Category: Blog

February 28, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Like Suzanne Venker a few days ago, Steve Hilton gets it right about the crisis of family breakdown (Fox News, 2/24/18). And like Venker, his jumping off point is the incident of mass murder at Parkland, Florida, to which Nikolas Cruz has confessed to police.

Hilton rightly calls family breakdown “the biggest issue America refuses to talk about.” I would add that it’s our biggest social issue. Period.

But at the heart of it is the most important social change of all – the biggest issue that Americans refuse to talk about: family breakdown…

[Violent deaths] are caused by individuals who are troubled in more mundane ways, and whose unstable family backgrounds are an instrumental factor in risky behavior, like joining a gang.

The immediate reason for writing is the Parkland shooting and that family breakdown exacerbates crime. But Hilton understands that, just because that’s the immediate concern doesn’t mean it’s the only one.

The deeper point is to understand that this is much bigger than just crime. More and more children in America are growing up in broken homes and in a culture of toxic stress and violence.

Most of these children will never commit a crime. But many will end up living in poverty. Suffering addiction. Or homelessness, or debt, or persistent unemployment – or a combination of these things – trapping them in lives without any of the opportunities that others take for granted.

Hilton could have added poor educational outcomes, emotional/psychological deficits, incarceration and others to his list. All are highly correlated with being raised in a home without two biological parents. But his “deeper point” is spot on. Family breakdown reaches its fingers deeply into all aspects of life to produce children and adults who are less happy, less functional, less reliable than their peers who are raised with two parents.

The causal connection between family breakdown and the intractable social issues that form the core of our political debates – taxes and government spending, inequality, crime – is well researched and well established. The science is in. It’s just that we don’t want to confront it because it means confronting something that is very personal to each of us: how we choose to live our lives.

I frankly don’t know if causality has been definitely demonstrated. But I do know that, when all the usual variables – race, class, income, educational level, religion, etc. – are held constant, family breakdown emerges as the factor associated with the various problems and deficits I’ve mentioned. Stated another way, when the usual suspects turn out to be innocent, what is left but family breakdown as the cause of those many social issues. When poor minority children raised with two biological parents do better psychologically on average than do affluent white kids raised by a single parent, only a fool refuses to address the problem of family breakdown.

So what does that make American society?

The elephant in the room is marriage. The data shows clearly that on average, children who are raised in stable homes with both parents do better. Children from divorced parents, or whose parents never married in the first place, do worse – whether that’s in terms of lower levels of social mobility or higher levels of poverty.

Hilton’s right. Married couples are more likely than unmarried couples to stay together and, if they have kids, provide a better home environment and parenting. What he misses is what so many others who argue in favor of marriage fail to notice – the institution of marriage is, as a matter of public policy, hostile to men.

As Samuel Johnson said, “marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.” That was never more true than it is today and especially for men. The instant a man marries, he’s at war with family law and family courts. He may not realize it until his wife files for divorce, but at war he is. At least half of what he earns and saves is his wife’s regardless of how much she contributed to the family income. His chance of being tossed out of his children’s lives is on the order of 82%. He’ll find that the same court that ordered that he have visitation rights is uninterested in enforcing them. Depending on how long he’s been married, he may find himself paying alimony for years, decades or even the rest of his life. He’ll find that child support levels bear little resemblance to what it costs to raise a child and, unlike its indifference to his visitation rights, the court will enforce his obligation to pay with usurious interest, the loss of occupational and drivers’ licenses and jail.

If marriage is the answer, the question must be put, not to men, but to family courts.

And while I’m on the subject of men, let’s not forget that, when Hilton says “family breakdown,” he overwhelmingly means “father absence.” Public laws, public policy, public discourse all militate against fathers being part of their children’s lives. It is that, not some mysterious force that results in “family breakdown” that plagues every aspect of American life. Everyone, including Hilton, should call it by its proper name.

Still, Hilton’s correct to force his readers to confront the most pressing problem we face. It can’t happen too often.

