Marriage, Fatherhood And Why I Have Avoided Both

There has been a systematic deconstruction of the importance of fathers and fatherhood during my lifetime. It was deliberate and has many broad, long lasting and downright scary implications. Along with this deconstruction comes a particular phenomenon that, when I am confronted with it, both alarms and bewilders me at the same time. This phenomenon is that of the single mother by choice.

I had an experience recently with one of these women who want to become mothers yet seem pathologically indifferent to the idea that there is another parent that may have actual human feelings about the matter. I was at a holiday season party with a friend and struck up a conversation with a younger woman I had met about six months prior during a party hosted at the same house. I was happy to see her because I knew she was pregnant but was a little puzzled because she did not appear to be pregnant now and I knew that she was early on the last time we spoke.

Hesitantly, I asked if she had given birth as anything could have happened and didn’t want to bring up something unpleasant. As it turned out I had committed what could quite possibly be the worst faux pas that anyone could make in casual conversation. She lost the baby at five months.

“Oh my God I am so sorry” I said “Please forgive me for bringing it up.” “Are you OK?”
“Oh please don’t be sorry it’s ok to ask and yes I am fine.” “But it was a harrowing experience.” She said.

Losing a baby at five months is an extremely dangerous situation to be in. Once the child is that big and you lose it (in this case it was a blood clot that was brought on by a bad case of the flu) it becomes septic very quickly and mortality rates when this occurs are high. “They told me that I might not make it and even if I did I may never get the chance to have a child again.” She said. I looked at her with genuine sympathy and relief and told her that I was glad that she was all right and she should try to get pregnant again. Of course I wished her luck too.

Trying to avoid any further embarrassment I looked to see if she had a wedding ring on and after seeing that she didn’t I asked, very cloddishly this time, “How did your boyfriend take the loss of the child? Is he ready to try again as well?”
She looked at me and without much more than a wince she said “No, I don’t have a boyfriend.”
Even more embarrassed at this point I said: “Oh I guess situations like that are hard on relationships.”
To which she responded: “No there never was a ‘boyfriend’ I just got pregnant and decided to have the baby.”
Now feeling like a complete imbecile: “Oh….. that’s great…..I really respect that. I am sure that the guy was torn up about it though.”

“He didn’t even know that I was pregnant.” She said, again without a wince.

Now, tossing modesty to the wind, I asked: “Was this someone you just lost contact with, you must not have known how to get in touch with him. That happens in life I suppose.”

“No, I knew how to get in touch with him” She answered incredibly. “I would have needed to do so after the baby was born of course for child support, but I just didn’t let him know. I didn’t need the drama. It’s all right though I will try again soon. I want to be a mother so bad!” She concluded with a gleeful smile.

Needless to say I was flabbergasted. Not knowing what to say before I distanced myself from her I simply exclaimed rather insincerely: “Well good luck with all that!” To which she said with still more clueless glee and without a hint of awkwardness: “Thank you so much I am very excited to try again.” After which I set a vector for the other side of the crowd and proceeded to move as fast as was socially acceptable.

For the next ten minutes I tried to comprehend what I had just been privy too. Here was a young woman of about twenty five, nubile, happy and not too dumb, who wanted to have a baby. Ok, normal enough but she didn’t seem to have any interest in developing a relationship with a man who might be an active father in the child’s life. Ok again, lots of women feel that way, it’s none of my business right? But why not just go to a sperm bank? But of course! You can’t collect child support from a sperm donor! At least not yet.

I thought of this poor guy who didn’t even know he had started a pregnancy with someone. He was left in the dark while this woman proceeded to make plans for the rest of her life, the life of his child and his own life without his input. I would like to think that he would have wanted to know how his unborn child was doing and also prepare for the massive change that was about to overcome his future, and perhaps find joy in the fact that he was about to become a father. Then again, he was spared the agony of losing an unborn; something he certainly had a right to know as well I would think. Obviously she did not.

She literally and unabashedly thought of his contribution to the whole affair was first as a sperm donor, and then after the baby was born, an ATM machine for the next eighteen-plus years. I could not believe that what we had just conversed about was spoken openly, in mixed company and with no shame whatsoever. I remember somewhat of a creepy crawly feeling coming over me and I went to the dry bar and made myself a very strong Gimlet. After the second one the feeling finally went away.

