Should teenage fathers have a legal responsibility to their children?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

If a teenage boy has sex with a girl, and the girl gets pregnant and gives birth, what legal responsibility, if any, should the boy have toward the child?

Do you let him off the hook because he is just a kid? Or do you insist that a father of whatever age has a duty to mother and child?  And if so, how should these duties be enforced?

[Antonio the Sixth]

The family should at the very least have to pay alimony. That aside, I'm not sure how we can legally force someone to be actively involved in childrearing, but if they're not going to be involved they should lose all future parental rights.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

Nobody should be forced to have legal responsibility of this sort regardless of their age.

[Ferguson97]

…yes of course, why wouldn’t they? If the teenage mothers can’t get off the hook, why should the teenage fathers?

[dead0man]

…yes of course, why wouldn’t they? If the teenage mothers can’t get off the hook, why should the teenage fathers?

so if teenage mothers can "get off the hook", teenage boys should be able to as well then?

[Ragnaroni]

Uh yes. He knew of the consequences of what could happen and still did it. He should be responsible.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Great question. Great thread.

He should be forced to pay a proportion of his personal earnings to raise the child.

ABBA

Money, Money, Money

https://youtu.be/ETxmCCsMoD0

[Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God]

I agree with having the parents pay alimony if the girl decides to raise the baby, but no minor should ever be forced into parenthood. (And if they are raising a child, let them vote for God's sake!) And in general I'm just against the idea of someone being forced into anything (libertarian). And I would extend that not only to abortion, but also giving men the choice not to be fathers or pay alimony -- provided that decision is made during and not after the pregnancy.

[Santander]

Alimony is not the same thing as child support. There is no reasonable justification for a teenager or his family to pay alimony under any circumstances. Of course, he should be liable for child support.

[Ferguson97]

…yes of course, why wouldn’t they? If the teenage mothers can’t get off the hook, why should the teenage fathers?

so if teenage mothers can "get off the hook", teenage boys should be able to as well then?

If you're talking about like, adoption, then yes.

What I'm objecting to is the prompt's implication that custody should default to the mother, and that parental responsibility of teenage fathers is something that's even up for debate.

Nobody would ever make a thread asking if teenage mothers should have legal responsibility to their children, because the answer is obviously yes.

When you ask, "Should teenage fathers have a legal responsibility to their children?" there is the underlying assumption that the mother would be otherwise raising the baby by herself/with the help of her own parents.

[MarkD]

Yup: child support.

And Zablocki v. Redhail was wrongly decided.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

…yes of course, why wouldn’t they? If the teenage mothers can’t get off the hook, why should the teenage fathers?

Both should be able to get off the hook. If either or both parents are unwilling to care for the child, put the child up for adoption to a willing couple. Applies regardless of age.

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

Yup: child support.

And Zablocki v. Redhail was wrongly decided.

I've never heard of this case before. Seems like a weird decision; I'm not quite sure how I feel about it but I guess my first instinct would be that Wisconsin's statute was constitutional in its intended purpose but not well-tailored to achieve that purpose.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

No man is an island.

[Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God]

I agree with having the parents pay alimony if the girl decides to raise the baby, but no minor should ever be forced into parenthood. (And if they are raising a child, let them vote for God's sake!) And in general I'm just against the idea of someone being forced into anything (libertarian). And I would extend that not only to abortion, but also giving men the choice not to be fathers or pay alimony -- provided that decision is made during and not after the pregnancy.

This was kind of a dumb point I made since I just researched this, and for using "alimony" as a synonyom for child support. A parent does not have to pay child support if they terminate their parental rights, which is something I can see a lot of teenage fathers doing.

[Ferguson97]

…yes of course, why wouldn’t they? If the teenage mothers can’t get off the hook, why should the teenage fathers?

Both should be able to get off the hook. If either or both parents are unwilling to care for the child, put the child up for adoption to a willing couple. Applies regardless of age.

Okay but my point is, that if the father wants to put the kid up for adoption but the mother doesn't, then the father should have legal responsibility.

[Vosem]

Yup: child support.

And Zablocki v. Redhail was wrongly decided.

I've never heard of this case before. Seems like a weird decision; I'm not quite sure how I feel about it but I guess my first instinct would be that Wisconsin's statute was constitutional in its intended purpose but not well-tailored to achieve that purpose.

It's actually a fairly crucial case in any possible right-wing justification of a federally protected right to gay marriage; although marriage had occasionally been recognized as a natural right in Supreme Court cases in dicta before Zablocki, no case before Zablocki had found a federal right to marriage -- and, indeed, Rehnquist, to a substantial extent the father of modern SCOTUS originalism, dissented in Zablocki, and felt that disallowing marriage for nonpayment of fines was a reasonable power for the State. If Zablocki was correctly decided (or even if the correct conclusion was reached, but through the wrong logic -- it seems to me like a religious-freedom First Amendment argument could also be advanced to defend a right to marriage, and the Fourteenth Amendment due-process one is more than a little silly), then it isn't that difficult to derive the Obergefell conclusion through several different chains of logic. If some future right-wing court overturns Zablocki, it would virtually certainly also be overturning Obergefell.

[Jim Crow]

Yes if they want to get laid, they should pay the consequences for it.  Then we'll see how cool it is to get with girls!

[Mr. Smith]

Barring cases like assault against them, being under the influence, or sperm theft, yes.

[Samof94]

There have been cases of teenage boys getting grown women pregnant, like the infamous case in Quebec in the 1990s