From the Trolls Under the Bridge (who shall remain nameless, but who shall henceforth be known as TUBs or "Tubbies"), comes this gem:

[META] Can we make a list of why the notion of 'Legal Parental Surrender' is a stunningly stupid idea?

I'm sick of reading about it and it'd be nice to have all arguments against it in one place.

I'll start:

  • if men can opt out of parenthood there are two options: have a crapload of single mothers become homeless and living in poverty, or the government will have to pick up the slack. I sure as shit don't want to pay extra taxes because some schmuck doesn't want to wear a condom.

  • even more than already exists, Legal Parental Surrender will foster an attitude in society that men don't care about children.

  • possible pregnancy is the biggest reason men wear condoms - with that responsibility taken away there would be a decrease in condom use and a rise in STI contractions.

  • women already bear the majority of the negatives that come from childbirth (greatly reduced chance of career advancement, less likely to be hired in case of paid maternal leave) and this would just exacerbate the gap.

  • abortions are expensive and often difficult to obtain, and women faced with being 100% responsible for raising and paying for a child who also cannot afford an abortion are far more likely to turn to desperate measures (i.e. back-alley abortions).

Please feel free to add to the list!

  • We can't get our evil harpy child support checks if LPS is legal!

Should be the obvious one, really, you guys aren't misandering hard enough.

sorry, I know this is a serious question, but I could resist =P

  • I think there are some inconsistencies in our own arguments, and I'd like to bring them to the table so we can flesh them out a little.

I think we need to be on the same page about how much child support is. I notice that when MRAs complain about child support, we say "Oh my God it's only X dollars a month, and it's not even enough to take care of the kid's sometimes! It's the least you can do!".

However, when MRAs talk about getting rid of child support, we say "But if there's no child support, so many mothers will be homeless!" which suggests that child support isn't just peanuts, and is in fact a LOT of money. You need to have a LOT of money to keep yourself from being in poverty or becoming homeless.

Keep in mind that I don't have any children myself, let alone child support, so I am completely clueless as to how this works. I could be missing a part of the puzzle. Can someone show me how we can hold both those arguments at the same time?

  • As I mentioned, I also feel there is a "Frankenstein Syndrome" which would negatively effect the child. (I don't think children who are placed in that situation will become criminals or will be necessarily evil people) but it would mess them up emotionally.

Also, I feel like I am alone on this, but I view abortion more in the realm of sexual health and but the Misters seem to view it as letting go of responsibilities. It may help to analyze it from that angel.

  • Why?

1) Because no one has any inherent right to sexual activity that could result in pregnancy.

If your body parts line up in that fashion and you have that sort of sex, it's a risk. Just the same as an STD. You can walk away from it any time beforehand. Every single one of us has probably walked away from sex at some point and while it may not have been gratifying, it's certainly something possible.

2) Time is important as well. Having child support that covers every imaginable cost still leaves the child-rearing parent spending time and not being able to seek every opportunity they could. The parent may not be able to work overtime to climb the corporate ladder or may not be able to uproot the family to move to a different state, for example. I'm not having kids with my wife, nor will we ever have kids but being as I am a human being with parents I know that my mother had two full time jobs: raising my dumb ass and working. For a solid decade and change, her time at home was almost completely dedicated to my upbringing.

  • LPS simply becomes carefree sex on the man's part. No worry about pregnancy. They show absolutely no regard to the effect this could have on women and children, or women who aren't in a situation where abortion is an option. Their concept of women stealing sperm becomes much easier for men to do as a way to harm women or guilt them into a relationship. "I ain't paying for this kid unless the mother is with me."

Nobody has suggested any limitations to the idea that a father can simply leave his child and the mother of his child with absolutely no repercussions. The perfect world where a man can bring into this world literally hundreds of children and have no responsibility for their upbringing.

  • Fuck your "fair". I didn't ask to be fertile.

  • Pregnant women are a very vulnerable segment of society, seeing higher statistics of domestic abuse, financial abuse, physical injury and murder in comparison to the wider population. Additionally, forced pregnancy is already a tool used in abusive relationships - I can't help but think that there are a myriad of ways an abuser could use parental surrender as a threat. They wouldn't even have to go through with it. Merely having it codified into law, I believe, would be the perfect way to keep a pregnant woman in an abusive relationship - stay with me or I'll abandon you, force you onto welfare/into poverty etc.

  • MRAs are interested in fairness, right? If they are able to get a "financial abortion", then so should the mother. Meaning, she should be able to give birth, hand the baby over to the father, and leave forever - retaining no financial responsibility to the child.

Wonder what they think about this?

It's a stupid idea because it's inherently unfair, despite what the manosphere's warped sense of "fair" says.

  • One thing it doesn't cover though is what happens if the father gets his financial abortion, then later the father and child want to have a relationship. I doubt that MRAs are going to fall over themselves defending fathers being legally restricted from seeing their children.

** The legal ramifications: If we codify it in law that the father is unnecessary, and thus an "optional extra" - it's not just something allowed for fathers who want to opt out - it's now something mothers can use as well. They can say "Well, Daddy doesn't pay any child support, so why should he have other commensurate rights to seeing his child?"

