Time: (800) 541-1000

Time Magazine released an article in their June 18 2007 issue entitled, “The Psychology of Fatherhood,” which you can read here:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1630551,00.html

The article attempts to paint fathers as inadequate for several reasons. Below are some quotes, all obviously meant to blame fathers:

1. Worldwide, 10-40% households have no father at all [are men to blame?]
2. In the U.S., more than half of non-custodial fathers lose contact with kids within a few years. After 10 years, only a third of dads remain in contact. [Why?]
3. According to a 1994 study by the Children’s Defense Fund, men are more likely to default on a child-support payment (49%) than a used-car payment (3%). [Could this be because it's far easier to pay a much-lower amount on a car payment?]
4. Even fathers in intact families spend a lot less time focused on their kids than they think: in the U.S. fathers average less than an hour a day (up from 20 minutes a few decades ago), usually squeezed in after the workday. [Working all day provides no benefit to the kids??? Father time has tripled in spite of today's working hours, and fathers are still unworthy?]

The most offensive part of the article, however, was the introductory paragraph. It set the tone for the cooked stats that were to follow. And I quote:

“The folks at Hallmark are going to have a very good day on June 17. That’s when more than 100 million of the company’s ubiquitous cards will be given to the 66 million dads across the U.S. in observation of Father’s Day. Such a blizzard of paper may be short of the more than 150 million cards sold for Mother’s Day, but it’s still quite a tribute. What’s less clear is whether dads — at least as a group — have done a good enough job to deserve the honor.”

It is “less clear” that Fathers Day is deserved by fathers than Mothers Day is deserved by mothers? Go to hell, Time magazine. What is clear to me is that the two women who wrote the article are projecting their low views of their own fathers onto the rest of the population — 66 million fathers in the United States.

In honor of fathers, and in protest of Time, I called Time magazine this week to cancel my weekly subscription: (800) 541-1000. I made it clear why I was canceling. In response, the lady who took my call offered to give me some free issues. Offended at her retort, I refused, and asked her to communicate my reason for canceling my subscription to the appropriate decision makers. She too quickly agreed, and ended the call.

Let me emphasize that number again: (800) 541-1000. If you are a subscriber, now is the time to send a message by dumping this rag.

Here are some points I gleaned from Warren Farrell’s book, “Father and Child Reunion: “How to Bring the Dads We Need to the Children We Love.” (Buy it here, in honor of Fathers Day)

CHAPTER 8: “Is Child Support Helping or Hurting the Family?”

1. Wives initiate divorce twice as often as husbands.

Reference:
Sixty-one percent of all divorce cases (legally); the remainder are initiated either by the husband (33%), or jointly (6%). Men file 33%, and 6% are filed jointly. See “Monthly Vital Statistics Report: Advance Report of Final Divorce Statistics, 1987,” National Center for Health Statistics, Vol. 38, No. 12, Supplement 2, May 15, 1990, p. 5. This is the latest data available as of 2000. As is apparent throughout the book, the data suggesting that women are not the victims tend not to be updated. When the couple has children, women are more than twice as likely to initiate (65% vs. 29%). See National Center of Health Statistics, 1989.

2. “By giving the woman the option to the children, child support and the family home, are we giving women a financial and emotional incentive to initiate the breakup of the family? Yes. * In states that adopt shared parent time, divorce rates drop within a few years.” * That is, women initiate most of the divorces in part because they know they can get the children and the income; when they don’t know that, they’re more likely to hang in there.”

