Cammeron on absent fathers

[LegoStuckinMyhoover]

"In an article for the Sunday Telegraph to mark Father's Day, he said it "simply isn't acceptable" for mothers to be left to bring up children on their own.

Cameron indicated his determination to introduce tax breaks for married couples ? a Tory general election pledge that appeared to have been dropped by the coalition in the face of Liberal Democrat opposition.

"I want us to recognise marriage in the tax system so as a country we show we value commitment," he wrote.

Before the election, Nick Clegg described Tory proposals to introduce a tax cut of at least £150 for married couples as "patronising drivel that belong in the Edwardian age"."

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jun/19/runaway-dads-drink-drivers-cameron

So, they take money from the sick, disabled, children, single parents, the poor, the middle earners-child benefit, tax credits, the schools, the NHS, etc, etc because of ''the deficit'', but happily want tax breaks for married couples?

We all know tax breaks will not make people stay together so, maybe someone run through the math here? Someone tell me this isn't all about ideology.

The worst you could describe my friend as is naive. He thought that the woman he was in a long-term relationship with was pregnant with his child. He thought that the child that this woman repeatedly told him was his, was actually his. How is it his responsibility that she's a liar?

Primalscream, that's utter bollocks. Roughly one in ten single parents is a man.

The recent changes which allow single mums to keep their tax credits/benefits in addition to maintaince need highlighting I an sure plenty of women put up with irregular pitance amount or daddy buying clothes and shoes instead of supporting the child properly because they think they'd be worse off. Well they wouldn't be so start fighting back single mums.

Ok - in 90% of cases - still a massive imbalance.

Agree that there hasn't been an incentive for single parents to chase up maintenance for the children as, if they were on benefit and not working, the money went to the state and not to the children. That is the real reason the CSA was set up despite what they said at the time. This has changed recently but I am not sure why they agreed to change it. I guess it was because the CSA a public sector organisation was cost alot more than it was bringing in so wasn't worth it. That's why they will be charging for it in the future. The sucess rate of the CSA ended up with men being caught in the system who would comply and would have paid anyway, with ex partners who wanted to get off benefits at the first opportunity.

The deadbeat men, typical of the 'single mother on benefits' runaway father types probably slipped through CSA system.

Men who walk away are in the position of knowing that the state will pick up the bill anyway. This is still the case, this won't change, so I wish people would stop saying what a great thing Cameron has said today.

There's a Tony Parson's Tweet - doing the rounds on Twitter today -

"The men who walk away from children are not fathers - they are not even men"

Primal

People can change dramatically e.g. As a result of

Mental illness
Addictions
Physical illness

These can alter a persons behaviour a great deal. If the behaviour is a danger to the other partner or any children it may be reasonable to split up. Of course it is possible to stay together through these, too, but not everyone is able to deal with these things due to their own issues.

It all comes back to compassion for other people and their life stories. There are enough examples in the relationships thread to show that some people are genuinely better off apart.

Snorbs, that one in ten single parents is a man statistic includes widowers.

It's ludicrous to suggest that women waltz off in roughly the same numbers. Acknowledging this reality is not the same as saying men are all evil bastards. I think that's how a lot of men take it. But the truth is it's just harder for women to waltz off. Maybe they would if they could. But they are emotionally (because of hormones) and physically more invested from the moment the baby is conceived. That's just the way it is.

Sorry, I genuinely misunderstood. I thought he was criticising absent fathers as in 'fathers who aren't with the mother anymore', rather than fathers who don't support the family financially or practically. I thought he was criticising divorce and blaming it on men running off.

I don't know why Cameron has to pay lip service to this. Jeremy Kyle does a good job on shaming them all on his show.

As a soundbite for the press, this all sounds well & good. The problem is that in practice life is somewhat more complex. Something I'm afraid DC & his mates know little about.

Firstly I bet if you ask the absent "dad's" why they walked away, many would claim their ex has stopped them from seeing the kids. Of course in some cases it's genuinely true. Often it's simply the dad isn't fussed enough. But you can bet your bottom dollar that's not what he's telling his mates, his family & his new GF.

I would wager that's a big reason why it's still socially more acceptable. Because when was the last time you met a bloke who said "Nah, i can't be arsed with the kids, they're too much hassle. I like my life better without them".

Instead we hear how awful their ex was, how she's stopping him from seeing them. How he's had to walk away to save the kids more heartache & hopes one day they'll find him.

Over the years I've become pretty astute at spotting these sorts of blokes but alas many others are not. Usually a question like "Well if your ex is so bad, why are you not fighting for full residence?" sorts the wheat out from the chaff. A good dad will have been to court and have stories even if they ultimately failed. A crap one will start to mumble some crap about cost or not wanting to hurt the kids.

That said, of course there are a lot of father's out there who have genuinely been forced out or alienated. Should those be tarred with the same brush? Because often it's very hard to tell the difference when you only hear one side of the story.

Yeah, none of the Dads listening are going to listen to it and think 'that applies to me, shit!'.

They're going to think, well, she left me/slept with my brother/called me fat so therefore no way am I going to give her any money/make her life any easier/forgive her for moving on,.

I wonder if my x listened to the news and thought, "shit! I'm feckless I really ought to give my children some money!". No way. His own rationalisation is that my family 'implicitly undertook to support me when they took me in' (after we escaped his aggression). He held his head up high when he told my dad this.

my point being that nobody thinks they're the bad guy. (myself included I guess).

I do not understand why, if I park my car in the wrong spot, and don't pay up, I can end up in court, or if I fail to pay my council tax, I can find myself in jail, but we cannot, as a nation, find a way to criminalise the non-payment of child maintenance. It is baffling to me.

To true Bandwitch. I very much doubt my ex thought 'oh shit that is me' had he had one ounce of compassion for my DD he fathered, I think it would have come out before now. 17 years later.

The father of a friend of DD's told me, in all seriousness, that he refused to pay child maintenance because his ex had kicked him out and so it was her choice. He expected me, as a man, to agree with him that this was a reasonable position.

I was genuinely like this

I think Bandwitch you've very succinctly summed up what I was rambling on to say!

niceguy2 - I would imagine the difference is a decent father won't leave his children to starve in order to score points off his ex. Child maintenance is a right of the child - arguments between the adults about contact are nothing to do with it. A man who will see his children go short because he's pissed off about access is not a decent human being (and probably lying about access anyway - very probably the sort who spins a tail about his evil ex denying access when actually he couldn't be bothered to turn up when he said he would).

Of course there are bad parents of both genders, but an absent parent who refuses to pay for their child is a bad parent by definition.