Fatherhood Activists to Protest Pizza Box/Deadbeat Dad Campaign

Caligirl,

I applaud all of the responses above to your post. They all reek of logic and rationality with only a few emotional outbursts. It is clear and intuitive that the child support laws, policies, guidelines and societal predispositions are all totally misguided and not about the support of a child but instead about a transfer of wealth and power from one parent to another. Stripping a father (or mother) of his rights to be a parent and then extorting money well beyond what is required is criminal. This is not just about the sound bite “Be a man, support your children.” This is about the details of this process and you need to take a good hard look at what is involved before you appreciate just how unjust this whole process is.

Putting aside all of this, consider the criminalization of Parents who do not or can not pay child support (or are victims of a mistake by the office of child support) and place it in juxtaposition with the approaches used for true crimes. Perpetrators of true crimes in this country have a myriad of programs to help them deal with their issues and help them understand their responsibilities and help them reform. So for one minute let’s assume some “deadbeat” parents are in fact attempting to avoid their parental financial responsibility. Should the government criminalize, embarrass, destroy these people further (risking the parents relationship with their child or the child’s emotional well being with his or her peers), or should the government offer programs to help these parents come to terms with their responsibilities. What happens when a Mom falls prey to drugs, prostitution, etc? There are many programs to help her overcome these obstacles and she is given the benefit of the doubt all along the way. We don’t go on a national campaign (pizza boxes, newspaper ads, etc.) of destroying her very fiber in her children’s eyes or society’s eyes. THERE ARE NO PROGRAMS FOR NON-CUSTODIAL PARENTS, there are many for custodial parents. Why?

Add to this the fact that things would be largely better (not right, but much better) if the guidelines were at least applied as they were intended – but the family court system in almost every state is using them to foster a specific political ideology – moms are good (sugar and spice) and dads are bad and must be punished even if they haven’t done anything wrong… yet. If the courts looked at finances carefully, applied the combined parental cap in all cases except for special cases, as it was intended, then things would clearly be considerably fairer. Still not right – but at least in the right direction. All the concepts of imputed income, standard of living, refused accounting, refusal to consider both parties responsibility to support are all making a mockery out of what we call justice. Transferring all of the required support to the one parent and providing that parent with all of the financial control is not only unjust but isn’t even intuitively sound. Having the non-custodial parent required by law to pay for the fundamentals is arguable but that is not even remotely the case in today’s family courts.

Bottom line – you need to evaluate all of the details of this mess before throwing around phrases like “Not supporting your child is inexcusable. The I don’t have a job excuse does not work…if you don’t have a job…get one!” which fully reveals your ignorance on the subject. Dad’s looking for family law reform all want to support their children – but they do not want to do so at the threat of ridiculous, unrealistic, politically motivated impositions which remove their fundamental rights as parents.