Category: Blog

June 30, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

I suppose the first thing that comes to mind about this article is the obvious – that if the sexes were reversed, the article never would have been written and, if it were, the fathers would be raked over the coals (Sydney Morning Herald, 3/17/18).  It’s about three Australian mothers who left their husbands and children, something the article calls a “tough decision.”

That’s right in the headline and it sets the tone for the rest of the piece.  That tone is one of understanding and sympathy for the mothers, not a hint of rebuke or faultfinding, and barely a word about how their leaving might have adversely impacted their kids.  Needless to say, words like “deadbeat” never appear.

The main point of the piece seems to be that the women were criticized for leaving their children, to my mind, an understandable response.  Somehow it seems to assume that, if a father did the same, he’d be clapped on the back and stood a pint by the lads at the nearest pub.  But, when mothers leave their kids, they’re the victims in need of our care and concern.

“[Psychologist Kirsty Levin] believes mothers who leave their children should be supported by their community.”

Maybe I’ve just forgotten, but I can’t recall anyone saying that about fathers who leave their kids.  Indeed, even fathers who would give everything they own just to get a glimpse of their kids often get the “deadbeat dad” treatment from the press, politicians and sundry commentators.

But the obvious gender bias of the article is just one of its flaws. 

The body of the piece is a sketch of each of three different mothers.  They tell why they came to leave their children and their lives since.  Now, only one of them actually seems to have left for good.  The other two continued to see their children every other weekend just like countless fathers do.

But what’s interesting is what the article and the mothers don’t say, like the fact that they didn’t pay child support.  None of the three had anything like equal time with the children, so clearly they should have paid their share of the support bill, but they seem not to have.  If they think living apart from their children was tough, it would have been made all the tougher if they’d had to dig deep every month.  Apparently their exes didn’t ask them to do that, much less take them to court.

What’s also not said is why none of the mothers asked a court for more time with their children.  Two of the women lived fairly close to them and yet never seem to have considered asking for 50% of the parenting time.  The other one was living in Canada in a bad relationship with her husband and moved to Australia, so she able to see the kids only rarely.  Why didn’t she move 30 miles away so that she could see them often?  She doesn’t say.

And, speaking of children, the article doesn’t, at least not much.  And when it does, the outcome isn’t good.  Here’s one of the mothers, Kate Munn:

I never felt guilty, just very sad. But I could sleep at night with the knowledge that I did the right thing by the kids. I was a stay-at-home mother for seven years, the president of the parents’ committee. I made everything from scratch and never felt the need for a separate career or identity. I loved every day of those seven years, even the mundane, boring stuff.

So Munn went from stay-at-home mother for seven years to every other weekend visitor.  That’s her idea of doing “the right thing by the kids,” but curiously, the kids disagreed.

It was tough because there was a 23-month period where my eldest child did not speak to me and I didn’t know why. 

Oh, come on Ms. Munn, you didn’t know why?  Really?  Of course you knew why.  The child felt abandoned by his mother and rightly so, that’s why.  I know it interferes with your narrative of your own victimization, but the truth is the truth. 

And just look; there’s that word again – tough.  For whom was the situation “tough” according to Munn?  For her.  Her son didn’t speak to her for almost two years and she didn’t know why!  Does it occur to her that having been left by his mother might have been tough on him?  It seems not.

The article’s final indignity is its claim of gender bias in favor of fathers.

She says women who are upfront about leaving their children to live with their father can face vitriol due to outdated notions of gender roles. “We still view motherhood as mandatory and fatherhood as voluntary,” says Levin.

But in its zeal to acquit these mothers of the charge of maternal negligence, the article ignores the most important fact about parent-child relationships – that kids need both parents, that neither parent is free to up and leave and expect no criticism for doing so.  The simple fact is that these three women did far less than they should have to get distance from their husbands while maintaining real relationships with their children.  That’s not something to laud or justify.  It’s something to criticize, irrespective of which parent does it. 

June 25, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

As I said in my last piece, the tide of denigration of fathers on Father’s Day seems to have ebbed substantially this year.  That’s good news of course, but what’s less so is the latest study of the depiction of fathers in TV sit-coms.  Whatever may be true on dads’ one day per year, is emphatically not so the other 364.

The study, by UMass Amherst professor of Communications Erica Scharrer and six colleagues, is entitled “Disparaged Dads: A Content Analysis of Depictions of Fathers in U.S. Sit-Coms Over Time,” and was published in May by the journal Psychology of Popular Media. 

