Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2022 7:42 am
Diopolis wrote:I'm going to essentially concede the point that the current system is biased against the autonomy of men, but I just want to address the below point.Galloism wrote:
It's true that mothers have, for centuries, perhaps millennia, had their rights cared for more than their children or men's.
This system didn't exist because past societies were particularly concerned with women's autonomy. It existed because men under these societies had nearly unlimited severability of parental responsibility towards children they had with any woman they weren't married to, whereas women were required to find someone to take the baby before severing their responsibilities. Before this system existed it was tacitly acknowledged that parents had the right to kill or sell very young children if they didn't want to take care of them.
Every society has some solution to the percentage of parents that want to alienate themselves from their parental responsibilities. It is entirely possible our current society's solution is the worst of all possible worlds. But I don't see a meaningful alternative- the state is unwilling to take on such responsibilities itself, the public won't stand for children just not being taken care of, and we lack large social institutions such that unwanted children can just be handed over to the nuns.
It's true - past societies had near limited severability for both men and women when it came to children's responsibilities in unmarried situations (although it maintained severability only for mothers in married situations when they led to divorce, but not fathers. It also *forced* severability on mothers and forced inseverability on fathers in that scenario, whether either of them liked it or not. Lots of problems there.). It also had lots of other problems.
I wouldn't say our system is the "worst of all possible worlds". The aforementioned selling your own children into slavery is certainly worse. Because slavery is bad and stuff.
But it is pretty bad.
The thing is though, people are ok with the state picking up the responsibility - if the person not taking responsibility is the mother. It's not that the state is unwilling to take on such responsibilities itself, rather, it is ONLY willing to take on such responsibilities when the people requesting it are by and large women, and not men. Put another way, it's willing to take on those responsibilities only on the basis of sex of the person requesting it.