Feminism and Child Support
First off, you might have to take my word that I’m a pretty feminist guy in order to understand this post the way I intend it. If you don’t want to take my word, I’d still like to hear from you, but we may not get very far. In case you’re interested, this post comes from my comments on this thread at Alas, a blog. I finally decided to make a post on it after reading this thread at Pandagon that brings up some of the same issues in the comments.
Second, my whole argument is premised on the idea that abortion is readily available to the mother, in the strongest sense, and as that really isn’t true in the US right now it makes my argument kind of hypothetical, and in any case a much lower priority than other feminist issues. Nonetheless, the issue kind of bothers me, being a guy and all.
So, all you feminists out there, what do you think the man’s obligation is where he meets a random girl in a bar, they hook up that night consensually, and she gets pregnant and bears the child? Do you think he should be obligated to pay child support? Is there a way to justify this with feminist theory? Or do you think it’s so obvious you would want to hear an argument against before even bothering with defending it?
In case you do, here’s why I think it shouldn’t be obligatory. There is a common view in the population in general that a child is half the mother’s and half the father’s. Both parents have a responsibility to raise the child. While I don’t dispute this is the common case in actuality (though not as common as would be ideal–there are too many children without enough support), I do think that the common case has a lot more to do with promises between the parents about how their life will go should a child enter the picture than it does with any biological facts. In a lot of relationships, there is either an explict agreement or a reasonable presumption (on the part of the mother) that the father will want to be a father to the child.
And then there are a lot of relationships where there is no such agreement or presumption. Either the father has explicitly said that he has no intention of being involved in the child’s life, or he hasn’t said anything. In the latter case, if the relationship between the parents had been casual (e.g. a one-night stand), the mother has no reason to presume that the father will be at all interested in child rearing.
Now, a child isn’t “half and half” of mother and father in any objective sense, except genetically. In fact, the majority of the time and energy and risk and pain, and money, expended into growing a child is spent by (or on) the mother. In many important ways, it really is her child. I really just don’t see that the father bears an equal responsibility simply by virtue of contributing half of the chromosomes in this situation. Now, the responsibility of raising a child is indeed a great one, and so most mothers are very grateful to find a person to share that responsibility; in fact, very few would wilfully conceive a child without such a person or persons, whether or not the biological father is one of them. I do think it’s good that when a mother has a reasonable expectation that a given person will partake of that responsibility, that the state should enforce a certain amount of support. So I do support mandatory child support payments in these cases, and even in cases where the support was expected from someone besides the father (thought the standard of proof should be higher in other cases).
And I fully support women’s bodily autonomy, including the right to contraception, abortion, etc. I just don’t see how you can give the mother the sole right to decide whether to have the child and still demand that the father be as responsible for it as the mother, without regards to the father’s prior expressed commitments.
I can understand that if the child was born with the mother expecting the father to give a lot of support voluntarily, and then the father withdrew that for whatever reason, that expecting child support from the father would be very reasonable. But in a situation where the father made it clear that he didn’t want any children and wouldn’t want anything to do with the mother if she decided to bear children, or in a situation where such a presumption would be unreasonable (e.g. one-night stand), I just don’t see how the father could be expected to be financially responsible for the children.
Futhermore, I think that a substantial fraction of all pregnancies are conceived in the context of relationships where no such reasonable expectation exists (i.e. the accident during the one-night stand). So, practically speaking, it’s a matter of substantial injustice in cases where child support payments are actually required of fathers who didn’t expect to get into any of that shit. (Do such cases actually exist? Not sure.)
On the other hand, child support payment enforcement, as I’ve heard, is not that good, and anyway the courts are not always sympathetic to mothers. So the situation isn’t all that bad, and in general the system works against mother much more than fathers. (So why this post, you ask? I don’t think the issue needs much attention, but I was surprised to see people identifying as feminist take the other position, so I wanted to see what sort of justification it had.)
evil_fizz said:
Oooh, I get to co-opt some pro-life language: Because it’s a child, not a choice. The argument for the affirmative, pdf, is that even though the result was not desired, there’s still a kid in all of this. Who needs clothes, food, school supplies, etc. To say that fathers shouldn’t be forced to pay child support if they really don’t want to isn’t supportable.
