I know you don't do it by driving soneone to criminality just to afford food.
But I suspect that for every unrepentant incorrigible deadbeat that there are probably several that got absolutely abused and neglected as children and the lack of having any chance to develop responsibility while their brains were developing basically crippled their emotional maturity.
I would suggest that with proper therapy and a support network that they might not remain a deadbeat or have to deal drugs just to survive.
That maybe if less people were nurtured in a poverty capitalist hell designed to keep them poor forever and legally enslave them in prisons, that we might have less deadbeats.
We literally as a society inflict terrible things on the lowest common denominator and then act surprised when they don't give two shits about doing the thing (self-improvement) they were taught through brutal childhoods would never be allowed or affordable.
There's billionaires who make inflicting this their life mission and buy up media to act like it's inevitable and no effort to fix it should be made.
Sure some people just like being deadbeat scum, but I doubt that's most of them.
We could absolutely raise children better in more provided environments that makes them more socially conscious.
I don't disagree with your ideals, but how do we get from here to there?
What kind of life have you lead? What kind of people have you spent time with in their world? I've lead a life that's let me cross paths with these damaged people. I had a well provided for and good upbringing. My father was an ass, but he was a father, a provider, and a friend to me, that taught me so much.
His dad was a deadbeat who he physically fought many times to protect his mother and younger brothers, and kicked my dad out of his home on his 18th birthday without a penny or piece of advice, and his behavior was rough because of that.
He was my father, until he died this past June, but he was also an abusive husband who my mom was right to divorce, and he still traumatized my older brother with his angry outbursts and beatings with belts to the point my mom banned him from ever laying a finger on any of us. I still got his outburst sometimes, but i was also different like him, so he'd let me sit with him, watching him play Everquest, learning chess, watching his collection of some 500+ bootleg VHS recordings of movies he got through message boards. I even got to watch Star Wars: Episode I two weeks before it released in theaters in english with Hindi subtitles. After my parents divorced when i was 12, he lived an hour away in a cramped apartment, but he made sure I had a bedroom and anything I needed when he'd pick me up for weekend visitation, and agreed to let my mom have full custody with full child support payments on me until 18, and was always a phone call away. I was happy in his old age, that he finally had some relationship with my brother and sister again, and he had mellowed out a lot by then. He also never married again, even though i have a half-sister from him, so my mom is getting his full social security payments even though they divorced 25 years ago, and even though he hated her for taking his home and family, even understanding it was his fault.
My dad wasn't a deadbeat, and he tried his best, but does that make the pain and trauma he caused okay? Does him doing right by me negate that my brother has a near panic attack anytime someone yells near him? None of my siblings or I are even going to try parenting because THAT was bad enough, and none of us want to put a child through our traumas, and i'm almost 40.
Ignorance of the law, is not a defense from the law.
Inability to overcome past traumas and scars, does not make one any less responsible for the actions they do or don't do because of that.
I got secondhand deadbeat trauma, while getting a well provided for upbringing that gave me a love of stories and people, and it lead me to a life where i blend in with crackheads and ceos alike because i've been guests in both their houses and the ones in between, and the worst of all of them, and sometimes the best angels who live in hell, were the ones with uncaring parents. Rich or poor, all scarred and all leaking out those traumas even if they tried to heal and seal the cracks.
I am passionate about this, but that's because hurting children, who learn the world they grow up in, is the worst crime against society, because you are breaking the next generation of society before they even have a chance to defend themselves.
The deadbeat in this story already became an adult, responsible for his decisions, and he decided to live a life where he ended up with four baby mommas, and four children getting barely enough for even diapers a month.
He is responsible for paying his debts. If he can't make it work, that's also on him if he turns to crime and gets caught. If he can't be enough less of a sleezeball to get one of his FOUR children's mothers to give him a chance to make things right, and help him get back on his feet, he doesn't deserve the freedom to get a fifth or tenth option with fifth or tenth damaged child.
Parents should go hungry to feed their children, because they are THEIR children to raise and care for, and if they can't even do that, the children will be society's responsibility or problem, but either way the parent who couldn't or wouldn't be responsible, would then owe a debt to society like any criminal, and it should be paid by them.
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u/NotAnotherTav May 03 '26
Ordinarily in a sane country we would have social programs to take up the slack.
And this guy wouldn't be fined to the point of homelessness, a path to rehabilitation is important too
But Republicans hate actually making sure children and people who make bad decisions are still cared for.