I think that there are some facts about child support which have not been given an adequate airing in this thread.
There is an inherent biological disproportion in the burden of bearing a child. It is much easier for a man to walk away from his responsibility for a child conceived than a woman. He merely has to become inaccessible to that woman. At the very least, a woman will have to finance, obtain, and endure an abortion. Perhaps this biological imbalance has much to do with the fact that she has more say in whether she will bear the child than does the father.
The vast majority of child support issues have to do with formerly married couples who have produced once mutually desired children. In these cases, the issue becomes one of insuring that the children are supported by BOTH parents, custodial and non-custodial. In most of these cases, it is not a matter of the NCP's inability to pay, but, rather, the NCP's unwillingness to pay. For issues of child support, the court does not much concern itself with NCP's who cannot pay, but with NCP's who can pay, but choose not to.
The amount of child support to be paid is usually determined on the NCP's ability to pay, and is, as such, figured on a percentage of the NCP's income. If we were to use the national average of 17%, an NCP earning $150,000.00 should be paying $25,500.00 per year in child support for one child. For NCP's who earn less, say the national income average of $25,000 per year, the child support amount for one child would be only about $4,250.00 per year, or $354.00 per month.
A listing of reasonable child support expense, say, for a 12 year old child, might look like this ...
Expense Amount/
month
Food 400.00
Clothing 100.00
Housing 100.00
Utility Cost 100.00
School Expense 50.00
Medical/Dental 50.00
Health Insurance 100.00
If you were to total just these costs, you've already got a monthly tab of $900.00.
Even with just these very basic expenses, the real cost of supporting one child is over twice what the average NCP is able to pay. The idea of custodial parents receiving a surplus of child support money from an NCP is, except for a very few select cases, just a myth. The reality is that custodial parents almost always contribute MORE, financially and otherwise, to the support of their children.
And, finally, as to the article which spawned this thread, it wasn't the women in the story who are portrayed as victims, it is the tax-paying public. Any person who has contributed to producing (9) children who they're not supporting is a huge drain of the working tax-paying public.
JustAThought
