We're not Deadbeats: Are fathers' protests having an impact?
By CYNTHIA ROSI
By
Last winter I found myself in an old warehouse–turned-winery in Columbus, Ohio, making conversation with an angry stranger over mulled wine.
“You’ll think I’m crazy,” he told me. When I egged him on, he turned out to be the first mad Dad I’d met, a man who felt he got burned by the child custody and child support system here in America. He told me about a campaign to shame dads who are behind on support by putting their pictures on pizza boxes. He told me that because of job loss and the recession 70 percent of men in Ohio were in arrears.
He went on to lament how he is missing out on his daughter’s life but what stuck in my head was that number – 70 percent of men in Ohio in arrears on child support payments? Could that true?
I cross-checked it with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. As of March this year, nearly three-quarters (73.88 percent to be precise) of Ohio child support cases were more than one month in arrears. Nationally, the US Child Support Enforcement Program reported that in 2010 there were 11.3 million cases in arrears, owing a cumulative $110 billion in child support.
And then I began to wonder – having lived abroad for 16 years – is this kind of systemic breakdown happening in other countries?
The international context: parallels between the US and the UK
So I set up a net: Google alerts for stories related to – “Fathers, Child Support” and “Fathers, Child Custody.” My inbox filled up fast.
I learned about the situation in the former Soviet republic of Georgia where one woman – kicked out by her family for an out-of-wedlock child – fought for child support and turned the country’s laws upside down.
I read that one of Ghana’s leading advocates for children (and former child slave himself) James Kofi Annan said that “over 70% of all children found on the streets of Ghana are as a result of irresponsibility on the part of fathers, and over 90% of all trafficked victims are due to same.”
In the space of a few weeks I had reports from India, Israel, France, Germany, and Saudi Arabia.
But the stories that daily flowed from the U.S. were different. The focus shifted from women struggling for their rights, to fathers feeling victimized by child support and custody laws. And, as I read further, it turned out American fathers are not alone. Fathers in Great Britain, too, are also raising their voices in protest.
I’d worked as a journalist in the UK, and the parallels between the countries piqued my curiosity. Full disclosure: my father died when I was eight. I know first-hand the importance of a Dad in a child’s development. I decided to talk with dad activists on both sides on the Atlantic.
Debtors’ prison for “deadbeat dads” in the U.S.
There is no shortage of extreme child support stories here in the US: a father who set himself on fire outside of a New Hampshire courthouse; a police officer on the hook after donating sperm to a friend. Many of these stories have to do with money.
Ned Holstein, founder of Fathers and Families, a U.S. fathers’ rights group, says one problem isjackpot-sized child support awards.
“One of the things that is happening in some states is the amounts are so high they are basically winning the lottery for the custodial parent,” he told me. “Then the bitterness lingers because every two weeks, or every month, one of the parties is writing a check they know is excessive, unnecessary, and not what the child needs.”
While super-sized child support payouts make headlines, the census reports that of $35.1bn in child support due in 2009, payments averaged $3,630 per custodial parent – $302/month.
One thing is for sure, however. The parents who don’t have custody – 80 percent of whom are fathers – are struggling to make the payments. And what happens to “deadbeat dads” if they don’t pay? They go to jail. Where they can’t earn money to pay their child support.
Ned Holstein: “It’s an iron fist system…”
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But states are beginning to soften their approach. Just last month Maryland stopped past-due charges for child support accruing to men who are serving time. And Georgia has put in place Parental Accountability Courts that work with bound-for-jail dads, helping them back on track.