The strange thing is that this girl isn’t necessarily a bad person. And, funny enough, you could arguably say she isn’t totally irresponsible either. How is that you might ask? Well, the law makes it possible for her to do this and still be assured that there will be support for her and her child. This effectively negates the need for a father. Along with that negation are any “sperm donor’s” right to be an active part in his child’s life and the fleecing of a goodly part of his income for the next eighteen years which is going to a person who has absolutely no accountability to him or need respect his wishes in any way, or his choice in even becoming a parent to begin with.

Is it any wonder why so many men are shying away from fatherhood these days? Is it any wonder that men are shying away from marriage as I have in order to avoid a situation where there is a 50% likelihood five years after the wedding date that you may end up as just another sperm donor turned ATM machine?

The fact is that there are women like this everywhere and their numbers are growing. It isn’t that they are evil and intentionally want to mar society with single parent homes and all of the high social costs associated with them. It is simply because society enables them to do so. They simply don’t care. And why should they? To them, men have become objects when it comes to reproduction and nothing else. And, there are some who say that we are all better off that way. Are we?

One thing is for certain: it is not better for men. And for all the heated arguments pertaining to the effect that it has on children another thing is for certain: the norm is quickly becoming one in which a child can no longer expect to have a significant male presence in their life at all while they are growing up. Think about it. Very soon the average child will have no male parental figure in their life and no significant adult male figure in their life until they get their first job. By no means was my father perfect, but I can’t imagine how my family life, or my subsequent employment life would have turned out had he not been there while I was growing up.

I have a difficult time with the complaints feminists have of “the constraints of traditional gender roles” placed upon men and women by the so called “Patriarchy.” As the story goes the “Patriarchy” decided that they had to keep women down because if they didn’t then women, being far superior to men, would eventually eclipse them in influence and power. So in order to do this they, the Patriarchy, created roles for each gender.

The male role was one of privilege, being the one who left home and made his way in the world and the female role was one of subjugation, that of underappreciated and often abused home maker and mother. She was not allowed to leave the home and get an education in order to gain awareness so she herself might make her own money; money being the ultimate symbol of power and domination. The Patriarchy, and men in general, are scared to death of this thought and that is why they continue to keep women down in the workplace and also why men in general are “intimidated” by successful women today.

But, as the story goes on, the Patriarchy, being made up of the bumbling idiots that all men are, shot themselves in the foot. They had stupidly created for themselves a paradigm in which men have limited gender roles as well. Men were now required to be the providers and protectors and as such they began to suffer too at the hands of the almighty and oppressive Patriarchy. So the only answer was to destroy the social system that made the “traditional family” possible.

This deconstruction of the family was of course not aimed at deconstructing the importance of motherhood. Mothers, being women, are far superior and supporting them at the collective expense of society is crucial for the future of humanity. Fathers on the other hand are men after all and don’t carry the baby for nine months. Furthermore, as the narrative continues, they are just men, and as such, do little more than sport a warbling sack filled with genetic goo between their legs that during copulation is inserted into the woman in an offensive manner by the use of something called a penis which is affixed to the top of this sack, the only useful part of a man’s body.

There was still one problem with this deconstruction of the Patriarchy though, the fact that women need someone to provide for them while they are gestating, breastfeeding, and weaning their children into adulthood. What was there to do about this huge problem?

Well, men need sex right? In fact they will do anything for it and they are so stupid that they are easily manipulated by those who control it. So we will just make them pay for it in the form of a “fine” called Mandatory Child Support. Since men can’t control themselves it will be easy to sucker them into an arrangement like this and if they will not or even cannot pay we will have their drivers license revoked, get their passport privileges taken away, revoke their business license, and if all else fails, throw them in jail. And just to make sure that other men who won’t or can’t pay their “fine” get the picture we will post the offender’s names and faces on a pizza boxes so they can never be too comfortable while watching their beloved Football and guzzling beer.

That is a fair trade as far as men are concerned right? Easy sex and a child that they get to play with one day out of fourteen for about four hours or so, only if the mother wishes of course, in exchange for eighteen years of monthly installments the amount of which he does not get to decide on or even negotiate. There we go! Problem solved.

