Over on men’s rights hate site A Voice for Men, Attila Vinczer has found the true villain in the case of Walter Scott, the black man shot in the back after he ran from a white cop: Don’t blame the cop for shooting and killing a man who was no danger to him whatsoever; blame the ex-wife who simply wanted Scott to pay the child support he owed:
Another AVFM commenter seconded Vinczer’s, er, interpretation of events.
As did someone called TLC:
Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, the regulars, to their credit, were a bit more reluctant to see this as a Men’s Rights issue rather than a “white cop shooting black man despite being in no danger at all” issue. Well, some of them were, in any case. The others posted comments like this:
Dungone decided to spread the blame to evil feminists eager to cash in on sweet, sweet child support payments.
InBaggingArea offered the most succinct explanation:
It’s true that Scott owed child support. He had four children with two ex-wives and apparently owed thousands of dollars in child support for his two younger children; his family says this is the likely reason he ran, though we can’t be sure. Despite being behind on his payments, he was reportedly on good terms with his children, and saw them regularly.
Scott’s funeral was held today.
H/T — r/againstmensrights
It strikes me that in a US where both parents can earn a living wage on their own, where there is a strong social safety net and far fewer parents imprisoned for being born poor and/or black this conversation would be very different and Mr. Scott’s kids would still have a dad.
…unless our racist, blood thirsty police found another excuse to execute him.
Bill Price,
Monthly child support averaged $430 a month in the US as of 2012. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/children/cb12-109.html
That’s not even enough to cover daycare costs. I can guarantee that custodial parents spend a lot more than that every month. Do you have a better source than the federal government that proves fathers are all oppressed and being forced to pay unreasonable amounts?
Seriously, Bill, do you have any links or citations to back up what you’re asserting? I really want to see them.
Well, this thread is certainly infested with trolls. What is it about “the cop who murdered Walter Scott is the person who is guilty of murdering Walter Scott” that brought these guys out of the woodwork? They really want to blame a woman. They really want to blame an unarmed black man for being shot in the back. Anyone but the white man who pulled the trigger.
This bit by Price is funny, though:
That’s because the custodial parent is already using their child support to, y’know, financially support the child/ren in their custody.
I’m just going to sit back and marvel at the stupid in this comment.
The custodial parent is already paying child support by supporting the child and having them live in their house. Of course they’re spending money on the kid. FFS.
The custodial parent is paying rent and utility bills to make the house livable for them and the child, they’re also buying the child clothes and food and making sure they get to school and what have you.
Let’s take into account your hypothetical figures: if the non-custodial parent has to pay only $800 per month, that isn’t going to cover much if the custodial parent needs things day care or after-school activities to give their child a better life and something to do while the custodial parent is at work.
So, where does the difference come from? The custodial parent’s pocket! Yay!
It’s a bit head scratching how Price always blames feminism for flaws in the legal system, especially those that penalize the poor.
“Walter Scott’s ex-wife/wives may not be personally responsible” for a cop murdering him? That’s big of you Price.
I had earlier posts, based in part on a Huff Po article, about how the child support enforcement in SC is broken and criminalizes the poor, despite me being a feminist and Huff Po being part of the gynocentric MSM. It’s almost as if we don’t hate fathers.
Of course you don’t hate mothers, you just blame the actions on of murderous police officer on them, because “politicized feminism” ruins everything.
Blame conservatives who refuse to spend money on any programs that could take some of the burden off poor parents.
Alrighty then. First, a note; you are moving the goalposts. You claimed that the only model for child support calculations was a percentage of the non-custodial parent’s income without any consideration for the custodial parent’s. I showed this claim to be false.
The reason you brought this up was because of this hypothetical:
You then switch tactics and say that even if the laws do take into account the custodial parent’s income, it doesn’t have any affect on the total amount due.
Well, let’s do some calculations first, just for the hell of it. I’ve got a site that lets you calculate an estimate for child support due based on individual state laws. Let’s plug in some numbers! Let’s use your example of 80k a year custodial parent and 1/3 of that for the non-custodial. Since the calculators are using monthly values, let’s use some very rough approximations: 6k for the custodial, 2k for the noncustodial. 2 children, since you mentioned that as an example as well.
