In the past, men could abandon their families, have multiple and secret families, or be so irresponsible as to live for themselves and not for the children that they brought into the world. Women, in lesser numbers, have been known to do the same. This is simply a part of well known deviance from the standard human condition, where some people do not become responsible parents or they do no bond emotionally with their offspring.
Now, both natural parents of children can be clearly identified and held responsible for the financial support that they can provide to their children, no matter what their situations in life.The exceptions and confusions are growing, however, because of flawed adoption processes and technology that allows anonymous egg and sperm donation or surrogate gestation and birth.
The law of the land has evolved to ensure that, generally, no natural birth parent is allowed to live in luxury or with high standards for themselves without contributing to the well being of their own children. The law of the land has evolved to consider the ability and the income of those who need to reduce the burden on the taxpayer and society by contributing to the needs of their own children, and to adjust the payments to the income that they can make.
When a non custodial parent is trying to go on a luxury vacation in a foreign country, but has refused to pay for the care and feeding of his or her own children, then he or she will not get his passport approved until he or she pays up. The operative terms are “he” and “she”, as the law no longer favors the woman as heavily as in the past when determining who should be the custodial parent.
This is because the elephant in the room that everyone wants to ignore: substance abuse, is causing greater failure of mothers and fathers to carry out many of their responsibilities in life than ever before, aside from times of war, disaster or the complete breakdown of societies.
But the vast majority of failures to pay for child support have been with fathers who either cannot be responsible, are sociopaths, or who have otherwise not been able to establish emotional and social bonds with their own children. It was time for these men to take more of the burden off of the mothers, the extended families and society and to pay their share.
The benefits of fathers being either freed of doubt or being unable to deny responsibility have come through DNA testing. The benefits of technology that can find out where a person is and what a person is doing, lead to better enforcement of laws that make the parent contribute financially to the well being of their children.
There have been aberrations in the adjudication of the law, including one case where a man who was not the father of a child was ordered to continue paying child support simply because he had already been tricked into paying child support for years. These aberrations need to be dealt with by sanctioning or overturning the actions of the judges who make such poor decisions.
In some cases, the fathers who would have moved on with great pain, doubts and regrets have actually established and maintained relationships with their children as the same technologies and laws enhance the ability to of men be a verified, defined parent who has the right to have an influence in his child’s life.
And for the children, this is the best benefit of all: to have any kind of good and healthy relationship with their fathers as they grow up.