The Virtue of Selfishness And Children

Lee wrote:

A woman becomes pregnant. The father can - literally - walk away and there's nothing inherent in reality will make him deal with it. He can get a woman pregnant, and not even know about it.

Check your language here: "He can get a woman pregnant." First of all, he did not "do" anything to her. He did not "get" her pregnant. They did it together. Make sure you share the responsibility for this action.

At most, the law should compel an unwilling father to finance one half the cost of an abortion.

To assert that he can have no say over how she uses her body (for having a child), then in the same breath to say that she should have a say in how he uses his body (to support that child into adulthood), amounts to a looting victim mentality and blatant gender discrimination.

To retain this attitude irreparably damages your credibility as an advocate of rational egoism and liberty.

The Dad's Rights movement [...] was created by men who don't want to pay child support.

For good reason -- they do not want to pay for benefits they do not enjoy.

Many women seek child support, not for the child, but for themselves. A coworker informed me of such a situation in which the woman sought judgment in a paternity suit against a friend of his who made good money. The judge ruled against her when the man in question produced medical records proving his vasectomy and sterility at the time of the impregnation. Two weeks later, she married the real father, a man who did not make the kind of money she had sought from the defendant.

That men have decided to stand up to this nonsense pleases me. I have no moral issue with men who seek to share custody and authority rather than just pay child support responsibility without any commensurate moral authority.

As I suspected, my arguments fail to convince you. Hopefully, they will at least benefit other readers of this message board.

(Edited by Luther Setzer on 3/04, 9:31am)

Post 21

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 9:29am

Do I have your position correctly - that unless someone beleives as you do - that at MOST, the law should require a man to pay for half an abortion - that they can't be an advocate of rational egoism or liberty? That's your litmus test, and all that's need to prove someone is opposed to liberty?

By the way your argument that she's 'using his body' by wanting him to support their child is specious. Does anyone need to spport chilkdren? Can we dump them in dumpster at birth -?

Post 22

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 9:32am

Luke, good man, you saved me a lot of typing.

In Lee's scenario, "the child" is non-existent. It is not in the picture yet. So I don't even think it is a issue of parenting. All I hear is the girl saying "that's what I want!". Is that a sufficient reason for anybody to have a child???!!!

So, Lee, you suggest that Frisco (or tax payers in case she has to be on welfare) must submit to her solely because "that's what she always wants it"??!! Geez.

Post 23

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 9:34am

Lee wrote:

By the way, your argument that she's "using his body" by wanting him to support their child is specious. Does anyone need to support children? Can we dump them in a dumpster at birth?

Of course not. A person can responsibly put a child up for adoption. It happens all the time.

My argument about using his body remains valid. Objectivism views the human being as an integration of spirit, emotions, mind and body. To compel him to move his body in a way against his values, e.g. the other parts of his human being, for an unchosen obligation amounts to slavery.

Post 24

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 9:39am

Hong - She's not saying that's what she wants. It was an accident, but now that there's a pregnancy she doesn't want to have an abortion. She thinks she'd be a good parent.

And Luther - I'm sorry I typed anything more, because I am really curious - is this a litmus text for being pro-liberty, as far as you're concerned?

Post 25

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 9:41am

Lee,

If I donate (sell?) my sperm to a sperm bank and a woman later uses their services and becomes pregnant, do you think that I should be required to support the child?

Thanks,
Glenn

Post 26

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 9:46am

Glenn,

No, I don't. Totally different situation, where someone is making a full conscious decision to get pregnant and knows that support isn't part of what they are buying. And the person supplying the sperm knows that support isn't part of what they are offering to supply. This is all explicit, contractual, and in writing - no assumptions otherwise. It's very clear cut to me and very different from my made up story.

Post 27

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 9:52am

Lee asked:

I'm sorry I typed anything more, because I am really curious -- is this a litmus text for being pro-liberty, as far as you're concerned?

I prefer to call it a "bullshit detector" rather than a "litmus test". I think your arguments amount to attempts to justify existing laws and moral codes rather than to examine their underpinnings to see if they truly match the Objectivist ethic of rational egoism. I can call bullshit on most statements in the culture at large and quite a few statements in the SOLO Forum based on this "detector" methodology.

Perhaps I need to qualify my statement by just saying that I find your logic flawed on this matter -- without smearing your other views as anti-liberty, since I do not know them. However, your view on this matter would certainly make me suspicious of your other views before I even read them. To attempt to hold a man responsible in this unchosen fashion begs the question: For what else would Lee hold a man responsible in an unchosen fashion?

Post 28

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 10:00am

Interesting figures from here:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,59963,00.html

"The percentage of "deadbeat" moms is actually higher than that of dads who won't pay, even though mothers are more consistently awarded custody of children by the courts.

Census figures show only 57 percent of moms required to pay child support -- 385,000 women out of a total of 674,000 -- give up some or all of the money they owe. That leaves some 289,000 "deadbeat" mothers out there, a fact that has barely been reported in the media.

That compares with 68 percent of dads who pay up, according to the figures. "

Post 29

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 10:15am

John,

That's why we use the term generically 'deadbeat parents' on our deadbeatdoug.com site - unless the person in question is a man, of course. Child support is a gender neautral issue.