It is definitely a child, but it was also a choice. It was the mother’s choice not to abort the child. The production of the child was a voluntary and autonomous act on the part of the mother, an act she should be responsible for. This is why she has the responsibility, and why the father doesn’t, in my one-night stand hypothetical. And when abortion isn’t avaliable (as it really isn’t, readily) then my whole line of argument falls. Does this make it largely hypothetical? Hell, yes. Does this make it a much lower priority than other feminist issues? Hell, yes. In other words, I think my priorities are straight, but this issue still kind of bothers me, being a guy and all.
The Strawman said:
The guy should know what he’s getting into when he knocks up a girl, and take responsibility for his sexual actions.
Umm, Mr. Strawman, can you take a moment to realize how that argument is circular? Thanks.
If he wants to avoid child support payments he should just not have sex in the first place.
Echos of abstinence-only sex ed.
The Devil’s Advocate said:
If the guy knew (or had a reasonable expectation) that the girl was going to keep the baby, and he knocked her up anyway, then of course he’s partly responsible for raising the child.
Thanks for your thoughts, Mr. Advocate, but I’m really not sure I find that convincing. After all, the only thing he really contributed to the child was a few milligrams of sperm. Any takers in the comments? (I echo Advocate’s position in my comments here and here, but I’m still not that comfortable with the position.)
The Socratic Student asked:
Why do you think this is a feminist viewpoint? Isn’t it uncomfortably close to the views of some obnoxious MRAs?
Actually, I think this is even more consistent with other feminist views than the opposite view. Take some analogies to feminist views on abortion rights. You don’t support the father’s right to approve of an abortion, do you? No, you think it should be the mother’s choice, and only the mother’s choice. But if the woman has completely autonomous control of the child when it’s a fetus (along with the sole responsibility (besides society’s)), how does that change all of a sudden when it’s born?
The Strawman said:
What’s you’re advocating will lead to the disintegration of families as we know them! Fathers won’t have any responsibilities anymore! They’ll be able to skip out whenever they feel like it!
Well, not really. I think that fathers should definitely be required to support their children, in a certain class of situations. And that class includes most or all of those that are considered to be traditional, healthy, atomic-family arrangements, as well as o number of other arrangements that would probably be considered healthy. So I don’t think my view really impinges upon families all that much.
So, am I wrong? Does this view make me a bad feminist? And if so, why?
UPDATE: More.
February 26th, 2006 at 23:38
Here’s the thing: The man in your scenario is as responsible for his fertility as the woman is; he is, therefore, as responsible for her pregnancy as she is; and he is therefore as responsible for what happens to that child as much as she is, even though he has no say in whether or not she has an abortion. To suggest that her decision not to have an abortion absolves him of that responsibility is to suggest that his original responsibility did not exist at all–because his responsibility is not contingent on her actions. He is responsible for his body and for his body’s fertility. Period.
February 27th, 2006 at 9:04
“Man meets random girl?” Okay, here is what I think. The man should be locked up as he is engaging in sexual interaction with a minor & the bar should be fined for allowing a minor on the premises.
I’m going to have to have grave doubts about whether or not you are a “pretty feminist guy” until you rethink the whole man/girl dichotomy that you have. Why is it a man? Why is it a girl? Why not boy & girl or man & woman? Your phrasing is fairly revealing.
February 27th, 2006 at 18:10
Richard, sorry, but I’m really not convinced. I asked for an argument from feminist principles. Your argument is more or less affirming the consequent.
Jake, if I were older I would probably use “man” and “woman”, but as it is I usually use “guy” and “girl”, as the people I know are “guys” and “girls”. I’m not always consistent, but it’s absolutely silly to think that I’m referring to a minor when I say girl. So fuck you.
February 27th, 2006 at 18:25
What is not feminist about my response? It seems to me precisely feminist to insist that he is responsible for his own body’s fertility and for the consequences of the actions he takes with that body and that this responsibility is his regardless of what the woman does. To say that her choice not to have an abortion when he does not want the child absolves him of responsibility for the child merely reinforces the very unfeminist male privilege of being able to walk away from a child he helped conceive. You posit a one night stand: if he really is not willing to risk having a child–and that risk is there from the start–he shouldn’t have intercourse, because that is the only thing he can do to avoid the risk he isn’t willing to take, and it is his responsibility to take that position precisely because he has no control over what happens if his partner becomes pregnant.
