First, I should note that I do NOT approve of actual deadbeat dads under the current system. They are literally welchers of the worst kind, and I cannot stand welchers of any kind. To any fellas reading this, I strongly advise you NOT to have any unprotected PIV intercourse at all unless you either 1) had a vasectomy, and/or 2) can afford to set aside the quarter-million dollars or so per child to raise such children with at least a halfway decent standard of living from birth to age 18 (or an even higher age in some states for child support obligations). And that doesn't even include college or the possibility (nay, probability) of massive medical bills in the USA. Sorry fellas, but the truth hurts. Under the current imperfect system, if you want to play, you may very well have to PAY. And if you don't pay, well, then you get to face the modern-day version of debt peonage or debtor's prison. You can thank the patriarchy for backfiring on you per the law of karma. Also don't forget to thank neoliberalism (including the hypocritical President Slick Willie in the 1990s, one of the biggest rakes and cads in modern history) as well for essentially gutting what passed for a social safety net, and thus for "hunting you down and making you pay" in return.
In other words, fellas, discipline yourself to say, "no glove, no love" as a matter of course, lest you play a risky game of Russian Roulette both physically and financially.
That said, as we make the rocky and often nonlinear transition towards a Matriarchal society, a very vexing question will inevitably come up. What to do about child support laws? Should the very concept be phased out? Many men will reflexively say, "Hell Yeah!", while many Women would say, "Hell NO!", or at the very least, have an abundance of caution about the overall idea. On social media, for example, I have even encountered some Women here and there who say they want to create a world where no one knows or cares who the father is, yet somehow still want to force men to pay for it all. I guess they want a rule of "joint and several liability" or "deep pocket rule", of all of the potential fathers for all children, not unlike what Lenin briefly had in the USSR during their ill-fated first attempt at a "sexual revolution" in the late 1910s and early 1920s, that is, before Stalin did an about-face and abruptly reversed it after the orphanages became (paradoxically) packed to the brim with unwanted children. Yes, that was before modern birth control and paternity testing, of course, but it really doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how that sort of policy probably would NOT end very well at all under late-stage capitalism today either. That circle simply does NOT square at all.
Meanwhile, many right-wing reactionaries (including so-called "reactionary feminists"), believe that the more obligations people have in general, the better, because reasons. Even if some tacitly believe that Women should have all the rights but men should have all of the obligations, or vice-versa. That circle doesn't really square either.
Yet in actual Matriarchal societies, past and present, such as the Mosuo, we know that men generally have no real liability for their own (putative) children at all. Why? Not only due to the traditional lack of paternity certainty (at least before the advent of modern birth control and paternity testing), but also because the Women do NOT want themselves or their children be tethered to or dependent on the men, for obvious reasons, as that is a major conflict of interest. Whoever pays the piper calls the tune, and with men's shekels come the shackles. And men, as a rule, in every society patriarchal or Matriarchal or anything in between, have always been the lazier gender overall, and often seem to be congenitally allergic to responsibility. Sure there are exceptions, but those exceptions really only prove the rule. If Women are going to inevitably carry the bulk of the "mental load" regardless, to say nothing of the physical load too, they might as well be fully in charge as well. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, and heavy is the head that wears the crown.
In other words, it is understood that with power comes responsibility, and thus men would have both less power and less responsibility relative to Women under Matriarchy, particularly in regards to children. That makes sense, as it's a trade-off. Women would also be the richer gender as well, and children would ultimately be raised (more or less) collectively by the "village". And to paraphrase the philosopher Iris Murdoch (in a different context), one cannot simply go on indefinitely living off of the interest of a capital that one has long since rejected, at least not for very long.
(Perhaps that is one somewhat esoteric reason why, contrary to popular opinion, even Feminists have long been divided on the issue of child support laws and reform. Any Feminist Women who do support reform (despite it being a very hot-button, "third rail" issue), however, generally use equality-based arguments to openly make their case, though.)
And yet, abruptly ending all child support obligations right now (especially in the USA) would be nothing short of catastrophic, leaving millions of Women and children high and dry, while rakish men get to laugh all the way to the bank. So that is clearly a no-go, hands down. Especially in a world where Women's hard-won reproductive rights are currently on the chopping block as we speak.
The fellas can't have it both ways, of course. If Women are to be treated as brood mares, then it logically follows that men would be....WORK HORSES. And we must all say "NEIGH" to both of those "traditional" and dehumanizing gender roles.
Long story short, in the long run, I do support gradually phasing out the child support laws, for children born at some point in the future, but we must be very careful NOT put the cart before the horse. Before we even begin to do so, we must do ALL of the following first, at a minimum:
- Fully codify and guarantee Women's reproductive rights in federal law.
- Birth control and abortion access must be readily available to all on demand.
- Universal Basic Income (UBI) for all, aka Social Security For All, with NO strings attached. Goodbye poverty!
- At the very least, we must have some flavor of UBI for children, similar to what we very briefly had in the USA with the expanded child tax credit. We could even call it "collective child support".
- Universal, single-payer Medicare For All. Goodbye massive medical bills!
- Generous paid family leave for both genders.
- Free or subsidized high-quality childcare for all who want it.
- "Baby bonds" to make every baby a trust-fund baby and build generational wealth.
- Free college and/or trade school for all who want it.
- As long as other social welfare and safety net programs like TANF still exist, remove the perverse requirement for single Mothers to name the father in order to receive benefits (you can thank Slick Willie for that one).
- And so on. In other words, the genuine progressive wish list, funded collectively via progressive taxation, Georgist-style taxation, financial transaction taxes, Pigouvian taxes, vice taxes, and/or money creation.