Luther,

I thought I said, way back in the thread admittedly, that I think children are a special case in terms of ethical reponsibility. That's not to say I'm totally 'free market' in my political thinking at this point, but that is a seperate issue than the ethical one.

Post 30

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 10:16am

I find it interesting that Clarence comes down so hard on deadbeat, absent Dads�because he is black and the phenomenon affects a huge portion of the black community compared to white (some say it is partially causative of that communities� vast relative disadvantage.)

Fathers should be held responsible, so I agree with Clarence.

Here are my reasons:
The father is not an �innocent� in the creation of a new life. Luke keeps pounding that fatherhood is �unchosen� in this case. But sleeping with the woman WAS chosen. If he slept with her knowing little or nothing about her, which seems to be the case here, then he was irresponsible and bad choices have consequences.

Someone is going to have to raise the child. The mother chose to have it, so obviously she�s responsible for raising it. The issue, especially in the black community, is what to do about the millions of children born to mothers incapable of proper care and what to do about the fathers who do this over and over again. Welfare has been the answer in the past and we can all agree that that is taxpayer theft. Charity can come in. For purposes of justifying holding him responsible, I don�t care if the taxpayers are saddled with the cost, or charity-givers, or whoever�the fact remains that those men having sex with women and girls they do not know the intentions of, are flooding the earth with children they want nothing to do with and thereby creating burdens for the rest of us. How dare he claim to be as unresponsible for the baby as I am? It�s absurd.

Figure out whom it is you are screwing and I will consider having pity on you that the law puts the consequences on your shoulders.

Jon

Post 31

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 10:28am

Jon wrote:

The mother chose to have it, so obviously she�s responsible for raising it.

She can also choose to put it up for adoption. She can also choose not to have sex. She can also have chosen to have an abortion. Same old song, same old excuses -- they change nothing. If she has these options, then so should he.

Post 32

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 10:32am

*Sigh*

The mother chose to have it, so obviously she�s responsible for raising it.

I can never understand why somebody want to have children when they are clearly incapable of raising them. It is completely irrational. The result of welfare state?

Post 33

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 10:40am

Hong,

The result of the welfare state, sure. And sometimes immaturity, or sudden disability. Lots of things can make her incapable.

My point in all of this is that I know that I am not by any stretch responsible for the care. And I deeply object to the scumbag who fathered the baby saying, �ditto.�

Jon

Post 34

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 10:45am

While I agree that in most situations* a father morally ought to take responsibility for an unwanted child, even if only to pay for an abortion, and have no hesitation in expressing utter contempt for deadbeat fathers, I fail to see how government action to enforce it legally can be justified on Objectivist grounds. An Objectivist government can do little other than enforce negative rights. Forcing a father to have anything to do with a child he doesn't want certainly means granting the child or the mother some positive "right" to the father's help.

Under Objectivist principles, women have the individual right to control their own body, including the right to abort an unwanted fetus. In that context, women must take responsibility for their bodies also, including the responsibility of dealing with unwanted pregnancy.

MH

* One exception that springs immediately to mind is if the mother falsely told the father that she was using a contraceptive pill or whatever.

Post 35

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 10:45am

Jon exclaimed:

I deeply object to the scumbag who fathered the baby saying, �ditto.�

It remains his moral right whether you like it or not.

Post 36

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 10:45am

I think a big issue in the black community is also the dispportionate number of black people currently in jail on drug offenses. The stats comparing drug use among blacks and whites show that while both groups use drugs about the same amount, it's not even close about who goes to jail. This situation has really decimated a lot of black families, and it really seems like goverment sanctioned racism.

Post 37

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 10:58am

Lee: Suppose the bachelor told the woman up front that he did not want a child, and expected her to get an abortion if she became pregnant, and that was the condition on which he would date her. She reneges on the deal. What then? Would you still say he has a responsibility to her and the child?

Post 38

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 11:02am

To my question as to whether a sperm donor should be responsible for helping to raise the child that results from his sperm, Lee answered:

No, I don't. Totally different situation, where someone is making a full conscious decision to get pregnant and knows that support isn't part of what they are buying. And the person supplying the sperm knows that support isn't part of what they are offering to supply. This is all explicit, contractual, and in writing - no assumptions otherwise. It's very clear cut to me and very different from my made up story.

It only seems to be a different situation because you are mixing up aspects of the legal and the moral and your arguments are a moving target. Let's take what I took to be one of your main arguments. You said:

The kid definately do anything wrong except be born, and should not suffer because you decided something was more important than being involved as a parent. It was okay to have those values pre-baby; post-baby, a paradigm shift is required.

Why are the two situations any different from the kid's point of view? Why isn't there a 'paradigm shift' in the sperm donor case also?

But, a more important point to me is: once the woman finds out she's pregnant and informs the father, then the situation is no different from the sperm donor example. She now knows that if she has the child, no support will be forthcoming. If she decides to go ahead and have the baby, she is in exactly the same moral situation as she would have been if she had used a sperm bank.

Thanks,
Glenn

Post 39

Friday, March 4, 2005 - 11:08am