Why Homelessness is a Man Thing

By Denise Noe

When the Atlanta Journal Constitution published an editorial, “To save Georgia’s children, we must save their mothers,” they inadvertently pointed to the reason why the majority of people at the economic bottom – the homeless – are men.

Since human fathers do not carry babies before their birth, are not physically equipped to breastfeed, and rarely are primary caregivers, our society has made little provision for the least economically successful males. While the life of poor, single mothers is undoubtedly very rough, they rarely end up, as men so often do, on the streets.

Of course, being children’s primary caregivers is a two-edged sword. As Sylvia Ann Hewlett pointed out in Creating a Life, mothers, saddled with childcare, rarely reach the economic top. Fathers have no problem since they leave most “hands-on” parenting to mothers.

But in discussions of the poorest of the poor, we must take gender into account and recognize that, in this area, men may be considered the disadvantaged sex. After all, one program aimed at helping the poor, WIC, is actually titled “Women Infants Children.” Men can and do receive WIC if they have custody of a child under the age of 5. However, would modern America tolerate an anti-poverty agency that had “Men” in its name?

The truth that the majority of the homeless are men also sheds light on the emptiness of some proposed solutions to the impoverishment of women and children. It is often suggested that the mothers and children would not be poor if the parents were married but men whose incomes are nothigh enough to pull themselves up out of homelessness cannot possibly pull wives and children out of poverty.

Moreover, while being a mother is a ticket to extraordinary stress and deprivation for poor women, being a father can be a ticket to jail for poor men. Under current Georgia law, a non-custodial parent can be criminally prosecuted and incarcerated for non-support, called “child abandonment” even if he or she has no funds and/or is unemployed.

We often look with horror on Charles Dickens’ depictions of Debtor’s Prisons in Victorian England. From our present, supposedly enlightened standpoint, the very idea of putting people behind bars who are unable to pay their bills seems barbaric. Isn’t it obvious that, if a person lacks the funds to meet their debts while they are free, putting them in jail is not going to help them get that money? We also look down at the Victorians for making criminals out of people for being failures.

Yet we do the same thing today. Debtor’s Prison is alive and sick in the United States and very popular. It’s called a crackdown on “Deadbeat Dads.” Certainly parents need to be responsible, financially, physically, and emotionally, for their children. When the parents are not together, the one who does not shoulder the day-to-day physical and emotional burdens ought to pick up the financial tab – if she or (much more commonly) he -- can. But we should not be demanding the impossible. We don’t expect to squeeze blood out of a turnip and we should not be demanding child support from parents, usually fathers, who simply don’t have the money. By doing so, we have criminalized financial failure.

Ours is a culture in which we are reluctant to see people suffer for things they cannot help. One of the major factors leading to the worst sort of destitution is something that, except for (arguably) the transgendered, individuals do not choose and that is their sex. We need to put in a more secure financial safety net for those of the poor who happen to be men. Society reaps no benefit fromleaving its least competent adult males to sleep on street grates and forage out of garbage cans.

Denise Noe

Published in the Bolivar Free-Herald and online at Fiercewomen.com