For other fields, let’s assume no previous marriages, and something stupid like 100$ a month each for health insurance and daycare by the custodial parent. If it asks about child ages, let’s say the eldest is 7-12. As for any overnights or visitation policies, let’s go with 0 if it asks.
Alabama: which uses the Income Shares model. 448$
Arizona: which uses the Income Shares model. 398$
Colorodo: which uses the Income Shares model. 418$
DC: which uses the Obligor’s Percentage. 323$
Nevada: which uses the Obligor’s Percentage. 500$
New York: which uses the Obligor’s Percentage: Total child support: 505$ (no taxes withheld)
So, basically, it varies a ton. If you put in smart values for net vs gross incomes (I tried to stick to ones that asked for gross only), you’d probably be able to get cleaner results. Seems like the shared income models tend to be a little lower, with the percentage states sometimes pretty obviously based on 25%.
Now let’s actually think about things for a second. Child support is supposed to be based on what the child would have received had the couple stayed together. In that sense, it’d be natural for support payments to always be a percentage of income for both parents. If the custodial parent makes much more than the noncustodial, the amount that would have been available to the child would be higher so the standard is higher.
What is the issue with this? The alternative is to set some absolute minimum monthly cost of a child, which can’t possibly apply to everyone, even within a state. Are you trying to find a system where the hypothetical 80k/26k parents would have the NCP pay nothing?
Also remember that these are guidelines. Courts make the final pronouncements, and would usually (I hope) take into account livable wages for all parties. If you actually want to argue that the percentages hit the poor harder (a sentiment I’d agree with) and that courts are ignoring whether the NCP can actually pay the support and still live, go ahead. But provide some actual evidence, not just assertions and hand-waving “it’s probably like this.”
SIDE NOTE: At least one calculator that I saw asked for how many overnights the children stayed with the NCP. Presumably this would decrease the child support payment. I’ll bet you weren’t aware of this, given your tendency to think of child support laws as a monolith.
The custodial parent is paying a lot for the kids. There’s increased utility costs (for electricity to charge kiddo’s belongings, to illuminate rooms the kiddo is in, to microwave kiddos afterschool warm snacks, to illuminate rooms the kiddo has vacated without turning out the lights), there’s clothing, there’s the extra food kiddo consumes, there’s the cost of school supplies (which easily gets up there if parents aren’t being uber thrifty and demanding kiddo reuse or use up old crayons and pencils), there’s the cost of babysitters or daycare so that the parent can work, there’s the cost of bedding, there’s the cost of extra-educational stuff like piano lessons (if it can be afforded) or toys (if they can be afforded).
Kids are expensive, yo.
One estimate was that raising a kid in the US to adulthood costs an average of $245,340 to raise a kid born two years ago to the age of 18.
For reference, that’d be an average of about $1,135.83 dollars a month (more than I make in a week right now) in just accounting costs. It doesn’t factor in opportunity costs like being able to pick up an extra overtime shift now and then, or having to take a part time job to reduce child-care costs, or the emotional stresses of little squirts.
Seriously, dude, $430 is not near enough to fully support a child. The custodial parent is doing a ton and paying quite a bit to accomplish it all.
(also, everything Kirbywarp just said)
Citations, please. Hell, I don’t even disagree that the US is terrible in terms of living standards and mobility, but for god’s sake you’ve done nothing but assert. Give me a spread sheet of average monthly child support payments per country, or something! What are you even basing your beliefs on if not numbers? Anecdotal evidence?
I dug around and found one paper attempting to compare child support schemes across different countries that echoes at least the spirit of some of your complaints of the US system. Who knows; if you could actually back up your position with papers like this, and you actually knew what you were talking about, and you stopped pretending it was the big bad feminists’ fault, you could find more supporters to fight the real injustices that occur.
A couple things I do know for sure, though. As brooked said, there is no point to blaming feminism or women for these issues, and the issue of child support has very little to do with Walter Scott’s death.
