Right Wing thinking: another reason why things are the way they are.

[pepperbear]

http://stephenbaskerville.mensnewsdaily.com/

Criminalizing America’s fathers?


In a nutshell: Law enforcement and child welfare became a single entity, meaning the middle class divorced deadbeat dad becomes a moneymaker for the state. The writer's tone suggests that the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the welfare state.

If what he says is true, some of his points are well taken.

But this particular passage caught my eye:

This also creates a windfall for middle-class divorcing women and an incentive to create more fatherless children. “This recent entitlement,” write economist Robert McNeely and legal scholar Cynthia McNeely, “. . . has led to the destruction of families by creating financial incentives to divorce the prevention of families by creating financial incentives not to marry upon conceiving of a child.”

Does anyone know any middle class divorcing women who look at their children as a "windfall", or who look forward to the financial rewards of having even more children with absentee dads?

Know anyone who isn't a celebrity who sees divorce as gold mine? And what are these hidden advantages to having a child out of wedlock?

Do you believe that it took 3/4 of the article to get to the family values meme?

[DBoon]

1. behind this is resentment of "loose women"

meaning not just women who choose sexual partners freely, but more so women who are not chained to a husband.

This guy really wants to see women completely subjugated to a man.

[notesdev]

2. Yes

>Does anyone know any middle class divorcing women who look at their children as a "windfall"

Yes. My own mother did exactly that 30 years ago, and the laws have not become more equitable since. Countless friends and acquaintances experienced the same thing. Easy divorce and the financial rewards for doing so has destroyed more families that I know of than any other factor, and perhaps more than all other factors combined.

In a family with kids, the needs of the kids need to come first, and our divorce/child custody regime puts the kids' needs dead last.

[Kitty Herder]

3. Windfall? Ha!! Child support payments are chump change!

My parents divorced when I was 12. I was a snoopy kid and I read the divorce settlement. The child support my dad was supposed to pay was $100.00 a month. For three kids. Never mind that he didn't even pay it. I loved my dad, but even then, I thought, "Why bother with child-support if it's such a small amount?"

My mom supported us by editing the little, local newspaper. That job barely paid the bills. But I see lots of single mothers who are far worse off, trying to support their kids on minimum wage jobs and foodstamps.

Divorce hardly makes children into a windfall. It makes them harder to support. But in most cases, the parents deem it worth it, anyway, because their marriage is terrible or even abusive. It was certainly better for me and my brothers that my mom divorced my abusive father, even if it did make us less well-off financially by a long shot.

[Kitty Herder]

4. One more thing: Where the hell do rightwingers get this tripe?! O.K. make that two more things:

Do we as a society not have a responsibility to children? To make sure they aren't starving or homeless? Right-wing thinking is so fucking irresponsible!