Deadbeat Parents
Since the beginning of time, there have been children born out of wedlock. When children are born out of wedlock it is still the responsibility of both parents to contribute to the needs of a child both ethically and legally. However that is not happening much of the time in today’s world. When a child is not cared for by a parent, it “looks” bad on them to society. However since child support laws have been enacted, ethical reasons to take care of a child are now overpowered by legal reasons.
Now there are more and more parents being dubbed “deadbeats” for failure to take care of their children financially. Since the women’s movement there has been a social shift in the United States. Mathew Beach, a child support caseworker for Hamilton County, says “single parenting is skyrocketing, and with that so are the number of non-paying parents.” Mr. Beach also stated “the taxpayers are footing the bill for children who have irresponsible parents. Most of the children who do not receive support from both parents often times fall into the welfare system, which ultimately cost taxpayers millions of dollars every year.” Fortunately for the children with non-paying parents and taxpayers, laws have been established to help relieve some of the child support cases.
Child support laws go back to the 1970’s. According to Ohio Jobs and Family Services, “congress passed the Child Support Enforcement Program in 1975.” This program was started to make sure that both parents were paying for their children. The laws and regulations have continued since then. Even former President Bill Clinton got in on the search for deadbeat parents, according to CNN.com. The article quoted Mr. Clinton as saying, “One of the main reasons single mothers go on welfare is the fathers have failed to meet their responsibilities to their children.” He is also quoted as saying “One way or the other, people who don’t support their children will pay what hey must.”
People are starting to pay for not paying for their children but there is still more work to be done. There is progress being made everyday in our country in trying to collect what is owed to children. In 2001, the US Department of Health and Human Services reported that “child support collections hit over $18 billion in collections i...
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...e.” This is understandable, but just because someone gets remarried does not mean that they should be exempt from taking care of responsibility for their children. If a person is going to have more children they should be able to support them. A child is not at fault of his parents. Mr. Walker also says that “many deadbeat parents are homeless, and even a greater percentage are poor.” Again that is understandable, but using a proposal like the “3 strikes” proposal would not only help the child but would also help the deadbeat parent obtain employment.
There will more than likely never be an easy solution to the issues this country faces with child support. However the new proposals help children with deadbeat parents have a better shot at life. The government is working hard to find answers in helping these children to obtain the financial support that they need, but it is becoming more difficult to find arguments that support proposal likes the 3 strikes proposal. Many times these proposals are being called illegal and against the laws of the Constitution. The most important people in this whole argument are the children. If they are not taken care
In the United States today more than one-half of all marriages end in divorce. The purpose of this paper is to examine the reason why women have typically received custody of the children far more often than the fathers. In order to better understand child custody one must first examine how fathers have often times been left out of the picture, and conversely why mothers have had such hard times raising children on their own. This paper will first examine the perspective of a father who has lost custody of his children.
Copyright (c) 2005 Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law, 2005, 12 Va. J. Soc. Pol'y & L. 371, 13986 words, SYMPOSIUM: THE STATE CONSTRUCTION OF FAMILIES: FOSTER CARE, TERMINATION OF PARENTAL RIGHTS, AND ADOPTION: FROM ANTICIPATION TO EVIDENCE: RESEARCH ON THE ADOPTION
There are many low-income families who are not receiving court ordered child support simply because they cannot afford the legal representation and court costs to fight for what they are legally entitled to. What should be done to start helping in these cases? The Office of the Attorney General Child Support Division is set up to help parents locate non-custodial parents who have not paid their child support. This is a free service; they also help provide the custodial parent with information regarding government programs including: Medicaid, TANIF, Food Stamps, and WIC. They can help you get health insurance if the non-custodial parent is not covering those expenses. The government help is easy to obtain only requiring information that would be easily obtained like proof of income, household members, SSN, expenses, and other personnel information. Once you have filed a case with them they will send paperwork to fill out, this will consist of; the noncustodial parents full legal name, last known address, last known telephone number,...
There are 15 million more people living in poverty than in the year 2000. Moreover, America has become a low-wage nation. The median paying job in the country now pays about $35,000 a year for a full-time job. It is barely more than it paid in 1973. With the salary being $35,000 it has people in America living in poverty because that amount of salary isn’t even enough to even live in a one bedroom house. It maybe is enough for one person, but for a person who has a family, it sure isn’t. In most cases in America, many families don’t have both parents. Single mothers were and are in trouble, with a poverty rate in excess of 40 percent. With this being said single mothers are the ones who are being affected and who are one of the cases that live in poverty. They live in poverty due to being the only ones that are bringing money into the households and with their salary being $35,000 is not enough to provide for themselves along with their children. Family structure plays a big role in poverty. “The poverty of single mothers with children at home, of all races, is the highest among demographic groups, higher than any minority or age group.” states Edelman, Peter. (2014). During the great recession when many single mothers were living off of food stamps and they soon destroyed the legal rights of benefits the Food stamp
The income that people pay for child support has many factors. Depending on what state you may reside in plays a major role in how much the parent may end up paying. Looking at things on a broad spectrum anything is valid when it comes down to determining the amount that a child will receive from the noncustodial parent. According to LawInfo there are three models that states choose to follow in order to calculate the income of each person's child support case; Flat Percentage, Income Shares, and Melson Formula. The similarity between these three models is how much the parents receive economically and the child’s necessities. With these three models plugged into the child support system we will get a better understanding of how the parents and children benefit from each model. Once the economic issues are settled among the parents there may not be a stable environment just yet until custody rights are given and agreed on. The following models will give a brie...
