Fathers, Rights, Responsibilities

Dennis Prager’s commentary (Aug. 12) advocating parental rights only for married fathers, but not for the unwed, reveals a talk show host’s ability to provoke controversy, but fails to solve the essential problem affecting unwed parents-acceptance of personal responsibility. By suggesting that we relieve an unwed father of any obligation to support his child, Prager seeks to make the father’s responsibility for his child dependent on the mere performance of a ceremony or ritual (the “marital solution”). As a society we should not be seeking new ways to avoid personal responsibility for our actions.

The father’s rights issue is real. Degrading the unwed father to “no more than an inseminator,” as Prager does, is the equivalent of degrading the unwed mother to no more than an incubator. If we treat unwed parents equally, the “simple” solution that flows from Prager’s faulty logic would not be to make the child the property of the mother to dispose of as she pleases, it would be to relieve both parents of any responsibilities toward the childand to deny them both any rights to the child. Presumably society (courts and lawyers) would take the child and give it a better life than its unwed parents could.

We don’t need “simple” solutions of the type proposed by Prager. We need to recognize that having rights connotes having responsibilities, and we need to accept personal responsibility for our actions. DARWIN THOMAS Los Angeles Prager, with whom I frequently disagree, got my assent to half of his proposal regarding the rights and responsibilities of unwed fathers to their offspring.

It was the part about rights. That a man who is unwilling to marry the woman he sleeps with should be able to wrench a resulting child from the arms of loving adoptive parents is a tragic injustice. To relieve him also of his financial responsibility for that child as a means of providing a disincentive to the potential birth mother is an intriguing idea, but it has as many holes as a cheap condom. Who gets nailed with child support if the birth mother keeps the baby and gets no help from the sperm donor? That’s right, us taxpayers.

Rights,no; responsibilities, yes. ROBERT BRIGHAM Manhattan Beach