February 27th, 2006 at 18:39
I don’t mean to imply, though, that I think your comment is completely meritless, Jake. I will think about why I refer to people in certain ways habitually and what it might imply about myself. But you really went overboard with the tone.
February 27th, 2006 at 18:58
It’s not that your argument isn’t feminist. It’s that it’s contentless. It’s begging the question. (I shouldn’t have said “affirming the consequent”. I meant the other.) You start by assuming that the man “is responsible for his own body’s fertility” and go from there to make the point that the man ought to take responsibility for his body’s fertility. But that’s what I’m questioning in the post. I don’t think the man has responsibility, because I think the responsibility should lay with the person who has put the most energy into the creation of the child.
I don’t see abortion as “absolving” responsibilty from the father. The reason it changes things is that without a safe abortion, the child is much less a product of the free choice of the mother (to continue the pregnancy), and much more a product of the joint choice of the parents to have intercourse.
“that is the only thing he can do to avoid the risk he isn’t willing to take”
This is a particularly bad instance of begging the question, because it has a good rhetorical effect without actually making an argument. You’re basically saying here, “oh, he fucked up–he should take responsibility”. But I don’t think there is any responsibility, so let’s establish that first.
OK, let me make an analogy. Say I suggest to my friend Bob that he go out street racing. He decides to take my advice, and he gets into a pretty bad accident and receives some considerable injuries. Am I partly responsible? Not really. Maybe a tiny bit, but not really. Basically, I think that the fertilization and implantation of a zygote is really nothing more than a suggestion to the mother that she might want to have a child. It’s still up to her to make the positive choice to continue the pregnancy.
Now, I’m sure most people will view this choice as a negative, not a positive. (In the sense that negative is abstaining from action and a positive is taking action, not in any moral sense.) The positive choice is to get an abortion. And when abortion isn’t readily available, or when it’s a morally difficult decision for the mother, it makes it really hard to see it as a negative choice, as I would have it. (And, as I’ve said, abortion *is* difficult, so my argument is pretty hypothetical.) But I think in a world not so terribly far from the one we live in, and in fact a world that is desirable by feminist ideals as I understand them, that abortion would be seen as the default option, and the mother would be making a positive choice to continue the pregnancy. People wouldn’t even see the pregnancy as having begun until that point.
March 2nd, 2006 at 10:08
I see your position as a sorta feminist wannabe, but because your starting point appears to me to be “how can a man justify not paying child support for his child?” I think it fails.
The whole point of the feminist POV is not “women first” or “crush the men” but “women equal to men”. This means that burdens, choices, and responsibilities should be accepted on equal footing and equally between men and women, and where the burden, responsibility, ability to make the choice, or footing is not equal, adjustments must be made to bring the situation into equality.
That said, in the pre-coitus part of a one-night stand, both the man and the woman should theoretically have the equal choice in whether or not to have sex and whether or not to use birth control. You posit consensual sex, so in your scenario, the choice about having sex is equal. But in your scenario, the man is not responsible for controlling his fertility, even if he doesn’t want a child to result from having sex that night - your scenario puts the whole burden of whether or not a pregnancy occurs on the woman. That is not equal, is it? Why should the man get off scot-free if he isn’t taking care of his end of things?
Post-coitus, I see several different outcomes, assuming that the man doesn’t want to have a child:
1) No pregnancy - nobody has to think about this further (I’m deliberately excluding STDs from this).
2) Pregnancy despite both the man and the woman using birth control - if the fetus is aborted, the man should help pay for the abortion - preferably half the cost. If the woman decides not to abort, I think in this case I agree with you that the man should not be responsible for child support unless he chooses to be.
3) Pregnancy despite the man only using birth control - the man should be at least partly responsible for the cost of an abortion if the woman wants one, but I would have to agree with you that in this case the man should only be as responsible as he chooses to be. To be really really fair to the child, who after all didn’t ask to be here, I think the man should assume some child support burden, say 1/280 of the total cost of raising the child (a typical pregnancy lasting 280 days)- which is about $2K if that total cost is $500,000 to age 18.