Shorter Bill: “Kids are expensive and wages are low! There’s nothing left over for a decent life once you’ve fed them, kept the lights on and covered down on the childcare”
Shorter feminists: “no shit, Sherlock”
Really, though, I think part of it is that the US middle class has kind of mandated a certain standard of care for kids, but then… largely doesn’t fund it, because bootstraps and June Cleaver or whatever. They expect kids to be safely and constructively supervised pretty much 24/7, but people under a certain income threshold often find that pretty near impossible… cue accusations of deliberate child neglect. Sucks.
Hell, I’ve been arrested for letting my kids play outside while I was inside TCOB with my schoolwork and/or cooking dinner, in an effort to get better paying work and thus raise the family’s standard of living or serve healthy affordable meals while the kids got some exercise. It’s the only time I’ve ever been arrested. Handcuffs, fingerprints, mug shot, the whole nine. Bananas.
Charges were (I think) dropped after I took six hours of parenting class at the “suggestion” of the prosecuting attorney, but… yeah. makes it hard for me to be like, omg, politicized feminism is to blame for how sucky it is to raise kids in the US! More like, laws written by mostly well-off dudes who are pretty thoroughly insulated from the reality of family life down in the trenches.
If anyone, feminists seem likelier to grok the class issues involved in the contemporary parenting/childcare scene than your average conservative upper-middle-class stick-in-butt types, who I generally avoid at all costs. lol
If this bullshit happened in the 1970s there would have been mass arrests through out my town. I played in woods alone as a little kid all the time and never died once.
Sorry these asshole feel the need to humiliate good parents who don’t stare directly at their children every waking hour or hire someone else full time to do it for them.
I don’t think it’s deliberate– it’s mostly just a kind of privilege blindness, mixed with paranoia. But yeah, standards for what constitutes acceptable parenting are significantly higher than they were 30 years ago, so it’s kind of amusing to me that fathers-rights people get all het up about the fact that CS is so high– that level of longterm direct supervision/surveillance costs and it’s not necessarily the broke-as-hell custodial parents who are demanding it. I think a lot of NCPs tend to just think of CS in terms of just food/clothes/shoes (sometimes in 1970 prices, too, lol) and never seem to get where the rest of the money is supposed to be going. Conclusion: she’s ripping me off!!!
The conservatives are the ones who freaked out about “latchkey kids” but it COSTS to have an adult pulled off of other productive tasks to mind the young-uns all the time. Pick a side, fellas. Geez
Personally I think a combo of chilling out about the standards of acceptable supervision and increasing state support to parents would be a really good thing, but you are NEVER gonna hear that from the men’s-rights crowd, because misogyny is what actually holds that center.
@ceebarks
It’s weird. Well, not weird… but it seems like the “conservative” pattern is “you should take responsibility for yourself and be ‘free’ to live your life without government involvement or assistance, but be punished if you don’t meet our high standards.” Countries that Price seems to like so much, like Norway, tend to be more leftist, provide greater family benefits, and seem to have child support schemes that are viewed more favorably. And of course, these are the same countries that MRAs complain to be run by the feminist hive-mind and be absolute hell for men.
MRAs need to sit down and ask themselves what their priorities are; hating women or helping men. In practice, it really does seem to be the case that the two are exclusive.
Of course I’m aware of it, because I wanted to have my kids half-time and was fully capable of providing that care at the time. The overnights deductions start at over 35%, and I got exactly 35% overnights. It wasn’t by accident.
There’s an incentive not only for lawyers and custodial parents but also for the federal government to designate a primary custodial parent (tax purposes). To the victor go the spoils. The loser gets to pay a pound of flesh.
However, the sad reality is that the “winning” parent usually doesn’t come out in such great shape either, because non-parenting is incentivized for non-custodial parents. And as weirwoodtreehugger points out daycare costs an arm and a leg, so it would be better for both parents and the kids if they could cooperate on childcare by trading off rather than putting it all on one who gets a fraction of what daycare costs.
Yes, totally insane. My mom used to put me in charge of my little sister when I was only four while she went jogging or whatever. We were fine. That was back in ’78 or ’79. I really can’t believe how these people who could parent as they pleased have turned the screws on us. I think it’s all about making more work for themselves by overregulating childcare. In a sane world, you should be able to sue whoever called the cops on you for letting your kids play outside. It should be under the category of malicious harassment or something along those lines. I’m sorry it happened to you. Makes me angry when I think of it.
