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
Men have changed as well; men didn’t used to think that children were their responsibility. If they didn’t want to give their child financial support, they would simply leave and they didn’t spend time with their children, if they didn’t want to. However, things have changed as now, men are required by the law to support their children financially even if they get a divorce. Moreover,
According to many the custody of a child should be determined with the best interest of the child in mind. However, it is not easy for a judge to make such an important decision in such a short amount of time with limited information. Smith (2004) stated that, the simple fact of being a mother does not indicate a willingness or capacity to render a quality of care different than that which a father can provide. Some might argue that what Reynolds (2004) calls deadbeat dads, or in other words fathers who refuse to pay their child support, are often times confused with Turnips, who are ex-spouses who can not afford to pay child support. One example of a turnip is a father who is in prison; he is obviously not making money while he is on the inside. Now an example of a deadbeat dad is when the father is enjoying all the finer things in life and he cannot reach far enough into his...
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
Alexandra Sakellariou writes an article about a mother Rachel who gave up her baby because she wasn’t ready to raise a child. “I knew there was no way I could raise a baby as I’d been living on my own since I was 16 and had no family support.” (Sakellariou). Here Rachel explains that when she got pregnant she was still a child herself and living on her own with no help which isn’t the right situation in which anyone should raise a child. Not everyone who gets pregnant is ready to raise a child on their own and not everyone is able to take on that great responsibility that a child brings. So every parent should care for their child unless it is too inconvenient like if they’re not receiving any family support or if they’re not ready to take care of a child. Ashlee Amraen was in a similar situation to Rachel when she got pregnant with her twin boys, “I want my twins to have a stable and healthy, two parent home and I can’t do that right now in life. They deserve so much better than what I can give them.” (Amraen). Amraen states that when she got pregnant she wanted her children to grow up in an ideal home, a home that she couldn’t provide for them at this time. Children deserve to grow up in homes that are
Elaine Sorensen, Chava Zibman ”Poor Dads Who Don't Pay Child Support; Deadbeats or Disadvantaged?” Urban Institute, April 01, 2001, Web. 13 Nov. 2011
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
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.
Close to 60% of children in the united states, who are living in a single mother family are impoverished. However, only 11% of two parent families are in poverty. This is very important because there are close to approximately 10,000,000 single mother families in the united states, and if 60% of those are in poverty, then close to 6,000,000 families are in poverty in the U.S. because they have a single mother. This is an issue because that is a lot of people living in poverty. If women don't get paid enough because of their lower paying jobs and the wage gap, then it is almost impossible to raise children while being a single mother. Also, many parents take time off of their work to take care of their children. Single parents usually have to take more time off of their work to take care of their child. However, this is difficult for salaries. An article about parenting says , “Some large or family-friendly companies employees six paid weeks of maternity leave, but many do not.”. This is an issue. IF mothers, specifically single mothers are not paid while taking care of their children, then it is way harder to stay above the poverty line. Children already cost a lot of extra money for two parent families, and if single mothers take time off to take care of their kids without any pay, then that makes the poverty problem
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.
Around the 1950’s, the media perpetuated the idea of the picturesque family unit; children made the shift from being a necessary evil to a symbol of status. Children were no longer meant to help sustain the family, so much as meant to be trophies of the parents’ competentness. Children became an outlet for parents to mold and live through vicariously: the more perfect your child was, the better parent you were. The problem is not that people want to have children, but that many cannot afford to take care of their spawn. Whether you are a young mother utilizing the assistance of government programs such as WIC or simply writing off your children on your taxes, you are making use of government incentive to procreate. Reproduction is completely natural; however, once backed by government incentive, the motivations for having children can take an unnatural turn. Children may be a symbol of love and unity, but it has expanded beyond the family unit. Many children have become the responsibility of the Unite...
“Four in 10 American households with children under age 18 now include a mother who is either the sole or primary earner for her family, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census and polling data released Wednesday. This share, the highest on record, has quadrupled since 1960.”
The website that contains the above sentence is a site that discusses stories about some men that do not believe they should pay child support. In some of the cases, the man is unaware that he was the biological father of the child, but was ordered by court to pay to help support the child. Other cases were about divorced couples where the man is upset about providing for the children after the separation even if they are his biological children. In the view of Daniel Callahan, the author of the article “Bioethics and Fatherhood”, this website is nonsense. He argues that, “given the obvious importance of procreation in bringing human life into existence, fathers have a significant moral responsibility for the children they voluntarily procreate”. In the situations where the biological fathers just don’t want to give up their money for the children, Callahan’s argument can be directly applied. For the other cases, the argument can still be used because those men had believed that they were the real fathers at first. The fact that they aren’t obligated to take on the responsibility of caring for that child, does not mean that all responsibility should be taken off the real biological father and put on the man that thought he was. The website, Women’s Health Care Services, also agrees with argument and says, “The father of a child has a legal responsibility to provide for the support, educational, medical and other needs of that child.” Therefore the dad should at least be there financially for their child.
If you can’t make sacrifices for your children, then you don’t deserve them. There are many adults that long to have children but are not able to. Having children is a privilege, not a right. Children should not be having children. But this is one subject that is widely controversial and continues to happen regardless. This is an epidemic that needs to
The amount of child support cases in arrears would decline if a few things were changed, hopefully providing incentives to pay child support on time and regularly. There are also harsher consequences that could be carried out to prevent future mistakes. There are things being done, but is it enough? As it stands the noncustodial parent can face loss of visitation, probation, and even jail time for none payment of child support. By not enforcing court ordered child support and making examples out of those who are not in compliance, we are sending out a message that child support is more of an option than a legal obligation. Think about the ones who are really suffering here, the children involved.
What is a single parent? Is it one who destroys their child’s life? Is it one who ultimately cannot raise a minor on their own? Or is it one who dedicates their lives to the well being of their kid? Imagine a parent, and for whatever reason they were left alone to raise a child. That parent you imagined has to work long hours just to put a meal on the table. That parent has to play the role of the mother and father. That parent has no financial support. Unfortunately, in our society, this image of a single parent is looked down upon. There are people that don’t realize how much a single parent goes through to give their child a better life.