Often addended with "and win custody more often in court"

Its a retort I've heard multiple times when you point out that women get custody more often.

I want to outline 3 rebuttals to that:

1) the causality can run both ways. If men are less likely to win custody, then they're less likely to want to fight an expensive legal battle for a likely failure. Moreover, they won't take a custody battle to court unless they have a bullet proof case

2) it's a fact that more women are stay at home parents. Courts often favor custody for stay at home parents because it "preserves the status quo" which is said to be in the best interests of the children. Perhaps this is true, but it stands in stark contrast that men "don't want their children" and highlights that while this may be in the best interests of the children, it's certainly unjust for the father. When you work your ass off to let your wife stay at home, you're reward is losing access to your children. The right response would be for men to have equal opportunities to be state at home parents but good luck with that.

3) TL;DR - the state uses bad math and makes men pay 10's of thousands of child support in a way that is inequitable. The problem disappears if the man gives up all their custody.

incoming long math rant: How child support is calculated varies dramatically state by state. I'm obviously most familiar with my own, but it incentivizes the payee of child support (which even in 50/50 will most often be the man) to avoid custody as much as possible. The "customary" method of calculating child support with 50/50 in my state is to calculate roughly how much each parent would pay monthly towards the child normally and then subtract the lesser amount from the greater amount. "Dad would normally spend 900 from his paycheck, mom would spend 400 from hers, therefore dad should send mom $500"

That's basically the starting point and then a judge might conclude more or less depending on the exact amount of time. But the math is just bad here. It means that dad ends up with 900-400=500 to spend for the half of the time the kid is with him. It means mom has 500+400=900 for the half of the time she spends with him. According to the state, the kid costs 1300 a month or 650 every 2 weeks. Dad is in the hole $150 because he has $500 to cover $650 of expenses, mom is turning a profit of $250 because she has $900 to cover $650 worth of expenses.

But if dad just gave up all custody, he would pay mom $900 and have $0 in expenses. If dad wants 50/50 custody, he pays $650 in expenses and $400 in child support. Dad is losing $150 a month (32.4k over 18 years) because he sought custody.

I got 50/50. I'm overpaying my ex wife because of this. Compared to giving up all custody I am losing $34,000. The state is making me pay $34,000 because I didn't abandon my son to his mother. 34,000 is a lot of fucking money. I can't imagine if I had 3 kids.