BTW, this whole June Cleaver thing is totally BS. Most boomers were allowed to run free as kids. My maternal grandma even made the kids leave the house and then rang a cowbell for dinner (in the suburbs — not on a farm).
The more I look into this system the more I realize that it isn’t just an issue that damages men, but rather a wholesale attack on parents and family in general.
That’s my new revelation I had last fall. Family and community are under sustained assault by profiteering assholes, so we need to put an end to these stupid gender wars to save these critical (and natural) institutions and make our and our children’s lives better.
I am frequently aware of how monstrously difficult care for our older son would be if I were not able to be a SAHP. It’s disturbing to me that our culture has two options for the chronically mentally ill – institutionalization or homelessness – and the PTB are working on eliminating the first one.
The argument against child support seems to boil down to “I don’t get to live with my kids, I don’t care what happens to ’em.” If you, as a parent, were living with your children, you would be legally responsible for their care and feeding. I understand that this can make it harder for a divorced man to begin supporting other children, but it’s not just to penalize the children.
@kirbywarp Yeah, it’s messed up but that’s pretty much it. Basically people (typically) have kids when they are younger and haven’t peaked income-wise yet, and this is especially true of women, who have a shorter biological timeframe to have kids, more cultural pressure to have them, and WAY more cultural pressure to cut back on paid work to tend to them once born. There’s even pressure to to plan and choose their careers with the expectation that they’ll have to cut back or drop out, years in advance of it actually happening.
(MRAs are totally ok with all of those things– in fact they revel in them! but are angry that there’s any downside in it for dudes, at all, EVER. I’m like, what the fuck? lol)
anyway, it seems reasonable to me that if reproducing and raising kids is soooooooo fucking important to society-as-a-whole, then society as a whole needs to get off its high horse and help pay some bills instead of issuing edicts and expecting the resources to fulfil them to come out of thin air. I know this all hits low-income dads, too, but why Bill-and-bros think women get off scot free on all this exasperating contradictory pressure ’cause “politicized feminism” is seriously beyond me.
OM
*sigh* Price, we’re talking about divorce here. A couple with children where one or both feel the need to separate from each other. Joint custody is not always an option, nor is it always the best outcome. 40% of the cases that go to court do end up in joint custody, but 60% don’t, and likely for very good reason. It’d be nice if we had a system that seems to produce less parental conflict (as Norway’s might), but you can’t get there by legislating the outcome. If you want to address reality, stop basing your ideals solely on what you wanted in your own situation.
@ceebarks:
Hear hear. This is true of quite a lot of things. I’m pretty sure there’s some fundamental notion at the root of it that poor folks or folks otherwise without the necessary resources are just not trying hard enough; that if they worked harder they’d be able to keep up with society’s demands. Hence all the outcries against any sort of government benefits or assistance.
It’s like an assumption that the poor are lying. I guess if society took the opposite position, they’d be forced to come to terms with the fact that the American Dream is just a dream.
yep, that would probably get her clapped off to the station now, lol At least it’d merit a CPS investigation.
Fortunately the social worker who came to “check things out” after my little run-in with the law seemed pretty nice and quite reasonable, though apparently what I did WAS illegal. (!) Arguing that “I could see them through the fricken window! I was doing homework and cooking dinner, not meth!” did not get me far, either. Meh.
I decided six hours of parenting class was cheaper and less stressful than trying to argue about it in court.
Two+ years later, I’m hoping my background check comes back clean, since “Child Neglect” is. ah, not a good look for future employers. Makes it sound like I didn’t feed them for a week or abandoned them in Vegas or something awful. sheesh
Last fall? Then why did you post this two days ago:
I’m in complete agreement with you here. Delegislating the outcome is the key. And yes, Norway and Sweden are paragons of family function and good childrearing compared to the US despite high illegitimacy and lots of single parents.
BTW, both my ex and I have significant Norwegian American ancestry. If we’d gone through a separation and divorce in the old country I highly doubt it would have been nearly as fraught as it was here, so it isn’t a matter of race/ancestry. The US system is designed to create problems and conflict.