Now, given all that we’ve learned over the years about the value of fathers to children and how fathers are doing far more hands-on parenting than ever before, you might think they’d get a break from pop culture.  After all, surely their depictions therein would have improved over time, right? 

But if you thought that, you’re sorely mistaken.  Far from improving, dads’ portrayals in sit-coms have gotten worse, deviating ever further from the reality of fathers.

Scharrer, et al studied 32 different sit-coms that aired from 1980 – 2017.  They examined 4,711 episodes in which there was at least one father and one child.  Those episodes included 578 scenes in which a father was shown interacting with his child.  The results are striking.

For example, the proportion of scenes in which Dad is disparaged by being the “butt of the joke” increased almost 60% from 1984 to 2017.  The mean number of scenes per episode in which a father is shown in healthy interaction with his child, while never high, decreased from 1984 to 2017 when it stood at precisely zero.  As of 2017, none of the sit-coms viewed had a single scene of positive father-child interaction.

Up slightly over the same time is the mean number of scenes per episode depicting fathers behaving incompetently or foolishly when engaged in parenting behavior.  Fortunately, those scenes are still somewhat rare, but the trend is in the wrong direction.  The summary of those last two findings is this: in sit-coms, fathers do little parenting at all and when they do, they do it badly.

Finally – and this is the “good news” – the mean overall “foolishness” of fathers depicted in sit-coms is the same as it was in 1984.  That measure spiked in 1998-99 and has come down since, but sit-coms treat fathers as the same incompetent bozos they were portrayed as almost four decades ago.

Scharrer, et al rightly point out the change in fathers’ behavior over the decades.  They mention that fathers now spend almost three times the hands-on parenting time as they did in 1965 and that men and women are now equally likely to say that being a parent is an extremely important aspect of their identities.

But pop culture – at least the sit-com part thereof – is having none of it.  And of course, from time to time we see other parts of TV culture taking a swipe at dads.  Last year’s Gillette ad, that showed men generally and fathers particularly as careless and likely dangerous to their children being one memorable example.  That drew a pretty heated response and a move to boycott Gillette products, which I personally do to this day.

But there’s no such outcry about sit-coms.  There should be, but there’s not, which raises the question “why not?”  Scharrer, et al don’t answer that question per se, but do offer some pithy information.

“Past research has found that appreciation of disparagement humor is associated with greater endorsement of social power and lesser endorsement of equality and helpfulness…”

That is, people who consume a lot of that type of humor tend to value power in social relationships and be less interested in equality and helping others.  As the authors point out, TV is one of our culture’s primary purveyors of narrative and narrative has the power to shape and reinforce social attitudes and behavior.

In a nutshell then, sit-com depictions of fathers have the ability to discourage fathers from childcare because they see their efforts in the light of TV representations.  Every parent, particularly new parents, sometimes feels less than knowledgeable, less than competent in caring for little Andy or Jenny.  TV portrayals of fathers tend to normalize that feeling in fathers.  And who wants to be incompetent, particularly in dealing with one’s own child?

In the same way, dad-disparaging sit-coms may encourage mothers to take up more of the load of parenting.

So the effect of sit-coms may well be to entrench Mom as primary caregiver and Dad as, at best, her helper.

“They could potentially strengthen traditional beliefs about the gendered division of labor through audience identification with sitcom fathers (Bandura, 2001) or through the absorption of gender role messages in sitcom narratives (Morgan, 2009).”

That of course may help us answer the question “why?”  Why would this aspect of pop culture that’s consumed by tens of millions of Americans virtually every night be so bent on keeping Mom the primary caregiver and Dad sidelined in his children’s lives? 

Over some 47 years, we must accept the notion that, if these depictions of fathers weren’t popular, they’d long since have ceased to exist.  My only explanation is one I’ve given many times before: our experiment with stepping out of traditional gender roles isn’t nearly as popular with the great run of people as it is with elites who appoint themselves the arbiters of what is good, right and necessary for the rest of us.

Whatever the case, and whatever the power of television, these shows have denigrated dads for a long, long time.  And yet fathers daily increase both their care of children and their desire to do so.  As usual, dads are tacking into the wind, but they’re still making headway.

