On Misogyny and the Maintenance Act: A Reply to MESA, BFP & Bajan Dream Project

16Apr09

i’m a bad blogger. and that’s good news because it means i have been living my life offline. finally growing up and thinking about my career and studies have paid off. i’ve had some good opportunities at work and very little free time. i never would have thought that i would love being so busy. i’m keeping my fingers crossed that it all works out.

i got home early today and sought to entertain myself online, reading my fav blogs, posting nonsense on facebook, catching up on all that i really haven’t had time to look at since the year started.

i started out at the barbados free press and stumbled across this little gem of a post which lead me to this other gem (posted on a blog which i really love for the quality of its writing, the only reason why i bothered to leave a comment).

Before I respond to the “Bajan women are mercenary gold-diggers, pinning children on hapless men aided and abetted by a legal system which favours women” let me declare my biases up front. I am a feminist. Of course 99% of the general population does not understand what that word means and it’s not my job to educate them. Let me just say that feminism has taught me to see everyone as worthy and deserving of the best life possible. It has made me insist on having a role to play in working towards that ideal. That means doing the little that I can to work towards social justice.

The other standpoint from which I write is that of going to court after my father walked out on one family to go create another one, so that my little sister could receive financial support to finish her studies. My experience and that of countless children belies the story being spun of money-grabbing women putting children on men and the courts supporting them in their fraud.

Magistrates have said in public fora that most men who ask for a paternity test in the case of a petition for maintenance are usually revealed to be the biological fathers and in fact use the paternity test as a delaying tactic.

When I accompanied my sister and mother to court my father had grossly inflated his expenses leaving him with a deficit and no disposable income from which to pay maintenance. He made up stories about my little sister cursing him in an effort to justify why he should no longer have to support her. His lawyer, who was related to his wife, accused me of threatening her even though I had never seen or spoken to her before and was meeting her for the first time in court that day. To make a long and painful story short my father appeared so utterly pathetic in my eyes that I felt we should just walk away and find some other way to make it without his money.

How does one’s responsibility to a child one has helped create come down to just $50 a week or $300 a month? How can anybody feel comfortable with such a diminished vision of parenthood? Certainly these questions are as important as who can give permission for a child to have its DNA-tested.

A single mother cannot register the name of the father on the birth certificate. The man must do so himself at the registry. It’s just not a simple matter of screaming, “Owen is my child-fada”, then dragging him to court and milking him for all he’s worth.

The women who stand in line to collect that $50, already humiliated by the experience of the Magistrate’s Court, would perhaps agree with that the Chairman of MESA that the Maintenance Act does in fact need to be revamped but for very different reasons.

I have no doubt that some men may feel as though they have been treated unfairly by the courts or their former partners. Their concerns should be addressed. But addressing men’s concerns should not require casting them as victims and women as mercenaries. Neither stereotype is accurate. Surely we can debate the concerns of women, men and children with regard to parental responsibility, paternity and the Maintenance Act without resorting to misogyny.

Sadly, in this battle to preserve the patriarchal privileges of men (and let us be clear what is really at issue here) the assault is not on men as has been suggested by MESA et al but ultimately on children.

Filed under: Barbados, angry, caribbean, gender   |  7 Comments
Tags: Caribbean family, Child Support, paternity