Reference:
Margaret F. Brinig and Douglas W. Allen, “These Boots Are Made for Walking: Why Most Divorce Filers are Women,” American Law and Economics Review, Vol. 20, No. 1, Spring 2000, pp. 126-169. See also Richard Kuhn and John Guidubaldi, “Child Custody Policies and Divorce Rates in the U.S.” Paper presented at the 11th Annual Conference of the Children’s Rights Council, October 23-26, Washington, D.C., 1997.
http://www.vix.com/crc/sp/spcrc97.htm

3. Are Mother Subsidies Really Designed to Give Women a Special Break?
“Is it possible for child-support payments to both *underpay* the mother (mostly) and discriminate in *favor* of the mother? Yes. It is rare for child support payments to pay a parent more than minimum wage for the hours put into raising a child. And that parent is usually the mother.
“Yet, when Alice McKnight Fitzgerald, a medical doctor who earned $120,000 a year, saw how much her former husband, who earned $30,000 a year, was receiving (according to child-support guidelines the U.S. Congress requires all fifty states and the District of Columbia to draft), she was shocked. She challenged it and won, which forced a reexamination of the guidelines in the District of Columbia from the perspective of a woman earning more. The guidelines were overturned — after only one woman victim fought for her rights.”

Reference:
Fitzgerald v. Fitzgerald, No. 87-1259 (DC Cir.) in Ronald K. Henry, “Litigating the Validity of Support Guidelines,” The Matrimonial Strategist, Vol. VII, No. 12, January 1990.

4. “Child-support payments are not tax-deductible for the father; yet they are tax-free for the mother receiving them. Previously, a father paying child support could declare the child as a dependency exemption; since 1985, the mother gets the exemption for having the child and the father loses it. It is another incentive for the mother to keep the child.”

Reference:
Section 423 of the Tax Reform Act of 1984, which was signed into law on July 18, 1984, amended the Internal Revenue Service code section 152 such that after January 1, 1985, the custodial parent claims exemption unless both parents sign forms to change this. Verified by Fred Tubbs (802) 223-0873, an expert on child support and the law who works with the National Council for Children’s Rights.

5. Men who are divorced are almost *ten* times as likely to commit suicide as divorced women.

Reference:
Kposowa, op. cit., Table 1, p. 256. The figure is 9.94 higher in divorced men than in divorced women. The 9.94 figure was optained from Dr. Kposowa using information from Table 1 on p. 256. Personal correspondence June 29, 2000. Dr. Kposowa teaches at the Department of Sociology, University of California, Riverside.

6. When Responsibility for Children Is Equal, Who Pays More?
“Full-time dads are much less likely to receive money from Mom than the other way around. Fifty percent less likely.”

Reference:
Mothers with sole custody were awarded mother subsidies 61% of the time; fathers with sole custody were awarded father subsidies 40% of the time. Lydia Scoon-Rogers, “Child Support for Custodial Mothers and Fathers: 1995,” in U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Current Population Report (Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1999).

7. “When dad does receive money, it is less (1). Is this because the mother earns less? Sometimes, but even when the full-time moms and full-time dads earn the same amount, mothers are ordered to pay only 80 percent of what the fathers pay.” (2)

References:
(1) Mothers with sole custody were awarded mother subsidies 61% of the time; fathers with sole custody were awarded father subsidies 40% of the time. Lydia Scoon-Rogers, “Child Support for Custodial Mothers and Fathers: 1995,” in U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Current Population Report (Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1999).
(2) Patricia G. Tjaden, Nancy Thoennes, and Jessica Pearson, “Will These Be Supported Adequately?” The Judges’ Journal, Fall, 1989, p. 40. Findings based on a random sample of 4,721 cases.

8. Which Sex Is More Delinquent about Paying Parent Subsidies?
“ITEM. When children were living with their *dad* and the court ordered the mother to pay a father subsidy (usually because her income exceeded the father’s), the mothers paid an average of 33 percent owed; fathers paid an average of 62 percent owed. It took a Freedom of Information Act request to get this data from the D.C. Office of Paternity and Child Support Enforcement.” (1)
“ITEM. The same request revealed that 13 percent of fathers *overpaid* mother subsidies; not a single mother overpaid father subsidies.” (2)
“In brief, when *dads* have the children, mothers are far less likely to be ordered by the court to pay mother subsidy, are ordered to pay less, are less likely to pay it, and never overpay.”

