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.

SaF is right though - your experience is the one which mainstream media assiduously promotes so that most people out there, think it's the norm.

Whereas our experience as single mothers who don't get a penny maintenance, is the more common one, but the mainstream media are not interested in telling the truth about that - they are interested in your minority experience allnew, not in our more common one. So when we see your experience once again being done to death on a thread about the opposite, we will most certainly stick around to argue with it and to ensure that you won't pull the argument off into the usual mainstream myths.

It is a real problem. The continued focus on very specific aspects of my own circumstances were largely in response to very specific questions aimed at me.

However the assertion that a woman is capable of anything negative clearly generates a very passionate response from you, hence your continued need to react to me rather than focus on the other many posters on here

Anyway I heard a litte girl singing a song this morning, and your posts have just reminded me of it "Girls are made of sugar and spice....Boys are made of slugs and snails....'. I guess you must have heard that one too - and clearly adopted it as a mantra

And also, it's not just part of the mythology that denies women proper access to maintenance, it's part of the mythology which enables abusive men to be put in charge of vulnerable children because courts are so desperate to ensure that men have relationships with their children despite the harm that does to children. It is actually really dangerous to keep promoting these myths, it harms women and children.

Xenia the eldest is nearly 16 and the youngest 12

"and why do you think the media has more interest in your situation" - what media? You clearly watch a very different sort of programme to me

This isn't about "women are capable of bieng nasty too". Only an idiot would deny that and only an idiot would see the need to restate it. This is about systematic practices in society and how mysogynist myths about bitch-harridan exes feed into the direct harm of women and children.

Have you thought about why your experience is so much more familiar a story to most people than our's, allnew? Have you considered why the media is so much more interested in your plight, than in our's?

What myths are you going on about now? I haven't said much at all about maintenace as far as I'm aware, let alone stating 'dangerous myths' about it

And again - "what media" ? Again, you are bieng subjective. If you did a systematic analysis of how the media covers stories of divorce, break up, contact, etc., you would find that overwhelmingly, the story is one of bitch-harridan exes who deny loving fathers access for no reason.

The other side of the story, which is more common, is very rarely told. We are inundated by your experience, while our experience is wiped out.

Why, do you think?

Do posters really believe mothers blocking contact is a myth?

"Have you thought about why your experience is so much more familiar a story to most people than our's, allnew? Have you considered why the media is so much more interested in your plight, than in our's?"

Actually I don't think it's a familiar story at all. Most people are shocked and horrified to hear of some of DH's ex's behaviour.

Tbh I don't think I've ever seen a single meda article about men denied access to children. But as I said, maybe I don't access the same sort of media you do

"funny that they aren't shocked and horrified to hear that the fathers of so many of our children are paying nothing towards their upkeep"

Who isn't horrified?
There are articles about the nightmare CSA and the number of PWCs not receiving anything on a regular basis. So that's probably why people aren't shocked any more.

They're probably shocked to hear about women using their children as weapons against their ex-husbands because it's nothing most people ever get to hear about. Hence the shock

One tends to be shocked about something one doesn't know, rather than something one knows already. Doesn't stop peole being horrified about both though

The articles about the CSA tend to focus on the inadequacy of the institution itself, rather than the plight of the resident parent and child. They often leave me feeling that it's being set up to fail so that they can legitimately claim it's not working and shut it down. Maybe fees and taxation on maintenance are a first step toward doing that, especially as the numbers who use the CSA will undoubtedly diminish as a result.

If I had more time I'd like to do a proper study, but from personal memory I know that well over half of these articles about the CSA completely fail to mention the number of parents not receiving maintenance. The scope of the problem is not widely known, accepted and understood. You only have to see the number of posters on this thread challenging the governments own figures to see that.

It's an interesting reaction - when faced with something unpalatable or something challenges your world view, deny deny deny instead of expressing how shocking you find it. Personally, I'd rather find a solution.

And Truck please don't try to derail the thread. No one has denied that there are mothers who block contact. What has been rightly pointed out is that it is a myth to believe that this applies to most cases where contact is absent, and even among the cases where the mother is obstructing contact deliberately there will be some mothers with valid reasons, such as abuse.

I'll post what I want where I want thanks.

Also, people are totally familiar with the idea of resident mothers using their children as weapons.

Most people are not familiar with the concept of non resident fathers using tehir children as weapons.