 

Donate

 

National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#family, #breakdown

A Personal Message from Ned Holstein

National Parents Organization has launched a nationwide search for a new, full time, professional Executive Director! Having an experienced, accomplished, full time, well-paid Executive Director will vastly improve our strength and effectiveness. If you like NPO now, wait til you see 2018!

At considerable expense, we have contracted with a major national executive search firm in New York City that specializes in non-profits. Known as DRG, they have successfully placed high executives ranging from non-profits smaller than ours to behemoths. DRG has thousands of nationwide contacts they can tap to locate good candidates. And they are experienced in how to use social media for maximum effectiveness in recruiting.

We hope to have chosen a candidate and reached an agreement with her/him by the end of January, 2018. We are excited that the Search Consultant we will work with at DRG already understands the family law issues and does not need an education in these matters.

We will be offering a substantial salary, because NPO’s success will hinge on the quality of the Executive Director we are able to attract. Candidates will be able to stay where they currently live, if they so desire. Our key people are already distributed around the country, and we work from a “virtual office.” With growth, we may need to establish a central office, but that is for the future.

Since I work without compensation, this change will cause a substantial increase in our expenses. So we do need you to continue and to even increase the gifts you have made to support this organization.

Imagine: many more media appearances; much more social media action; many more interactions with thought leaders in the areas of family court, child development and justice; much more lobbying; many more online and in-person campaigns; many more state affiliates getting much more support from the national organization; many more meetings and rallies; in short, much more of everything!

That is, much more of everything if you support us, which you can do by clicking here.

If you are interested to learn about this position, click here to see the job posting that has already gone out through multiple platforms. If you are personally interested in the position, please note that you should reply to our Search Consultant, Sara Lundberg, not to me.

Which brings up a personal note. I have been running National Parents Organization off and on since 1998 — with lots of help from many others. During these years, we have also had Dan Hogan, Glenn Sacks and Rita Fuerst Adams as Executive Directors for many of those years. Now we are taking a major step upwards towards more highly paid, experienced and professional non-profit leadership. The time is ripe for renewal, new blood, and change.

I will continue on the Board of Directors for at least one year, to ensure continuity and success with our new Executive Director. I will also lead a few specific projects, with the agreement of the new leader. So you can be sure there will be continuity, effectiveness and dynamism at the top.

We ain’t seen nothing yet!

Looking forward with excitement to the next chapter…

Together with you in the love of our children,

Ned Holstein

February 26, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Dr. Edward Kruk has long been one of the great champions of shared parenting and one of the assiduous and fair researchers in the field of parenting time and children’s well-being. So when I noticed that he’d published an article here, I was eager to read it (Psychology Today, 2/24/18). Alas, I’m disappointed.

Kruk’s theme – that shared parenting is as much a woman’s issue as a man’s and that promoting shared parenting promotes women’s welfare – is entirely sound. I’ve said the same thing many times. But how he arrives at that argument frankly isn’t persuasive and undercuts his otherwise legitimate points.

To get to “mothers benefit from shared parenting,” Kruk begins with claim that, following divorce, fathers are more and more getting sole or primary custody.

[Opposition to shared parenting in North America] not only overlooks the fact that in many parts of the world, a paternal preference in legal child custody determination still exists, but also ignores the increasing rates of paternal custody decisions and maternal alienation from children’s lives in North America…

In North America, we see increasing rates of primary residence determinations being made in favor of fathers in states where a maternal preference previously existed….

[M]others are being forcefully removed from their children’s lives in North America…

When accusations are made that court systems are biased in favor of mothers in the US and Canada, they have responded by increasing rates of paternal custody (as opposed to shared parenting) legal determinations. 

To all of which I ask: Citation? Citation? Citation? Citation?

Where is the evidence that, in any statistically significant way, anything has changed in custody or parenting time arrangements doled out by family courts? There’s plenty of evidence to the contrary of course, beginning with the U.S. Census Bureau that, once again, for the 23rd consecutive year, finds rates of paternal custody south of 19%. In 1993, it was about 16%. And data out of Nebraska and North Dakota find much the same thing.

It’s perfectly acceptable to not produce a citation for perfectly well-known and well-established facts. Needless to say, a great change in the direction of paternal custody isn’t among them.

