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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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Where are the Conservative Critiques of Family Court?

Conservatives, especially religious conservatives go on and on about the collapse of the family, declining sexual morality, and the increasing millennial failure to form families or have kids...

And yet I cannot think of a single major right wing thinker who's talked about one of the top 3 things causing all of this and which, unlike the pill, is a pure matter of public policy and government officials preying on the populace: Family court.

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Just as abortion was sacralized in post-60s as fundamental inalienable right, that women should not be forced to carry to term or have a child and deal with the financial and social burden it represented... and just as religious conservatives the country over started begging and pleading with women to not abort, but instead to have the child, and then give it up for adoption, that "obviously" they should not be burdened personally and financially with raising a child for 18 years over 1 night's sexual concourse... just please don't kill.

A new set of institutions were put in place to recreate every social, financial, personal, and hypothetical legal burden that even the most fever dreamed feminist never imagined a patriarchy might impose over one night's coupling. But for men.

Just as it became sacrosanct that every woman should be able to have sex and escape any possible financial or personal burden, even if she doesn't use protection, nor takes the morning after pill, nor avails her self of first trimester abortion, nor second, nor third, nor gives it up for adoption in the first, second, third or forth year, but in the fifth year, or even the fifthteenth! surrender the child to the state or for adoption with no ongoing legal, social, or financial penalty...

It became equally understood that the very second of coitus (or even without it if the sperm is stollen). That absolutely an child conceived will result in the man's complete legal and financial ruin. That the legal system gains full power over every asset, skill, or income source, he has ever or might ever have, and that if he tries to evade legal """Responsibility""" (as if this something that would ever consider being applied to a citizen of one of the other 82 genders) his wages will be garnished, his assets forcibly confiscated, he may be imprisoned, and in many jurisdictions his passport might even be confiscated.

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And yet Conservatives who claim to be critics of the state and claim to be critics of state intervention in family life... seemingly have nothing to say about marriage and the family being converted from an inviolable religious and moral compact, to a state contract whereby the entire thing can be disolved, and indeed is financially incentivized to be dissolved... except for the part where every asset and dime you might ever make is now at the sole discretion of the state for how it would like to redirect them.

They have nothing to say about a religious partnership essential being converted into a slavery contract. Nor that instead of doing the reasonable "Egalitarian" thing like setting a standard child support amount that all non-custody parents should be expected to pay as a universal obligation (all children being equal) family court judges are instead allowed incredible discretion to assign amounts based on the income or percieved competence of the non-custody spouse... because obviously bieng productive is the worst possible crime in our society.

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This is the great trend of conservative criticism. Point at the decay, (failing families, schools, communities, ethics) but cower from even raising the possibility that the laws and policies which caused the decay might be reversed.

Every conservative laments the decline of the family... none will suggest ending no-fault divorce or reversing the presumption of custody, such that a parent who cannot afford to raise a child on their own is presumed to be the parent less qualified to receive custody, thus removing the incentive for an unproductive deadbeat wife to divorce as a means to take her husband's assets.

Every conservative laments that social institutions used to work better, and that social values are decaying... none will broach returning to the policies and matterial realities that produced those quality institutions.

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Edit/ Addendum: (realized I didn't include this las night)

My solution is the same one that has worked throughout all of history in every institution that's been functional:

The person with the power is the person with the responsibility.

If women are to be empowered to abort whenever they like, surrender to adoption or the state whenever they like, and generally have full control... THEN THEY SOULD BARE FULL, TOTAL, AND FINAL FINANCIAL RESPONCIBILITY.

Family court should not exist.

The names on the bank accounts keep the accounts. Same with the houses and assets. And any joint assets accounts are divided in even... you don't even need a court all these things would happen naturally and the banks, etc. would oversee the pre-arranged division.

80% of divorces are started by women... this would end that very quickly and defacto limit divorce once again to real documentable instances of abuse. Since there would no longer be a financial incentive.

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Out of wedlock births should never result in a court case unless there is a criminal charge of sexual assault.

It should simply be the woman's full and final responsibility.

These are the conditions that produced the sexual norms conservatives were so fond of In the 19th century and before, if a man got a woman pregnant out of wedlock, that was a her problem. Full stop.

Even if a community thought they could try to force the responsibility on him, he could just disappear a few towns over.

This is what created the intense emphasis on chastity, and the sense of ruin that accompanied fallen women.

THESE ARE OUR TRADITIONAL SEXUAL VALUES AND INSTITUTIONS.

And not a single conservative will just full mouthed endorse a return to how things worked in 1890, instead they gesture at some version of a welfare state that never existed and lament sexual morality is collapsing whilst they use the violence of the state to prop up that immorality

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If the founding father's had been threatened with a coterie of lawyers threatening to drive a wedge between them and their wives, then claiming for themselves the power to divvy up every child, animal and asset whilst claiming for themselves a share (often the lion's share)... The founding father's would have slaughtered them to the last.

Framing this as a men's rights issue rests in the assumption that the mother has sole custody, but nowadays, most child custody is 50/50.* Hence, there is no custodial parent, and child support is paid by the parent with the higher income, at least in California. So, I guess conservatives should address this problem by pushing for more equal pay for women.

PS: See calculator here.

*A trend opposed by conservatives and pushed by liberals back in the day

Human females exhibit hypergamy to a greater extent than human males do. Thus even if the distribution of wages of men and women were identical, the hypergamy gap would cause men to overrepresented among payers.

Correct me if my math is incorrect, but in a world in which average income for women was the same as average pay for men, would it not be impossible for the average woman to make less money than her partner? I think perhaps your observation strengthens my argument.

Are you arguing for a communistic equal income distribution or full replacement of wages with UBI? I am deeply skeptical that you're unaware of the reality of the wage gap, namely that it's overwhelmingly a result of different choice and tradeoffs between men and women.

I am not arguing for or against it. I am merely saying that if in fact men on average pay more in child support than women do, and** if that is a problem** that should be addressed, then pushing for more income equality would be a way of doing so. Whether that would be sound policy, given the other costs and benefits associated with that outcome, is an entirely different question.

And, btw, yes, I am aware that the gap is a result of different choices and tradeoffs, but I am also aware that those choices and tradeoffs are the result of constraints, some of which are socially imposed and can change. Once upon a time, for example, almost no women chose to go to medical or law school, perhaps because when my aunt graduated law school as one of two women in her class, she was only offered jobs as a legal secretary. Now, women make up the majority of medical and law students, So, there might well be ways of reducing the income gap other than "communistic* equal income distribution or full replacement of wages with UBI."

*Whatever that means; it is usually used purely as an epithet, rather than as an analytical term.

I imagine you're thinking of closing the gap including women making more money but gaps can closed in either direction. Instead of women making the choices of men, which by and large has made them quite a bit more miserable, men may begin making the choices of women and this might result in the pie shrinking for all. It seems dangerous to me to disincentivize working harder and earning more.

Yes, it might result in a shrinking pie, and that might be a bad thing. But that is why I said, " Whether that would be sound policy, given the other costs and benefits associated with that outcome, is an entirely different question."

How inconvenient. But at least society at large recognizes that men are widely sacrificing their interests for society and their sacrifice is appreciated. It would truly be a tragic mistake to expect men to sacrifice for society while also holding them in contempt.

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