Check out this unbelievable article from the UK Spectator that ECM sent me. It’s written by a feminist. She is complaining about paternity tests. She thinks that women should be able to sleep with a lot of men and then arbitrarily name the richest one as the father to get the highest child support payments, and no fancy DNA test should be able to contradict her.  Oh, and it goes without saying that women should not be punished for committing paternity fraud. That would be mean.

Excerpt:

The subject has resurfaced lately, courtesy of a story in the Daily Mail, about a married television presenter who for years had been paying for the support of a child conceived, as he thought, as a result of his relationship with a writer. It seems that after meeting the child for the first time, he asked for a DNA test; it duly turned out that he was not, after all, the father. Poor child.

[…]Now I can see that some men might rather welcome an end to the old-fashioned scenario whereby they find themselves held to account for the paternity of children born to girls with whom they just happen to have had sex. The actor Jude Law recently found himself in just this position, and unhesitatingly and ungallantly demanded a DNA test.

By contrast, the old situation, in which women presented men with a child, and the man either did the decent thing and offered support, or made a run for it, allowed women a certain leeway. The courtesan in Balzac who, on becoming pregnant, unhesitatingly sought, and got, maintenance from two of her men friends, can’t have been the only one. Uncertainty allows mothers to select for their children the father who would be best for them.

The point is that paternity was ambiguous and it was effectively up to the mother to name her child’s father, or not. (That eminently sensible Jewish custom, whereby Jewishness is passed through the mother, was based on the fact that we only really knew who our mothers are.) Many men have, of course, ended up raising children who were not genetically their own, but really, does it matter?

Hmmmn. I wonder how anyone could even prove that the woman actually slept with her victim? Maybe a woman can just pick out a man arbitrarily on the street, based on his nice suit or fancy car, and name him as the (involuntary) sperm-donor. He wouldn’t have any parental rights or authority, you understand.

Anyway, this shouldn’t affect me. I’m chaste. But maybe I could still be forced to pay single mothers that I haven’t even slept with just because I can afford to? Oh wait – that already happens. It’s called progressive taxation. Oh well. It’s not like I needed the money I earn for my own future wife and children…

Save us, Barbara Kay!

Here’s another article about child support from Barbara Kay about the child support bureaucracy in Ontario, Canada.

Excerpt:

Ontario’s Family Responsibility Office, which is responsible for ensuring that custodial parents don’t get stiffed for child support payments by the non-custodial parent, has a lot of power.

Starting Dec. 1, someone (read “father”) in arrears on their support payments can have their car impounded. That’s about the stupidest punishment for non-payment one can imagine, since most people need their cars in order to work.

[…]If you’re going for irrational responses to non-payment, why not just throw the guy in jail –– but oh wait, they already do that. They throw guys in jail for non-support all the time, and when they do, the guys serve the whole 30, 60 or 90-day sentence (the term keeps lengthening), even though cocaine dealers routinely get out of jail after serving half their time.

[…]Let’s look at the bigger picture, though. What is the guy paying child support for? Yeah yeah, to support his children. But that means they are, you know, sort of hischildren, right? Not necessarily. The custodial parent, almost always the ex-wife, although supposed to grant agreed-upon access rights to the children’s father, can arbitrarily decide she doesn’t want to allow access, and for any old reason — oh sorry, little Jimmy has a play date, oh sorry little Emma has too much homework, oh sorry, I just don’t want to — can deny the father access. And does she pay for that? No. Oh, she might get a scolding from the judge, but there is no downside for her. No custodial mom has ever spent a night in jail or had her licence suspended for refusing her children’s father legal access to them.

There’s more in the article. Sigh. At least Barbara Kay likes men enough to speak out to defend us. Sometimes I think that women who care that men are treated fairly are the only ones who should be able to get married. If only men weren’t so stupid that they judge women solely based on appearance. I guess we’ll have to learn the hard way!