The child support issue is certainly a multifaceted one and ultimately there are few winners all in all. I hafta agree that men are at the mercy of a lot of women who indeed set out to and do wreck the lives of their spouses as well as their children, but in all fairness, we men are far from saints either, so ....

A cuppla things that certainly make the whole child custody/ child support issue a much less than level playing field for we males is the governments willingness (in most states) to employ free legal councel and bring to bear all legal resources for women while offering no such help for men seeking custody of their children. For a man who wants custody of his children, even when the mother is blantantly inept or incapable of providing a stable loving and safe environment for their upbringing, he can expect to spend every dime he has (or will make for a few years!) in such a fight and the odds of him winning are still stacked waaaaaay against him ever doing so.

Here in Texas the state legislature devoted a whole lot of effort into generating what's called "The Texas Family Code" book. When you open the cover and look inside on one of the 1st few pages, centered in the page is a statement that reads "In Texas there is no gender bias in relation to child support or child custody". My thoughts are that this statement is merely another fine example of the fluff and bullshit that legislatures are prone to pen when put to a task.

The one right I know every Texas father is duly imbued with is the right to pay, and pay and pay some more when it comes to being a father. Here, they don't care if taking care of your children causes you to wind up having no life at all or living under an overpass, so long as you take care of the obligations the courts saddle fathers with. And .... I can guaran-goddamned-tee that when the shoe id put on the other foot, and women are required to pay child support, the women, the courts and the enforcement agencies will make every allowance possible and find every excuse NOT to prosecute a woman who doesn't fulfill her mandated obligations.

This however is most certainly NOT the case when a man falls behind in his child support payments! He'll be labled instantly as a sorry father, a dead beat Dad, will be drug back into court at their earliest convenience and possibly jailed, lose his drivers license, be denied jobs and be hounded mercilessly.

Though the male version of "the pill" would solve a lot of the problem (or at least give men a more secure method of controlling the situation), while there have been rumors of it for years, as far as I know it's never been made available. This odf course leaves men at the mercy of using condoms or depending on his partners methodologies for preventing pregnancies. Neither of these alternatives are secure or sound methods in the long run and neither really have the best interests of males at heart anyway.

I'd LOVE to see a sampling of 1000 women who have children given a truth drug and asked about how each pregnancy they've undergone came to be in the 1st place. My thoughts are that well above 50% of these pregnancies were engineered by the women to achieve the desired result : 1. get a partner who was sitting on the fence to commit to marriage 2. secure a meal ticket for the next 18 or so years 3. have a baby so they would always have someone who would unconditionally love them 4.address the "mothering instinct" in them so they can feel fulfilled as women.

In any case, the man/dad/payee is seldom the one who I would guess implanted the idea that a couple "needed" to have a baby(s) together. From most men I've known in my life there are a helluva lot more of us who could do just fine without havin kids at all and many of the ones who even agreed to having children with a partner did so for fear of losing their partner if they did not acquiesse to her wishes.