Kruk’s next step toward his conclusion that shared parenting benefits mothers is that, particularly when they don’t have custody, mothers are in danger of becoming the target of alienation by the custodial father. That’s unquestionably the case. As I’ve noted many times, fathers are as capable of alienating behavior as are mothers and the literature on alienation backs me up. The only reason that most alienating parents are mothers is that the vast majority of custodial parents are mothers and custodial parents are the ones with the opportunity to alienate. Unsurprisingly, some of them do.

But the simple truth is that, horrible as it is, parental alienation, particularly severe alienation, is rare. Cases of it are often lurid and, as such, tend to make headlines, but most parents don’t attempt to alienate their kids and, if they do, don’t do so in the full-bore way that’s of most concern to mental health practitioners.

In short, Kruk makes the weakest case possible for mothers to support shared parenting. His message to mothers – that they stand a good chance of losing custody and another good chance of being alienated from their kids – is borne out by little or no evidence. If his aim is to scare women into supporting shared parenting, I can’t imagine his approach succeeding. The two prongs of his argument simply aren’t very likely to occur.

The better argument remains that everyone is better off with shared parenting, and that includes mothers. Kids obviously benefit and so do fathers who don’t see their vital role of Dad diminished to that of a reviled ATM machine. But mothers do as well. Relieved of being Mom all day every day, mothers are freed by equal parenting to earn more, advance more in their careers, branch out and do other things from travel to yoga to writing the Great American Novel to spending more time with their friends. They’re less stressed, more affluent and better prepared to meet the demands of retirement. Plus, they’ve got the contentment that comes from knowing they’ve done the best thing for their children, who may even thank them when they grow up.  (Who knows? It could happen!) More than a few mothers have publicly said exactly that.

Kruk means well and few have done the yeoman service on behalf of shared parenting that he has. But equal parenting deserves better advocacy than his Psychology Today piece.

 

Donate

 

National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#sharedparenting, #Dr.EdwardKruk, #paternalcustody, #parentalalienation

A Personal Message from Ned Holstein

National Parents Organization has launched a nationwide search for a new, full time, professional Executive Director! Having an experienced, accomplished, full time, well-paid Executive Director will vastly improve our strength and effectiveness. If you like NPO now, wait til you see 2018!

At considerable expense, we have contracted with a major national executive search firm in New York City that specializes in non-profits. Known as DRG, they have successfully placed high executives ranging from non-profits smaller than ours to behemoths. DRG has thousands of nationwide contacts they can tap to locate good candidates. And they are experienced in how to use social media for maximum effectiveness in recruiting.

We hope to have chosen a candidate and reached an agreement with her/him by the end of January, 2018. We are excited that the Search Consultant we will work with at DRG already understands the family law issues and does not need an education in these matters.

We will be offering a substantial salary, because NPO’s success will hinge on the quality of the Executive Director we are able to attract. Candidates will be able to stay where they currently live, if they so desire. Our key people are already distributed around the country, and we work from a “virtual office.” With growth, we may need to establish a central office, but that is for the future.

Since I work without compensation, this change will cause a substantial increase in our expenses. So we do need you to continue and to even increase the gifts you have made to support this organization.

Imagine: many more media appearances; much more social media action; many more interactions with thought leaders in the areas of family court, child development and justice; much more lobbying; many more online and in-person campaigns; many more state affiliates getting much more support from the national organization; many more meetings and rallies; in short, much more of everything!

That is, much more of everything if you support us, which you can do by clicking here.

If you are interested to learn about this position, click here to see the job posting that has already gone out through multiple platforms. If you are personally interested in the position, please note that you should reply to our Search Consultant, Sara Lundberg, not to me.

Which brings up a personal note. I have been running National Parents Organization off and on since 1998 — with lots of help from many others. During these years, we have also had Dan Hogan, Glenn Sacks and Rita Fuerst Adams as Executive Directors for many of those years. Now we are taking a major step upwards towards more highly paid, experienced and professional non-profit leadership. The time is ripe for renewal, new blood, and change.