June 24, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

So, we managed to get past Father’s Day without the usual barrage of dad-hating articles.  I’m sure there are some I missed, but, for the most part, it seems like a pretty good year.  But it wouldn’t be Father’s Day without at least one, so, here it is (Harvest, 6/20/20).

The writer, Pastor Gregg Laurie, knows nothing about his subject.  He makes assertions that are patently untrue and, predictably, unsourced.  His swipes at fathers are entirely gratuitous.  In short, his article is what we’ve come to expect in the run-up to Father’s Day.  The only difference is that Laurie is a pastor and his piece is larded with religious references and a spiritual tone.  How Laurie can call himself a Christian and be so dismissive of fathers, I can’t guess.

Here’s Pastor Gregg:

Not only that, but probably more fathers attend church on Mother’s Day than on Father’s Day. Next to Christmas and Easter, Mother’s Day has the highest church attendance. But Father’s Day is one of the days with the lowest church attendance.

Hmm.  If Laurie’s right, that’s interesting.  I wonder why fathers would go to church on Mother’s Day, but not on Father’s Day.  Needless to say, Laurie has the answer.

But on Father’s Day, many dads would prefer staying at home and taking a nap in their La-Z-Boys.

Note that the only reason Laurie can image to explain fathers’ absence on Father’s Day is that they’re lazy (or perhaps La-Z).  He can’t imagine that they might be mowing the lawn, changing the oil and filter in the car or painting the eaves on the house.  No, if they’re not in church – his church – they’re just La-Z.

Now, what Laurie doesn’t notice, despite having said it himself, is that fathers do attend church on Mother’s Day.  He doesn’t stop to wonder why they do that, but, a month later opt out of church on Father’s Day.  It doesn’t occur to him that, given a choice, dads tend to reject church in favor of other alternatives, but, to please Mom, attend when she want them to.  That act of Christian charity and generosity escapes him, possibly because it’s fathers doing it.  You might think that, as a man of God, Laurie would notice an act of Christian giving, but he doesn’t.

But why would fathers opt out of church?  Perhaps Pastor Gregg has the answer, albeit again unknowingly.

Unfortunately, men are not stepping up to the plate like mothers usually do. There are exceptions, of course. And there are also wayward moms who are horribly neglectful. But in general, mothers are there for their children. We expect them to be there.

Meanwhile, a lot of dads are missing in action.

Gee, Pastor Gregg, could fathers be rejecting church because of the reception they get from pastors like you when they do attend?  Is it possible that, thinking as you do about fathers, they just don’t want your input?  I guess it’s not enough for you to be flat wrong about what you say, not enough to have disdained doing even a few minutes of online research into the subject of your piece.  No, to all that you had to add a distinctly un-Christian lack of caring about fathers.  Where’s the love, Pastor Gregg?  Wherever it is, it’s not coming from you.

So how is it that “men are not stepping up to the plate?”  Needless to say, Laurie doesn’t get into that.  That’s of course because, if he’d actually taken the trouble to learn something about fathers, he’d know that they step up to the plate just fine, thank you.  And they do so in an anti-father environment that, at every turn stacks the deck against them.  Family law and family courts routinely sideline fathers in their children’s lives; pop culture misses no opportunity to denigrate dads and our educational system nowhere teaches the value of fathers to children.  With all that going on, fathers should be forgiven (a word you’d think Laurie would know) for turning their backs on both marriage and children.  But they don’t.  They soldier on, fighting headwinds every step of the way.

Does Laurie know that fathers do almost as much hands-on childcare as do mothers?  Does he know that they still do more of the financial providing for their kids?  Does he know the laws and court practices that do everything in their power to deny children real relationships with their fathers?  I guess not, because nowhere does he mention any of that.

June 22, 2020 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors

I’ve posted a few pieces on the very dubious ways family court judges use their power.  Many of those are of questionable constitutionality, but they’re seldom, if ever, challenged.  Here’s such a case (Detroit Free Press, 9/19/19).  It’s not a recent one, but it’s well worth mentioning.

Jonathan Vanderhagen had a son with a woman who goes unnamed in the article.  A family court of course gave primary custody to her.  But Vanderhagen complained.  He filed an action to gain custody for himself claiming his ex was unfit to care for their son, Killian.  He filed that in the court of Judge Rachel Rancilio although it was heard by a special master.  Vanderhagen’s request was denied and, sometime later, Killian died in his ex’s care.  She says she had nothing to do with his death.  Vanderhagen disagrees.