4) Pregnancy despite the woman only using birth control - sorry, dude, but you didn’t take care of your end at all, so by not using birth control you just signed yourself up for paying at least some child support (maybe $4K?) and definitely for paying half of the abortion. If you think the woman might have been lying about birth control, then a condom is good insurance against child support payments, eh?
5) Pregnancy results because neither the man nor the woman used birth control - same as #4.
The whole issue of partial child support is one I think ought to be examined more closely, because I think that might be the way to be more fair to everyone involved, but maybe this is something that has been argued before and I was unaware of it.
March 6th, 2006 at 9:46
Richard’s argument really reminds me of the argument from the woman digby quotes in the post here. I thought that was interesting.
March 9th, 2006 at 22:09
Fair enough about the tone. However, the unthinking normalness of “man & girl” in common usage is really revealing about the way society thinks about this. Your usage of the combo is also revealing about the way that you think (or haven’t thought) about it. Yeah, I remember when I referred to women as girls (in the same guy/girl vein you mentioned)- I am, after all, not immune from societal influence. For me it was mostly about my disdain of “adultness,” but that doesn’t excuse my phrasing. But once it was pointed out to me why “girl” is offensive I thought about it and realized the validity of the complaint. “Guy” is not equal to “girl” anymore than it is equal to “boy.” “Guy” can refer to an adult as much as it can refer to a child. “Girl” really doesn’t have such an ambiguity about it. Now if one were to use “boy” alongside “girl” it would be, although undoubtedly offensive to many, less offensive than in conjunction with “guy.” But, certainly, “man” juxtaposed against “girl” is belittling & offensive.
March 10th, 2006 at 13:59
I think what led me to choose this particular phrasing is that, while I would never call myself “man”, preferring “guy” or “male”, I’m not empathizing much with the guy in my hypothetical scenario, so I use a term that puts a bit more abstract distance between me and him, a more formal term, thus “man”. On the other hand, I tend to indentify more with the female side, (and tend to visualize the female as someone about my age,) so I use a less formal term.
Now, I do think “girl” refers to a younger age range than does “woman”, but not so much as you say. I think there are two separate senses of girl, one for a female child, and one for a young female adult. (Webster’s backs me up there.) There are two senses of “woman”, too, one that means any human female, and one that means a fully adult, socially mature female. The latter sense can be heard in phrases like “to make a woman out of one”. It tends to refer to females of 30+ years, in my experience, especially those who are either sexually unattractive, or when their sexuality is irrelevant to the context where they’re being spoken of. In doing so it probably trivializes the maturity of younger females, and further encourages the view that women are sexual objects, and it might be good to try to employ it more liberally for young women. But for me, it’s still awkward when used that way.
Ack. So confusing.
I agree about the juxtaposition, and can only say that it was unintentional.
March 10th, 2006 at 18:31
But if the woman has completely autonomous control of the child when it’s a fetus (along with the sole responsibility (besides society’s)), how does that change all of a sudden when it’s born?
Because it’s no longer in her body and part of a pregnancy. I would think that would be obvious. Both parents have equal parental rights at that point. A man can sue to try to get full custody.
Besides, she doesn’t have autonomous control of the fetus -she has to do what the doctor says. She can be tried for negligence for taking drugs or alcohol while pregnant. She’s already subject to state regulation of the embryo/fetus.
Once the baby is born - it’s a baby. A separate person with his or her own rights. Child support isn’t a payment in return for the labor of the pregnancy. Child support is a right of the child.
I think you’re mixing up the rights of the woman and the man over reproductive questions with the rights of a born child.
March 11th, 2006 at 21:48
Geoduck, child support *is* the right of the child. But I don’t think my analysis neglects the fact. I simply don’t think being 50% genetically related to some other person automatically means that one is owed support from them. I think things are more complicated.
And I should say that I’m not sure that it’s a good idea for the law to look into those more complicated aspects, because the law tends to be a blunt instrument. That’s another question.
Ampersand also made the same criticism you did, but I’m really not grasping it very well.
“Both parents have equal parental rights at that point.”
I’m not sure of the law on this issue, but I feel that morally a father who (in the extreme case) only saw the mother one time, on the night of conception, shouldn’t have any parental rights at all. This follows from the same sort of reasoning I use in my post, I think.