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Well, I don´t think the idea of state-supported child-rearing is all that unfair. After all, these will be the taxpayers, voters, people of the future, and should get the best possible support from just about anyone.
I would certainly be in favour of the state providing every possible encouragement to the happy growth of children to being functional, contented adults. Having said which... in that case, I find it slightly curious that the "just about anyone" excludes the father of the child, who can choose to exempt himself from responsibility - at which point his contribution to his own child's raising becomes the same as that of everyone else - a contribution by general taxation. Next question would then be whether the mother can do likewise. After all, she is, like the father, a collaborator in a two-person biological process leading to the creation of a child - she just happens to do a lot of the heavy lifting during gestation and parturition. So, can either parent opt out of financial responsibility with equal facility? A mother could sign a contract with the father to the effect that once the child was born he was sole parent? Or they could both sign out of responsibility, and the child would become a ward of the state by default (in effect, putting the child up for adoption pre-pregnancy). This would not reflect your original statement that the bloke´s quite helpless, but it would make it more equal.
The main problem of the "loving family" situation is, as you stated above, that this is often simply not the case. I think massive ammounts of tax-money should be spent on making parenthood something which doesn´t require as much personal sacrifice as it does today, by providing communal child-care facilities with well-payed and schooled personnel. A bit utopian, but still doable and viable.
Absolutely - but this doesn't have anything to do with men being able to contract out of responsibility for their child. Better childcare facilities make life easier for single parents and other parent groups alike.
Forcing anyone to give away his or her child is a violent step at any point, but still sometimes this is the best solution for the child. (In situations where the parents provide little but anguish, stress and violence, this is often the only solution.)
Again, I don't really see the connection here. Yes, children are often taken away from homes in which the parent or parents are unable to provide care. This is often a disruptive experience for the child and for the parent or parents. State-provided childcare will potentially make it easier for parent or parents to go to work, have a life outside raising their child (although, of course, there will be a rise in general taxation to offset this), and possibly - possibly - make it less likely that parent or parents will be unable to deal with having the child. However, I don't really see, again, how that ties in to providing binding contracts absolving the father of a child of responsibility for his actions in having pregnancy-risking sex with the mother. Are we talking about separating parturition completely from parenthood? A system like Plato's Republic, where childrearing is collectivised, and so parenthood is a non-state? That would be a way to do it, but is quite dramatic.
I agree that the best thing would be to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and perhaps another step in that direction would be to reduce the emotional stress a woman feels after her abortion by firmly banning fundamentalist pro-lifers from harassing them. If women who have had abortions are no longer socially expected to suffer, perhaps it would be easier for them to really consider whether or not the future child is wanted and can be supported.
I agree that women should not be harrassed on the way into clinics. No worries there. They should have access to the best advice, the best treatment and so on. However, you're still pushing this model where the man is incidental to the process - if a woman becomes pregnant, she needs to think seriously about whether the child is wanted, and and can be supported, and if not terminate the pregancy, while the other party is ... off , somewhere.
I think nothing´s worse than parents blaming their children for ruining their lives.
Best avoided, certainly, but again not really relevant, unless you mean that giving men the power to disclaim all connection to a pregancy they helped to create will make them less likely to tell children that they ruined their lives. Which is certainly true, because he will have been allowed to avoid any obligation to his child, with commensurate blame-risk. As I said:
This is not an arbitrary imposition, however. The male partner played a role which, while less time-consuming, is just as necessary in the creation of the pregnancy as the role of the female partner. Pregnancy is not some sort of game of roulette where one day a woman will spontaneously produce a foetus, and it is just bad luck for the blameless chap she happens to be going out with at the time.
So, how about this. Children are a big thing. Pregnancy is a big thing. So, upon entering a relationship, a man and woman discuss what happens if a pregnancy occurs. If the woman states categorically that she would not bring such a pregnancy to term, and signs to that effect, then the man is not financially liable for any child, in exchange of course for never being acknowledged as the father and not being allowed to remain in a relationship with the mother as if the father. If the man states categorically that he would not want a pregnancy to occur, he gets a vasectomy. If a pregnancy does ensue, he becomes fully responsible for the raising of the child, financially and personally, if the woman chooses to carry it to term. That way we can punish either gender by inflicting sole care of the child on the person who claimed in the first place not to want the child. If neither claims to want the child, then vasectomy to start, and then if the pregnancy is not terminated they are both responsible for any offspring.
Alternatively, if you don't trust your partner not to respect your pre-agreed decision on this without a legally binding contract, why not break up with her? Or use contraception, or even types of sex which do not risk impregnation. That might be easier, on the whole. |
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