Whatever the case, Vanderhagen posted to social media some harsh criticisms of the family court system, including Judge Rancilio.  Even though none of what Vanderhagen posted was remotely threatening or abusive, Rancilio complained to the county sheriff who brought charges against Vanderhagen.  He was arrested, posted the $1,000 bond and a no-contact order was issued against him.

Undeterred, Vanderhagen continued to criticize Judge Rancilio and the family court system on social media.  Again, his messages were overtly non-threatening, promising only to dig up dirt on Rancilio, et al.  Rancilio pronounced herself “scared.”

She testified that she found one post particularly threatening. It included a photo of Vanderhagen holding a shovel with Rancilio’s initials on the handle and talked about him digging up “all the skeleton’s in this court’s closet.”

Now, anyone reasonably conversant with English knows that message means finding discomfiting information about the individual in question.  Not Rancilio.

“Rancilio told the jury that she thought Vanderhagen was going “to kill me and bury me after he was done.”

The article linked to includes a photo of the judge.  She looks easily young enough to have imbibed, in college the false notion that “the authorities” not only need to, but are empowered to, quash any and all speech that anyone says makes them feel uncomfortable.  How Rancilio managed to square that with what she learned (or didn’t) in her Constitutional Law class, I’m not sure, but however she did so, she turned out to be right.

Another judge ordered Vanderhagen to jail on the charge of violating his no-contact order, where he remained until his trial two months later.  Fortunately for him, our constitutional liberties and common sense, the jury that heard his case found him not guilty and took just 27 minutes to do so.

“I think that they saw through this case. I think what they saw the prosecution do to this man was wrong,” said Vanderhagen’s attorney, Nicholas Somberg. “And I asked in my closing to send a message and to not just come back not guilty, but to come back with a quick not guilty so the prosecutor would know that what they did to this man was wrong.”

Somberg’s right.  What the judicial system, including family and criminal courts and prosecutors, did was wrong, clearly wrong.  But they did it anyway, and that’s very much the point.  Vanderhagen spent two months in jail and who knows how much on his attorney, despite having clearly committed no legal wrong.  By contrast, those who did wrong – Rancilio, the DA and others – will not suffer any sort of consequence for forcing an innocent man to spend two months in jail. 

Not only did Jonathan Vanderhagen do nothing wrong, what he did was right.  We want people to do exactly what he did – exercise his constitutional rights to attempt to draw attention to the wrongful behavior of public officials.  We the People are, and are meant to be, an important curb on the power of government.  If we roll over for the type of misconduct that occurred in Vanderhagen’s case, how will beneficial reform ever come about?  It won’t.  Vanderhagen is the hero of this story and Rancilio, et al are the villains.

But, as so often happens, the hero suffered and the villains walk free to abuse their power again.

The first celebration of a “Father’s Day” was in 1908 when a West Virginia church commemorated the deaths in a mining accident of 361 miners, 250 of them fathers. The beginnings of a general celebration of fathers began a few years later, in Spokane, Washington, when Sonora Smart Dodd, inspired by a Mother’s Day celebration, urged her minister to declare a similar day for recognizing fathers. There were several unsuccessful attempts to establish official recognition of Father’s Day by Congress, but they were defeated. In 1957, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith criticized Congress for ignoring fathers for 40 years while honoring mothers, thus “[singling] out just one of our two parents”. In 1966, President Johnson proclaimed the third Sunday in June ‘Father’s day’ and in 1972 President Nixon signed a law making it a permanent national holiday. (Credit goes to Wikipedia for the brief history.)

One reason Congress resisted making Father’s Day a holiday was concern that the day would be commercialized. This fear was not unfounded, of course, though with respect to commercialization, Father’s Day doesn’t match Mother’s Day. But commercialization isn’t the only disparity between the two holidays. Anyone paying attention over the past few decades has seen instances where Father’s Day is used not to honor but to disparage fathers. (For some examples, Google: deadbeat dads “Father’s Day”.) Father’s Day has even been used as a day to target fathers who are behind on their child support obligations, as documented here by Glenn Sacks and Ned Holstein. 

Thankfully, as public awareness of the importance of fathers in their children’s lives has increased in recent years, the use of Father’s Day as an opportunity to disparage dads seems to be in decline. And a new generation of young Americans, often poignantly aware of the pain of father absence, seems to yearn for greater father involvement with children.

