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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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The presumption in Western courts has long been shared custody.

The practice has been that child support will be enforced by any means necessary, but father's visitation rights will not be enforced at all.

I mean, even if this is true, the main reason isn't some evil feminists being in charge, it's that it's far easier to garnish a person's wages than to pay enough people to make sure all visitation rights are followed to the letter. You could put this message board in charge of America, and guess what, you'd still see this.

No, they don't stop with garnishing wages. They suspend professional licenses and drivers licenses for unpaid child support. They put "deadbeat dads" in jail, in one of the few remaining uses of debtor's prison in the US. For women who don't co-operate with visitation the system gives a Gallic shrug and admonishes the fathers that they still have to pay child support or else.

I’ve heard of quite a few cases where mothers have been charged with kidnap for denying visitation or moving to eg. another state or country to be away from their kids’ dad.

On some level it’s a underclass problem, too. I assume your sympathy for single mothers who don’t get child support from their exes because they’re in jail/unemployed/etc is limited too, so why wouldn’t it be for those men who married women so ratchet/psychotic/etc that they illegally deny their exes visitation?

I’ve heard of quite a few cases where mothers have been charged with kidnap for denying visitation or moving to eg. another state or country to be away from their kids’ dad.

There was a famous case some decades ago where a woman moved the kid out of the country and was held in contempt, and they changed the law to get her released... without, of course, getting her to comply.

I can be sympathetic for single mothers who don't get child support from their exes because they're in jail/unemployed/etc, but you still can't get blood from a stone.

so why wouldn’t it be for those men who married women so ratchet/psychotic/etc that they illegally deny their exes visitation

Because I refuse to accept that women don't have agency, and shouldn't be held responsible for their exercise of it. If they really are so psychotic that they can be effectively said not to have agency, they sure as hell shouldn't have custody.