I will continue on the Board of Directors for at least one year, to ensure continuity and success with our new Executive Director. I will also lead a few specific projects, with the agreement of the new leader. So you can be sure there will be continuity, effectiveness and dynamism at the top.

We ain’t seen nothing yet!

Looking forward with excitement to the next chapter…

Together with you in the love of our children,

Ned Holstein

February 25, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

This is not a post about guns. If you want that, there are plenty to choose from elsewhere. This is a post about fatherless boys. I write it of course because of the horror perpetrated against school kids in Parkland, Florida by Nikolas Cruz. The debate about guns will go on, but sadly, it seems that it won’t include a debate about fatherless boys. Here’s Suzanne Venker to try to right that wrong (Fox News, 2/19/18).

I often point out the many deficits produced in children by the lack of a father in their lives. The statistics are overwhelming and have been around for decades. The terrible effect of fatherlessness on children, including when they become adults, is the single greatest social ill we face. And yet we promote it – actively promote it – as a matter of public policy. Family courts do it, child support laws help, adoption laws pitch in and so do child protective agencies. The absence of laws prohibiting paternity fraud does its part too. Depictions of fathers in the news media and pop culture also contribute. At every turn, where we should be doing everything in our power to keep fathers in children’s lives, (which is where most of them fervently want to be), we do the opposite. We sideline them marginalize them, call them deadbeats, assume they’re not important, assume their greatest importance is as a source of money. Not occasionally, we offer cash incentives to mothers and states to keep fathers out of children’s lives.

These are the broad-brush strokes of the problem. They paint a picture of a deeply dysfunctional society. It is a picture of a society that knows what’s right and deliberately does the wrong thing, the thing that damages everyone, fathers, mothers, children, society generally and the public purse.

Nikolas Cruz was raised without a father. So was Adam Lanza. So was Dylan Roof. So were countless others.

Broken homes, or homes without a physically and emotionally present mother and father, are the cause of most of society’s ills. “Unstable homes produce unstable children,” writes Peter Hasson at The Federalist.

He adds, “On CNN’s list of the “27 Deadliest Mass Shootings In U.S. History,” seven of those shootings were committed by young males since 2005. Of the seven, only one—Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho—was raised by his biological father throughout childhood.”

Returning fathers to children’s lives won’t stop violent crime; it won’t stop mass slayings like the one in Parkland. But it will reduce violent crime and indeed crime generally. It will mean boys do better in school, have fewer emotional and psychological problems, be better able to commit to relationships, be more likely to be employed and to hold a job and be happier people. What’s not to like?

Venker quotes Warren Farrell:

 “Without dads as role models, boys’ testosterone is not well channeled. The boy experiences a sense of purposelessness, a lack of boundary enforcement, rudderlessness, and often withdraws into video games and video porn. At worst, when boys’ testosterone is not well-channeled by an involved dad, boys become among the world’s most destructive forces. When boys’ testosterone is well channeled by an involved dad, boys become among the world’s most constructive forces.”

Just so. The case for fathers gets lost in so many ways. In the Nikolas Cruz case, it’s lost amid the hubbub of the gun control debate. When drug and alcohol abuse is the topic, fatherlessness is there like the elephant in the living room, huge, present and unmentioned. When the decline of American education is discussed, there’s fatherlessness again, but again, if it’s mentioned at all, it’s only in passing.

So thanks to Suzanne Venker for doing what needs to be done. Multiply her effort by 10,000 and we’d be getting somewhere. Fatherlessness is an issue that We the People understand, but with which policy elites can’t be bothered. It’s time we forced them to do the obvious thing, the right thing, the constructive thing. It’s time we forced them to change laws, regulations and the public discourse toward solving the most important problem we face – the absence of fathers from children’s lives.

Nikolas Cruz may be an argument for greater regulation of firearms, or he may not be, depending on your take. He is unquestionably an argument for keeping fathers in children’s lives whenever possible.

