"Fighting for kids" adf wrote in message ...
Unleash the Bill Collectors on Deadbeat Dads

By Gary S. Becker
July 18, 1994
BusinessWeek

More than one in five U.S. children live in poverty. This is mainly because
of a spectacular growth in the number of families headed by unmarried
mothers,

Hey Gary, you and all the other fluttering mother hens have spent
enough time clucking it up about "deadbeat dads." How about
addressing the other side of the equation?

Women have been given three, count 'em, three legal ways to escape
single motherhood after accidentally conceiving a child, and most
can't manage to use a single one of them. In droves (no pun
intended), they still choose to have _and_ keep kids they can't
support.

compounded by low or nonexistent child-support payments by
noncustodial fathers.

Mostly due to an inability to pay.

Fortunately for the children, as well as the mothers,
it is possible to greatly increase the number of fathers who meet their
obligations.

It's obviously not possible, or articles like this would have stopped
appearing long ago. The crusade against fathers has been going on so
for so long that they'd have easily been cowed into paying by now, if
they could pay. But they aren't paying, because most can't.

How many articles have you seen where a bus driver is villified for
being $100,000 in arrears. When reading such an article, did you ever
consider where on earth a bus driver would get that kind of money? Or
did you just pump a triumphant fist in the air as you read of him
being imprisoned without due process?

It is far too easy for fathers to dump the financial as well as the
emotional burdens of raising children on mothers.

Oh please. If it was such a "burden," women would be aborting,
adopting, using drop off centers, and demanding that their ex-husbands
be given sole custody. Instead, they breed like rabbits and use their
chatt...er...children as human begging bowls.

More men will hesitate to
father children if they know they'll have a tougher time evading the duty to
support them.

Bull****. Men don't blithely "father children" because they think no
one will come for them. Quite the contrary. Men father children
because sex happens, and the sperm solicitor knows all too well how to
turn that deposit into an 18-year gravy train.

Children can benefit emotionally as well as materially when
their fathers support them.

Knowing this, you'd think deadbeat mothers would choose more
financially solvent sex partners. But, in droves, they have
unprotected sex with men who haven't two nickels to rub together.
Then they whine about not getting child support. Well hello.

And if more dads were forced to pay up, they

You can't force money from someone who has no money. Why must I
explain that to a writer for Business Week?

might be more likely to spend time with their kids --

That isn't true, but the reverse is. More fathers might pay if they
were allowed to see their kids, or even if they knew about their kids.
How many men are labeled fathers en absentia? How many "deadbeat
dads" don't even know they have kids?

since they would no longer be avoiding detection.

Avoiding detection? How? We're all lowjacked in a million different
ways.

A 1993 Urban Institute study estimates that incomes of many one-parent
families would rise above the poverty level if all child-support obligations
were met.

That's becuase child support "obligations" are arbitrary and
unrealistically high.

But the American Fathers Coalition -- a group of child-support
payers -- claims the delinquency figures are inflated by mothers' failure to
report the payments they receive. This coalition also believes fathers
sometimes fall into arrears because child-support awards are excessive.

No mother ever gets enough support. Just ask her.

This group makes some valid points, but it is still important to improve
compliance with child-support obligations. Congress passed legislation in
1984 and 1988 requiring states to make stronger collection efforts, with the
Federal government footing most of the bill. It is now easier to garnishee
wages, even when fathers have moved to other states, and to jail those who
refuse to pay.

As well as those who can't pay, which makes them even less able to
pay. But then this is woman-inspired government. I don't expect it
to make any sense.

Computer systems allow states to keep better track of where
fathers live and how much they owe.

Radio collars are soon to follow.

PATERNITY WARDS
As part of his welfare-reform package, President Clinton recently proposed
stiffening these laws by establishing national clearinghouses to track
interstate cases, by denying occupational permits and driver's licenses to
fathers who don't pay up (some states already have such rules), and by

Again, nonsensical. If the bus driver falls behind on his $2000/mo
"obligation," will you help things by taking away his license? No,
but you'll still do it.

requiring hospitals to establish and record who the father is for every baby
born.

And how, pray tell, will they establish that record? Uh huh. By
unconditionally accepting the word of the mother. And we all know
women never lie. Just ask them.

Although federal laws and state efforts have increased the numbers of
fathers who pay up, statistics compiled by the Health & Human Services
Dept.'s Office of Child Support Enforcement show that state agencies are
collecting money in less than 19% of their child-support cases. Many fathers
continue to successfully avoid detection by state governments -- in some
cases by fleeing to another state.

A temporary remedy. They should be leaving the country. But I
digress.

Has anyone compared the cost of these Orwellian enforcement measures
to the additional money they collect?

[...]