NPO recently received a message from PhiL Bell, leader of the PhiL n’ Nem band sharing with us a musical tribute to fathers, “Pop Song”. There are many touching, stereotype-breaking songs about fathers and their love of their children. Here’s a list of 25 songs about fathers, spanning many decades and from a variety of musical genres. (I would add to that list Stevie Wonder’s lovely celebration of his newborn daughter, “Isn’t She Lovely”.) 

And there are plenty of great films about fathers and their relationships with their children: To Kill a Mockingbird, Mrs. Doubtfire, Boyhood, Finding Nemo, Boyz n The Hood, The Pursuit of Happyness, and more. There’s also a new documentary by Bryce Dallas Howard and her father, Ron Howard, Dads, that’s funny, touching, and well worth watching

This Father’s Day, we can step back from the commercialization of the day and celebrate the fathers in our lives–watch a father-positive film, listen to some songs that remind us of a father’s love for his children, or, as researcher Linda Nielsen recommends, really get to know your father.

June 19, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

This piece builds on my last two detailing the most recent (May, 2020) data from the U.S. Census Bureau on child custody and support.

The Bureau reports this information every couple of years and has since at least 1993.  One of the most remarkable aspects of the data is how little child custody arrangements have changed over the past 27 years.  Most noteworthy is the fact that the ratio of maternal to paternal custody has remained essentially unchanged over all that time.  In 2017, 80% of child custodians were mothers and 20% fathers.  In 1993 the numbers were 84% and 16% respectively.

It’s hard to believe that, with all we’ve learned about the value of fathers to children that so little headway has been made toward increasing fathers’ custody.  The simple fact is that the social science on fathers and children is now far ahead of what it was in the 1990s, so you’d think that we’d see that reflected in child custody data, but we don’t.  It’s as if all that vital information, all that painstaking work has gone for naught.

That’s doubly so given the fact that, as I reported last time, custodial fathers and their children are far less likely to live in poverty than are custodial mothers and theirs.  The poverty rate for custodial fathers is just 11.1% while that of custodial mothers is 27.3%.  That rate for mothers is almost twice the national average, while that for fathers is below the national average.  Plus, the median family income for custodial dads is a bit above $70,000 while that of custodial moms is $52,000.  So if one parent has to get the majority of the parenting time, you’d think fathers would be the favored parents, but needless to say, the opposite is true.

But it’s not just family court judges who are marginalizing fathers.  Much of the way custodial mothers gain that title is by never marrying in the first place.  Some 40.4% of those mothers have never been married and that alone makes gaining custody – or even parental rights – by a father an even steeper hill to climb than it otherwise is.  By contrast, just 29.3% of custodial fathers have never been married.  Meanwhile, 30.1% of custodial mothers are divorced and 39.1% of custodial fathers are.

My guess is that a hefty majority of those out-of-wedlock births never have custody decided by a judge.  So the glacial pace of paternal custody increase is not just due to family courts, but to mothers ensuring their own custody by avoiding marriage that at least gives fathers presumptive rights.

And,

“The proportion of custodial parents who were supposed to receive support, but received none, increased from 24.2 percent in 1993 to 30.2 percent in 2017.”

As I said in my previous two pieces, the number of custodial parents with child support orders is decreasing and stands now at its lowest level since 1993.  The amount of child support ordered to be paid is also at an all-time low, and those are not inflation-adjusted figures, so the dollars ordered to be paid in 2017 are worth much less than they were in 1993.  And now we know that significantly fewer people are paying anything at all than was true in 1993.

All that suggests, as I said before, that parents generally don’t trust the child support system and are opting out of it.  Plus, that system isn’t doing much of a job at collecting the money ordered to be paid.  Again, the percentage of parents who received any child support at all in 2017 was almost at an all-time low – 69.8%.  The only lower year was 2015 – 69.3%.

Now, it’s true that the percentage of parents who received everything owed to them is respectable, by historical standards.  In 2017, 45.9% did, and that looks to be a bit above average for the years since 1993.  But the fact remains that the vast apparatus for collecting child support does so successfully in under half the cases.  That’s not exactly a full-throated endorsement of that apparatus.

Overall then, the Census Bureau data paint a picture of a child support system that many people want no part of and that does a generally poor job of its main job – transferring money from one parent to the other.  That’s true in part because and in part in spite of the draconian methods and the astonishing amount of money deployed by the child support enforcement system.

