The last Labour government made fathers increasingly irrelevant.
In 2020 a law change repealing section 70a of the Social Security Act meant mothers applying for a sole parent benefit no longer had to name the father of their child for the purposes of collecting child support from him.
Men became decreasingly responsible for children they fathered.
Former Social Development Minister Paula Bennett told RNZ at the time: "These are women who are choosing not to name the father, that means he doesn't have financial obligations to the state, to actually be paying child support, so it's actually quite a big thing to be dropping that." For context there are over 100,000 sole parents currently collecting a benefit.
If a father is no longer legally required to financially provide for his child it is difficult to justify attendant obligations.
Yet a court report in today's NZ Herald explaining why a judge commuted the sentence of a sole mother convicted of killing her 4 week-old baby, says:
The Court of Appeal allowed a starting point of five and a half years’ imprisonment, nine months shorter than was determined by the High Court. The appellate justices then allowed further discounts for her youth, prospects for rehabilitation and “to reflect that tragic background which resulted in her being inadequately prepared for motherhood”. The discounts should also reflect that she was “effectively abandoned” by the children’s fathers, the justices said.
“We pause here to emphasise the need to condemn what appears, at least on the evidence before us, to have been the failure of both fathers to perform their obligations as parents,” the appellate panel said as an aside. “[The deceased child’s] father had some involvement but seems to have taken no steps to respond to the appellant’s clear signals that she was not coping and that she feared what she might do.
What "obligations as parents"? There are none that, if neglected, are punishable by law.
Sixty years ago the courts fined - and occasionally imprisoned - men who failed to provide maintenance. Harsh but clear.
Today we stumble about vainly trying to reconcile a plethora of human rights and fail miserably.
Of course it is mainly female rights that are catered to. Fertility rights, custody rights, benefit rights ... the enforcement of which can and do culminate in an abysmal failure to uphold children's rights (which exist under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.)
In this case, an older brother had suffered a "non-fatal assault" earlier but the youngest was killed. Not even the most basic right to "life, survival and development" was upheld.
The court concluded:
“The appellant is the only parent held accountable for the manslaughter and assaults ... yet there were two other adults who must be considered as sharing some responsibility.”
Do they or don't they? The messages young men receive are badly mixed. On one hand the state says they can impregnate at will and bear no responsibility. On the other, an Appeal Court judge, mopping up after the too-common horrible aftermath, claims there is responsibility. But it's not one enforceable by law.
Legality and morality are not hand-in-glove.
The basis of social security law is now amoral. The failure to hold fathers financially accountable is just one of the many perversions of its original strongly moral basis. What did Michael Joseph Savage call social security? Applied Christianity.
I don't know what he would call it today.
Lindsay Mitchell is a welfare commentator who blogs HERE. - where this article was sourced.
Former Social Development Minister Paula Bennett told RNZ at the time: "These are women who are choosing not to name the father, that means he doesn't have financial obligations to the state, to actually be paying child support, so it's actually quite a big thing to be dropping that." For context there are over 100,000 sole parents currently collecting a benefit.
If a father is no longer legally required to financially provide for his child it is difficult to justify attendant obligations.
Yet a court report in today's NZ Herald explaining why a judge commuted the sentence of a sole mother convicted of killing her 4 week-old baby, says:
The Court of Appeal allowed a starting point of five and a half years’ imprisonment, nine months shorter than was determined by the High Court. The appellate justices then allowed further discounts for her youth, prospects for rehabilitation and “to reflect that tragic background which resulted in her being inadequately prepared for motherhood”. The discounts should also reflect that she was “effectively abandoned” by the children’s fathers, the justices said.
“We pause here to emphasise the need to condemn what appears, at least on the evidence before us, to have been the failure of both fathers to perform their obligations as parents,” the appellate panel said as an aside. “[The deceased child’s] father had some involvement but seems to have taken no steps to respond to the appellant’s clear signals that she was not coping and that she feared what she might do.
What "obligations as parents"? There are none that, if neglected, are punishable by law.
Sixty years ago the courts fined - and occasionally imprisoned - men who failed to provide maintenance. Harsh but clear.
Today we stumble about vainly trying to reconcile a plethora of human rights and fail miserably.
Of course it is mainly female rights that are catered to. Fertility rights, custody rights, benefit rights ... the enforcement of which can and do culminate in an abysmal failure to uphold children's rights (which exist under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.)
In this case, an older brother had suffered a "non-fatal assault" earlier but the youngest was killed. Not even the most basic right to "life, survival and development" was upheld.
The court concluded:
“The appellant is the only parent held accountable for the manslaughter and assaults ... yet there were two other adults who must be considered as sharing some responsibility.”
Do they or don't they? The messages young men receive are badly mixed. On one hand the state says they can impregnate at will and bear no responsibility. On the other, an Appeal Court judge, mopping up after the too-common horrible aftermath, claims there is responsibility. But it's not one enforceable by law.
Legality and morality are not hand-in-glove.
The basis of social security law is now amoral. The failure to hold fathers financially accountable is just one of the many perversions of its original strongly moral basis. What did Michael Joseph Savage call social security? Applied Christianity.
I don't know what he would call it today.
Lindsay Mitchell is a welfare commentator who blogs HERE. - where this article was sourced.
7 comments:
This article is saying what I have been thinking for a long time. Jacinda actually had the attitude that nobody is responsible for anything, other than taxpayers who were a bottomless source of money. Margaret Wilson and Helen Clark's radical feminism was all about women's rights at the expense of children's, but as this article says, ultimately puts a greater burden on women.
For comparison, look at the Gisele Pelicot rape case in France - raped under sedation by her so-called " perfect husband" and 51 other men over a 10-year period.
How is any society calling men to account - as husbands, fathers, partners and occasional contacts?
Related to this , NZ's benefit system will cause the country's bankruptcy if this "culture of unaccountability " is legally permitted to continue.
We live in a (so called) free society, but within that freedom is a certain amount of responsibility. In nature, an action can get a reaction!
Kevan
Why are people not using contraception?
I wonder how many abortions could be prevented by people simply using contraception? 95% plus?
Barend,
https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/2024-12/Abortion-Services-Annual-Report-2024-v6.pdf
60.7 percent of females who had abortions in 2023 were not using contraception at the time of conception. Of course, if they had been using contraception, it may still have failed but it seems a surprisingly large percentage to me.
Thank you Lindsay.
I think we can safely assume that if they had all been using contraception the abortion rate would have been less than 3% of what it actually was.
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