregnated a woman without ever marrying her and then found themselves having a hard time convincing anyone to let them have a place in the kid's live... and men who had children with thier wives, who came home to the children every day and then at the time of separation were 100% cut off of all that time just because the mother said that she was "primary".

If the presumption were that there is no "primary" parent, but just that in a household headed by a couple they are allowed to choose a division of labor that they no longer have the luxury of choosing when they separate... and that both parents are presumed to be jointly responsible for the children AND the support of the children, then the only child support we'd have in those circustances is a small amount needed to bring up a sub-standard lower wage earner's home up to par... not EVEN par with the higher wage earner's, but at least giving the kids enough bedrooms and making sure she could afford to heat the place in the winter... We'd have a lot less people thinking that the woman had an automatic right to keep the marital home (and since most can't afford to do that if they're the lower wage earner, most of them would be moving out and eithe rselling the house to a stranger or selling thier half to the husband.)

If we could oootch the outcomes of custody cases towards mroe fairness in TIME division between the parents, the natureal result would be more parity in support obligations.