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.

Making it illegal would only be fair if its applied to both parents in the event of a split. Both have a moral duty to financial support the child not just one.

It's funny isn't it, that a thread about deadbeat dads inevitably has loads of shit about mothers withholding access.

Very few mothers deliberately withhold access without extremely good reason.

60% of non resident parents, pay no maintenance whatsoever.

Yet the former problem is discussed as if it is as big a problem as the latter. It simply isn't in terms of sheer numbers.

I think DC is well-meaning with what he is saying.

However I do hope this movement would not be compulsory as there are those of us who would not want NRP forced back into our lives either financially or emotionally.

Oh don't worry, it won't be compulsory.

There is no government in Britain and hasn't been ever AFAIK, who will force absent fathers who don't want to, to pay for their children.

I think this thread has been quite useful at showing the effect of stigma actually - lots of people have immediately read it as all non resident fathers, not just those who don't pay for their children. In other words, stigma is a very dangerous weapon as it stigmatises people who are blameless as well as those who deserve stigma and a much more effective weapon is to use the Inland Revenue and other state institutions, to get these tossers to actually pay. That is what children need. And what DC is ignoring, is that if you actually use the IR and debt recovery agencies against these people, they will be stigmatised anyway. You don't create stigma from words, but from actions.

IMO the issue here is about responsibility. The fact that women carry and give birth to children mean they are seen, expected and (most of us feel naturally) bound to our children. If a mother abandon's her child, people will pass judgement on her. However, this is not the case for father's. While society doesn't encourage fathers to leave their children, if they do, there seems to be a higher degree of 'acceptance' and that is what is fundamentally wrong. If fathers were truly held accountable in these situations, it might just make them think twice about contraception and the potential consequences of unprotected sex.

OP, just out of interest, why shouldn't we stigmatise a whole group of people? We seem to do it with alacrity these days. Smokers, overweight, people on benefits, the list is almost endless.

I was born in the late 50s, and I have never known our society to be so judgemental. It's truly vile, and utterly hypocritical to pretend it isn't happening.

I am quite agog at the number of "fathers" on this thread, who are not thick, nor improverished (as if that gives them the tinciest winciest excuse) who are happy to skip off to foreign parts and never see their children again, let alone pay for them.....

herbex.. it happens. Dp pays regular, weekly maintenance, has regular access and yet when something doesn't happen the exs way their poor children are used as pawns against him. It makes me sick. The children regularly come with scratches, black eyes and cuts and bruises and headlice. Fuck knows where they get them from

yes many many absent dads are fuckwits, sometimes its the mother as well

Portofino- my sister's ex lives 40 miles away (she had to move to stop him driving round to harass her several times a day). Sadly it didn't stop him driving by her house every so often to let down her tires or smash her car windscreen, but apparently it's still too far for him to abide by his court-ordered access schedule to his 9yo and 7 yo DC. Even when he does turn up on the appointed day he only takes the children for an hour or two and then brings them back. Still at least he's stopped turning up at 10:30 on a school night to take them to McD's.

He pays no maintenance, in fact he has actively tried to sabotage my sister's job (the only thing paying for her children's food) by making allegations against her to her work.

The BEST thing he could do for his children quite frankly is to fall under a bus. Sadly he has far too much of a self-preservation instinct.

And he is putting every resource he has (intelligence/low cunning, money, time) into actively trying to make my poor sister's life more difficult than it already is as a FT working single mother of 2.

He, for example, ...

i dunno. i believe all fathers should pay for their offspring regardless of the relationship or whether the child was planned - they took the risk by having sex. BUT i dont think stigmatisation is the way forward - it will certainly make it much harder for young men to turn things around and be an involved parent.

with legal aid dwindling away to nothing its hard for some fathers to get access arrangements and be as involved as they want to be. i have two friends who are NRP fathers. friend E's wife made it so difficult (two sides to every story of course granted) for him to even stay in otuch with his 3 dc (he obught the eldest a mobile so they oculd rext eachother - mum confiscated it as didnt want any unsupervised conversations etc) that eventually after years of pleading he has given up and moved abroad - yes i know how can you give up on your kids but he tried and tried and then an opportunity for him to have a life of sorts came along and he took it. i am a harsh judge but i dont blame him. friend J's ex partner runs ring around him, refuses to declare any maintenance in case in affects her benefits (he pays cash, lots and lots) and she makes access near impossible. he can't afford to get a solicitor and isnt entitled to legal aid so what can he do?

a female aquaintenace i have runs rings around the father if her dd too. if you listened to her you'd think this man was satan incarnate, not a quite ordinary bloke who's a bit arrogant now and then but spends about 60+ hours a week at work and tries his best with his dd despite being quite clueless. mum didnt list him on the birth certificate because she didnt want to risk her benefits but the mian reason was that she didnt want him to have PR and therfore any rights wrt to her of their dd.

now i'm thinking about it i could list quite a few more women who torture their babyfathers. i'm not biased either, i nearly alwasy side with the mum but i have seen such extreme, batshit crazy behaviour just to 'get one over on the ex'.

ironcially all the rubbish dads i know are still in relationships with the mums :(

wrt to this marriage tax i think cameron is on another planet. how bloody dare he assume that being married to the mother of your child makes you/them better parents? if he wants to get nrp dads behaving this is hardly a way of including them ffs. ithink its a very alienating policy which will make absent father issues worse.

