Yeah, this is unbelieveable. It’s certainly not the only anti-family thing the GOP has done, but..pretty bad.

I lived with a woman in the 80s whose ex husband decided to simply keep their son (but not their daughter! Nice.) after a visitation was over. So not only was he stealing their son (she had full custody) but he used it as an excuse to pay less child support – which he was always behind on anyway. The husband lived in MN and we lived in TX. We actually had to hire a lawyer in MN (which is not easy when you’re in TX and have very little money) and sue. We ultimately won, but it was quite expensive, and there’s no way this woman could’ve afforded it if she’s been on her own. And before this incident, when he didn’t pay child support, her only recourse was to plead with him on the phone. Shamefull, really.

A couple points from a man’s POV: even when there were better enforcement mechanisms for collecting support, there was never any focus on protecting men’s vistation, and I’ve known some single fathers who wanted to be involved, paid all the money, and still got screwed. Obviously, I’m pro-abortion, but one unfotunate aspect of all the â€it’s my body†talk of the last thirty years is that, for some women, â€it’s my baby†is a very short leap. And that marginalizes men in a society where men are already becoming marginalized, going to war and prison instead of college. Of course we want men’s money, but that can’t be all we want.

Hmm. I’m surprised that you’re surprised the Republicans don’t proudly stand behind enforcement. Support money supports single mothers, who, according to Republicans are pretty much responsible for the demise of all that is good and decent about our country. If you find even the notion of divorce distateful not to mention just plain wrong, supporting the concept of child support is akin to encouraging all women to become lesbians.

p.s. This is my first post at Next Hurrah. Hi everyone!

It doesn’t intersect much with folks here, but it is important to realize that folks like Jim Wallis of Sojourners and most of the leaders of the mainline Protestant churches have been campaigning for a year for the notion that â€the federal budget is a moral document.†They’ve press conferenced, met, speechified, and even gotten arrested.

This notion has tremendous potential. It is not something that can be gotten across instandly, but it is a very good idea from within which to approach many issues. It is certainly worth trying to establish it as a frame within which to look at Congressional actions. Reducing child support enforcement makes a moral statement that you might think some Republicans (and most people) would not really want to own. Are they endorsing parental irresponsibility?

The Dems do really need to call the Repubs on their bluff about abortion. Push hard for reliable sex ed and contraception as a way of reducing the need for abortion and isolating the right wing anti-sex and anti-woman crazies. This really seems like a no-brainer to me, and it doesn’t mean retreating from the right to choose, just shifting the emphasis, as the R’s are so good at.

Same with child support. It is an issue of responsibility. Plus, it pays dividends for states. OTOH, I saw a situation where a father was sued by a county here in CA for failing to pay support (the county can try to recover to offset the costs of welfare) and with back interest, he was in a position where he could never got out of debt. It was like a bad credit card debt, except that it was the county.

Another issue where there have been some interesting alliances is the environment, with some fundamentalist congregations becoming â€Noah congregations†trying to protect God’s creation. The environment is a moral sisue vis a vis furture generations as well.

When the House returns to reconsider the budget bill we can all see whether the rhetoric around Abramoff and ethics is just talk, by how transparent they are and how they treat earmarks.

Well, the whole issue of support and custody is nothing if not messy as all get out. I had two friends who worked as attorneys in the family division for two different state agencies. They burned out quickly thanks to spending a lot of their time plagued by the fact that virtuallly everyone involved in the custody and support battles were total assholes, who did anything but put the children first.

But seriously, EW, in what universe are women ever not punished for having sex outside the context of a state-sanctioned marriage? Fundies–and most Americans–may sort of believe that men should keep their pecker in their pants, but ultimately we are the sluts, the whores and the gold diggers and yes, the single moms (for contrast, think â€single dad†and see what image you come up with in comparison).

Anyway, I’m all for children being supported. Poverty is a killer. Still, there are a ton of hurdles to overcome to make this sort of push seem like it’s something other than more evidence that Democrats support the tearing apart of families.

