To think this is scandalous yet in plain sight because the patriarchy has no shame

This simply isn't true

I'm not sure how much you think he should be paying, but ~15% of his net income doesn't seem that bad.

What percentage of the woman's income do you think goes on supporting the children?
It will vary according to the size of the home she needs maintain, and the age of the children, and someone please correct me if I am wrong- never been there- but I think it's rather more than 15% of her income.

What happens if the father can have the children 50% of the time but the mother wants them to go to childcare and not spend the time with father/fathers family? Does he have to pay 50% childcare or does this then become her costs as she refusing to let Dad have them 50/50

It doesn't help that the UK seems to pretty woeful in providing/subsidising childcare.
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/06/childcare-puzzle-which-countries-in-europe-have-the-highest-and-lowest-childcare-costs

Be logical. By the time a husband leaves a wife with a couple (or more) kids, it's a tad bit late for a termination.

I don't think they do, actually. They just know that if they don't, no one else will step up and so women tend to put their children first, unlike many men.

Getonwitit · Yesterday 20:36
This is where women have to sit up and take notice of what is happening to other women. Maybe it is time to make sure an account is opened and childcare costs are saved by both parents to be before a baby is conceived.

Do you not think he would take half of that when splitting up? I'm pretty sure it would be classed as savings.

Gosh, thewe poor men. Presumably the pharmaceutical companies are stockpiling the male birth control in anticipation of this vast demand 🙄

Perhaps National Insurance numbers should be on birth certificates and also be required for opening any bank account or other financial product.

It would make non paying parents traceable, their income more accessible and might make other financial dodginess more difficult to get away with.

In order to find solutions to problems, it is necessary to look at the issues from all sides, rather then decide upfront which side you are going to support and then to jump in without any thought as to circumstances and viewpoints. Sometimes it is the intelligent thing to do to look at situations and why they happen rather than making instant decisions.

@Dayoldbag you're basically saying the same as the poster on page 1 who said women shouldn't have babies "willy nilly". The vast majority of single parents were married or in long term relationships with men whom were committed and involved with the pregnancy and child - until it got too hard / boring / restrictive / expensive / in the way of a shiny new OW / taking up the mother's time and attention. No one can guarantee what their partner / husband will be like. There's a thread on here about a woman whose husband left after 20 years and became an absolute callous bastard pretty much overnight. Those of us who were left holding the babies are usually blind-sided (and not there are not always red flags).It really doesn't matter who left who, the point is a child should be adequately supported by BOTH parents and given that the NRP is not restricted by childcare, they ought to be able to increase their earnings, retrain, take double shifts etc if that is what it takes to contribute an appropriate amount.

You're absolutely right, OP. This is just one of a hundred different ways society and the state exploits women's sense of social and moral responsibility and expects them to step up and behave better than they expect men to. Women still do the vast majority of cleaning and domestic work in their and their family's homes, they are the ones the school phones and expects to drop everything when a child is ill, they carry the emotional and practical burdens of feeding, looking after the health and development of their families and they're under immense pressure to make birthdays and Christmas increasingly special. And of course they are expected to provide emotional care for the extended family and act as unpaid carers for elderly relatives. Yet Andrew Tate and similar misogynists preach that women have it easier than men and apparently some young men identify as women because they believe women have it easier too.

I'm an older woman: I fought for women's and LGB rights in the 80s and 90s and was a second-wave feminist. We saw what appeared to be great strides in equality. Then the liberal feminists came along, wanting to include men in feminism and calling my generation strident and man-hating and feminism began to fall apart. The libfems triumphed and now we have the situation you describe here, OP, where society takes it as read that women will step up to fill the gaps while men are allowed to relinquish their responsibilities. Meanwhile women are punished most severely by the cost of living crisis and the destruction of state support.

Women are learning. We're having fewer and fewer children and we're having them much later in life, with the knock-on effects of that (increased rates of ASD, ADHD etc) which cost the state. But what we need is a strong feminist movement to redress the balance that has tipped back towards men and we need to bring up our boys and young men to be better partners, husbands and fathers.

When I was at college a friend kindly invited me to stay the night as we had an early start for a trip the next morning and I lived about 40 minutes from the college.

I was shocked at the sparsity of the flat. No carpets and the most basic furniture, the only pictures were the ones the DCs had done in school and although it was November the heating was off. Their mum at no dinner that night - I felt awful but she insisted I should eat. Yet the girls were always beautifully presented and from the outside you'd never have known there were any financial issues at all. Their mum worked but on a low income - well before the days of the minimum wage. My friend had taken a weekend job in a shop when she was 14 to help.

It was 1993.

It's never left me. It was a life lesson. It made me understand what poverty meant in this country. I thought I knew but that was my 17 year old middle class arrogance

Months later for some reason the question of maintenance came up - I don't remember why at all but I know we were talking about money and our fathers - both our parents were single. My friend told me that their father paid £1 a week maintenance towards the 2 girls. Looking at inflation calculator that's £2.09. I think things have improved but single mums get shafted then and now

Some also get off on fathering children and will tamper with condoms and women’s contraceptives without their knowledge. It’s an actual kink for some.

