New New Fatherhood in the Inner City | Hacker News Reader

New New Fatherhood in the Inner City

thedailybeast.com

53 pointsgwern21 comments

> motherhood provided the crucial, emotionally satisfying transition into adult life.

I know someone who worked at a treatment center for disadvantaged inner city girls (drug treatment, mostly court mandated). From what I understood motherhood is a status symbol, also a right of passage. A way to earn respect. All of the sudden people pay more attention to you. It also affords a pass into a club of other unwed mothers, many older ones, that might have served as role models growing up. Like the observation said, it is seen as the next step in life.

One deeper level, I think it also provides companionship and family where there is none. Deadbeat deads or moms, girlfriends and hookups who are abusive, come in an out, but this one little person, will be there looking up to them never going anywhere, providing love and attachment that they never got much. That is at least my interpretation of it. It is unfortunate because in most cases these children and parents will have a hard time. It is very selfish to bring children into the world just to be used a status symbol or someone to provide companionship when there are just no resources to raise safely.

On an even deeper, perhaps unconscious, level, maybe having children can be seen as giving up on accomplishing more in life and instead choosing to procreate, hoping maybe the offspring might have a better shot at it.

> The good father is somebody like your friend.”

I can see how that would be an attempt at reversal or mend their own experience with their fathers growing up. Their father wasn't there. Their father wasn't their "friend". Their father used to beat them and be harsh. So they vow to be the opposite.

The one hope in this is that it would also reverse some of the stereotypes about men. Men are the default guilty party in family disputes. They are the stereotypical predator and abuser while women are given a a great leeway and only with concrete and absolute evidence will they be considered as unfit to take care of the child. This mentality has permeated the court system, the school system, the culture in general. Hopefully this leads at least to a re-evaluation of those stereotypes.

> It is very selfish to bring children into the world [...]

Would you say there are any unselfish reasons for having kids? I believe poor and rich folks do it for the same reasons, although the circumstances are different.

> Would you say there are any unselfish reasons for having kids?

I didn't say it was selfish reasons. I said it was a selfish act. There is a difference. You can make the argument that there aren't unselfish reason -- everything one does can be linked to benefit to oneself.

In this case it is a selfish act. It is selfish because it exposes this new human being to most likely a bad environment, poverty, abuse, danger. To make it unselfish would be to have better guarantees that the child will have stable home, parents who can provide, other caretakers, make sure that well police doesn't get called to the neighborhood every Friday night and there is no need to duck if you hear loud noises that sound like gunshots.

> From what I understood motherhood is a status symbol, also a right of passage.

_Promises I Can Keep_ is a good book on this topic.

" Since 1965, mothers at every level of the economy have tripled the hours they spend working outside the home. Fathers now spend much more time playing and talking with their children than they did in past decades, but men’s domestic labor—cooking, cleaning, and readying the kids for school—has not kept pace, meaning women are still working the “second shift”"

This is a fine example of how to misuse statistics for ideological reasons. Without absolute numbers, this is completely meaningless - women tripled their time working outside of the home - from what? How much are they working now, and how much are fathers working? Why is the time spent on household chores even relevant? It's relevant who contributes how much to the survival of the family, not in what way they contribute.

The message of the article is simply that "men who don't earn a lot of money are not good enough", not very surprising.

I thought the point was the opposite of that. Something along the lines of : "in the psst men worked and provided money to their wife and children. If they didn't they were morally suspect. Now, in communities where there is no hope of work, men should spend some of their time on the non-paid work required to raise children."

It never says how much the men work, just that they are poor.

Another choice quote: "responsible women and feckless men in the poor and working classes" - how are the women more responsible than the men? Don't they know who they are having kids with? And women seem to get something out of having kids, they are not just the victims of men recklessly impregnating them.

I didn't quite understand why they don't want to marry, either. The argument is "because the mates are low quality", but at the same time they seem to expect all the services usually given in marriage - doing housework, providing, raising kids...

I just don't trust that article very much to really provide the relevant data.

The article is written under the assumption - an assumption enshrined in American family law - that women are helpless and must be provided for by a man. Women lack agency and thus it is unreasonable to expect them to behave responsibly.

This is the law of the land throughout the Anglo-Saxon world (though thankfully not outside of it).

All is rather remarkable when one thinks about it. Women have the ability to jettison any child they do not want (either by killing it [!] or by post birth adoption), yet men of course are not afforded this right.

It's interesting that the relationship between fertility rates and economic status applies so strongly within the US as well as between countries.

Often the high fertility rates in poor counties is seen as a way of guaranteeing someone will be around to care for the parents when they are old. I wonder if this explanation is backed with research, or the reasons that apply within the US also apply elsewhere?

Child support needs to be abolished wholesale.

If a woman wants a mans support, then she either needs to be married to him or convince him to do so of his own free will.

This simple change would inject much needed sanity into this entire process.

The problem is that you don't want to punish the children. They are innocent.

If the father dies the child also gets nothing, so no real punishment.

It's not punishment if a father dies? I mean, you imply that kids whose father dies are not worse off than kids with a father. Because if they were worse off, they would be "punished" compared to the kids with fathers.

A kid with a dead father is no worse of (financially) than a kid with a father who just left the mother, really.

Removing a child from the custody of a parent who was not financially prepared to raise the child is not punishment.

I thought it is just about the money. Giving the child less money is punishment.

If the mother doesn't have enough money to raise the child, she was clearly being irresponsible and should be relieved of her ward.

Of course, I assume that women are volitional human beings and thus should be held responsible for their actions. A concept quite foreign to the Ango-Saxon legal tradition.

You seem to be talking about something else than the OP. I was under the impression he was talking about fathers paying up for kids, not kids being taken away from their parents.

Let's check if I understood you correctly, though: your opinion is that parents who can't afford their kids anymore should have their kids taken away from them. And you are sure that is what is best for the kids?

I'm staying one step ahead of the conversation.

We're all talking about parents taking care of their kids: If moms have the option not to have to take care of their kids - as they currently do - then fathers should have that option as well.

Once fathers have that option, and women are thusly treated as responsible adults, then we will come across situations in which mothers claim not to be able to care for their children. They will require assistance, or so they shall claim.

Simple solution: If the caretaker is sufficiently irresponsible as to have children without the means to care for them - which is precisely what they are claiming - then the children should be removed from their irresponsible care. Offer the father custody, and if he isn't interested then off to foster care.

Why is this so important? Why am I being so callous? Why is this relevant?

Simple. You incentivize behavior, you get more of it. Current law in Anglo-Saxon nations incentivizes irresponsibility by women. Get rid of these silly laws and you'll have less of this silly behavior.

In my country, if you don't take proper care of your kids, the state will take them away from you. But there is social welfare, so you will get money if you don't have a job.

If parents are unable psychologically to take care of their kids, I suppose the state should step in. If it is just money woes, I am not so sure. Especially as it might be cheaper to give money to parents than to finance foster homes (I don't know). I also don't trust that foster homes generally provide good care for children. I suppose some do, but it seems difficult to assess, so there are probably a lot of bad apples. You can't make people love a kid - caregivers in foster homes are being paid to take care of the kids, but maybe they won't be able to provide some crucial things like love.

Maybe the child should be put up for adoption if not both of the parents want to be parents.

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