This is mostly a vent. I'm just pissed about it and I don't have anything more to offer besides pointing out the obvious double standard.

Why is it that when it comes to custody and decision making authority that women feel completely unabashedly entitled to take complete ownership and authority for the children they created WITH the father and call those kids "MY child"?

As in: "No you may not take MY child for the whole day on Christmas!"

Or: "I don't care if you got stuck in a traffic jam back from the lake, you're late bringing MY child back from your weekend visit, I was about to request a Megan's Law abduction alert!"

Then, when the mother isn't happy with either the amount or the timeliness of the child support or the willingness of the father to pay for extras on top of child support, it's all of a sudden "HIS child"... but only for financial reasons, not for any other reason...

She's happy to shame the father: "You really aren't going to buy your child soccer shoes?"

Telling friend: "My kid's sperm donor is too fuckin' cheap to buy his kid soccer shoes."

Telling judge: "This man refuses to financially support his children [beyond the exorbitant amount you mandated he pay in child support, your honor], and this is why I'm requesting a modification to the custodial arrangement since this man refuses to take paternal responsibility for his child!"

For what it's worth, I've heard my own sister speak this way about her and her ex husband's child - calling the kid HER child when her ex bucked up to her and stood up for his custodial rights, and calling the kid HIS child when he was laid off and could barely afford to make his child support payments and so, had to stop paying for the extra stuff that he usually paid.

I've heard a dozen other women speak this way as well, and there are LITERALLY countless examples of this in popular culture in television programming and so forth... this is the accepted societal norm.

I don't know which came first in the issue - whether family court delivered the entitlement to women, or women got family courts to recognize their entitlement, but the truth is that this horseshit is not only accepted, but put forward as the de facto standard position by the courts, and this is reflected culturally.

Anyway... /rant off!