To think men get a fantastic deal here?

[Bumpitybumper]

I've previously started a thread on this board about the biological disadvantages of being a woman however I would love some thoughts on the below which is something I have been thinking about lately.

From puberty females are burdened by their reproductive system. Alongside mensturation and associated conditions, women are also usually pumping their bodies full of hormones to control fertility (or their periods). Then a woman falls pregnant and has to run the gauntlet of a whole array of nasty pregnancy symptoms and conditions before giving birth whilst adhering to the whole not drinking or eating restricted foods advice. Some women breeze through birth but many end up with horrendous experiences and complications that can leave long term or permanent mental and physical damage. In the aftermath most women will attempt to breastfeed and potentially struggle with associated pain and sleep deprivation, not to mention feelings of guilt/failure if it all doesn't work out. Finally at the end of women's reproductive years they then must go through the menopause which can wreak havoc of women's lives and health.

Men on the other hand will mostly have sex and then be in a (hopefully) supportive role for the rest.

Basically biology dictates that men have the far easier ride. If women moan about this they are usually met with responses of "well that's just the way it is" and of course that is ultimately true, but yet the assumption that any babies that are the result of such a biased biological process are equally the father's and mother's is surely questionable? Yes genetically the child is 50:50 but surely more acknowledgement should be given to who has actually sacrificed the most and had basically taken on responsibility for the whole process?

Why is it assumed men can benefit equally from the fruits of the elements women's reproductive biology that ultimately disadvantage us?

Would you be opposed to a future father being forced to contribute towards the loss of earnings and general costs incurred by the mother that were associated with carrying and giving birth to his baby

I wouldn’t be opposed to it completely.

But what exactly is the proposal?

Loss of earnings to be funded by the father? You could end up with a low earning father trying to cover a high earning mother.

It could lead to men abdicating practical care as they’ve “paid” the mother to give birth and care for the baby.

I’m not against it. I just what to know what the proposal actually looks like.

Caring premium as a cash transfer?

Better pension credits for caring responsibilities?

Free retraining/upskilling for returning mothers?

Accelerated career paths for returning mothers?

I think those are great ideas lang

I’m more in favour of state support (which will mean higher taxes but I’m fine with that). Rather than individuals paying money to the mother of their children.

Also fine with higher taxes. Taxes come from the GDP contribution to society and should be redistributed to the reproductive and care economies to achieve equity between them. I don't think this is something that even a change in social practises by individual couples can manage.

They're also society's children. And society must have children. So the women having them are as much a necessity to a growing economy as the entrepreneurs. This understanding is what it is needed at macro economic level.

Yy was coming to say this!

I don’t think the answer is to have financial compensation payable from fathers to mothers.

I don’t see how that would help.

There may be an argument that some financial support for the adult sometimes becomes an obligation in situations outside the contractual agreement of marriage.

Women definitely have the rough end of the deal, so happy I’m on the pill so I never have to have periods again

I suppose you could argue that women live longer than men, and this is partly due to reproductive capacity, so we get our reward in the end? (I don't know whether that means we consume more health and social care resources then males, though.)

Furthermore, female hormones and the role of women in reproduction have been linked to greater longevity. Estrogen, for example, facilitates the elimination of bad cholesterol and thus may offer some protection against heart disease; testosterone, on the other hand, has been linked to violence and risk taking. Finally, the female body has to make reserves to accommodate the needs of pregnancy and breast feeding; this ability has been associated with a greater ability to cope with overeating and eliminating excess food.

And that's irrelevant to lower pension income due to child-rearing, of course.

@ConstantlyCold
I’m more in favour of state support (which will mean higher taxes but I’m fine with that). Rather than individuals paying money to the mother of their children
Whilst I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to some state intervention to help mothers, I fundamentally believe that if practicable and affordable then parents should pay for their children.

To me this is most akin to child support. The state could of course pay maintenance to the Residential Parent but I think most people would agree that the NRP should pay a sensible level of child support to help fund their child(ren). There is a strong element of encouraging parents to take responsibility for their children and that the RP shouldn't be burdened with all the costs whilst the NRP is let off the hook.

Doesn't the same logic apply to funding women's costs associated with having the children? Aren't they just another financial consequence of reproduction that should ideally be split equitably between both parents? If this was the case I think men would be a lot more mindful of the extent that reproduction hampers women as they would bearing the brunt of some of it and it could help close the financial gap between male and female parents.

Whilst I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to some state intervention to help mothers, I fundamentally believe that if practicable and affordable then parents should pay for their children.

So if all the women turn around and say fuck this, I'm not having any children because it fucks up my economic independence in a way it doesn't for men, who is going to pay your pension? Nobody will be generating any GDP to pay it, or anything else you need. Because no children.

I'd suggest anyone who believes that the responsibility for children (and their mothers) falls solely on the couples who have them go and look at fertility policies in low birth rate countries.

You can't have a country with a pay as you go system of health care and pensions if you don't have enough children to pay as you go when you are old.

@LangCleg
I think that scenario is incredibly unlikely as the biological drive to have children often overrides that kind of thought process. Having children is usually quite a selfish act that people do for their own benefit especially in a world which is arguably already overpopulated. I just fear that imagining doomsday scenarios like that allows men off the hook. Why should a father expect the state to step in to financially support the costs associated with bringing his child into the world when he is in a position to do so himself?

