Having one’s face on a pizza box is shaming, no doubt. But in a world where community pressures have broken down, where close social networds no longer compel people to fulfill basic social obligations, that’s what may be needed.

Let me reiterate: some women are exploiters and abusers; some women use custody and visitation as weapons. But these are not the majority and their existence does not negate the larger social problem. Those men – and I do not say all men because many, perhaps even most men are wonderful, committed fathers, who do not make every effort to sustain their offspring are irresponsible or worse, must be called to account. And the same goes for their female counterparts.

Why not think about the larger setting in which both men and women, whether feminist or not, must contend with financial difficulty, social isolation and the lack of appropriate government support for families?

Truer words were never spoken. I would like to know your take on the latest news item that fathers’ advocates are now discussing both online and in traditional media: the story about the woman who owns a pizza shop putting on her pizza boxes fliers of men who are behind in their child support payments, to shame them into paying.

Here’s a broadcast of that. (Requires the Windows Media player)

When the advocate for the fathers’ position (opposing the pizza box campaign) tried to highlight the fact that penalties and arrearages in child support add up to make satisfying the debt impossible, he was talked over. The woman running the pizza box campaign said that if it’s the law, they have to pay it, and that’s that — otherwise, they shouldn’t have had kids. Her opponent had pointed out that even in cases where the court has legal authority to ratchet down child support payments (such as in the case of the father’s temporary unemployment, or disability), it is rare when this happens. The woman also implied that men who are behind in their child support payments don’t want to see their kids, an implication drawn from the fact that they’re late on the payments but without further substantiation.

I have read this thread and noticed that you have elucidated the problems of women in the workplace, in the home, and in the general culture. It’s good that you are looking out for the interests of this set of human beings, but I fear that you are not looking at all human beings. If the difficulties of fathers have not been explored. It is implied that fathers want to take off and leave both their children and their ex wives in dire economic straits, never to visit their kids. Custody and visitation are related to child support payments; the more a father is involved in his kids’ lives, the more balanced the child support obligation will be between mother and father. Note that balance in the financial obligation also reveals a subtle benefit for children: both parents will play an equal role in the lives of their kids, post-divorce. Shared parenting is a healthy thing for most kids, and yet there is no presumption of shared parenting in most state laws (Iowa is the lone dissenter). So in a custody battle, where women are likely to fare much better, fathers tend to lose because they have embraced the breadwinner role (and you have acknowledged the value of this). Because fathers have embraced this valuable role pre-divorce, their kids are punished for it post-divorce by being denied equal parenting time with their fathers. Fathers are then racked with the maximum in child support and alimony payments. Already they were kept apart from their children all day while they worked; now they’re working all day with the same (or greater) economic burdens, and the bond between their kids is weakened.

We need sympathy for the kids and fathers in these situations. Kids are being raised without sufficient benefit of a father in their lives; I’m sure that as a sociologist you can attest to the vast literature that is available about the social benefits of actively involved fathers.

We need sympathy for fathers who are trying to make child support payments on low incomes. Pre-divorce, a low income or difficulties in employment or due to low wages meant that the family would roll with the punches, but stay together. Post-divorce, there is no such adaptation in the eyes of the courts. The law gives them discretion to lower child support payments to appropriate levels during times of economic difficulty. Why then is it assumed that fathers are deadbeats when the courts are slow to act in this regard, or refuse to do so? There is a certain rigidity and politicization about the issue of child support, custody, and visitation that ignores the plight of fathers. Your call to tread all human beings with humanity, support for families, and to recognize financial difficulty resounds in light of these facts.

MRAs may be abrasive sometimes, that is true. But they happen to believe in much of what I’ve just said above, and their means of expression do not invalidate the above points. In the video link I posted above, the woman said that if men don’t like the way they’ve been treated, if it’s unfair, they should change the laws. That seemed like a concession to me; if she recognizes difficulty imposed on fathers by the law, why is she so gleeful about demonizing men who are behind in child support payments, rather than finding ways to make it easier for them to catch up and stay current (such as equal parenting time, more easily obtained downward modifications in child support, and supporting the ability of child support obligors to more easily find and keep jobs, such as retaining their driver’s licenses)?

Yes, seeing the financial difficulties of all humans necessarily encompasses seeing the difficulties of men and fathers. To date you’ve focused much on women and mothers. How about some equal time?

Let’s try considering, once again, the context of anger. Many of these posters make reference either to personal experience, to perceptions of others’ experience, or to websites that attest to the iimpossibility of gender equality and to trust between men and women. Even more significant, I think, is the thread that reduces the outcome of such bad experiences to fights over money and children. Comments in this thread then frequently turn to ad hominen attacks on Uccellina, on feminists, and then on women in general.

There seems to be enormous difficulty with separating the particular from the general. Yes, some women are abusers; yes, some women are exploiters; yes, some women behave abominably. Why must this be interpreted in terms of the “nature” of women and extrapolated as inevitable?

Why not think about the larger setting in which both men and women, whether feminist or not, must contend with financial difficulty, social isolation and the lack of appropriate government support for families?

Contrary to those who argue that people behave according to instinct and “natural law,” I will argue, as a social scientist, that our behavior is learned and heavily conditioned by the culture in which we live. Any course in introductory anthropology will demonstrate the possibilities of other cultural models. Examples of societies where men and women regard themselves and their work in a non-hierarchical way do exist. There is nothing natural about male dominance, just as there is nothing natural about women wanting children (we are taught to do this and as U ponts out, some do and some do not) or about women expecting men to provide for them. And lest anyone rush in with claims about man the hunter and our evolutionary psychology, let me point out that in many hunting societies, women gather at least as much food, if not more, than the men bring home. In other words, both sides bring in “income,’ and women do not instinctively seek out the man with the best hunting skills. And married as well as unmarried mothers have worked “outside” the home – in too many contexts to count to sustain their children, without expecting a Prince Charming to rescue them. Most women are realists, after all.