Thread by @MSS3RosaFerreum

@Stoicsense2 If you know the history, then you know why this keeps happening despite laws saying that equal or shared parenting is possible. Many of us were told lies.

What is the real purpose of child support?

Why are mothers given preferential custody orders?

@Stoicsense2 The law changed in what’s now the United Kingdom🇬🇧 (granting women custody of their kids after divorce) because of the whinging of an adulterous ex-wife () and the United States🇺🇸 soon followed with the Talfourd Act (named after the British🇬🇧 reformer).spartacus-educational.com/Wcustody39.htm

@Stoicsense2 The reason child support exists is not for the sake of the children.

Child support exists because women — unlike men — were viewed by society (including by women) to be incompetent in handling their finances and incapable of working enough to care for children by themselves.

@Stoicsense2 For millennia, when men were the sole custodial parents after divorce, women were neither asked nor required to pay child support. Men had to support the children of whom the men had custody.

Why can’t modern women handle the same degree of responsibility as men of old?

@Stoicsense2 Regarding when men always got custody in divorce, consider “Lagging Behind the Times: Parenthood, Custody, and Gender Bias in the Family Court” by Cynthia A. McNeely published in 1998 in Volume 25 of the _Florida State University Law Review_ on page 891 ().ir.law.fsu.edu/cgi/viewconten…

@Stoicsense2 “[T]he father [was designated] as the natural protector of children because he had the ability to provide for their financial support. Women were seen as incapable of handling legal or financial matters….” 25 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 891, 897 (1998).

@Stoicsense2 “Because fathers usually provided the family’s sole income through their employment away from the home [during the Industrial Revolution], this absence advanced the fathers’ ‘long march from the center to the periphery of domestic life.’” 25 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. at 898 (1998).

@Stoicsense2 “Congress implemented the Talfourd Act of 1839 to legislate the presumption that courts should award custody of children under age seven to the mother.” 25 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. at 897 (1998).

@Stoicsense2 “This presumption became known as the ‘tender-years doctrine,’ which legalized for the first time the belief that mothers were better suited to raise children than fathers.” 25 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. at 897 (1998).

@Stoicsense2 “Eventually, ‘the tender-years presumption became the rationale for awarding custody of children of all ages to the mother on a permanent basis.’” 25 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. at 899 (1998).

@Stoicsense2 “[T]he continuous refrain throughout the last one hundred years has been that when it comes to childrearing, fathers are not that important.” 25 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. at 914 (1998).

Feminists actually pushed this message that fathers aren’t important. 102 Virginia Law Review 144.

@Stoicsense2 Consider “The Divorce Bargain: The Fathers’ Rights Movement and Family Inequalities” by Deborah Dinner published in 2016 in Volume 102 of the _Virginia Law Review_ beginning at page 79 (available at: ).virginialawreview.org/articles/divor…

@Stoicsense2 “[L]egal reforms enabling fathers to fulfill caregiving roles through joint custody would also enable mothers to fulfill breadwinning roles.” 102 Virginia Law Review 128 ().virginialawreview.org/articles/divor…

@Stoicsense2 “By promoting joint custody as well as sex-neutral spousal maintenance, …the [divorce] bargain liberalized gender roles within divorced families, offering a model of a more egalitarian family structure.” 102 Virginia Law Review 142 ().virginialawreview.org/articles/divor…

@Stoicsense2 “Criticism of joint custody formed part of a broader critique among feminist legal theorists in the 1980s about what they perceived as an earlier generation of feminist reformers’ mistaken focus on same treatment.” 102 Virginia Law Review 144 ().virginialawreview.org/articles/divor…

@Stoicsense2 Specifically, “[t]he literature argued that liberal feminist reformers had pursued formal equality that… entrenched women’s subordination.” 102 Virginia Law Review 144 n. 334 ().

Ask yourself: how does “formal equality” “entrench[] women’s subordination”?virginialawreview.org/articles/divor…

@Stoicsense2 The liberal feminist reformers (and prior feminists) addressed the desires of middle class and rich women, but “[c]hild support enforcement imposes a middle-class breadwinner model on poor and working-class fathers.” 102 Virginia Law Review 147–148 ().virginialawreview.org/wp-content/upl…

@Stoicsense2 “…[T]his system harms rather than nurtures paternal-child relationships in low-income families and contributes to poor men’s economic insecurity. The majority of men who do not comply with formal child support orders cannot afford to do so.” 102 Virginia Law Review 148.

@Stoicsense2 “Among never-married parents, mothers serve as … ‘gatekeepers’ for fathers’ access to their children.” 102 Virginia Law Review 148–149 ().virginialawreview.org/wp-content/upl…

@Stoicsense2 “[F]eminist theorists argued that the advent of joint custody preferences undermined mothers’ bargaining power at divorce.” 102 Virginia Law Review 143 ().virginialawreview.org/wp-content/upl…

@Stoicsense2 It was argued that “…a sex-neutral custody standard created an incentive for the parent with a greater socio-emotional attachment to her child to trade away child support obligations and property entitlements to avoid trial.” 102 Virginia L. Rev. 143 ().virginialawreview.org/wp-content/upl…

@Stoicsense2 “The …[federal Child Support Enforcement Amendments Act of 1984] legislation passed by Congress represented a …victory for women’s rights groups…. The law… did not tie child support responsibilities to reciprocal visitation and custody rights.” 102 Virginia Law Review 138.

@Stoicsense2 As outlined above, before labor-saving gizmos, men used to be awarded custody whenever the courts got involved and then the “tender years” doctrine came to be (which was advocated for by women) which led to sole custody being awarded to women and women getting child support.

@Stoicsense2 However, men prior to the “tender years” doctrine had to be the household breadwinner (as such men received no child support at that time) and had to care for their kids.

It’s worth asking: why can’t modern women handle the degree of responsibility on their own that men could?

@Stoicsense2 Now consider that now about 82% of single parent homes in 2021 are being run by single mothers (census.gov/data/tables/20…, table A3; www2.census.gov/programs-surve…).

Consider that kids who never had a father living with them have the highest incarceration rates (mnpsych.org/index.php%3Fop…).

@Stoicsense2 Consider that kids in father-only homes have no difference in incarceration rate than kids from two-parent homes (mnpsych.org/index.php%3Fop…) and there was an over 25% drop in homicide, violent crime, and property crime due to legalized abortion (pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10…, at 182).

@Stoicsense2 The citations regarding incarceration rates are from “Father-Absent Homes: Implications for Criminal Justice and Mental Health Professionals” by by: Jerrod Brown, MA, MS, MS, MS published by Minnesota Psychological Association.mnpsych.org

@Stoicsense2 Why is there this disparity between (a.) single mother households and (b.) both single father households and two-parent households?

Is it in society’s interests to fund the single-parent lifestyle choice women make? …or the force fathers to fund that lifestyle?

@Stoicsense2 There was no child support prior to the 1800’s. Child support didn’t exist in America 🇺🇸 prior to 1839. The idea that women were responsible enough to independently parent started in 1839 (but women needed a man’s financial help as women were seen as so irresponsible otherwise).

https://twitter.com/mss3rosaferreum/status/1848300719452856512

@Stoicsense2 Mothers are proportionally more likely to be deadbeats than fathers (census.gov/content/dam/Ce…, p. 12).

Men generally work more hours than women (pewresearch.org/short-reads/20…) and fewer custodial fathers are in poverty (fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-m…).

Why can’t women be as competent as men?

@Stoicsense2 @threadreaderapp, please unroll.