Men should not have to pay child support for children who are not theirs. That sounds simple and fair enough, but it's not. All over America men are being forced to pay for kids they were deceived into believing were theirs. And that's not fair.
This issue first caught my attention several years ago when a rash of stories about non-fathers being forced to pay child support hit the media. One story that got a lot of air time centered on a man who didn't discover that one of his three sons wasn't his until after his divorce, yet he was ordered to pay support for that child along with the others. And then there was the man who not only wasn't the father of the girl he was ordered to pay for, but he didn't even know the mother. He just had the misfortune of having the same name as her ex-boyfriend. I was instantly struck by the injustice done to those men. Why should they or any men be forced by law to pay for children they didn't sire?
Supporters of this treacherous practice say the best interest of the child should overrule any concern about fairness to adults. They say that kids need support no matter what and they also point out that men do have a time period in which they can contest a claim of paternity. This is true but the time period is only 30 days long and when it's over there's little chance of a successful appeal. A man is stuck even if he never got the initial claim in the time frame allowed. That's what happened to a Florida man just last year.
Francisco Rodriguez was targeted for $10,000 in back child support, plus $305 in monthly payments, for a girl DNA testing proved wasn't his. The girl's mother, a former girlfriend of Rodriguez, testified that he didn't father her daughter and even requested that the child support payments be stopped. However, the state of Florida persisted in charging Rodriguez because he missed the deadline for contesting paternity. I don't know the final outcome for Francisco Rodriguez and his family but I pray it was just. If it wasn't Rodriguez is stuck paying money to another man's child while his own children go without. That is NOT fair!
How can we stop this insanity? Simple. First, women who commit paternity fraud must be prosecuted and made to pay back any money they received from their victims. Second, we must require all children to be given a paternity test at birth. This will let men know their true relationship to a child up front. Men who choose to assume responsibility for a child knowing they are not the father shouldn't be allowed to back out later. So post-natal paternity tests will protect both men and children. This isn't a perfect solution, though. Some women might opt for a clandestine abortion rather than risk their infidelity being exposed. As a prolife person that possibility weighs heavily on me but, in our imperfect world, I feel this trade off is necessary to achieve overall justice.
Feminist types will no doubt oppose my solutions. Their problem is with men, not with men who don't pay child support. They have a very vengeful mindset and believe that women defrauding or harming men is just payback for the injustices of male chauvinism. They won't say that in polite company, of course. No, their desire for revenge will be cloaked with a bogus concern for "the best interest of the child".
Well, the best interest of the child is to be loved and supported by its REAL father, or a man who freely assumes the role of father while knowing his non-paternal status. Surely the child's best interest aren't served when a fraud that's been perpetrated for years is exposed, causing upheaval in the lives of all involved. So we as a society must take paternity fraud for the serious crime that it is, punish it like we mean it, and prevent it when we can. That is in the best interest of everyone.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Saturday, February 9, 2008
In Defense Of Large Families
I believe it's high time that we in the West get over our love affair with infertility and start to once again appreciate and celebrate large families. I don't mean that everyone has to go out and have 10 kids. I DO mean that our culture needs to once again see children as blessings from God rather than as time consuming, figure destroying, money draining headaches, as it does now. I've been coming to this belief for several years but it crystallized in my mind several months ago when I read a disparaging article on the Duggar family of Arkansas, perhaps the most famous large--and I mean large!--family in the world.
The article, obviously written by an embittered liberal, moaned that the then 16 Duggar children were attention deprived, disparaged the family's Christian faith, and accused them of being homophobic. All because the Duggars dared to go against the "progressive" optimal family size. It never occurred to the author of that bigoted article that the Duggars and other large families may be doing the world some good.
Imagine seeing this bumper sticker on someone's car as you're driving down the street: Save the Earth! Stop socialized medicine! Now what, you may be asking, does socialized medicine and saving the earth have to do with defending large families? Well, "progressives" have been preaching for decades about the threat (supposed) overpopulation poses to the environment. These are the same people who also advocate for government welfare programs paid for by taxpayers. Yet the fewer children you have the fewer taxpayers you have. See the catch-22?
"Progressives" want zero population growth (ZPG) to protect the earth and its resources but they also want a nanny state, i.e. socialism, that can only survive with a Catholic birthrate, as author Mark Steyn put it. Many "progressives" who acknowledge the inconsistency tout immigration as the solution. But that still means increasing the population, at least in a given country or region. And if you must increase the population why not do it naturally rather than importing foreigners? After all, if those foreigners adopt "progressive" ideas they'll start having fewer babies, too. Then where will Western countries get the people they'll need to sustain their nanny states?
The only solution is to admit that we can't have it both ways. If we want fewer and fewer people in order to protect the environment we must be willling to forego the "free" state services provided by taxing workers and consumers, i.e. people. Hence the bumper sticker mentioned above. Of course, the vast majority of "progressives" will never agree to this. They'll continue to dogmatically insist on both ZPG and socialism. They'll continue to hysterically denounce large families like the Duggars even though they're providing the resource the "progressive's" socialist utopia needs most: children. But maybe those children, raised in self-reliant Christian families, will spell the end of the "progressives'" unsustainable dream and herald the coming of a saner world where both children and the earth are loved.
The article, obviously written by an embittered liberal, moaned that the then 16 Duggar children were attention deprived, disparaged the family's Christian faith, and accused them of being homophobic. All because the Duggars dared to go against the "progressive" optimal family size. It never occurred to the author of that bigoted article that the Duggars and other large families may be doing the world some good.
Imagine seeing this bumper sticker on someone's car as you're driving down the street: Save the Earth! Stop socialized medicine! Now what, you may be asking, does socialized medicine and saving the earth have to do with defending large families? Well, "progressives" have been preaching for decades about the threat (supposed) overpopulation poses to the environment. These are the same people who also advocate for government welfare programs paid for by taxpayers. Yet the fewer children you have the fewer taxpayers you have. See the catch-22?
"Progressives" want zero population growth (ZPG) to protect the earth and its resources but they also want a nanny state, i.e. socialism, that can only survive with a Catholic birthrate, as author Mark Steyn put it. Many "progressives" who acknowledge the inconsistency tout immigration as the solution. But that still means increasing the population, at least in a given country or region. And if you must increase the population why not do it naturally rather than importing foreigners? After all, if those foreigners adopt "progressive" ideas they'll start having fewer babies, too. Then where will Western countries get the people they'll need to sustain their nanny states?
The only solution is to admit that we can't have it both ways. If we want fewer and fewer people in order to protect the environment we must be willling to forego the "free" state services provided by taxing workers and consumers, i.e. people. Hence the bumper sticker mentioned above. Of course, the vast majority of "progressives" will never agree to this. They'll continue to dogmatically insist on both ZPG and socialism. They'll continue to hysterically denounce large families like the Duggars even though they're providing the resource the "progressive's" socialist utopia needs most: children. But maybe those children, raised in self-reliant Christian families, will spell the end of the "progressives'" unsustainable dream and herald the coming of a saner world where both children and the earth are loved.
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