References:
(1) John Siegmund, “Preliminary Analysis of the Database of the D.C. Office of Paternity and Child Support Enforcement,” compiled for National Council for Children’s Rights, November 9, 1990. The Freedom of Information Act request was made by the National Council for Children’s Rights. The computer printout is dated August 3, 1990, and contains 6,103 names, addresses, amounts owed, and amounts paid, from which a random sampling of 610 names was taken.
(2) Ibid. In that 10% sample, there were 81 records of overpayment totaling $37,106.27, showing that 13% of men had overpaid.

9. “When women fail to pay, they are less likely to be found in contempt of court and be sentenced to jail.”

Reference:
Bennet Stark, Ph.D., “Child Support Delinquency: Are Men and Women Treated Differently?” Today’s Dads, March 1990, p. 3.

10. [Picture of a "Most Wanted" poster, "for failure to provide child support", with 9 men and 1 women pictured]
“While almost no measures are taken against moms who deny children access to the dads, dads who don’t pay mother subsidies are now commonly placed on these “Most Wanted” posters in post offices. And, as a careful look at the poster indicates, the one mother who was delinquent was not arrested.”

Reference:
Associated Press, “Ex-Hostage Jailed in Child Support Case,” Greensboro News and Record, December 16, 1990.

11. “The only debtors who can go to jail are debtors for alimony or child support. In practice, that means almost exclusively *male* debtors. *Even in bankruptcy,* neither child support nor alimony debt is dischargeable.

References:
Stephanie Finucane, staff writer, “Failure to Pay Child Support,” Santa Barbara News-Press, March 1, 1989.

12. Him: No Money, Prison; Her: No Money, Social Services

“Thousands of fathers in Iowa missed child-support payments after being demoted or fired. Or becoming sick. The collection agency notified credit agencies that the fathers’ credit was no good. Often the court had already awarded the father payments (because of his having been fired, etc.), but as the left arm of the bureaucracy had the lowered support order, the right arm was sending out delinquency notices to credit agencies. Still other fathers were in the process of seeking lowered payments.

“The collection agency would have discovered this had the men been granted due process, but the men were not given trials, and the collection agencies had the support of federal law, which requires Dad’s wages to be garnished and credit agencies notified if the father’s payments are delinquent.”

Reference:
Interview November 7, 1990, with John Conine at (206) 586-4775. Conine, former director of the state of Washington’s Child Support Recovery Office, is the author of “Fathers Rights: The Sourcebook for Dealing with the Child Support System” (NY: Walker & Company, 1989)

13. [Referencing #12 above]: “When this program was implemented in Iowa, although it was one of the best years in the decade economically for Iowa, the Iowa suicide level among men soared.”

“In brief, when a man fails as a wallet, we put him in prison; when a woman fails as a mother, we offer her social services. We’re taking a criminal approach to men, a social-services approach to women.”

Reference:
Richard Woods, former executive director of the National Congress for Fathers and Children in “Fathers Rights: The Human Rights Issue of the 1990s,” a lecture delivered at Coe College, Iowa, June 24, 1989, and published in “Fathers for Equal Rights” (now called “Networker”), July, 1989, Vol. VII, No. XII, p. 1.

14. “MYTH: Few men pay mother subsidies (child support), and even fewer pay it in full or on time. Even the Census Bureau confirms this.”

“FACT: The headlines we read telling us how little men pay are based on Census Bureau figures. All these Census Bureau’s figures are *based on the reports of women.* And only women. Yet, even among these women, 51 percent acknowledge receiving the full amount of child-support payments, and another 25 percent say they received partial payments. Overall, of the 14.6 billion dollars awarded to women, ten billion dollars (over two-thirds) was paid.(1) But this is based on women’s *recollection.*

“Only recently did the government commission a special survey including men. The men reported paying almost 40 percent more than the women reported receiving (between 80 percent and 93 percent of what the court ordered), (2) plus more payments in full and on time.” (3)

References:
(1) As of 1991, the latest Census Bureau data on child support is available in Gordon H. Lester, “Child Support and Alimony: 1987,” Current Population Reports, Series P-23, No. 167, U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, June 1990.
(2) The women in this survey reported receiving between 55% and 83% of their awards, similar to the Census Bureau reports. Sonenstein, op. cit., p. 26.
(3) Ibid., p. iv, and other citations.

