My new co-authored column, Obama’s Responsible Fatherhood Bill–Not Enough Carrot, Too Much Stick (Wisconsin State Journal, Buffalo News, 6/30/07), criticizes the newly introduced Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act of 2007 for misunderstanding the roots of fatherlessness.
To write a Letter to the Editor of the Wisconsin State Journal regarding Fatherhood bill: Not enough carrot, too much stick, click here. To write a Letter to the Editor of the Buffalo News regarding Obama’s legislation does too little to encourage fathers, click here.
I co-authored the column, which appears below, with Mike McCormick, Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children.
Obama’s Responsible Fatherhood Bill–Not Enough Carrot, Too Much Stick
By Mike McCormick and Glenn Sacks
Wisconsin State Journal, Buffalo News, 6/30/07
U.S. Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Evan Bayh (D-IN) recently introduced the Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act of 2007, which they say will address our “national epidemic of absentee fathers.†Obama and Bayh are correct that fatherless children are dramatically more likely to commit crimes, drop out of school, use drugs, or get pregnant than children who have fathers in their homes. The Responsible Fatherhood Act is explicitly a carrot and stick approach. The problem is that the carrot is too small and the stick is already too big.
Currently many noncustodial fathersâ€â€particularly African-American and Latino fathers, upon whom Obama often focusesâ€â€are required to pay their child support to the state to reimburse the cost of public assistance, instead of to the children’s mothers. This is demoralizing for low-income men struggling to make a difference in their kids’ lives.
The Responsible Fathers Act will make this money go directly to the mothers, instead of the state, a policy which research shows helps bring fathers closer to their children. The bill will also expand the Earned Income Tax Credit and provide fathers with job training services.
All of these are good things, but the bill’s stickâ€â€increasing federal reimbursements for child support enforcement–is damaging and misguided. Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement data shows that two-thirds of those behind on child support nationwide earn poverty-level wages; less than four percent of the national child support debt is owed by those earning $40,000 or more a year.
Most “deadbeat dads” are low-income men who are unable to meet the demands of the child support system because of their employment problems. Stepping up already draconian enforcement only makes it more difficult for them to play a meaningful role in their children’s lives.
Bayh himself endorses such wrongheaded efforts, boasting without a trace of irony that when he was the governor of Indiana, “We used ‘most wanted’ posters to track down deadbeat parents and intercepted their tax refunds, lottery winnings and unemployment benefits†(emphasis added).
The biggest problem with the Responsible Fatherhood Act, however, is that it reflects its authors’ misunderstanding of fatherlessness. (more…)
|