Bottom line is that women invariably carry the burden of raising children financially and otherwise if there is a split and men want to be BMD ....a bare minimum dad, like your Ex.

It is why some women are very careful and protective of who and when they have children, as they know ultimately they will be responsible for their children and that will hugely restrict them in their ability to juggle everything.

Financially, pension wise, women usually bear the brunt of the decision to go ahead with a pregnancy.

Unfortunately so many do NOT look beyond delivering the baby and find a relationship breakdown so shocking, as the reality of how single parenting will impact their ability to work hits them.

I think if most women fully educated themselves it would give them deep pause.
I also think that schools could really help in this area to explain the Math of having children to young women.
As mothers we definitely can have the conversation with our daughters too.

A friend of mine has a daughter that found herself in this situation, .......that she couldn't continue her primary teaching job with the logistics of her young child after her relationship broke down.
She hadn't been with her partner long, 18 months when she became pregnant and decided to go ahead with the pregnancy...at 28.....despite her parents explicitly warning her of the pitfalls.

The relationship fell apart 12 months on, and suddenly her daughter is looking to mum and dad to be her child minder as her ex has taken a new job an hour away and is a BMD.
My friend and her husband were both only 12 months retired, and had zero interest in child minding a baby fulltime.

They are actually very pissed off with this turn of events as they had tried to talk to their daughter at the time, but she was having none of it.
She has had a very rude awakening as to the consequences of her decision.
They decided to help financially with the cost of childcare rather than do it themselves as they want to enjoy their retirement.
They reared and put all their children through university whilst working full-time and had really looked forward to plans they had made.
Life is now very different for their daughter juggling work, a childminder and parenthood alone.
She loves her little boy as do her family, but the responsibility to make it work is on HER, and my friend has said that if she had her time over she has no doubt she would make a very different choice.

My friend has huge sympathy for her daughter, but after nearly 40 years of working, rearing her own children, educating them, making sacrifices for them, she and her husband want to enjoy their good health and retirement while they have it.
Not unreasonable IMO.

My friends that are recently retired/retiring soon, have spelt out very clearly to their children that child minding will not figure in their retirement if their children choose to have children.
This is a great conversation to have prior to your children procreating so expectations are clear.
Emergency help of course, but regular childcare....absolutely not.

The penis defenders coming on a thread to argue that if men fuck off and don’t financially support children, it’s the woman’s fault and problem, or what about the men not getting 50/50 - which time and again so many only every want to use as a weapon because they don’t actually want to parent - would be depressing if it wasn’t so bloody common in real life.

Those of you putting in a full time shift on here defending deadbeats must really be peaches in your own lives.

Lots of men only become abusive when the woman is pregnant. Lots of men only start cheating when the woman is pregnant/has a young family

At the end of the day, rape aside, the woman has the final say whether or not to go ahead with unprotected sex. If the man goes ahead regardless of her saying 'no' then that is rape and a whole different discussion.

Just to be clear, I'm not in any way supporting men's right to bugger off and not pay for children that they both were equal partners in making, nor am I a believer in women raping men, but there are definitely some women who want to go ahead with pregnancies for their own reasons ( we see that on here sometimes) and manage to manipulate this even though they are aware it is not what both parties want, so the answer to this as to whether the men in those situations should pay regardless I really am torn. On the one side, the child shouldn't suffer but on the other, the father also has been hoodwinked.

I agree with you, wholeheartedly.

They can - or they used to - be able to deduct payment at source. I don't know why this isn't the default.

I owed some tax back this past tax year as I earned over the amount for child benefit. I was hounded via email and they wouldn't have hesitated to take me to court had I not paid - but apparently they can't apply this same level of duty when it comes to CMS.

But the it would be your choice. When I was pregnant with DS ( surprise baby) his Dad and I made a deal that if we were to split up ( we never lived together ) that HE would become the full time carer. Without this I wouldn't have continued with the pregnancy

I had 2 older kids whose dad didn't pay or bother with them so wasn't prepared to put myself in that position again.

When we did split u when DS was 5 he did become the main carer. DS had never known us living in the same house so it wasn't a great deal different for him

Financially we worked it out between us so no need to maintainence

Shouldn’t fathers feel the same way then?

You mention motherhood being valuable and fulfilling. Shouldn’t/Wouldn’t fatherhood be the same, hence 50:50.

excellent, can I ring fence the CMS amount on my salary, use that on them and then stop? Want to eat in the week before payday? sorry, money's run out. Need a new laptop for school, nope sorry. Broken your glasses, grown out of your shoes, sorry, have to wait til next month. Fab, I'll just do that. In my case my ex earns more than I do, (in the same profession) because he is not limited by parenting other than the occasional weekend. What he spends on the kids and what I spend is vastly different. THAT is what is not fair.

But I wouldn't. I love my kids but I would have loved 50/50.

most men don't want it, even if offered.

Only if the man also chooses 50/50. And only if he is safe to parent.