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.

It's worth bearing in mind that maintenance does not equal access and access does not equal maintenance. They are not the same thing.

I have always believed that maintenance and access issues should be seen as 2 separate issues completely.

maintenance - every child needs to eat, be clothed, housed etc and the cost of this does not change in real terms but seems to change depending on the absent parent's situation eg, unemployed, started a new family etc. It has always baffled me why the system will not deduct maintenence from a persons income/benefit if it will leave them below the amount the law says a person needs to live on. The cost of the food that goes into a child's mouth is the same whether his biological parent is rich, poor, otherwise occupied....

access to a child's life - should be kept separate from maintenance payments. The ability to pay weekly amounts or the inability to prevent it from being deducted from your earnings does not automatically make a person fit for parenting. The same applies the other way round - the person who struggles to provide financially may well be an absolute wonderful parent and so lack of money should not keep them away from their children (this of course applies to both the absent parent and the ones who are raising them)

Maintenance and access aren't the same thing. Neither are access and parenting.

More is done for abandoned animals in this country than for abandoned children. Someone who abandons a creature or neglects to provide adequate care is lambasted publicly and rightly so.

But people who abandon their children? It's only now that they are considering doing something potentially remotely effective? FFS

Animal shelters receive more public support than single mums, who are left to struggle while being slated by outdated and draconian sociological traits, dating back to the days of true patriarchy. We're a long way from equality as far as our offspring are concerned!

gosh im still at slimbo's story. what an asshole your ex is! im so glad your dd has a new father figure who will not be a prick. i don't know what gets into men sometimes, they have affairs and leave and stick their heads so deep in the sand just their arses are sticking out.
yes if the government can do anything to curb this, great. but its such a massive grey area. im guessing the demographic they're aiming at are young feckless blokes who father baby after baby and don't work because if they did they'd have to pay maintenance. not a massive demographic but an annoying one.
i don't know what effect this will have in reality - maybe a few more young lads will wear condoms for fear of getting someone knocked up and being stigmatised, or maybe they wont give a shit.
but yeah, in principle i would agree that feckless 'jeremy kyle style' fathers should be outed and tarred and feathered because im sick of them breeding innocent children into their mess, but really i dont think they're the kind of men that'll care.

domedon

We would see dps girls more than once or twice a week if

a. his ex would let us
b. we had a car to get them when we wanted, but when you are relying on public transport to get them its gets quite difficult

c. what the hell would we do about school
d. i have 4 other kids to think about too.
e. we sat on our arses and didn't work but dp works 40 + hours a week and I work 16 to support us all including his two. He works shifts which are never the same two weeks running and if we did have shared care with his ex it would mean I would be looking after six kids two with adhd whist he worked. oh and he spends two hours travelling on the bus everyday t0o. So he wouldn't get any decent time with them anyway

f. his ex has a number of other dc by another partner and has said she would rather us see them once or twice a week anyway he is both available and can do things with them rather than him dumping them on me and not seeing them whilst he works. and that would not be fair on them either.

so its not always clear cut, my ex sees mine once or twice a week and pays maintenance but then I'm very happy with what I getbecause he has them when he's not working and they have something to look forward to every week. but then he has the money to make things good for them (and a car) which we do not.

when we do have his dc, we try to either take them out (weather and money permitting) dp is teaching them to play golf which is very funny, I bake and cakes, we all go to the park, and have dvd and popcorn nights when we can.

We are trying domedon

isitreally ha you just descibed my ex to a t apart from the age. my ex was 27 when he fucked off with a 16 year old school girl.

I have just had the last laugh though, she walked away from him 2 months before thier wedding (after 7 years together) because she couldn't cope with being a stepmum, amongst other things)

my ds hated her though

Seems as though testosterone ought to be limited until people are emotionally mature enough or moralistic enough to be trusted with it.

People who have affairs should be subjected to public stoning. People who have affairs where children are concerned should be subject to chemical castration. Why aren't these people ostracised? What's the point in the government or anyone else doing anything to encourage 'families' when philanderers are rife and often excused by society?

Bast-

What a thoughtful, rational response.

Can you chemically castrate a woman? Or would it be remove her ovaries?

No more irrational than tossers who sod off and leave their families. Does the rational appeal to them on any level? No, it doesn't. Maybe a response as equally rational as their behaviour might deter?

I have no idea whether anyone could chemically castrate a woman but I know I can't. Why do you ask? I stated 'philanderers', I wasn't gender specific.

Given brief thought ...of course women can be chemically castrated. Depo-Provera. The same drug used to chemically castrate men is dished out to us all the time. A side effect? Lowered libido.

Bast No idea if you were serious, probably not, but I didn't like to see the mention of "public stoning" for adultery. Does happen in some parts of the world I believe. And very inhumane.

agree that maintenance and access are separate issues - its not 'pay per view'! however on the other hand i think it should be easier and cheaper for nrps to get regular, fixed access and to be able to utilise thier PR without bankrupting themselves. my lp aquaintance is always threatening to move abraod. her dc's father is terrifed but can do nothing about it because she refused to name him on the birth cert. thats another issue - fathers dont always want ot be un named, they often have no choice!

I was going to say that juggling I wouldn't like to see those practices in the UK!

Juggling, quite right. My apologies. Chemical castration across the board then.

IMO mothers are to blame for having children with men, kicking them out for little or no reason, and then expecting to be supported for 18 years. Women have control over whether or not to have children. It's 2011, not 1950.

Yes, those poor men that are forced to have sex without a condom or thinking that their lives shouldn't change when they become a parent...

those nasty evil mothers who stick by their children and raise them....evil I say EVIL.

RobF! Thank God you're here! Obviously taking a few precious minutes away from your obs/gynae consultancy and Relate counsellor training. Did you read the one about the woman who had a baby after hysterectomy? Even you couldn't blame her for that pregnancy. No, wait! Course you could. Anyway, Rob: tell us what to do. Please. Oh, go on.

Yes, RobF, women should be able to see into the future. Every woman should be equipped with a crystal ball. That way a woman would know for certain that marrying and having children with Mr Right would be the wrong move. That way, women would be able to predict domestic violence and completely avoid it; they would be able to foretell the arrival in their lives of OWs. It would all be so simple. Why the heck can't women just predict the future when they decide to have children?

Don't encourage him Alice. [severe look]

Re the demographic, the govt must know that 60% of NRP's don't pay maintenance, it's not a secret, so the demographic is most NRP's.

Viz access and maintenance being separate, I used to believe it should be separate issues because that's what our culture tells us it should be.

Now however,since becoming a parent and learning more about the nuts and bolts of parenting, I don't believe that anymore. A parent who doesn't understand the basic obligation to financially support your children, is obviously a parent who doesn't understand lots of other parental obligations either and so must be viewed as someone who is pretty suspect as far as being in sole charge of children is concerned. If you don't love your children enough to support them - a pretty basic requirement of parenting - then there are going to be all sorts of other really basic requirements of parenting, that you don't understand as well and therefore you have to question how well such a person is going to look after a child.

It's in the interests of NRPs, most of whom are men, that we pretend paying maintenance is some sort of separate issue from the rest of parenting; well surprise surprise, guess why it's become orthodoxy; it isn't a separate issue though, it's an integral part of how you function as a parent.

3/5 of parents who don't use the CSA do not have a maintenance agreement is the statistic.

4 in 10 have a private agreement or court order.

The figure for CSA payment is in the 70-75% area.

I don't have a maintenance agreement as neither of us pay anything to each other, so I'm one of the 3/5 who doesn't have an agreement.

You're in a minority wellnefermind.

Most people don't have 50 50 care and control.

Well said HerBeX.