Deadbeat_Dads

Deadbeat Dads Why is it in today’s society we think that all men are not dead beat dads' As I sit in this doctor’s office waiting to be called I get to listen to a very interesting conversation from a group of women. A subject that seems to come up so many times is about men, their kids, and the responsibilities they seem to not want to share with the moms. As being a mother of six I understand the topic of conversation. I am one of those women whose kids have deadbeat dads. I know right now one might be wondering exactly what a deadbeat dad is. My definition for the word is a father that does not take care of his child financially, physically, or emotionally. This type of man has no care whatsoever for the life he has made out there in this world. Deadbeat parents are a term referring to parents of either gender that have freely chosen not to be a financially supportive parent in their children's lives. Being that deadbeat dads are so widespread now, in 1992, the federal government passed the Child Support Recovery Act (CSRA) to help enforce court ordered child support payments (Child Support, n.d). However, the enforcement only consisted of misdemeanor penalties, which did not pose a great deal of threat to child support payment evaders. In 1998, President Bill Clinton passed Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act. With this Act, individuals who flee to another state or country intending to evade child support payments may face felony punishment. These individuals must be delinquent in payments for one year or owe more than $5,000 (Child Support, n.d.). With the passing of this the Child Support Recovery Act bill and the growing number of deadbeat parents now more than ever there are consequences for parents that do not pay child support. There are several things the state can do when a parent falls behind in child support payments. These steps include garnishing his or her pay, refusing to allow the parent to obtain a legal passport, intercepting unemployment compensation, offsetting federal and/or state income tax refunds and enforcing jail time (Child Support, n.d.). The opposed view point would be that deadbeat parents and deadbeat dads are not synonymous. Not all deadbeat parents are fathers, and not all non-custodial fathers are neglectfully behind on child support. In fact, there plenty of moms, who have been ordered to pay child support, yet fail to do so. (Deadbeats Parents n.d.) The vast majority of single parents in the U.S. are women. According to the US Census Bureau, 47.3% of custodial mothers received all child support that they were owed and 77.5% received some. The Census Bureau reports that about 9.9 million single mothers headed households with children in 1994, compared with 1.6 million households headed by single fathers. (US Census Bureau, 2010). Only 12% of women receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) welfare benefits receive any kind of support from their children's fathers. When I was younger I thought of a dead beat dad as being an unemployed person who could not afford to care for his kids but today I have found that is not the case. You may not recognize them because they come in all forms and colors. They are doctors, lawyers, teachers, drug dealers, cops, and any other profession you may think of. As shown in the study by William and Renet Bender due to the low income potential kids receive little or no child support from their fathers. Only one-forth pay partial and one-forth pay none. They give many reasons for not supporting there kids like getting married and having other kids, cannot get along with mom, distance, and the list goes on. A lot is said about deadbeat dads, but I must also agree with Lisa Schiffren as she writes an article in the New York Times, "A disproportionate number of unmarried fathers are unemployed, unemployable or too young to work" (Sciffren, 2007). Schiffren says that women need to take more responsibility for preventing pregnancies. Not only do we as women need to be more responsible but we also need to be in tuned into the various number of welfare reform programs that our state offers. According to the GCU Library Database, Welfare reform has been around since 1994 and is the key to element in the "Contract with America," which is the list of initiatives House Republicans pledged to pass when the GOP took control of Congress in January 1995 (1992). Here the states would set welfare eligibility standards and decide which benefits of cash payments, job training, child care, transportation assistance and others if any, they would provide. The bill promised to reduce overall spending on welfare by $91 billion over five years. It goes without saying that a child needs both a mother and a father. It is a difficult world out there and there are things kids must learn from their dads that a mother just cannot show them. An example of this is a phrase I remember hearing my whole life, “How can a woman raise a man' I have sons, six to be exact, and for a time a man was there but I knew that I would never be able to show my sons how to use the potty like a dad could or other manly things they may need to know. Knowing this, I knew that as a single mom I would have to find a good man to instate good moral and manly behaviors into my boys’ lives. Boys need their dads more than ever! Boys need a man to teach them to be men. In the beginning when I said why do we not think that all men are deadbeat dads well, because they are not' There are still some very good men out there and you hear about them just as you hear about the bad ones like now in the doctor’s office. At first you will not know how this man will be with your kids but you will know, your kids will know. If there is one thing you should do, listen to your child about these men because they will be honest. When a person tells you all men are the same you can let them know they are not. Then again one cannot always rely on conversations that one hears in the doctors’ office. References Being a Single Mom without Child Support (n.d.) Retrieved November 15, 2010 from http://singleparenting. families.com/blog/being-a-single-mom-without-child-support    Bender William N & Bender Renet L, The Deadbeat Dad Myth: Strategies and Research in Defense of Men in Divorce, The University Of Georgia, and Institute of Government.     Child Support (n.d.) Retrieved November 15, 2010 from      http://2facts.com.library.gcu.edu:2048/icof_story.aspx'PIN=i0501790&term=deadbeat=dads                Deadbeat parents (n.d.) Retrieved November 15, 2010 from  http://singleparents.about.com/od/legalissues/p/deadbeat.htm   Shackelford, T. K., Weekes-Shackelford, V. A., & Schmitt, D. P. (2005). ‘An evolutionary perspective on why and how some men refuse and/ or reduce their child support payments’ Retrieved on November15, 2010 from https://subscriptions.census.gov/service/document.html (2010)  Schriffen, Lisa (2007) Deadbeat Dads article in the New York Times April 2007 Issue, page 121 Welfare Reform (n.d.) Retrieved November 15, 2010 from http://www.2facts.com.library.gcu.edu:2048/icof_story.aspx'PIN=i0101380&term=deadbeat+dads