As public money is sourced from all demographics in a way it can be seen as women have to pay twice, once through carrying the burden of the elements that the state can't/won't assist with and then through paying their taxes to fund the state assistance.

Are men mindful of the consequences of reproducing now? Do they generally feel paying maintenance is their responsibility as a father and an ex spouse or are they paying vast sums to hide their money or, if they don’t have money to hide, simply doing everything possible to avoid paying? Are women comfortable with taking money from an ex? Generally the ones who need it most see it as a point of pride not to claim it IME.

Your idea only works for women who have children with men who have high earnings anyway... when wages are low...

How does it protect women who are raped or victims of abuse? How does it help women who have unplanned multiples and then split? Accidental pregnancies? Women who can’t identify a father?

How does it encourage separated parents to coparent effectively?

It simply makes the whole thing adversarial and as has happened re child support in the past there is a real risk the attitude will be ‘you have recourse re the father not our problem’ from the govt.

There is no logical reason why child rearing is considered to have no or low value, in fact there are very good reasons why it should be better supported by the state IMO.

Nope. We are already struggling to cope with the ageing population as it is now. I am paying my father's state pension. I am paying his health care. So are you. It's only going to get worse. We are going to have to either introduce fertility policies (requiring a complete reversal of the single mother as object for policy abuse) or beg for immigrants (about the least popular policy you can imagine and relies on us having a healthy enough economy to be attractive).

We need to start thinking about this now, regardless of the benefits for women (and errant fathers). Suits me because I think it's high time that economic activity wasn't the only measure of social contribution in policy terms.

Child maintenance is a major cause of coparenting breaking down and abuse continuing after a split. If you want men to pay more the vast majority don’t have more to give and a significant number will take their anger about this out on women and children.

I agree that women bear more of a biological burden. I can't deny that I'm relieved I only have sons and won't have to watch any of them go through the hell that childbirth has wreaked upon my body. However, I don't think that alone entitles the mother to be the primary parent. Having said that, nobody will deny that mother and child have a biological connection that the father doesn't have. They breathe in sync, sleep in sync, release hormones in sync... in a purely biological sense it would be much harder on the mother to lose custody of her children.

I think that scenario is incredibly unlikely as the biological drive to have children often overrides that kind of thought process

I’m not all that convinced there’s a massive biological drive to have children. There’s a massive drive to have sex. In the past that generally lead to children, but with good contraception you can have sex for decades without getting knocked up.

And whilst it may be your experience that having DC is a ‘selfish choice’ to benefit the individual who has the children this is a fortunate position IMO.

Far far too many women being deliberately or coercively impregnated by men as a way to control them. Far too many women with babies conceived by rape. Far too many just expected to cope with twins having planned for one. Loads as a result of contraceptive failure...

Only just over half of babies in the 2013 social attitudes survey were reportedly planned...

@Offred
Whilst I can appreciate that relying on fathers to pay for their children is imperfect and would definitely need to be supplemented by state assistance where this wasn't feasible in a whole myriad of scenarios (rape, father has no money etc), I really struggle to accept that we shouldn't pursue this course of action to avoid it causinv friction in the co-parenting relationship. Of course it bloody does as men don't feel that they should have to pay for their children. This is abhorrent and definitely shouldn't be an attitude that is supported through the state stepping in even when the man can afford to pay his share. What kind of message does this send to men both about women who can't opt out of the shit bits that cost them so much, but also to their kids? I'm utterly shocked you seriously think that men who can afford to pay shouldn't be made to pay.

@LangCleg
We are struggling with an aging population but the answer isn't necessarily to keep having more children. Those children too will age and as life expectancy increases then we are just storing up a future crisis unless we keep having more and more children or encourage increasing amounts of immigration.

I definitely agree with you from a wider perspective though about what society values being too narrow.

It’s not that at all... It’s that I think we have been expecting men to pay, trying to make them pay, for decades and what has happened? Men use it as a way to control the mothers of their children.

And they still don’t pay.

And a considerable amount of women, often disproportionately made up of the ones who need the money most, have rejected child maintenance as a way of helping to provide for their children.

What’s more important than men paying is men being committed and involved IMO. Child maintenance causes a huge amount of friction and actually incentivises running away for men.

@Offred
Yes but that is a flaw in the system that allows the loopholes, not necessarily a flaw in the concept itself. The concept that fathers should pay for their children is absolutely correct.

Who pays to administer a child maintenance system?

You would rather pay vast sums criminalising men re child support that most of them can’t afford to pay/still won’t pay/will result in conflict than just direct that money to the children via their mothers?

@Offred
And a considerable amount of women, often disproportionately made up of the ones who need the money most, have rejected child maintenance as a way of helping to provide for their children.
These women need to be educated and these attitudes need to be tackled.

What’s more important than men paying is men being committed and involved IMO. Child maintenance causes a huge amount of friction and actually incentivises running away for men.
Of course that's more important but does that mean that we should allow fathers to abdicate all responsibility for their children in case forcing them to do anything they don't like encourages them to run away? Is this seriously where we are at with this issue? I'm not denying this does happen by the way and I do understand what you're saying but I just cannot bring myself to sanction an approach that allows men to reject all their responsibilities in the hope that they stick around and aren't scared away. These poor women and children stuck with such wastes of spaces.