Some parents struggle knowing they will have to care for a disabled child for the rest of their lives and some parents are not prepared to take on that role. I don’t feel that withholding care is the answer, but I also don’t believe that forcing the parents to take on such a big responsibility is the answer either. People get put into situations that they are not prepared and they don’t care for the child like they should. In the end the child is the one who suffers. This subject will always be controversial with the world that we live in today. I am thankful for the Federal “Baby Doe”rules and I am sure a lot of newborns lives have been spared because of it.
The history of welfare has been a short story. This is a short summary of welfare history from Micheal Katz’s article The American Welfare State. AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) was around the 1970’s, and it was the first modern welfare division but after a reform in the 1990’s TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) rose out of the remains of AFDC. After the reform the people on welfare went down, momentarily, but the poverty rate stayed steady. Since then there have not been many changes (Katz).
In America, poverty has been on the rise since the 1970's.(Poverty World Book 723). The family structure has been constantly changing. The presence of a father in the family effects the poverty rate. The presence of a father in the family was higher when the poverty rate was formed. The family is four times more likely not to have a father in it today than it was in the 1950's. (Report Ties 3). Without a father in the family the chance for children to become poor and eventual...
The main issue, as is so often the case with controversial subjects has been lost along the way. Everyone has become caught up in the right vs. left fight and ensuing name calling so few people are truly paying attention to the children themselves. America already has enough laws. What parents need most is education and support, not legislation. Also, those without children need to mind their own business and stick to subjects they have experience with, not just opinions. Having been a child does not give one insight into how to raise a child.
There are a lot of children that fall through the cracks of the social welfare department. Because of this new parenting style, there have been concerns about the children and the children’s welfare. We cannot assume that parents are adequate caregivers, and the children are mature enough to watch themselves. Law enforcement has been called for this new parenting style for the parent’s leaving their children unattended;
reasons why these particular families are so poor is because out of all divorced fathers, only 50% help support the...
Surrogacy is becoming extremely popular as a way for people to build their families and women to have a source of income. Many people have various reasons for their opposition to it whether it be by comparing it to prostitution or disagreeing with how military wives take advantage of the Tricare insurance. Lorraine Ali states in her article “The Curious Lives of Surrogates” that one of the more popular reasons to oppose surrogacy is that it contradicts, “what we’ve always thought of as an unbreakable bond between mother and child.” However, a woman’s inability to conceive her own children does not determine the absence of a mother to child bond.
Not only are there personal issues, there are social issues as well. For example, adolescent mothers are less likely to receive child support from biological fathers, less likely to work, and less likely to be able to provide for themselves and children without outside assistance (Coard, 2000). It is well documented that teenage mothers do not acquire as much education as teens who delay childbearing, therefore they are less likely to find stable employment and more likely to rely on public assistance, thus perpetuating the cycle of poverty. In fact one half of teen mothers go on welfare within a year and 77% within five years of the birth of a child (Corcoran, 1999). While teenagers make up less than 8% of the welfare caseload, 43% of long-term recipients gave birth for the first time when they were 17 years old or younger (Harris, 1998). As of Spring 1999 the estimated cost of society subsidizing these births is 20 billion dollars (Kellogg, 1999).
Commercial surrogacy commodifies children because by paying the surrogate mother to give up her child, they treat the child as an object of exchange or commodity that can be bought and sold. As any business transaction, the parents give money for the exchange of an object, the child. The parents get their desired child and the mother gets the money, but what about what thee child think about this event? The parents and surrogate mother’s action were done with self-interest. It could be argued that they wanted the best for the child. However, the first priority in the intentional procreation of the child was not the welfare of the child but rather to give it up to the parents in exchange of money. Additionally, women’s labor is commodified because the surrogate mother treats her parental rights as it was a property right not as a trust. In other words, the decisions taken concerning the child are not done primarily for the benefit of the child. The act of the mother relenting her parental rights is done for a monetary price. She disposes of her parental rights, which are to be managed for the welfare of the owner, as if they were property right, which are to be handled for personal
According to the 2012 Census Bureau report, in 2012 the average household family income was around $51,017 dollars a year. The income is nearly split in half for the income of a single parent. Single parents are often financially unstable, decreasing opportunity and lifestyle quality for their children. “The single mother lives with the competing priorities of earning money and providing caring services to their children” (Bronnimann). To provide some aid to single parents, the government requires for the noncustodial parent to pay what is known as Child Support. Child support is a payment that the noncustodial parent must pay to make up for the financial costs he or she would need to contribute to the child or children to support their lifestyle. However often times the noncustodial parent does not earn a large enough income to pay a significant amount of child support. In some cases the noncustodial parent may be unemployed and unable to contribute at all. Children coming fr...