Oh wait! We didn't mean that women should get paid to have children and stay home. Where is the dignity? It's a job yes, but not on our dime. The mother should have opted for an abortion if she couldn't afford a child. Oh that's right, we made that illegal. Well, she should put the child up for adoption. She couldn't possibly have any attachment to the child that causes such a burden. Stay at home moms are ideally for "better off" folk, not for all the Blah people to take advantage of. Man up women.

I would prefer to see a jobs program for them to do something to help them meet their responsibilities. Getting rid of the drug laws and letting all drug offenders out of jail would be a start because many men are incarcerated.

As far as I am concerned it makes little sense for a mother with only minimum wage skills to work if they have two or more children at home (too young to go to school). Their highest value activity is being a mother to those children.

For every story of single mothers, I would like the reporter to attempt to track down the father of the children and ask him why he is not stepping up to his responsibilities and what he would recommend. Would shaming fathers have any impact?

is the right thing to do. If shaming them is even possible.

with fathers that don't have a job? While most of my female friends are sensible and avoid sex (I love Seattle), the few that do all pick partners with either drug or alcohol problems and that do not have a steady job. Doing something great liking paying women for three years to not work is awesome, but it would be better if we attacked the root of the problem. It's the men that coerce women into having sex. The cost to these scummy men is nearly zero, but the cost to women is 18+ years of work. Make sex just as painful and costly for the men as it is for women, and the problem will go away.

here on this board that is near verboten. I think for men who take their responsibilities seriously the system is aggressive in getting child support. When the father does not work (or does not work on the books) and has no assets - what do you do? Punishing the mother only hurts the children.

I thought of some ideas involving negative income taxes. I wonder what research is in the area? Most discussions end up in an idealogical food fight.

I would hope the pastors in the community are pushing responsibility. The schools are mostly teaching the mechanics and the pragmatic aspects (pregnancy hurts your future possibilities). My daughter's High School hits on the pragmatic aspects pretty hard, and we are a pretty conservative community. The kids think it is a joke.

PSAs would be laughed at.

I sure as heck would like to see every man step up to their responsibilities. I have lived my life in a responsibile manner (two children, born inside a lasting marriage, who I interact with frequently). I was blessed to have a two parent home (not a perfect home) and the skills to get an engineering degree. Assuming responsibility for my children (who we had after 30) is pretty easy for me.

Aggressive enforcement of the child sexual abuse/rape laws would help, but I am not sure how much of this would fit under those statutes.

and if their child(ren) are between maybe the ages of 3 and 7 they would be required to babysit them while the mother if she has a fairly decent job that she wants to do and needs child care. Probably needs to be at a location where the fathers are being supervised properly too unless they go through classes.

Can anyone tweak this better?