Bag's Rants

Important message being put out.

Well it seems that the important messages are sometimes the simplest things.

The government is planning to make the registration of fathers' names on birth certificates compulsory. The Institute of Public Policy Research said the move would send an important signal about fathers' roles and duties. Read here.

Now if the state can't get the names of these fathers from the mother when the CSA is pushing for them how is the DWP going to do it? In addition how will another piece of paper increase the pressure on the absent partner. How heavy is a birth certificate nowadays? The fathers are not all feckless. It's just so easy for women to appeal to the blokes urges and then they are trapped. The men have no say and the women have total control. I want to be looked after for the next 20 years find a bloke willing to have sex with you. Wow! that must be difficult. Try and find one with a future, which you can deliberately screw up, or one with rich parents for one mistake. In a pinch though anyone with a willie will do. Just tell them your on the pill.

On the one hand the state says that families are better then provides financial inducement to single mums. Read here for details. The state says that women with kids get £x. That is way over what they can earn in a part time job. Decades ago it encouraged single mums by giving them free money, houses etc. with little call on the fathers. Then it realised that this was costing a fortune and the state wanted to recoup the costs and the CSA was born. The rules were so strict that it was impossible for a father to have any life with another family unless that women was working and they wanted a cut of that too. Some of the atrocities committed by those rules are unbelievable. The people they were after simply avoided it and the ones that were hammered was the general law abiding chaps who actually were responsible parents anyway. I know families that went on the social themselves to avoid it as they were actually better off that way.

I think a stronger signal might be when the government actually comes out with a coherent all round policy on this issue which basically stops encouraging women financially to have kids. Everything else is just another sticking plaster that won't fix the problem.

posted by Bag @ 12:15 pm