Now with the current situation, we say "A child deserves to know his father - any relationship is better than none. A father is important." But with this new notion, exactly what are we going to say about fathers exactly? That they're not really necessary?

The problem with common law is that once you put these sorts of notions into it, it sets a precedent. You can't have half a dozen of one, half a dozen of the other. The father is either important, or he's not.

Misters could find themselves bitten on the arse by such a law in a variety of ways. Mother cuts them out of the child's life and they have no "right" to see their child without proving it with money backing them - or that when they file for custody in a divorce, they find that there is no imperative of a father's right to have contact with his child.

Not to mention that most times, the right to prove paternity rests with the notion that fathers have rights - so that's that out of the window. Bring in financial abortion, and you won't be able to shoehorn round the law with a paternity test. If you're only a father when we say you're a father, then you can't have a paternity test to prove your right to a child. That case where the Dad wanted his child back, who had been adopted? Yeah, no, new financial abortion laws shoot that in the foot.

** The emphasis on biological fathers: Not all fathers are biological, and step-Dads deserve kudos for opting into a child's life.

** Unnecessary stress on existing fathers - who have their own children to support as well as the new taxes. So what, fatherhood is now a rich man's game? WTF?

** You've now got to file with the state to prove you're the father. As in, they are not going to give the task to medical staff - you're going to have to file that paperwork and wait a couple of months for the state to acknowledge you. Which means that for the first couple of months of your baby's life, you have no say in what goes on with them unless the mother allows that. She wants him circumcised? Done without opposition. She doesn't want you as next of kin? Done. God forbid he has an operation? Good luck finding out his medical prognosis - that baby isn't yours and you don't get to know shit.

And of course, what happens if the state loses your paperwork (because we all know that happens) - suddenly, your wife died, and your kid isn't your kid any more. They can't find the fatherhood paperwork, so your kid is going into foster care. Or if she divorces you, she doesn't have to give you custody if she doesn't want you to have it.

** You're going to need to carry that paperwork around with you. Your kid enrols in school? You're going to have to show you're the Dad, or they won't let you have any information.

** If you die, and they can't find the fatherhood paperwork, all your stuff gets sold and your kid gets nothing. Men with children will have to pay extra money now to have a formal will drawn up - no longer will their heirs inherit things by default - they'll have to prove he formally acknowledged them.

  • this whole idea, just the damage it would inflict on children, in my mind's eye it's cruel and evil and I am in a state of shock that such a large population of people would put the father's need of keeping a full paycheck over the incredible damage that would be done to the child

  • Most MRAs seem to attack the current system on (what they consider) logical grounds and then propose LPS as the solution. So to deal with some of the objections....

It is not logically inconsistent to hold people responsible for starting a process they had no power to end. We do it all the time.

Child support is the right of the child, any argument about what the mother did to "not deserve" support is irrelevant.

Abortion does not stem from the right to abandonment. It stems from a right to bodily autonomy. Any attempt to create an analogous law for men will fail as its a false equivalency.

  • The biggest reason I hate their LPS arguments is because they create a false equivalency between abortion (termination of pregnancy, no kid to take care of) and legalized abandonment (kid is born, but now only has one parent to care for it).

Legalizing this would create a giant cesspool of poverty - even more so than now - where single mothers are trapped having to care for the child on their own, and the fathers can just go on living their lives as if nothing ever happened. No burden on men, HUGE additional burden on women.

Fuck that noise. MRAs are a deadbeat and abusers lobby, and im glad no one takes them seriously outside of Reddit.

  • I think there are three basic principles that make it impossible/unethical:

Everybody has the right to bodily autonomy.

Women have uteri

Both parents are responsible for the well-being of their child

"You know, I learned something today..."

LPS should be...

THIS. Every discussion in the future must be phrased towards what LPS will be like, not if it will be. Speak confidently and firmly about the way it should be when it happens. Bring every conversation and debate back to focus on how it will be composed and arranged to account for the complications and variables. Dismiss any notions or objections that try to paint it as impossible or implausible, and simply laugh off the people who think it is wrong.

When LPS is law, it should be gender neutral, available to both men and women equally, finally bringing an end to Planned Parenthood Apartheid.

When LPS is law, it should be phrased and constructed in a way sure not to leave any room to use it as a challenge to women's right to an abortion.

When LPS is law, it should recognize and uphold the biological parent's right to First Refusal, including some system of mandatory notification.

When LPS is law, it should not be seen as a moral failing for an adult to decide they are not ready to be a parent, even if the other person decides they are ready.

When LPS is law, it will not generate a "moral hazard" of irresponsible sex any more than the right to an abortion did, or the ability to adopt, or any more than firefighters cause people to become arsonists.

When LPS is law, it will codify the principle that merely having sexy does not constitute consent to parenthood, nor a defacto contract for financial obligation.

When LPS is law, it should function much like Adoption does now, allowing the unwilling parent to surrender both obligation and authority.

"When Legal Parental Surrender (LPS) is law, it should be..."

To the Tubbies lurking this thread: Speak up. Stand by your convictions and have the guts to argue your case without the abusive power of the BanHammer to silence your opposition. Unlike some other subs, your peaches will not be frozen here, because we can tolerate people who have different opinions. It's a very useful skill you would do well to acquire.