 

Donate

 

National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#guncontrol, #NikolaCruz, #fatherlessness

A Personal Message from Ned Holstein

National Parents Organization has launched a nationwide search for a new, full time, professional Executive Director! Having an experienced, accomplished, full time, well-paid Executive Director will vastly improve our strength and effectiveness. If you like NPO now, wait til you see 2018!

At considerable expense, we have contracted with a major national executive search firm in New York City that specializes in non-profits. Known as DRG, they have successfully placed high executives ranging from non-profits smaller than ours to behemoths. DRG has thousands of nationwide contacts they can tap to locate good candidates. And they are experienced in how to use social media for maximum effectiveness in recruiting.

We hope to have chosen a candidate and reached an agreement with her/him by the end of January, 2018. We are excited that the Search Consultant we will work with at DRG already understands the family law issues and does not need an education in these matters.

We will be offering a substantial salary, because NPO’s success will hinge on the quality of the Executive Director we are able to attract. Candidates will be able to stay where they currently live, if they so desire. Our key people are already distributed around the country, and we work from a “virtual office.” With growth, we may need to establish a central office, but that is for the future.

Since I work without compensation, this change will cause a substantial increase in our expenses. So we do need you to continue and to even increase the gifts you have made to support this organization.

Imagine: many more media appearances; much more social media action; many more interactions with thought leaders in the areas of family court, child development and justice; much more lobbying; many more online and in-person campaigns; many more state affiliates getting much more support from the national organization; many more meetings and rallies; in short, much more of everything!

That is, much more of everything if you support us, which you can do by clicking here.

If you are interested to learn about this position, click here to see the job posting that has already gone out through multiple platforms. If you are personally interested in the position, please note that you should reply to our Search Consultant, Sara Lundberg, not to me.

Which brings up a personal note. I have been running National Parents Organization off and on since 1998 — with lots of help from many others. During these years, we have also had Dan Hogan, Glenn Sacks and Rita Fuerst Adams as Executive Directors for many of those years. Now we are taking a major step upwards towards more highly paid, experienced and professional non-profit leadership. The time is ripe for renewal, new blood, and change.

I will continue on the Board of Directors for at least one year, to ensure continuity and success with our new Executive Director. I will also lead a few specific projects, with the agreement of the new leader. So you can be sure there will be continuity, effectiveness and dynamism at the top.

We ain’t seen nothing yet!

Looking forward with excitement to the next chapter…

Together with you in the love of our children,

Ned Holstein

February 23, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

The Pew Research Center finds that today’s fathers want to spend more time with their children despite spending more time with them than did dads in the past (Pew Research Center, 1/8/18).

U.S. fathers today are spending more time caring for their children than they did a half-century ago. Still, most (63%) say they spend too little time with their kids and a much smaller share (36%) say they spend the right amount of time with them, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in August and September 2017.

Pew earlier found that fathers are spending about seven hours per week on childcare on average and about nine hours on household chores (Pew Research Center, 6/15/17). Those totals are about triple what fathers did 50 years ago.

That fathers feel they spend too little time with their children shouldn’t surprise us. They’ve long felt fatherhood to be a vital part of their identities.

Dads are just as likely as moms to say that parenting is extremely important to their identity. Some 57% of fathers say this, compared with 58% of mothers. Most dads seem to appreciate the benefits of parenthood – 54% report that parenting is rewarding all of the time, as do 52% of moms. Meanwhile, 46% of fathers and 41% of mothers say they find parenting enjoyable all of the time.

So why aren’t fathers spending as much time as they’d like with their children?

For both dads and moms who say they spend too little time with their kids, work obligations are cited most often as the main reason: 62% of dads and 54% of moms say this is the case. However, a sizable share of fathers (20%) say the main reason they spend too little time with their children is that they don’t live with them full-time.

The fact that work keeps fathers from spending as much time with their kids as they’d like is easily predictable. So is the fact that children who live with only one parent spend most of their time with Mom. About 60% of children live in intact families with both parents and 20% of fathers don’t spend as much time with their kids as they want because the children don’t live with them. So it’s a fair estimate that half of fathers who don’t live with their children say they’d like to spend more time with them.

