By now, anyone who reads my blogs is aware that I am a divorced mother of 2 beautiful teenage daughters. In speaking with other mothers who are single, I realize each and every day how truly blessed and fortunate I am to have the ex-husband and father of my children that I do. Having come from a broken home, my parents divorced when I was only 5 years old, I knew I wanted more for my children than I had, as most parents do. What I wanted for my children was for them to always have both of us in their lives in an active manner whether or not we were together as a couple. I didn’t want them to feel the tension and stress due to being miserable because my marriage didn’t work out. 
Their father and I made the decision that we would maintain our friendship and co-parent in a manner which not only benefited our children, it also helped us as adults going thru the life altering decision of ending our marriage.
There are women I know who are single parents to their children 95% of the time due to the father of that child/children being in his feelings towards the mother and taking it out on his seed. They fail to see that one has nothing to do with the other. First and foremost, no child asked to be here, that was a decision you both made when you laid down in that bed and planted that seed. I’m going to say what my father told me years ago: “In this day and age with all of the birth control options available to you, there is no such thing as an accidental pregnancy”. 
Yes, there will be times in which that birth control fails but nothing outside of abstinence is 100% and that’s something you have to keep in mind as well. I will not get into the whole Pro-Life/Pro-Choice debate because everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I’ll leave it at that. 
If your birth control were to fail and you’re surprised with a pregnancy, that’s a discussion between you and the person you laid with, no one else.
When you and your partner make the decision to have a child, you’ve made an agreement to take care of this child emotionally, physically, financially, and mentally by always being there for them for the rest of your lives, not just while you’re cohabitating. Will money get tight?! Of course it will, children are expensive and that only increases as they get older. 
Trust me, I wish I could take my girls out to eat and still pay only a couple of dollars for kids’ meals but they eat more than I do at this point. It doesn’t matter how old your child is, they still need a roof over their heads, water to bathe with, electricity for heating/cooling/cooking, these are expenses for the child as well, not just buying them the latest pair of Jordans ® or flyest name brand gear which they will outgrow or destroy in a matter of months. It doesn’t matter if you and your partner are together or not, your child still needs you there for their good, bad, happy and sad times, they need to know they matter to you more than hanging out in clubs all hours of the day and night. 
Your children are not here to listen to you moan, groan, bitch and complain about what’s not going right in your life, that’s the type of stuff we’re supposed to shield from and not unload on them. Children are not something you deal with when it’s convenient for you, once you made the decision to bring them forth into this world, it ceased being about you and what you wanted first, it’s about them and their well-being first and foremost.
The subject of child support is a very touchy and emotional one these days because you have fathers who bitch about how the money he’s giving to support his child is being spent. On the flip side of that, you have mothers who abuse the money given to them by the fathers and go get their nails and weaves done instead of buying clothes that fit their child. 
I get it, it’s messed up on both sides but, trust me when I tell you, we’re not all the same, the abusers make it hard for those who truly need the money. I know of a situation where the father swears up and down all day long that his daughter means everything to him, however, he doesn’t spend time with her, calls her every few days and offers nothing towards her well-being. This man doesn’t care if his daughter has eaten today or has clothes which fit her but makes sure to have the latest Gucci ® belt around his brand new jeans, with his fresh Polo ® shirt on and brand new sneakers every time he comes around. He and his daughter’s mother had a very volatile relationship and she finally broke free of it and him but that’s not good enough for him, he wants her back and their daughter suffers in the process.
The mother has asked the father for financial support on a regular basis but he ignores the requests and instead composes lengthy emails about how his misses his family and attaches love songs from their relationship. All the while, his daughter’s lunch account is $25 in the hole, her shoes have seen better days and she misses her daddy. This same guy told the mother of his child that if she took him for child support, he wouldn’t buy his daughter another birthday or Christmas gift, the mother would have to do that since “she wanted to be petty and take him for child support”. The ignorance of that statement totally blows my mind.
When you have a mother who is a mature adult, she will work with you and do what she can to keep both of you out of the court system. There will be times when the court needs to get involved and in those cases, she will still be a grown woman and work with you. There are men who are in arrears when it comes to child support and that can affect your driving abilities and freedom. 
As women, we know and understand that and do what it takes to make sure you don’t lose your job because you don’t have a license to get there or are sitting in jail. The one thing you have to remember is she is going to respond to you in the manner at which you come at her. I say this to mean, if you go to court and have a decent attitude, she will work with you but if you call her bitter because the court has made a decision based off your salary? Yeah, stop buying your fancy clothes because you have some arrearage to catch up on.
Another situation I am aware of involves a scorned woman with more than one child’s father. Now, the man takes care of and loves his daughter with everything he is and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for that little girl. However, her mother uses the child to get back at the father for breaking her heart by refusing to let him even see his daughter. 
This same woman only took him for child support because he married another woman instead of her and the proof of that is once he separated from his wife, she began actually giving him money back. Everything was going smoothly until she realized that his divorce didn’t mean a reconciliation between the 2 of them and she began keeping his daughter from him and has taken him back to court twice to get increases so she can take care of her other 3 children who have different fathers. This is an abuse of the system and the reason it is hard for there to be civility between 2 biologically grown people who should be focused on the well-being of the children, not the demise of a relationship.
One misconception I’ve heard before is child support and visitation go hand in hand, not true, one has nothing to do with the other. However, there are females who actually tell the fathers that since he is behind on child support, he can’t and won’t see his child until he is current. Sometimes, he just doesn’t have it but that doesn’t mean the child shouldn’t have time with him. At that point, the father gets resentful and bitter because he feels the mother is viewing the child as nothing more than a paycheck and he has to pay to spend time with his own seed. The one who is affected the most deeply is that child whose home life was already disrupted when the relationship ended, he no longer saw his father when he woke up every morning and before he closed his eyes at night. 
And now, due to selfish people who are in their feelings over the demise of that relationship, he doesn’t get to see his daddy on a regular basis. This poor child did nothing wrong but is the one being punished because his parents can’t get their shit together enough to be cordial and put his needs first.
Child support is not your personal wardrobe fund, it is to support that child in every aspect of life, whether it be food, lights, rent, field trips, school supplies, clothes, hair, etc. There also needs to be an understanding that just because you helped out with school supplies or paid for a field trip here or there doesn’t mean you deduct that from the child support payment, that’s still stuff a parent does, you don’t get brownie points for doing it. There are too many children out here suffering because they don’t have both parents in their lives due to bitterness and hatred towards each other, whether it be over the demise of their relationship or money.
Do what you can to put your pettiness aside and remember who this is truly about ~ your seed and their well-being. Do what you can to spend time with your child regardless of how your ex feels about you, don’t let questions of money keep you away from knowing your child and being there for them. Put your pride and ego aside so you can be involved and contribute to a healthy human being growing up in a world full of hate and confusion. 