RE: Comments below the Sunday Telegraphs DC article that was linked in OPs 1st post. Extract from one below:

"...However, I have now left the country and taken my assets with me. There is no way in hell that I am going to give the little Bitch who stole my son from me, and is poisoning his mind against me, a single penny...."

Holy cow. No wonder his wife left him.

Not all absent fathers don't pay!! My ex gives me £70 a week standing order he pays for my son but refuses to see him!! He can't be bothered so paying eases his concience!!

I've been keeping up with this thread but haven't read all the posts so this may have already been said - if this "clamping down" on absent fathers happens, isn't it just a sneaky way of reducing benefits for single mothers? I'm sure I remember something about this before - that a woman could risk losing her benefits if she DIDN'T name the father of her child so that he could be chased by the CSA - or am I imagining that?

But it could happen - "you WILL name the father of your child so he can be forced to pay towards the child's upkeep and then the state doesn't have to cover any of it. And if you DON'T name the father of your child, we will punish you by withholding benefits until you do."
Obviously there would be circumstances where the father couldn't be named and that would supposedly be taken into account.

Bastardy of the highest order if the woman doesn't want the father to know where she and the DC are because of danger to their safety.

re the women who leave their partners while their children are still really small (there've been several second partners mentioning their ex's saintliness re their children and their previous partner). I would always assume in the case of a woman leaving her partner while their child/ren is still very small (ie under 2) that something was drastically wrong with their relationship in ways that the man is not necessarily coming clean about. My personal feeling is that most women would wait until their children were school-aged to leave unless they felt unsafe or neglected- bringing up very small children is such a huge job that few would voluntarily do it alone if they had an even semi-decent partner to help, so the woman leaving her partner when the child was 6 weeks old rings huge alarm bells for me. PND or postnatal blues combined with an arse of an unsupportive partner could well lead to that.

Maybe I'm just naive and uninformed.

A very strong whiff of 'But What About The Menz' here.

As a single mum without any support I think that David Cameron is absiolutely right for a change. although the reasons for absenteeism are varied it's usually because the man knows he can walk away lightly with minimal consequences.

At last David Cameron recognise that single mums aren't always single out of choice. Tnhe dads should cough up and face their responsibilities.

I absolutely think that it's time they were stigmatised. I can't believe that these men are living the life of riley. If you can't do the time don't do the crime I say!

It makes me want to puke when people talk about absent fathers in terms of 'he pays maintainence and he sees his DC once a week' - whoopee!! That is the mimnimum a father should do. We expect far too little from men and we accept way too much. A woman who walks out on her DC is demonised - 'how could she?' shout the hand wringers, yet as long as a man pays maintainence/sees his DC that is enough. The balance is not there.

I am also enraged at the lone parent stigma. When I was LP a friend said I wasn't 'one of THOSE single mums' - you know the type- young, single, benefits I hear people at work chuntering about single mums frequently. I would prefer to hear them moaning about the feckwit fathers out there (that's not ALL fathers BTW just the feckwit ones).

I don't think stigmatising absent fathers is 100% helpful but I do think we need to appreciate lone parents more and balance our views of male/female roles in childcare.

I would not share a drink at the pub with a hit and run driver, I also wouldn't share one with a parent who abandoned their family without a second thought. Think society needs to stick some sort of moral code.

When I first read this article my first thoughts were - Why runaway fathers and not runaway parents? and, stigmatising a group will affect the good ones too.

Now, after reading many many comments here and around the net my way of thinking is changing.
Runaway mothers are already stigmatised; human nature dictates this so it doesn't need the media. Using the media to prompt the stigmatising of runaway fathers may help balance things out a bit.
As for all absent fathers being clumped into the same group... well all single mothers have always been clumped in the same group haven't they? so again, this may help balance things out a bit.

Men are crying out all over the net at the moment. They are good men, are paying, are fighting for access, already have good access etc - but crikey are they angry that they are going to be considered part of this stigmatised group. Well men, you are going to have to suck it up just like all the 'single mothers' have had to do. No matter how a single mother conducts her life she is always branded with the single mother slur and all its associations. A single father? Got to admire a single father haven't you? What a great job he is doing....

This stigmatising will probably do nothing to help the welfare of children, but it may bring on a much needed balance.

sixlostmonkeys - appreciate your statements; it's a refreshing change to have someone say they have changed their mind instead of sticking to their position out of false pride.

Stigmatisation might help in years to come - it might make those immoral bastards that do conceive then sod off, think twice.

However, it will do little for the children of those current immoral bastards. If they gave two tosses what anyone (including their poor dc) thought, not hell or high water would stop them from providing for and parenting their c.

I know some men who wouldn't dream of having children then shirking that responsibility, I know many more who have and would.

Parents who do one, male or female, should be kicked straight into a set period of community service ....with a healthy dollop of CBT to address their issues, as compulsory.

Someone who doesn't want to see their child should never be forced to, for the sake of the child! So there should be severe implications for those who feel this way but create a life nonetheless.