The Hidden “Luxury” of Fatherhood: When Loving Your Kids Comes with a Price Tag

When people talk about a luxury they can’t live without, they usually mean things like a favorite TV, an Xbox, or a daily coffee ritual. Something fun, something extra.

But I’ve been thinking about that word—luxury—and how twisted it’s become. We’ve started labeling essentials as indulgences.

A phone? Not a luxury. For someone with mental health struggles, physical disabilities, or limited mobility, a phone is a lifeline. It connects us to help, to family, to the outside world.

Internet access? Also not a luxury. Try finding a job, applying for aid, helping your kids with school, or even just paying your bills without it. In the modern world, internet is basic infrastructure. Calling it a “privilege” is like calling clean water a perk.

Even food, when you really think about it, isn’t a luxury. Sure, we might glamorize expensive meals, but food is fuel. Nutrition is survival.

You know what is a luxury?
Vices—drinking, smoking, gambling.
Game consoles and streaming subscriptions.
Things we could live without if we had to.

But here’s the hardest truth I’ve had to confront:
Society has made fatherhood itself into a luxury.

As a single dad, being in my kids’ lives comes with a price tag. Not figuratively—literally. I’m charged to maintain a connection with the people I helped bring into this world.

And it’s not a small charge, either.
In some cases, it’s up to 45% of your income.

If you fall behind?
They can take your driver’s license.
Your tax returns.
Your access to public aid.
Even your right to see your own children.

How is that support?
It feels more like a subscription service with life-altering penalties.

I’m not anti–child support.
Absent fathers should be held accountable.
But when a father wants to be present, when he’s involved, when he’s already covering costs and showing up—he shouldn’t be punished because the system was built to assume the worst.

If custody is 50/50, the financial responsibilities should be too.
If I’m paying for my children in my home and still expected to support them in another home, shouldn’t my role be primary, not secondary?

That’s just logistics. That’s just common sense.

If a mother seeks primary custody, she should carry the greater share—financially, emotionally, logistically. And if she chooses daycare or other expenses without mutual agreement, she should shoulder those decisions accordingly.

Fatherhood shouldn’t be something I have to rent.
My presence in my kids’ lives shouldn’t be a performance I have to pass to keep seeing them.

I won’t play by those rules anymore.

My children aren’t luxuries.
They’re not optional.
They’re not something I get to keep only if I stay on society’s good side.

They’re my family.
And no system—no matter how legal or long-standing—should ever have the power to put a price tag on that.