Absent fathers to be made into scape goats

[ivykaty44]

absent fathers

as a single mother who has lived without maintenence for periods of time and at times struggled to make ends meet I still think it is awful to suggest making a group of people stigmatised.

there are good NoneResidentParents and there are useless NRP, it isn't just absent fathers but sometimes absent mothers. What sort of country do we live in thuogh where we would want to stigmatise a whole group of people.

Better to keep the CSA free and make it work rather than the clerical mess it is at the moment.

[GypsyMoth]

You mean don't stigmatise the fathers who hide their earnings, or, like my ex, leave his job to remain on benefits (creating a disability) saying openly he won't work again til youngest has left school

Hmm..... I'm with Cameron on this one!!

[meditrina]

I'm conflicted about this.

Not supporting your children is wrong, and I have no problem with such actions being condemned.

But I don't see how one reconciles this with other Govt policies which make it harder to secure adequate financial support (charge to use CSA, levy on payments).

[ivykaty44]

I mean do something about those feckless fathers that refuse to support their children - make them pay but do not lump good and feckless fathers together and call absent fathers as bad as drink drivers.

Stigmatising a feckless father means jack shit to a poor child, whereas money coming in means a better life for the child.

[meditrina]

My reading of the story (and trying to work out which bits are DC and which bits are the newspaper spin) is that DC is specifying only those fathers who do a runner and provide neither financial support nor any other input to the family.

But if that specification is going to get lost in practice, then yes it will misfire.

[BertieBotts]

I didn't read it as them being lumped in together. The quote was fathers must make the decision to support "financially and emotionally" their children even if they have separated from their mothers ? spending time with at weekends, attending nativity plays and "taking an interest in their education".

Though he seems to assume all fathers will be a good influence on their DC. Personally I'm not really sure XP would provide that, particularly if he was being forced to have contact. Also, I'm wondering if this general attitude does start to prevale, what will that mean for mothers who have kicked their husband/partner out, or left with the children?

[ivykaty44]

How will you not lump them together - how will you dividethe fathers whom are a good role model and which fathers are useless - will it be down to opinion or a certain level of payment and contact.

Surely better to concentrate on implementing a good solid system where by feckless fathers can't escape than just calling them names

[HerBeX]

" I know there are a lot of cases where a mother wont let them see the children etc"

Nope, sorry there aren't. There are a tiny minority of cases where that happens, that problem is far outweighed by the 60% of fathers who pay no maintenance and the large number who either never see their kids or if they do, only do it sporadically, unreliably and on their terms and then complain when their exes won't let them see their kids because they've already arranged something and can't drop everything at the drop or a hat. I think it's very important to challenge those myths about vicious harridan mothers who deliberately deny contact just out of spite. I'm sure they exist, but it's important to remember that they're in the minority and that there are much bigger problems than them - like the 3/5 of fathers who don't pay maintenance. Not one penny. That of course, doesn't count the number who pay a pathetic fiver a week and think that makes them a good dad.

I tend to agree with the OP in that I suspect this isn't actually aimed at stigmatising the fathers who don't pay, who frankly, should be stigmatised; I think it's aimed at stigmatising all absent fathers, in order to make sure that lots of couples who shouldn't be together, stay together miserably. Cameron wants both single mothers and the non resident fathers to be objects of disgust so that no-one wants to join the club of divorced person. Tories are amusing really aren't they, King Cnut springs to mind.

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

I agree with Cameron. There's a certain casual acceptance that men can father children and then disappear from their lives or absent themselves from responsibilty, emotional or financial. Women who desert their children are despised. Why not level up the playing field?

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

"Cameron wants both single mothers and the non resident fathers to be objects of disgust"

Rubbish. He wants deadbeats who neglect their own flesh and blood to be objects of disgust. I'm a single mother and I'm also divorced. Do not feel that the conservatives have got it in for me in the slightest.

[onagar]

As a man I have nothing but contempt for any man who abandons partner and children.

However, when I read our Beloved Leader's words though I wonder why he didn't say 'parents' who abandon since it can be women doing it too. Does he think all men go to work and all women are in the kitchen?

I also wonder what it is he plans to do to single fathers that he needs to drum up hatred for.

There is a pattern that all parties follow.

We get a spate of articles/comments on 'benefit scroungers' and how they all have big TVs, 'young mums' and how they are all drunken sluts or 'disabled people' and how they are all faking it and when everyone is nicely worked up it's easier to slip through a new rule making life worse for them without losing too many votes.

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

"I wonder why he didn't say 'parents' who abandon "

Because women who abandon are already despised by society.... No-one needs to be urged to regard a woman that's abandoned her children as beneath contempt or beyond the pale.

[onagar]

CogitoErgoSometimes, that's a clever answer, but do you really think it explains anything?

Consider how odd this conversation would be.

Headteacher: "the way the white boys behave is disgusting".
Reporter: "just the white ones?"
Headteacher: "No all of them. but black kids already get put down a lot so I thought I'd just say white"

Doesn't really work does it.

Anyway give it a week and we'll see what he has planned. Perhaps he will insist they all go back to live with their children so he can take the whole family off benefits.

[maypole1]

Onger although mother do leave to that is a minority and you know it the reason why its so shocking when a woman leaves her kids is because it realty happens even the ones who can't cope cling on to their kids.


So although this happens we have to admit it is usually the man having a child then bolting siteing they were tricked or the kid is not theirs yawn,

Then plead poverty to the CSA mean while starting up a family with the fancy woman that they left you for and living like kings.

Then when the child's older and everything is mostly paid for trying to take you to court for access even though you begged them for years to the child child.

My child gets nothing from my ex and hasn't bothered in 10 years "new daughter " goes to private school and he drives a BMW

[BooBooGlass]

Why the hell not? Single mothers have been stigmatised long enough. Society as a whole are too accepting of men who just walk away. If women abandoned their children on the same scale there would be uproar.

[Clytaemnestra]

Fathers who run away and refuse to support their kids financially or emotionally are in the wrong.

How is that a controversial thing to say?

[Clytaemnestra]

"David cameron isnt interested at all in whether a child sees his or her father, he is interested in the father paying so that the goverment doesnt have to."

Well, I kind of agree that fathers should pay for their children instead of the state. That sounds right to me. The state should step in when people CAN'T pay - not when they won't. There should be more efforts to force the absent parent to pay.

[Riveninside]

"re useless NRP, it isn't just absent fathers but sometimes absent mothers. What sort of country do we live in thuogh where we would want to stigmatise a whole group of people."

We already do. Single mums, disabled people etc

Although i am actually agreeing for once with DC. I know so many mums where the ex pays nothinb and never sees the kids. Tossers. My own father was the same. And he was a tosser too. Fathers should support ALL kids they have fathered, whatever they think of the mother.

[HerBeX]

Well I'm a single mother and I do feel Cameron has it in for me.

His introduction of a #100 fee for the CSA for a start.

The cut in tax credits.

His constant drivel about "broken families" which is code for families headed by single parents, when most of those families were well and truly "broken" when the parents of those families together, but as long as you don't see the evidence of bad relationships and unhappy families in the form of a split, that doesn't matter.

That's just for starters.

But I do agree with you re the reason he doesn't need to say "parents" who abandon their children. 90% of NRPs are men and of the 10% who are women, they are more likely to pay maintenance and they are still more stigmatised than the men who don't. It's a fucking disgrace, but how making the CSA even less accessible than it is will solve that, is beyond me. It seems that Cameron wants to make social opprobrium the weapon to get deadbeat dads to pay up, rather than the state making them. I personally would prefer the state to do its bloody job and make these men pay.