Why Fathers Demonstrate
What Fathers Want
June 17, 2000
There is widespread concern in the United States about the breakdown of the family, and about the number of
children who grow up in fatherless families. This concern is very well-founded. Children who grow up in fatherless
families are far more likely to become criminals (particularly violent criminals), to commit suicide, to become pregnant as teenagers, and be involved in other social pathologies. The prison population consists overwhelmingly of the products of fatherless families. By contrast, in the progression through the various stages of the educational system, students from fatherless families become increasingly rare: many high-schooldropouts are from single-parent families, but few of those with post-graduate degrees come from such families. In short, fatherless families are a very serious problem for America.
Why is nothing done about the problem of fatherless families? Part of the problem is a misdiagnosis of the epidemic.It has become common for defenders of the status quo to claim that the problem isn't fatherlessness-it's poverty among single- parent families. However, the evidence shows that this claim is untrue. A family policy study by the Progressive Policy Institute, a think-tank connected to the Democratic Party , illustrates the point. Looking at one social pathology associated with fatherless families-crime-- the study concluded that ? relationship between crime and one-parent families is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time
and again in the literature.
A system of laws, and a huge enforcemen mechanism, > provides incentives for the expulsion of fathers from their families;
>penalizes innocent fathers, requiring them to subsidize the families from which they are excluded, through what is misleadingly called "child support," and forcing them to underwrite the very type of family that research has shown to be extremely damaging to the children;
> and "is grotesquely biased against fathers, imposing increasingly Draconian penalties (including debtors' prison) for nonpayment of child support, whereas nothing effective is done about the widespread problem of interference with visitation.
The characteristics of this whole system are obscured by those who operate it. For example, they habitually refer to "noncustodial parents," rather than "fathers." There is a concerted effort to conceal the glass ceiling on paternal custody (10- 15 percent). This glass ceiling on paternal
custody is combined with the fact that when fathers do get custody, they hardly ever also get child support. In any other context, this bias against one sex would be regarded as intolerable. In the caseof custody and child support, nothing is done. Most people don't even know the problem exists.
A whole series of remedial action are possible-and necessary-at the federal and state level:
> The focus of the system must cease to be the subsidization of fatherless families, and
must become the preservation and encouragement of two-parent families.
>States must adopt a presumption of joint physical and legal custody. This would help to retain
the father?onnection with his children after divorce. There is also good reason to think that it would
reduce the percentages of marriages that end in divorce. Early indications in the states that have presumptive joint custody are that divorce rates have been cut.
>Child support must be tied to the needs of the children, and cease to include a large element
of hidden alimony. Most states use child support formulas that assume that fathers have no continuing expenses for their children. Instead, these formulas must be based on the assumption that the children have two homes. and that (for example) fathers housing expenses are much related to the children as are mothers.
>Visitation must be protected through use of effective penalties for interference.( Several
states have adopted penalties for interference with visitation, but in striking contrast to the penalties
for non-payment of child support-the penalties interference with visitation are hardly ever used.)
|
