@Wommit
Hear, hear! Deadbeat Moms are (as a % of the individuals on the hook for such payments by gender) far more common in my province than deadbeat dads. Yet our government still focuses entirely on non-paying fathers and ignores the problem of non-paying mothers entirely.
The issue of course is that our laws are so unbelievably unbalanced here that the Fathers almost never get custody. (Women are “far more important to a child’s development.”) This is of course despite that fact that in many cases the fathers in question are good individuals who care a great deal about their children and have the means to support them. The mother can be (and sadly too often is in cases that end up going to court) strung out on drugs, irresponsible and unable to properly care for the children. She’ll still get custody in an unfortunate number of cases.
So the total number of women here asked to pay child support is vanishingly small. Sadly, those that are on the hook for it are pretty negligent about paying. So there are a higher % of “deadbeat moms” amidst the pool of mothers asked to pay support. That said, given the vastly wider pool of fathers asked to pay support even the significantly lower % of “deadbeat dads” amongst them makes for a higher number of bodies who are unable or unwilling to provide upkeep.
The whole thing is a complicated web of social injustices on a lot of sides; neither gender is perfect…but in my humble opinion neither gender is “more important” to a child’s development either. While right now today there are more “deadbeat dads” in my jurisdiction than “deadbeat moms,” this is a symptom of a larger injustice.
Thusly I agree without wholeheartedly; we need to be referring to these issues using non-gender-specific terms. Only once we can defeat gender barriers such as those that automatically assume the mother is more fit to raise a child than the father will we be approaching a truly equitable society.
It is well past time that the pendulum of equality swung the other direction. It is time to address the injustices that exist in how we treat men in our society with just as much vigour and passion as we approach the injustices that exist as regards women. A truly equitable society would not look at any of these issues with any gender bias whatsoever.
Most importantly, a truly equitable society wouldn’t be spending provincial tax dollars to push out advertisements on television, radio and the internet specifically focused at “deadbeat dads.” It’s demeaning, it’s backwards and it’s unconscionable to use public money to perpetuate gender sterotypes of any type. Especially when they are flat out wrong.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