But they do, often. Not paying maintenance, possibly the biggest form of it, is using your children as a weapon. Threatening not to pay maintenance fi the ex doesn't do as you say, is another under reported form of it. Pissing you about on contact, is another form. Bringing the kids back early so disrupting your plans, is another form. Turning up 3 hours late so disrupting your plans, is another form. Deliberately engineering rows in front of them unless you STFU and do as they want, is another form. Ringing them up to tell them that Mummy won't let them see them on Saturday (because it's not their day as stipulated by the courts and they've made other plans) is another form. Using pick up and drop off times to quiz your ex about her social plans, friends, other men, work, criticise her parenting, her housework, her clothes, etc., is another form.

None of which is as widely discussed in the media, as some resident mothers' bad behaviour in manipulating contact.

Why might that be? Are none of you interested in thinking about that?

So resident parents using their children is a myth.

But NRP doing it is a fact.

Nobody has said that resident parents do not use their children as weapons ever truck. But that situation, has passed into popular myth, in a way that non resident parents using their children has not.

I ask you once again, why do you think that is?

But well done on trying to pretend that we are saying something we aren't.

You do that a lot, I've noticed.

Here are somefacts.

2.3 Million households are eligible for Child Maintenance.

1.3 million use the CSA

Of the remaining 1.2 million.

6 in 10 have no arrangement.
2 in 10 have a private arrangement.
1 in 10 have a court order.

It doesn't state anywhere factually that 6 in 10 NRP refuse to pay maintenance.

So the 60% figure is for parents who don't use the CSA.
and also includes the 6% of fathers who don't even know they've had a child.

www.gingerbread.org.uk/uploads/media/17/6850.pdf

Gingerbread website.
'There are around 2.5 million households in Great Britain who are eligible to receive child maintenance.4 Around 97 per cent of parents with the main responsibility for children
following separation (called ?parents with care? in the statutory child support system) are women.5 Two-thirds of parents with care are aged between 30 and 44 years.6 At present, 1.2 million of eligible households use the statutory maintenance service, run by
the Child Support Agency (CSA), which is part of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (CMEC).7 Of the families who do not use the CSA, a largescale survey found that around six in ten had no arrangements at all (and therefore receive no child maintenance); about three in ten had a private arrangement; and one in ten received child maintenance via a court order.'

Have had a look at those figures and you're right, that 60% is not NRP's not paying, it's 60% of lone parents not receiving maintenance.

That means that that 60% figure includes widows and those who have 50 50 arrangements.

The number of widows/ widowers who are lone parents, is something in the region of 5 or 6% AFAIK. I don't know the number of 50 50 arrangements, but it ain't many.

That still leaves a lot of NRP's, who are not paying maintenance. Probably at least half, but that would depend on 50 50 numbers.

How many NRP's do not have to pay maintenance, before people think it is as serious an issue as bitch-harridan mothers who withhold contact? Would half be enough? 40%? A third? A quarter? 10%?

HerBeX you seem fixated with making it an 'either'/'or' conversation. There can simulaneously be issues of non-payment of maintenance and with-holding contact, one of which clearly is much more statistically prevalent than the other.

No-one on here has actually argued that non-payment is not a serious issue.

Ok, I've just downloaded the CSA figures and gone through them.

At the end of 2008, they concluded they had a 66% success rate. However, a NRP only has to make one payment or to have an agreement in place in order for that to count:

I quote: "Cases are counted as having a positive maintenance outcome if they have received a payment via the collection service or have a maintenance direct agreement in place, since we assume that NRPs in MD cases are making payments."

So a NRP can be counted as paying maintenance if he makes just one payment at the close of the quarter and then stops paying until the case is resurrected by the parent with care (which can often take months).

Positive outcomes also include NRPs paying the minimum £5 a week on benefits and NRPs deemed unable to pay because of low income (as opposed to refusing to pay). This is a tactic used by the self-employed very effectively.

Either way, that's 60% of children outside the CSA system not receiving maintenance, and 34% of children in the CSA system not receiving any maintenance (with the real figure likely to be higher because non-payers who do not pay with the CSA's approval are counted as paying).

I think all NRP should pay maintenance.
But I think shared-care is best where possible.

It's 60% of roughly 50% of Resident parents who do not use the CSA who do not have a maintenance arrangement.

So getting the 1.2 million who don't use the CSA to use it would be a start. CSA although far from perfect has a 70% success rate.

And I don't agree with charging for it.