The above narrative may seem funny and surreal, like some kind of Orwellian satire, but make no mistake; it is this world view that has driven the development of family and divorce law for the past forty years. U.S. Court and Legislative decisions have been rigorously pushed through regarding child custody, child support, and domestic violence that make the civil and private environment for husbands and fathers hostile. Mothers are almost guaranteed custody of their children in the event of a divorce. The father need not be a presence in the child’s life in order to be placed under child support obligations, and thanks to the Violence Against Women Act a man can be forced out of his home for even so much as perceived slight, giving any woman, battered or not, a means to eject the father from his home and his children’s lives.

People will try to soften it up a bit by making conciliatory remarks from time to time like paying lip service to enforcing visitation rights and occasionally granting primary custody to a father only after the mother turns out to be so worthless there is absolutely no other alternative. Regardless, these are essentially the limitations facing men when it comes to reproduction. If married, a woman can file for divorce at any time and the father will still be expected to maintain her and the children at roughly the same capacity as he did while he was married. What if he loses his job, wants to change careers or for any of a plethora of reasons or simply becomes less than able to pay? No matter, he is still required to pay child support or he may face jail time.

When a man is in a stable marriage and falls upon hard economic times he can work it out with his wife and family. In the event of a job or career loss he can approach them and say “I am sorry kids I will not be able to get you new clothes for another month or two.” Or in the case that he may want to change his career thus allowing him to spend more quality time with his family he can approach them and say: “hey everybody, I have decided to pursue my dream of becoming a high school teacher so that means you kids won’t be getting brand new cars on your sixteenth birthday. But I will also get to spend lots of time with you in the summer.”

No one would deny that every human being has a right to deal with a crisis or make choices as they see fit for themselves and their families. Yet somehow, when men become non-custodial fathers they cease to become human beings.

The non-custodial father is essentially a wage slave. He does not have the luxury of being able to fall upon hardships and rebound in a new form with the same ease as a man who is not a father. He does not have the right to choose his path of employment with the freedom that others do. The amount of child support a non-custodial father must pay is calculated according to his Imputed Income. In other words, it doesn’t matter what kind of job you have, what kind of job you want or whether or not you even have a job, you must pay the amount that they say you are worth.

If you have a degree in electrical engineering yet make your living by doing something you love like playing Jazz Guitar, tough luck buddy, you got to go back to designing high pass filter circuits for Spacely Solid State Inc. even if you do hate the pencil necks that work there and were contemplating suicide before you finally quit after you paid off your student loans.

Despite what many would tell you, divorced and never married mothers have far more social and economic support available to them than the average man of any marital or parental status. If divorced they can go on and start another family with ease, not having to worry about the loss of child support. However when a divorced man starts another family he does so with an existing burden, limiting him severely in many cases. I am heartbroken when I hear stories of spiteful ex wives who, upon hearing that their ex husbands are planning to have another child with the new wife, petition the court for more child support and get it due to financial incentives courts have to raise child support payments.

Education is another glaring example of disparity when it comes to these two groups of people. A single mother can walk into the financial aid office of any university or college and there is someone there specifically to help her. Available for the single mother are copious amounts of grant money which a specialist (and yes, there are specialists who make their living doing just this for single mothers) can mine for her according to her specific circumstance. She will have access to a daycare facility and perhaps some transportation. Her scholastic performance and over all well being will be closely tracked by the institution as many federal and state moneys provided to the school are contingent on the amount of single mothers getting an education in the system.

I used to work in Higher Education and I can tell you for sure that demographics drive the money supply for Public-Post-Secondary education administration and all of the inflated salaries that go along with it.  And the one golden demographic that attracts the most money are single mothers with dependent children. I could almost hear all of those enrolment specialists hop to their feet as I read the headline: “Obama Says Single Mothers Should Go Back to School.” Is there any educational assistance for single custodial fathers or non-custodial fathers with dependent children? No. Do they need the assistance? Yes. Do they deserve it? Well, according to the people dolling out the money, apparently not.

Then there is the appalling way that we treat single custodial fathers who need social services. One of the worst stories that I ever heard was that of a  a single father who had lost his job, and being poor to begin with, lost the roof over his head and went with his daughter to a homeless shelter to seek help. Like any responsible father he decided to inquire about the possibility of getting some assistance for his daughter in the form of funds for a school uniform. He was determined not to let the current yet temporary state of affairs interrupt the education that his child was getting at a good school where the uniforms were required.

What happened to him and his daughter? They were separated, she was subsequently placed in a foster home and he has not seen her since. The rational quoted by the case workers at the shelter was “we can’t let a child remain in the care of a man in that condition.”

