Should unwilling parents be forced to pay child support if we'll have a UBI?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I actually am serious that people who support this 'independent individuals who are only as obliged to one another as they want to be' model of the modern family should read What Maisie Knew, by the way. It's actually a much more relevant novel now than when it was written--there's a film adaptation that changes the setting from 1890s London to 2010s New York and shockingly little about the plot or themes has to change with it.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I actually am serious that people who support this 'independent individuals who are only as obliged to one another as they want to be' model of the modern family should read What Maisie Knew, by the way. It's actually a much more relevant novel now than when it was written--there's a film adaptation that changes the setting from 1890s London to 2010s New York and shockingly little about the plot or themes has to change with it.

Is the movie a good adaptation? I might be interested.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

If abortion/birth control was easily accessible, more income support was available to parents and full employment was prioritized, I'd argue that our child support system should remain intact. As none of the above statements are true, I oppose our child support system because it penalizes both women and men in a very moralistic/individualizing manner for problems that are social; it also has the effect of creating a "vicious cycle" where men, typically Black men, are locked up for not paying child support, which furthers the breakdown of the American family along class-lines.

The issue isn't that the American family has grown less and less formal as time has gone by. The issue is that the American family has ceased to exist in a recognizable form in working class and poor communities. Any sort of legal framework that punishes parents for not providing for their children is going to create more problems than it solves when the legal burden of paying for child support is correlated with poverty.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Isn't the amount of child support owed a function of income though? I mean, it would be utterly absurd to ask of Drumpf the same you'd ask of an unemployed guy from a poor neighborhood... right?

[Mopsus]

I have a hard time seeing child support as anything other than an unnatural compromise between two worldviews - one accepting that people have the right to live their own lives, the other imposing on parents the social responsibility of raising their offspring.

I voted No.

Writing a check is not "raising their offspring".

That's my point.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I actually am serious that people who support this 'independent individuals who are only as obliged to one another as they want to be' model of the modern family should read What Maisie Knew, by the way. It's actually a much more relevant novel now than when it was written--there's a film adaptation that changes the setting from 1890s London to 2010s New York and shockingly little about the plot or themes has to change with it.

Is the movie a good adaptation? I might be interested.

It's pretty good. It removes one character and changes the ending--not to make everything Hollywood-happy, just to streamline the narrative--and I think it loses something thematically in the process, but for somebody for whom English isn't a first language it's probably a more worthwhile investment of time than attempting to wade through Henry James's prose.

Isn't the amount of child support owed a function of income though? I mean, it would be utterly absurd to ask of Drumpf the same you'd ask of an unemployed guy from a poor neighborhood... right?

In theory yes. In practice it can get pretty damned unreasonable. There are plenty of aspects of reproductive and family policy that I don't agree with TheDeadFlagBlues on, but the critique that he's lodging of the combination of current child support policies and lack of meaningful family structures in many communities rings true and is a much better argument than 'muh independent individuals, muh men should be able to screw their children too' or whatever.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Isn't the amount of child support owed a function of income though? I mean, it would be utterly absurd to ask of Drumpf the same you'd ask of an unemployed guy from a poor neighborhood... right?

In theory yes. In practice it can get pretty damned unreasonable. There are plenty of aspects of reproductive and family policy that I don't agree with TheDeadFlagBlues on, but the critique that he's lodging of the combination of current child support policies and lack of meaningful family structures in many communities rings true and is a much better argument than 'muh independent individuals, muh men should be able to screw their children too' or whatever.

Definitely. Admittedly I don't know very much on the subject, so I'd rather let you and DFB speak, but I'm convinced that the atrophy and sometimes downright perverse nature of the American welfare state is the root cause for many of the failings ascribed to the "American family".