Assuming the father 1)is known 2) is able 3) is willing. Re #3, Paternity must be established and that burden falls on the mother. Where the assumed father does not voluntarily submit to a paternity test, the mother has to file suit to compel him. That's not something that's going to be easy for someone already in poverty.
When the Welfare People Come is great read on the the way the welfare system is stacked against those who need to use it that delves into this and OP's points in greater detail.
Another factor is the large number of men put in prison for long periods of time, and even when they get out their record destroys their ability to earn money to support their families.
> 1) is known
If the woman doesn't know who the father is, who's choice was that?
> 2) is able
yes
> 3) is willing
The courts routinely assess child support on both willing and unwilling fathers. It's not an option for fathers.
#1) Don't moralize the situation. The woman may have been raped, her partner may have lied to her. She may just have wanted to get off and the condom broke. She may be a prostitute, willingly or unwillingly.. Doesn't matter. The only reason any of these are an issue is the unremunerated responsibility of the woman to raise the child.
#2) Yes, your prison comment overwhelmingly impacts the poor, particularly minorities.
#3) The burden is on the woman, if the woman is poor she may not have the resources to force the father to pay.
My mother cheated on my father and he left her because of that.
He was required (by Texas law) to pay child-support to my mother up until we were 18 (I am 29) to my mother who cheated on him; he still owes back pay on that and refuses to pay until they put a warrant out for his arrest.
My mother demonized him to us by crying about not knowing why he left her; she never once mentioned until 5 months ago that she cheated on him.
Dad regrets leaving us (his kids, not my mother) because it put a rift between us. We never knew the truth until recently when my mom let it slip in a conversation.
At this point I feel like he has been punished enough by the state of Texas for leaving my cheating mother.
Recently my eldest brother had a girl and my father has been in her life as much as he can and I'm incredibly happy for that (not jealous one bit) because at least my niece will have something my brother and I never had because he was soured by her behavior.
We grew up poor because of my mother's infidelity...
I will respect this moderation decision, but I think, in context, it seems to indicate an approach that is ultimately detrimental to the quality of discussion on HN.
If someone is using a personal story with blaming statements as a means to make commentary about a more general topic of discussion, either the appropriateness of the blaming statements given the narrative must be just as subject to challenge as it would be if the narrative were a third-party news story and the whole style of argument of using such stories in a discussion needs to be viewed as out of bounds, otherwise you've created a specially privileged argument style for which only silence or agreement is allowed.
I largely agree, except it's easy to turn the topic back to the argument at hand. You just make statements about that, rather than about specific individuals, even though the other commenter did the latter. By commenting explicitly about the general and only implicitly about the personal, you convey respect and leave space for the other. It's different when the personal details are from your own life—relevant personal experience is fine.
We need this for discussion quality because challenging someone on their intimate personal details typically makes them feel wounded where it already hurt, prompting a defensive attack and a flamewar. Also, because we can't know from internet comments what was really going on in someone's life, it's more intellectually honest.
There are other things one can do to signal that someone is not being attacked. You can rephrase a statement as a neutral question. You can lead with "In my experience," making the statement about yourself. You can say "Of course I can't judge what was going on in your situation, but" and return to a general case.
I agree with you that when someone makes blaming personal statements as if they had general force in an argument, most of us immediately sense that something's off. But such statements come from pain and pain never responds to argument, only acknowledgement.
You're a fine HN commenter and I think you know all this already, but maybe the above will help clarify something for others.
It's just bad writing. There's a way to make the point you're trying to make without directly confronting someone about their childhood and their parents. "Well actually" is a super useful, easy way to make points on a message board, but there are things we should be extra carefully not to well-actually.
I've been thinking about trying to start a new site with fewer helicopter parents.
Would you be interested in essentially a mirror of HN's front page, but where you're free to say most things?
The mod criteria would be "If you get personal, or you're destructive to conversation, you're out." But conversely, uncomfortable ideas will be allowed.
I'm thinking we could also set up a Slack community for the site. If people have problems with the moderation, they can come chat about it openly.
The moderation here has been getting a bit stuffy, and maybe other people feel the same way. I don't know. If you're interested, shoot me an email and we can start hammering out a plan.
Unfortunately, I have no way of contacting you other than to post this here.
> So because my mother cheated on him it's his fault for leaving
No, independently of your mother cheating on him, it's his fault for refusing to uphold his legal obligation to materially support his children.
Leaving the spouse is not the issue. (Leaving the children may be an issue, but to the extent it is it is at a minimum mitigated by fulfilling the legal support obligations a parent who is not raising their children has to those children.)
> If my father had cheated on my mother I'm assuming it would still be his fault if she left him
Whoever's fault leaving is, it would be his fault if he chose to refuse to meet his legal obligation to support his children.
> We grew up poor because my mother cheated, not because of my father leaving.
From your own description, the poverty was at least in large part because your father refused to pay legally-required child support after leaving you and your mother. Assuming that there was not a custody contest that you omitted in which your mother was awarded full custody, leaving children is not necessary with leaving their mother, however justified the latter is, and in any case, neither requires being a deadbeat on child support.
It is also incredibly shitty to suggest that if a woman is raped she can just get an abortion, problem solved. It is surgery, this another insult to the body, and some women feel strongly that abortion is murder. So the choice becomes "Do I try to spend the rest of my life loving this demon spawn that will be a living, breathing reminder of my rape every day, or do I swallow my morals and commit what I view as baby murder?" Acting like it is no big if a woman is raped and left with such a conundrum sounds just mind-bogglingly callous.
When the Welfare People Come is great read on the the way the welfare system is stacked against those who need to use it that delves into this and OP's points in greater detail.