Contrast this with the treatment that single mothers get at homeless shelters. Case workers will bend over backwards to ensure that drug addicted women do not get separated from their children in the process of assisting them through a tough time in the name of preserving the ”sacred bond between mother and child.”  I wonder what they feed the men who make up 80% of the population at homeless shelters; the scraps from the women’s table perhaps? I am afraid to find out. One thing is for sure, if you are a single custodial father you are in many instances considered no more of a human being than a non-custodial father.

In the fantastic Patriarchy described above “rigid gender roles” are enforced by societal attitudes and taboos. Yet in today’s society the male gender role of provider is enforced at gunpoint. This wouldn’t be so bad if as a man you had the same decision power in becoming a parent as women do, which you do not. The argument for abortion in Roe v. Wade clearly articulates that the state should not have a right to impose parenthood on a woman because it is an intimate invasion of the state into her life. I hear feminists cry all the time: “KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF OF MY BODY!” Yet as I write this there are roughly 100,000 “bodies” in jail for not being the parent that the state thinks they should be. The only difference is that they are male.

Think of the characteristics of fathers in jail for not paying child support: below average intelligence, below average wage earners, below average educational attainment, the list goes on. No one believing in the “right to choose” would deny that if a woman isn’t ready to bear the responsibility of being a parent she should have the right to choose whether or not to be one. Yet here these poor guys are in jail rotting away not doing anybody, including their children, any good. Where was their choice when they needed it?

Furthermore, a single mother can abandon her newborn baby by dropping it off at the nearest emergency room or fire station and no one will say anything. She can give the baby up for adoption and no one will criticize her for being a bad mother.  When was the last time you heard of a teenage girl who threw her newborn into a dumpster being portrayed in the media as being anything other than a “victim of circumstance” or having to pay any consequences?

And what of the over 50,000,000 abortions performed since Roe v. Wade? How many men were involved in those “choices?” That’s a whole lot of people to look at and say: “no, your feelings don’t matter, you are going to accept this decision made for you by someone else whether you like it or not.” That is one hell of an imposition isn’t it? But men don’t have the same feelings towards unborn children that women do so it doesn’t matter……right?

What’s more, if you are man like me who has decided to avoid marriage you are derided and called “irresponsible” or as suffering from “Peter Pan Syndrome.” All labels used to shame and cajole you into a gender role regardless of your analysis of that role and the risks, both financial and emotional, imposed upon you by the law should you assume it. Women and mothers are given choices that have a direct and profound bearing on the lives of the men they are married to and/or have children with, ultimately leaving these men with a marked diminishment of control over the lives of them and their children. Is it all that irresponsible and selfish to want to avoid such a contract? I think not.

Ahh well, here I am at the age of 38 never married and damn glad never to have done so. The risk of a horrific outcome is avoided. Some reading this may ask “is this guy serious, does he really think he can be happy without a wife and children?” Wife and children? Are you kidding? There is no such thing as a wife any more. A so called “wife” is really nothing other than a serious liability for your emotional and financial well being.

It is just too risky to get married with an overall divorce rate of 50%, with women initiating between 70% and 90% of them depending on whether or not you live in a state that has no fault divorce laws, in which case it is the later statistic of 90%. Children? Would you really have a kid if you knew there was this kind of likelihood they would be ripped out of your life and used as a proboscis to suck your wallet dry? I don’t think so, but incredibly men get married all the time.

I like my lifestyle as a single man. I like not having a car and riding my bicycle to work and play even though I risk injury. I like going to the bar and reveling it up with all of my other single guy friends. It used to be that being the aging single guy at the bar carried somewhat of a stigma. Not for me. I like doing what I decide for a living and not having someone else tell me what I should do or how much money I should make. A twenty thousand dollar wedding and the likelihood of a divorce that will cost me many times more for the rest of my lifetime with an estranged kid? No.

I think I am going to buy a second bicycle.  Perhaps I will buy a used Reighley frame with a single speed drive train that I can put some kick ass wheels on.  As I ride my bike I will be wearing my favorite biking attire: full length weather proof tights under a pair of cut off pants, not unlike that of Peter Pan. Until someone gives me a better option, that is exactly what I can be expected to do.

Tags: Child Support & Custody, divorce, Fatherhood, marriage, single mothers