The other day, I heard a quote that stood out to me:
“Just because it works, doesn’t make it right.”
I’ve been thinking about this quote ever since I first heard it, and I related it a lot to the challenges I’ve faced as a single Dad. The task of raising a child is a two-person job, and anything less leaves all parties shortchanged – especially the child.
During the later half of the 20th century, the government stepped in to offer single mothers welfare benefits, as well as the introduction of the child support system; a one-sided system that historically favors the mother in a split household. As a result, many women felt there was a way ‘out’ of the relationships they had committed to; whether that be a marriage vow, or the lifetime commitment of creating a child with a man.
While I’m sure there are plenty of cases where a man needs to be punished for not paying his dues or showing up as a responsible father to the child[ren] he created, I’m now seeing more and more cases where women have taken the role of the deadbeat parent – while collecting child support – and making the more responsible parent (the Dad) jump through a plethora of legal hoops just to gain equal footing/custody of their own flesh and blood.
While I know that it’s a mighty thin pancake that doesn’t have two sides, I now see more cases of good, hardworking and responsible men that have encountered clinically-diagnosible women in their lives; making the mistake of having a child with a lunatic.
I have witnessed my own share of attrocities in my life. I’ve dodged flying dinner plates and glassware that have shattered to pieces on the wall, been beaten with broomsticks and other household objects and have even been stabbed in the back with a sharp metal spike when I retreated from the rage of ‘a’ woman.
“Just because it works, doesn’t make it right.”
Going back to the topic of single parenthood (did I leave it?) there’s one thing that comes to mind when I see split households:
Shopping at the grocery store with a cart that only has two wheels.
Sure, it might ‘work’ when the cart is empty. However, as you go through the grocery store and fill up the cart with groceries, it becomes less and less managable. Turns become impossible without sharp scratching of the metal on the floor, and the cart will never be able to coast for even one second.
When a cart has four wheels, you can push it with one hand even when it’s loaded to capacity. However, the two-wheeled cart requires exponentially more effort to push, if you can push it at all.
One person pushes the two-wheeled cart and exclaims there’s something broken with it, and that it won’t go very far.
“This is working. The cart has all of the wheels that it needs.” the other party says.
Children are a lot like the groceries in the cart. They need all four wheels, and each parent provides two of them. Without all four wheels, the groceries in the cart will never be carried with stability. When one parent chooses to walk away and rip the wheels off the cart in exchange for a child support check, they singlehandedly destroy the family unit; the greatest source of strength, joy, encouragement and love that God created on this plane[t].
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