I think there’s a angle, but it isn’t about being pro-life or criminalizing a woman’s sex life.

First off, you can’t come from the perspective of the single mom. Because while many of us are doing fan-fucking-tastically, the opposition has been very successful at building an anti-single-mom meme because there are no shortage of single moms who are doing a craptastic job at best.

And good luck making this a sexual equality issue. I see that as a mountain-sized hurdle to overcome. Make that planet-sized, as in Jupiter–too big in my estimation.

I do think though that support can be pushed as a pro-child/father issue. I have zero studies to point to, but I’ll be there’s evidence out there that men who financially support their children are also more involved in their lives and that those children end-up as more productive members of society.

The thing is, I think you’d also have to make this a total package that also gives men who do stay current on support stronger rights when it comes to visitation.

So in the end, you portray these cuts as ones that weaken the presence of fathers in their children’s lives and force us back to the days of welfare moms and a new generation of children raised sans the guidance of fathers.

Well actually, I do know there are studies that show that success is based on income. Middle-income-and-above single moms raise children that are just as successful as their two-parent family counterparts. Certainly I wouldn’t cite the the right’s studies, which lump together all single parents as a group, making it appear that this is an issue about the absence of fathers when that is not the case.

All that being said, I do like the whole personal responsibility angle. It’s a lot less complicated and very difficult to assail.

I understand at least one study has been done that shows the states most opposed to abortion give the least to children once they are outside the womb. Can this be verified by one of you?

Gene

I think I did that when I said:

I think it depends on where you are, but it seems like it is tied to the same vision of patriarchy (as well as hard-fought legal protections in teh case of abusive relationships) that make the woman the default custody. That needs to change as a whole.

And:

Yeah, I think one thing we need to be careful about is not to make this a source of antagonism. The father who can’t catch up to his child support is not much better off than the mother pulling welfare to support her family (well, and the custodial mother has access to a lot more services). But neither should be in that position, longterm.

The way fathers are treated in many parts of this country is terrible. But it’s not going to help if we make it easier to criminalize women’s sex lives but not men. They’re both strands of patriarchal culture that does neither men nor women any good.

p.s. I guess what I’m really saying is that a group doing activism for father custody rights AND mother child support would get greater traction than the sum of either alone

I’ll comment here on SaltinWound’s point and related comments: He’s right that fathers’ visitation issues and other questions needed to be dealt with as well. One of the things that was done to improve enforcement was to make it easier to get a support order modified if circumstances changed. Under the old system, where it was very difficult to get an order modified, non-custodial parents would just stop paying. There are also wild disparities in states’ guidelines for child support, some of which are very punitive.

The visitation and custody issues were also important, but don’t have the same federal financial hook as child support, so those couldn’t be dealt with in the same context. My experience with these issues drops off about nine years ago, so I don’t know if there are improvements in this area at the state level.

One of the things I was going to write in my original post, but cut to save space, was that, while there was little opposition to improving child support, there was a lot of cheap politics floating around attacking â€deadbeat dads.†The effort I’m talking about did not involve that kind of demagogic villainization, but focused on making the system work.

Gene, well put. Reminds me of the old Doonesbury cartoon where Joanie is giving their child a bath and Rick comes in and asks, â€Can I help?†Joanie: â€Help? No, ’help’ implies that caring for our child is primarily my responsbility. Go out and try it again.†Rick goes out, comes back, â€Hi, can I co-nurture?†Joanie: â€No, you always get the floor wet.â€

I did fall into the loaded language I’m used to hearing. In fairness, I should have used the same language to describe either parent’s position. (â€Custody†I was using to denote making legal-type decisions, e.g. medical care, education. â€Visitation/access†I was using for living under the same roof. Don’t know what I’d use for general parenting, like groundings, tv time, etc. Obviously I haven’t been through this, or thought it through well! But then that’s why I participate in threads like this…)