June 30 2029
Contrary to popular belief, the evolution of child support policy and guidelines has never had anything to do with fathers abandoning their children, and in fact the opposite may be true. The mythical rise in fathers abandoning their children that led to the creation of what we today refer to as child support never happened. Laws forbidding paternal abandonment, albeit wholly inadequate by today’s standards, had existed since the late seventeen and early eighteen hundreds, although american judges made a consious shift towards provision of a living stipend in favour of forbidding abandonment.(1)
After the first world war, there were many single mothers of children whose fathers had been war casualties. As war pensions waned and disappeared in the 20’s momentum built in the American parliaments to create mechanisms to take care or war widows and their children. The Social Security Act of 1935 contained the Aid to Dependant Children (ADC, later known as AFDC), enacted to support these children of the war. The ADC was fairly progressive for its time, and not only provided for children disadvantaged by the war, but for all fatherless families.(2)
With the creation of a vehicle to support single mothers and their children, their ranks began to swell, The effects of the great depression and the pressures contributed to the pressures faced by families, and a small stipend may even have appeared preferential to a husband who struggled to find work.
Single Mother culture was born.
There is a story in my family, of my grandmother almost leaving my grandfather because he was unable to find work during the great depression. As a child, the story confused me somewhat, but I understand now that it was a government stipend that she must have threatened to leave him for. Thankfully my grandfather eventually found a good job at the Liquor Control Board, and my grandparents raised my father together, and babysat me as a child.
There was some effort to shift support for mothers of working fathers from the AFDC to a sort of employment insurance type of vehicle for men, although it never came to fruition.(2)
The Second World War brought with it another wave of war widows and families. The United States suffered four times the number of casualties as during the First World War. The AFDC was broke and becoming very expensive, and worries about rising rates of divorce and sepration led to the offloading of eligible recipients to a newly created private support system.
Newly created private child support systems were administered by the courts, and though they were effective in smalltown America of the fifties, where a judge might well know and understand the circumstances of his parishioners; they quickly became some of the most unevenly and unequally applied of laws.
A university professor who helped revolutionalize Wisconsin’s child support laws in the mid 1980’s found that child support awards ranged from zero to over 100% of a father’s income, and that such laws were regressive, targeting the poor for higher percentages of their income than the rich.(2)
Wisconsin, of all places, has become a shining example of modern private child support. Child support is calculated based on a percentage of income, starting at 17% for one child; no argument, no dragging anyone into court, and it’s pretty much taken right off your paycheck. The system, thoughnot perfect, is heavily butressed with public funds, and there are mechanisms to prevent abuse, such as the ability to earn child-care credits automatically with work-hours.(2)
Most of the world has followed the American lead, without learning any lessons from the Wisconsin example. Shackles placed on men to prevent an imaginary flight from family duties are increasingly used prevent a second parent’s ability to take part in their children’s lives, and the court process is just another venue to help chase the second parent away. In todays ever more androgenous world of increasing legal equality between the sexes, child support, the chasing of large amounts of it, and harassment to impede the payor’s ability to pay are increasingly arrows in the quiver of parental alienators of both sexes.
There is an modern epidemic of parental alienation taking place; Most of the victims are men, but sex is really a distraction from the issue. Private child support systems, though almost definitely required to some degree in any permanent solution, are in their current state heavy deterrents to parental involvement by both parents, and are increasingly being used as instruments of abuse and parental alienation.
Repeated studies have shown that children without good relations with both parents, or that are separated from their fathers commit more crimes, more violent crimes, and commit suicide more often than any other demographic of the population, and that parental deficiency is a better indicator of criminality than race, environment, or poverty.(3)
Being based on the now sexist attitudes of the 1940’s and 50’s, single parent family support mechanisms have focused almost entirely on female-headed families.
Early child support legislation (and some to this day) focussed primarily of the reduction of welfare lines, and politicians concerned with reducing debt and welfare spending have passed successively tougher laws concerning child support and default on its debt.(1)
The authority to demand payment has led to more authority, family support has turned to child protection, and today’s men are falsely acused of the majority of family violence.
Studies show that male/female ratios to commit family violence are roughly 50/50,(4) with some newer studies reporting higher incidences of family violence from women(4); family violence is also more prevalent in female-headed households.(6)
Family support and child protection services have eschewed accountability while courting ever-increasing authority with an apparent spend-it-or-lose-it mentality.
Child protection bodies now target families and parents of both sexes throughout the civilized world with arcane powers and subjective mandates. Children are arbitrarily removed from some parents and placed in the care of sometimes emotionally unattached family units, that fit a mold based on values from the 1930’s.
Continued definition of the Family in terms of a unit as defined by depression and nuclear era america, is no longer applicable. Men are both much more willing and capable to take on an equal role in child rearing from birth than ever before. The family is no longer a discrete unit, but a series of connections and bonds that bring us together.
We are no longer supporting families, but subjectively exerting arbitrary authority over them.
Government Involvement in Family Affairs is a thorny issue, poiticians don’t like to discuss it, and most people start to squirm when the topic comes up. Too long has this issue sat dormant as it affects the very demographics of the populations we live in.
We are hurting parents.
We are hurting Children.
The time has come to raise the issue and re-invent the family for a modern world.
Written by Christopher Kelly
Sources:
1. Drew D. Hansen, The American Invention of Child Support: Dependency and Punishment in Early American Child Support Law, 108 Yale. L.J. (1999)
link at : https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7872&context=ylj
2. The evolution of child support policy-Institute for Research on Poverty, Irwin Garfinkel, Professor of Social Work, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Link at:https://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc111d.pdf
3. Canadian Children’s Rights Council: https://canadiancrc.com/Fatherlessness/Fatherlessness_in_Canada.aspx
4. The Child Abuse Crisis: The Disintegration of Marriage, Family, and the American Community (Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation “Backgrounder,” 3 June 1997), p. 16.
A Lysova, EE Dim, D Dutton
Partner Abuse 10 (2), 199-221
6.Household Risk and Child Sexual Abuse in a Low Income, Urban Sample of Women,” Adolescent and Family Health, vol. 1, no. 1 (Winter 2000), pp. 29-39