Why are most courts on a women’s side when it comes to deadbeat parents?

There are fathers that have custody of their children, but when a mother has custody why is the father almost always held 100% financially responsible. For instance if a woman leaves her husband for her boyfriend and takes the children, they live together, neither works, they get on food stamps. The father of the children is held by the state and the court 100% responsible and now owes the state 100% of all state help including all food stamps even though her boyfriend ate the food also. Why is the woman not held responsible for at least half and why doesn’t the state and or the court take into consideration the boyfriends benefiting from the state support. Where are the equal rights? Thoughts?

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Tatsumi · 31-35, M

It's leftover from past gender roles, I would suppose. 75, 100 years ago, most women couldn't survive without a man to support them. Now that single women make more money than single men, we still have that judicial infrastructure, which hasn't caught up to the change. And there's not much desire to change it, either, because reasons.

There's also the idea in society that women are "objects" [not in a dehumanizing sense], in that they cannot act--[i]they are acted upon. [/i]

Whereas, men are viewed as "agents": [i]they act; they are not acted upon. [/i]

That's kinda a default perspective which a lot of people default to. Instinctually, imo.

I.e. "Why is a woman a stripper?" Because her dad forced her into it, one way or another.

"Why aren't women going into science and technology?" Because men keep them from doing so.

Etc. etc. If you look around, you notice it a lot. Women aren't really responsible for their actions. They're viewed as children, which is kinda fucked up.

So, in a sense, a woman having a child isn't something that she did--it's something a man did *to* her, regardless of the fact that she has 100% control over reproduction. So it's the man's responsibility.