@Aethelflaed I know of people who have stepped right out of their kids lives because the marriage broke up. It was the biological fathers. The men who did face up to be parents were the second husbands. Letters were sent to the biological fathers to ask them to give up any custodial rights, which they signed, then the step fathers legally adopted the respective kids. Because they were adopted and gained ‘real’ fathers, the biological father no longer had to pay support. So, yes, the biological parent who abandoned the family had the responsibility and validity of his parenthood lessed, cancelled, you might even say, so they didn’t have to pay 18 to 23 years of support and they ended up getting what they wanted. I think you are absolutely right that we need to have more acceptance for common law relationships, be they same sex or not, and also, we need to fully recognise who is really caring for the children. (I have been a primary caregiver to an autistic stepson and found myself so stressed out, but when I went to my doctor and social services, they said I had no rights to ask for assistance because I wasn’t a ‘parent’! grrrr)
I am not sure how we can argue what ‘valid sex’ is and that having sex to just have babies is more valid than other forms. I am not sure what you are arguing there.
We were not discussing valid sperm donors, egg donors or surrogacy. Those situations have ‘pre-fucktual’ agreements as someone put it. We are talking about pregnancies as a result of the usual scenario where boy meets girl, boy and girl get drunk, have fumbling sex and she ends up pregnant. IF she decides she can’t bring herself to abort, even though the guy wants NOTHING to do with the child that will be up to her because it is HER body. There is nothing equal about child bearing. It works both ways, as well. If he really wants the baby and she doesn’t, it is her right to abort because it is HER body. Pregnancy is STILL one of the most dangerous things women do on a regular basis. It could kill her. (there are 7 billion of us on the planet but America has the worst maternal mortality rate of all industrialised nations)
So, it is much more complicated. Life happens. I can only wish, that if anyone I am close to again in that situation, that they find a real man who loves them and the child she brought into the world and makes a family with them, so the biological dead-beat can get cut lose.