The fact that they don’t, then isn’t due to their lack of desire, but to other factors. Needless to say, that’s where family courts come in. Few divorced fathers have anything close to 50/50 custody, and that appears to result in their dissatisfaction about parenting time.

Interestingly, no fathers said they spend too much time with their children, but 12% of mothers did. That would seem to suggest at least a partial solution to the problem of fathers spending too little time, but I suspect courts won’t take notice.

Fathers without a college education are significantly more likely to not live with their children than are those with a bachelor’s degree or more. That too is unsurprising. For example, the out-of-wedlock birth phenomenon is far more pronounced among non-college-educated mothers than those better educated. The overall rate of births to single mothers is about 41%, but to college-educated mothers it’s more like 8%.

Plus, the single factor that best predicts a man getting divorced is the loss of a job. That suggests – and anecdotal information from women confirms – that a man’s employment is a significant factor in whether he gets and remains married. Naturally, college-educated men are more likely to be employed and better employed than their non-college-educated counterparts.

The takeaway is that men are upping their game when it comes to parenting. They’re doing more and they want to do more still, but various factors militate against them. One of course is the family court system that routinely sidelines fathers in the lives of their children. The other is the fact that fathers do significantly more paid work than do mothers. If mothers did more, that would free fathers to do less. And since 12% of mothers say they spend too much time with their children, maybe they could work out a deal with the fathers of their kids.

Just a suggestion.

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Donate

 

National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#fathers, #work, #parentingtime, #PewResearch, #familycourts

A Personal Message from Ned Holstein

National Parents Organization has launched a nationwide search for a new, full time, professional Executive Director! Having an experienced, accomplished, full time, well-paid Executive Director will vastly improve our strength and effectiveness. If you like NPO now, wait til you see 2018!

At considerable expense, we have contracted with a major national executive search firm in New York City that specializes in non-profits. Known as DRG, they have successfully placed high executives ranging from non-profits smaller than ours to behemoths. DRG has thousands of nationwide contacts they can tap to locate good candidates. And they are experienced in how to use social media for maximum effectiveness in recruiting.

We hope to have chosen a candidate and reached an agreement with her/him by the end of January, 2018. We are excited that the Search Consultant we will work with at DRG already understands the family law issues and does not need an education in these matters.

We will be offering a substantial salary, because NPO’s success will hinge on the quality of the Executive Director we are able to attract. Candidates will be able to stay where they currently live, if they so desire. Our key people are already distributed around the country, and we work from a “virtual office.” With growth, we may need to establish a central office, but that is for the future.

Since I work without compensation, this change will cause a substantial increase in our expenses. So we do need you to continue and to even increase the gifts you have made to support this organization.

Imagine: many more media appearances; much more social media action; many more interactions with thought leaders in the areas of family court, child development and justice; much more lobbying; many more online and in-person campaigns; many more state affiliates getting much more support from the national organization; many more meetings and rallies; in short, much more of everything!

That is, much more of everything if you support us, which you can do by clicking here.

If you are interested to learn about this position, click here to see the job posting that has already gone out through multiple platforms. If you are personally interested in the position, please note that you should reply to our Search Consultant, Sara Lundberg, not to me.

Which brings up a personal note. I have been running National Parents Organization off and on since 1998 — with lots of help from many others. During these years, we have also had Dan Hogan, Glenn Sacks and Rita Fuerst Adams as Executive Directors for many of those years. Now we are taking a major step upwards towards more highly paid, experienced and professional non-profit leadership. The time is ripe for renewal, new blood, and change.

I will continue on the Board of Directors for at least one year, to ensure continuity and success with our new Executive Director. I will also lead a few specific projects, with the agreement of the new leader. So you can be sure there will be continuity, effectiveness and dynamism at the top.

We ain’t seen nothing yet!

Looking forward with excitement to the next chapter…

Together with you in the love of our children,

Ned Holstein

February 22, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Steve Fischer’s disgraceful screed in the Texas Tribune, about which I wrote yesterday, combines astonishing ignorance of his chosen subject – child support and those who owe arrears – with a snide attitude towards the poor. It’s a bad combination. It’s so bad in fact that I couldn’t deal with all its deficiencies in a single post.