On the basis of these numbers alone, it’s a system that cries out for reform.

These are uncertain economic times for many families. Once thriving businesses are struggling and sometimes failing. Workers are facing cutbacks in their hours, furloughs, and layoffs. It’s a time when many families can’t responsibly consider increasing their contributions to non-profit organizations like National Parents Organization no matter how much these families support the mission of that organization.

It’s also a time, though, when many families are doing more online purchasing than ever, often from the 300-pound gorilla of online shopping, Amazon,com. And that means that there’s a no-cost way for people to support the mission of NPO.

Through its Smile program, Amazon will donate .5% of your eligible purchases (which are likely to be almost all of them) to the non-profit organization of your choice. And this doesn’t cost you a penny.

If you think that .5% doesn’t sound like much, you’re not thinking about how much we all purchase through Amazon.com. This year to date, Amazon has donated more than $183 million to various charities through the Smile program.

It’s easy to set up National Parents Organization as your non-profit of choice for the Amazon’s Smile program. From any Amazon.com page, pull down the ‘Accounts & Lists’ menu and select ‘Your AmazonSmile’ from the right hand list. The resulting page will give you the option of selecting (or changing) your desired charity. That page will give you a search box to “pick your own charitable organization.” Just search for ‘National Parents Organization’ and select it.

Tough economic times are tough for non-profit organizations, too. And the Amazon Smile program offers an additional way that you can support NPO in its efforts to make equal shared parenting the norm across the country–at no cost to you. That should make us all smile.

May 17, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

Last time I introduced the latest Census Bureau data on custodial and non-custodial parents and child support.  As usual, hard facts make for some interesting reading. 

Some of that interesting reading includes the fact that, since 1993, the amount of child support ordered by courts has been declining.  In 2017, the latest year for which the Bureau has statistics, the average amounts ordered by courts for both non-custodial mothers and non-custodial fathers, was at the lowest point since 1993.  I speculated that the reason for that is that perhaps judges have come to realize what so many of us have known for a long time – that child support orders are often set too high.  So possibly the decline indicates a coming to grips with that fact on the part of courts.

Two very wise people have offered other explanations.  One is that the incidence of equal parenting may be on the rise and, since some states reduce child support as parenting time increases, average orders decrease accordingly.  I suppose that’s possible, but we really don’t have much evidence to let us know one way or the other.  One reason given the Census Bureau by parents for not requesting a formal child support order was “child stays with other parent part of the time,” but obviously that bears little on the incidence of shared parenting.  And the data don’t go into types of custody or parenting time.

Still, it’s an interesting theory.

The second idea is that women are working and earning almost more than ever now and often more than their husbands.  So, since mothers have custody far more than fathers (80% vs. 20%), if they earn more, the amount Dad has to pay likely decreases.  Again, that’s a possibility for custodial mothers, but it doesn’t explain the parallel decline in child support orders for custodial dads.

Whatever the causes of the decline, it’s good news.  Child support levels have always been set too high, at least on average, so any reduction is a trend in the right direction.

Meanwhile, back to the Census Bureau data.

As expected, children living with a one parent and not the other one are far more likely to live in poverty than other children.  Or are they?

“The poverty rate in 2017 of all custodial-parent families with children under 21 years of age was 24.1 percent, 10.5 percentage points higher than the poverty rate of all families with children under 21 years old (13.6 percent).”

Children living with custodial mothers were particularly prone to poverty.

“Poverty rates vary greatly among types of custodial-parent families. The poverty rate of custodial-mother families in 2017 (27.3 percent) was statistically higher than the poverty rate for custodial-father families (11.2 percent).”

The bureaucrats that write for the Census Bureau rightly phrase the data dispassionately, but the difference in poverty rates between custodial fathers and mothers is quite large.  Those mothers are about 2.5 times as likely to live in poverty as are the fathers.  More remarkable is the fact that of the four sets of parents reported on – custodial mothers, custodial fathers, all custodial parents and all families with children under 21 – custodial fathers were the least likely to be impoverished.

In case judges want to know, those data tell us something quite important – that, as long as we insist on a system of primary or sole parenting, fathers should be the primary or sole parent far more often than should mothers.  After all, we know that poverty is not a good situation in which a child should grow up.  So if fathers are the least likely of all parents to live in poverty, they should be the default custodians.