15. “It would, of course, be as fallacious to run headlines saying, ‘Men Pay 93 percent of Child Support” as it has been to run the ‘Deadbeat Dad’ headlines. But here’s the big question: Why haven’t we seen any ‘Men Pay 80 to 93 percent’ headlines? Well, suspiciously, as soon as the men’s perspective was discovered to be so different, Wayne Stanton of the Family Support Administration had the study *discontinued.* (1)

This is part of what constitutes the “lace curtain” or the tendency of government, the media, academia, and the helping professions not to print anything that makes a woman look like less of a victim than the public consciousness holds her to be, a concept I develop in “Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say.“

References:
(1) This is documented in a memorandum from Robert Helms (Assistant Secretary, Department of Health & Human Services) to Wayne Stanton (Administrator, the Family Support Administration), October 1, 1988. The complete letter can be obtained from the National Council for Children’s Rights, (202) 547-6227.

16. “MYTH: Fathers don’t pay mother subsidies for one of two reasons: First, the father just plain refuses to pay; or, second, he runs away and the mother cannot locate the father. Even the Census Bureau confirms these two reasons.”

“FACT: These ‘two reasons’ are the *ONLY TWO OPTIONS LISTED* by the Census Bureau! (1) Second, once again, the Census Bureau asked *only women* why fathers don’t pay child support!”

[Graphic shown of the Census Bureau's survey, question #54, reproduced here]:

54. What was the main reason you did not receive these payments regularly, was it because…
( ) The father refused to pay?
( ) You were unable to locate the father?
( ) Or was there some other reason? (Specify in notes)

“The problem with this? The *main* reason fathers don’t pay *isn’t even asked.* That is, all three major studies that have looked at why men do not pay have discovered the same thing: *The man’s income level is the most important single determinant of whether he pays, and how regularly he pays.* (2)

Yet “inability to pay” is not shown as an option in the Census Bureau question. The result? We read in newspapers that the two main reasons men don’t pay is because ‘they refuse’ and ‘they can’t be located.’ We are not told that these are the only two options listed!”

References:
(1) Lester, “Child Support and Alimony: 1987,” op. cit., p. 40.
(2) One study is by Carol Jones, Nancy Gordon, and Isabel Sawhill (”Child Support Payments in the United States,” 1976, Working Paper 992-03, Washington, DC: The Urban Institute); a second is by Martha Hill in “PSID Analysis of Matched Pairs of Ex-Spouses: The Relation of Economic Resources and New Family Obligations to Child Support Payments,” University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research, 1984. Hill used the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics (PSID), one of the few containing longitudinal information about a national sample of couples. The third study is by Sonenstein, op. cit., p. 5.

17. “Are there other reasons men pay or fail to pay child support? Yes. Regular payments in full are highly correlated with…

a. weekly visitation, (1)
b. a friendly relationship with the mother (2)
c. shared parent-time arrangements (3),
d. residence in the same state (4),
e. a higher education level on the part of the mother (5)
f. the father being white (6)

References:
(1) Ibid. Sonenstein, op. cit., pp. vi and viii
(2) Ibid., pp. vi and viii. See also David L. Chambers, “Making Fathers Pay” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979) and Judith S. Wallerstein and Dorothy S. Huntington, “Bread and Roses: Non-Financial Issues Related to Fathers’ Economic Support of Their Children Following Divorce,” in The Parental Child Support Obligation: Research, Practice, and Social Policy, Judith Cassetty, ed. (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1983).
(3) Ibid. Sonenstein.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Ibid.
(6) Ibid.

