To ask if you would agree with a law forcing absent parents to step up?

I think they're more than capable of looking after their children but choose not to...but once they know by law they have no other choice I believe many men will step up or think twice before getting someone pregnant. I also would like to add in these circumstances regular checks should be made for the welfare of the child, the dads should get support in looking after their children too. I just think it's a better idea of kids being with their father rather then nurseries and with childminders, which itself is a financial drain.

No it doesn't it make women responsible for sticking their head in the sand and getting pregnant to a useless person

Men are responsible for being useless women are responsible for ignoring it, but no one these days thinks about the children they create it is all 'it is my right to have baby'

How can you force someone to look after and parent a child?
Kids get removed from people who can't look after them properly.
How would this be in the best interests of the kid?
Are you providing a good home for that kid, or punishing their dad (or mum)?

If they're mentally well and physically able to then yes they should look after their own blood.

Definitely not. Any parent who is absent (ie hasn't made the effort to see their child regularly when the courts will support them) can't be bothered.

Which also means they won't be bothered to feed their dcs a healthy diet or look after them properly, or ensure they are in school, or provide them with a clean & safe home environment, putting those children at risk of harm.

Absentee parents should be forced to step up financially - the CMS needs a boot up the bum, and a lot more teeth - but children are safer and better cared for away from bad parents.

A terrible idea. You can't force someone to be a parent. That is in no way in the best interests of the child, which should be the priority.

I know the focus is on the fathers here, but imagine a women giving birth to a child who she does not know who the father is, or he has just vanished altogether. She wants to put the kid up for adoption. She gets told no... she has to parent that child. There would be an uproar.

Thing is it needs to be about maintenance. Forcing a father to have contact with a child he is unwilling or incapable of parenting is damaging to the child.

Maintenance (or lack thereof) however is a serious drain on the taxpayer.

I don't think this is the kind of thing that is very well managed through the law. It's just too blunt an instrument.

What you really need is a strong social belief that it's both significant and worthy to be an involved parent, that fathers are really necessary for kids, that involved fathering is socially valued and satisfying, and that uninvolved fathers are looked down on in what used to be called "good society."

That wouldn't mean there were no bad fathers but it would mean men would be relatively more likely to grow up with the idea it was expected and be ashamed when others looked down on them for not stepping up.

There is a school of thought now too that says that fathers aren't really necessary, so it isn't really surprising that some men actually think that is the case. People want to be able to say it's just fine for women to have kids alone without a dad if they want, no harm to the kids, but society can't say that without tending to lessen the perceived importance of fathers in general.

Totally agree.

Absolutely not. Having a bitter, angry, resentful parent is way worse than having an absent one. This sort of thing feels like spite on the non-absent parent's part, and I cannot imagine using my own child to spite someone who wants nothing to do with them. It's not in the kids best interests.

No.

I wouldn't want someone to be forced to be around my child if they didn't want to - I value them too much.

I'd rather parent alone.

This makes women accountable for men's shitty behaviour and it is not it.

Or have both couples sign an financial agreement before conception on what happens when the child is born and they split

Forcing someone who wants nothing to do with a child to spend time with them is a recipe for disaster. No child deserves that.

It shouldn’t be mandatory. How would it be enforced, and how awful for a child if they have to spend regular time with a parent who is not interested in them.

But maintenance payments should be mandatory, and taken at source via taxation if necessary. And the amount should be at least what a child needs to live. Let the absent parents use a food bank for a change.

Also if a parent is so bad of a person why on earth would you want them in your child's life in the first place?

Maybe women could put more effort into ensuring they breed with the first person they come across

And if they have a history with having children why on earth ad to it then cry about it later?

How many men are absolutely perfect with zero signs beforehand compared to how many women choose not so see?

But both men and women should think how the other will be as a parent before sleeping with them, it is not rocket science

And if they are not good with the first use more than one form of contraception

Taking my own parents situation

They were married, they had a child. Yes he should have stepped up and been responsible (instead of dragging my mum though hell through courts to only pay £18 a week fucking matainence 🙄 though that was only another way he tried to control/abuse her).

Yes I accept there are men who will say they never consented to being a father but then the general Mumsnet consensus on that tends to be use a condom or get a vasectomy if you don't want the responsibility of potentially having kids? 🤔

I think yes provided it doesn't endanger the child or the other parent. Pay for - yes absolutely- everyone should be financially contributing to a child they've created even if you're on benefits imo. But to actively parent? No because not all absent parents would be safe or good parents.

I don't see a way to enforce it without a whole lot of children spending half their lives neglected because a parent who doesn't want them is forced to have them.

I do think child maintenance needs an overhaul with much stronger enforcement and more realistic levels of support. The lives of children will be much better enhanced by this.

cross posted!! Agree 100%

No, because parenting by a reluctant parent would very likely be damaging to the child and in some cases would likely be abusive.

I do however think that absent parents should have to fund 50% childcare.

(eta: even if the mother chooses not to use childcare, father should still pay the mother the going rate.)

(eta again: and if they can’t pay, then they either have custody of the child up to 50% of the time (if deemed safe by court) or they are pursued for the payments just as they would be for any other debt).