Now, it goes without saying that the payment or non-payment of child support does not explain the difference in the incomes of custodial mothers and fathers.  Fathers pay more than do mothers across the board, but are far less likely to live in poverty, so, whatever else may be true, the lack of child support isn’t the reason children are brought up in poverty.

More on this next time.

June 15, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors

The May, 2020 publication by the Bureau of the Census, “Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2017,” is a mass of good information.  The facts stated in the report militate strongly in favor of changes to both custody and child support laws.

First, a few basics:

About 22 million children in the U.S. lived with a custodial parent household when their other biological parent lived elsewhere.  That’s 26.5% of all children under the age of 21 in the U.S.  (Since when are 20-year-olds classified as “children?”)  Almost half (48.8%) of black kids live with a custodial parent and without the other biological parent.  About 13 million custodial parents cared for those kids. 

Unsurprisingly, custodial parents and their kids were generally far more likely to live in poverty than were children who lived with two biological parents.  Some 30.1% of children living with a custodial parent lived below the poverty line versus 11.1% of children who lived with both parents.  In case anyone wants to know what the problems are with single parenthood, that’s one major factor.  Children living in poverty overwhelmingly tend to do worse on a wide range of individual characteristics than children who don’t.  That’s in addition to the deficits associated with losing a parent to divorce, separation, etc.

Of those 13 million custodial parents, just under half (49.6%) had any kind of child support order or arrangement, whether formal or informal.  Just 43.2% of custodial parents had a court order for child support.

Not quite 70% of custodial parents with those orders actually received some child support in 2017.  30.1% of them received none.

As in the past, non-custodial fathers are more likely to pay all of the support they owe than are non-custodial mothers (46.4% and 43.1%, respectively).  They’re also more likely to pay some of what they owe than are non-custodial mothers.  That’s true despite the fact that non-custodial fathers are ordered to pay more ($5,580 per year) than are their female counterparts ($5,177).

One interesting aspect of average child support orders is that they’ve been coming steadily down over the years.  So, the average amount Dad owed Mom in 1993 was $6,078; that shot up to an astonishing $8,036 in 2001 and now stands at $5,580.  The average amount Mom owes Dad began in 1993 at $5,402, increased to $6,783 in 2013 and is now $5,177.  In both cases, the 2017 amount is the lowest amount of child support ordered since 1993.

I wonder why that is.  Could it be that judges have heard the cries of non-custodial parents, the Office of Child Support Enforcement, the National Parents Organization and simple common sense?  Did someone realize that, as the OCSE has so often said, orders are routinely set at amounts non-custodial parents can’t pay?  Did they finally realize the utter futility of overcharging, racking up arrears and interest, suspending drivers’ and other licenses and sending parents to jail?  Is the dysfunctional nature of the child support system finally sinking in on policy makers and those who periodically adjust child support guidelines?

I don’t know the answer, but, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, for several years, the economy has been in historically good shape with unemployment rates at modern-day lows.  So the decline in amounts of child support ordered isn’t a function of a bad economy and high unemployment.  If anyone can tell me why those orders are coming down, I’d be interested to know.

Meanwhile, just 51.4% of custodial mothers and 41.4% of those fathers even had a child support order.  That too raises a question: “why so few?”  Well, the Census Bureau has an answer of sorts.  It asked parents why they didn’t seek an order of support and their answers give us some idea.  The top three reasons given were “Did not feel need to make legal,” “Other parent provides what he or she can” and “Other parent could not afford to pay.”

The meanings behind those are a bit cloudy to me, but I suspect there’s something at work that the Census Bureau’s questions to parents didn’t quite tap.  My guess is that a lot of custodial parents don’t want to involve themselves with the enforcement apparatus that inevitably comes with a formal court order of child support.  They’d rather get what they can from the non-custodial parent and leave the rest to chance and his goodwill than to have him harassed and hounded by police and the DA’s office if he falls behind.  The draconian nature of the child support system isn’t exactly a well-kept secret and my belief is that many parents want no part of it. 

That theory is corroborated somewhat by the fact that the percentage of custodial parents with formal child support orders has been coming steadily down over the years.  In 1993, 57% of all custodial parents had a formal order, a figure that rose to a high of 60% in 2003 and has declined to its current rate of 49.4%.  To me, that suggests a learning curve on the part of parents and the lesson they’ve learned is that steering clear of formal orders and their enforcement mechanisms makes the most sense for all concerned.  Policy makers might want to think about that.

More on this next time.