The movement for shared parenting faces a major obstacle: the federal government. The conventional piety is that family law is a matter for the states, and federal officials claim they have no authority to become involved. This is piffle. The federal government is up to its ears in family law by its funding for child support enforcement, domestic violence programs, and child abuse “prevention.â€Â
Family law reformers must labor to create 50 campaigns to enact shared parenting in 50 state legislatures. But we labor in vain until we confront the federal funding. In essence, the federal government pays states to collect child support. How this works is complex, and the formula seems to change constantly (perhaps to prevent us from understanding it?). I have described the process in a paper just published by the Institute for Policy Innovation. But the essence is this:
- The more child support collected, the more money the state receives from federal taxpayers.
- The more children are forcibly separated from their fathers, the more money the state receives from federal taxpayers.
- The more mothers divorce their husbands or bear children out of wedlock, the more money the state receives from federal taxpayers.
- The more sole custody awards are granted, the more money the state receives from federal taxpayers.
- The more onerous the child support levels, the more money the state receives from federal taxpayers.
- The more money is squeezed out of every parent (or even any non-parent available), the more money the state receives from federal taxpayers.
Conversely, the argument goes (not entirely accurately), stable two-parent families and shared parenting mean a loss in revenue for the state. The government has created a machine for destroying families, an engine for generating fatherless children and making a profit in the process at taxpayers’ expense.
The result was seen starkly during the last election in the North Dakota Shared Parenting Ballot Initiative. Mitch Sanderson and the North Dakota Coalition for Families and Children toiled valiantly to collect signatures and successfully put the measure on the ballot. They received overwhelming support and little opposition, and the measure looked set to pass easily.
Then the federal government stuck its nose in. In an action that was certainly improper and probably illegal, HHS regional administrator Thomas Sullivan issued what amounted to an ultimatum to North Dakota. Threatening an ” immediate suspension of all Federal payments for the State’s child support enforcement program,” Sullivan explicitly pressured a state senator to take “whatever steps are necessary to ensure that initiated measures are not enacted.” A federal bureaucrat not only took sides
in a matter of state politics but marshaled the weight of his multi-billion dollar agency to intimidate voters.
The threat was hollow and little more than a scare tactic, but it worked. Bar associations and the media uncritically (and falsely) announced that the state would
lose $70 million. No one raised the issue of what permits federal officials to intervene in a state’s internal affairs and use its citizens’ own tax dollars to twist their arms.
Tackling this federal funding is more than just some nuisance that must be taken care of before we can approach state legislatures to pass shared parenting laws. It offers a huge opportunity. Right now we are fighting 50+ battles in 50+ jurisdictions. Addressing the federal funding will create what we need more than anything in this country: a national debate about child custody and child support. In Britain, Australia, and Canada, national debates have taken place on the front pages because they have national laws. In the US, we are fragmented into 50 states and are lucky to get an article inside the local news section. No one advocates federalizing family law. But we must confront
federal family policy and funding in such a way as to get the issues debated in a national dialogue on the causes of fatherlessness.
This is what RADAR are achieving with federal domestic violence funding. They have created a campaign focused specifically on the Violence Against Women Act – a destructive and unconstitutional law that federalizes and politicizes law enforcement, bypasses due process of law, and pays feminists to create a machinery for destroying families and separating children from their fathers.
We need a similar campaign to confront federal child support funding. Dedicated researchers like Molly Olson, Jason Bottomley, and Lary Holland have spent years investigating this system in depth. Now Dr. Michael Ross of the Family Rights Coalition of Michigan (info@frcmi.org) has begun a grassroots political campaign to gain the attention of that state’s legislators. Ross wants leaders in other states to create similar campaigns and link them up into a national movement.
Here in Washington, the American Coalition for Fathers and Children has organized a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt, endorsed by the leaders
of 14 prominent national organizations, including Phyllis Schlafly, Susan Carleson, and Grover Norquist (and more are expected). The signatories represent both pro-family advocates concerned about the continued erosion of marriage and taxpayer watchdog groups who object to the escalating costs of subsidizing single-parent homes.
Again, this is not an additional political burden. It is an avenue to make your group part of a national campaign. It is also an opportunity to create a coalition not only with “pro-family†groups but also with taxpayer groups, who can be very influential both locally and nationally. The only way to defeat the divorce machinery is to create coalitions with allied interests. An abuse that hits all Americans in their pocketbooks is one that can gain attention.
Stephen Baskerville is president of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children (www.acfc.org) and author of the paper, “Welfare and the ‘Road to Serfdom,’†just published by the Institute for Policy Innovation. His book, Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family will be published in August by Cumberland House Publishing.