18. “Fathers paid less when…

a. a formula was used to determine the award level, (1)
b. when support was court-ordered,
c. when he had to pay through a public agency (as opposed to directly) (2)
d. when he was black (even when his income level and the number of children were identical to the white father’s). (3)

“Note that the Census Bureau offered none of these options, and thus headlines neglect to tell us that when a dad is allowed to see his children, he usually does, and when he sees them, he pays.

References:
(1) Ibid., Sonenstein, pp. vi and viii.
(2) “Child Support and Alimony: 1983 (Supplemental Report),” 1986, Current Population Reports, Series P-23, No. 148, U.S. Bureau of the Census as cited in ibid., Sonenstein, p. 5
(3) Hill, “PSID Analysis,” op. cit., as cited in ibid., Sonenstein.

19. How Mom Can Get Dad to Pay

“Dads who see their children pay for their children. When fathers were given access to their children, the default rate in mother-subsidy payments ‘dropped from as high as 70 percent (default) all the way down to 7 percent.’ (1)

Another study found that contact with a child led to mother-subsidy payments increasing from 34 percent to 85 percent. (2) A father who cannot love does not pay. Out of sight, out of wallet. Withholding payments is his only leverage to get love.”

References:
(1) Goldberg, op. cit. Study conducted at the University of Toronto by Dr. Howard Irving. See also F. Furstenberg and N. Zill, “Supporting Children After Divorce: The Influence [of] Custody on Support Levels and Payments,” Family Law Quarterly, Vol. XXII, No. 3, Fall, 1988.
(2) R. Mnookin, “Child Custody Adjudication: Judicial Functions In the Face of Indeterminacy,” Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 39, pp. 226-93, 1975. Also see Chambers, op. cit., as cited in Liberator, Vol. 16, No. 5, May 1990, p. 3.

20. “Do mothers really deny fathers contact with children? And, if so, why? Almost 40 percent *of mothers* reported they had refused one or more times to let their ex-husbands see the children, and acknowledged that ‘their reasons had nothing to do with the children’s wishes or the children’s safety, but were somehow punitive in nature.’ (1)

Even more of the fathers — 53 percent — said they had been denied ‘visitation’ one or more times. The percentages were this high just within the first two years after divorce. This study was conducted by a woman, under a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.

“Other studies find that dads without shared parent time feel they do not withdraw from children’s lives but are, instead, driven out.” (2)

References:
(1) Julie A. Fulton, “Children’s Post-Divorce Adjustment,” Journal of Social Issues, 35:4, 1979, p. 133. Study sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health.
(2) Judith Greif, “Why Fathers Don’t Visit,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, April 1979. See also John Jacobs, “The Effect of Divorce on Fathers,” American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 139:10, October 1982.

21. “When dads (mostly) don’t pay child support, the government steps in — it spends $3.4 *billion* on child support enforcement. When moms (mostly) deny dads access to children, the government backs out — it spends only $10 *million* on ‘visitation’ enforcement. In essence, the government spends $340 disciplining dads for each dollar it spends disciplining moms. (1)

But that’s not the half of it. About 80 percent of the government money spent to enforce dads’ access is given to agencies *without* access enforcement programs! (2) Rather, they are given to agencies with programs that *limit* a dad’s access — that is, programs that require his access be supervised. The money is still used to discipline dads, not moms. In reality, then, the spending is about $1,000 to discipline dads for each $1 to discipline moms.

References:
(1) For the $3.4 billion figure, see Elain Sorensen and Ariel Halpern, “Child Support Enforcement Is Working Better Than We Think,” The Urban Institute, Series A. No. A-31, March 1999, p. 4. For the $10 million figure, see the Department of Health and Human Services, “93.597 Grants to States for Access and Visitation Programs.”
http://www.cfda.gov/static/93597.asp
(2) Hugh Nations, “Analysis of Access and Visitation Enforcement Grants in Texas, FY 1999.” Private correspondence, July 21, 2000. Nations found ten out of twelve access and visitation enforcement grants were given to agencies without access and visitation enforcement programs, but only with visitation limitation programs (e.g. visitation under supervision).

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