Once he’s finished being entertained by parents under arrest for not paying child support, Fischer eventually gets down to the business at hand – congratulating the lawyers of the Texas Attorney General’s Office on the job they do collecting arrears.

Now, as I said yesterday, Fischer’s happy to overlook the cases in Texas in which the AG’s Office tags a man for support of a child who’s not his and, having done so, continue to dun him even though his non-paternity has been established and is well known. I’ve pointed out before that nothing in the world prevents those legal stalwarts from simply dropping the case against the wrong man and pursuing one against the actual father. But they seem never to do that.

Predictably, Fischer has no idea of those cases. What he does know is what the AG’s lawyers tell him.

Their office was specific: $4,221,976,348 in back support was collected in 2017 at a cost of $409,668,749. That’s $10.31, earned for every dollar spent.

Fischer’s impressed. But should he be? Let’s find out.

In the first place, this document from the Administration for Children and Families, that’s part of the Department of Health and Human Services and that oversees the Office of Child Support Enforcement, tells a far different story than do the lawyers Fischer relies on. Page 91 shows that Texas distributed a little over $1 billion in back child support in 2016. Fischer claims it collected over four times that in 2017.

It did no such thing. Page 9 of the ACF publications shows that Texas collected just under $4 billion in 2016. That means that what Fischer claims were collections of “back support,” i.e. arrears, were in fact total collections.

In fact, page 92 shows that there were about 1.14 million cases owing arrears in Texas and the state collected about $1.02 billion, or about $890 per case. That tallies well with anecdotal evidence from elsewhere. For example, the State of New Jersey periodically conducts “sweeps,” i.e. scattershot arrests of child support debtors. Those sweeps routinely collect somewhere between 1% and 2% of what’s owed. That is, faced with jail, child support debtors can only pony up a tiny percentage of what they owe and, tellingly, that’s fine with the state. In short, everyone understands that these people can’t pay what they owe and the Garden State takes what little it can get and then ballyhoos the results.

Obviously, Texas is in the same boat, whether Fischer knows it or not. Page 90 of the ACF publication shows total child support arrears owed to the state in 2016 as almost $16 billion. The AG’s Office collected a little over 6% of that. Fischer’s claim that the state collects over $10 for every dollar spent on collection is wrong. The correct figure is under $2.50.

Why so little? As I said yesterday, courts set support at levels parents can’t pay and then charge interest on top of the inevitable arrears. The ones behind on support payments are overwhelmingly poor. Here’s an analysis done by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation of the Department of Health and Human Services. It reports on nine states (one of them Texas). It’s dated 2007, but its observations and conclusions are as valid today as they were then.

Most of the arrears are owed by a relatively small number of non-custodial parents, each of whom owes a large amount of arrears… Using data from the federal tax refund offset program in April 2006, researchers found that 43 percent of the nation’s certified arrears were owed by just 10 percent of the debtors, each of whom owed over $40,000 in certified arrears.

In the nine states studied, 31% of obligors owed a whopping 86% of the arrears and they all owed over $10,000.

The report by the ASPE makes clear that most of those arrears will never be collected.

In the nine study states, the obligors who owed over $30,000 in arrears, whom we refer to as high debtors, were quite different from other obligors. A major difference was the amount of reported income that high debtors had compared to other obligors. Nearly three quarters of the high debtors had no reported income or reported incomes of $10,000 a year or less… In the nine study states, 70 percent of the arrears were owed by obligors who had either no reported income or reported income of $10,000 a year or less. 

Those are the people at whom Fischer was sneering as he lounged in child support court being entertained. The report is explicit about the likelihood of collecting what’s owed.

Combining results across seven study states, we estimate that 40 percent of the arrears owed at the time the data were extracted will be collected over 10 years. At the time the data were extracted, these states held $30 billion in arrears; we estimate that $12 billion of that will be collected in 10 years. In addition, we predict that arrears will grow in these seven states by 60 percent over 10 years, reaching $48 billion in 2014.

The ASPE estimated that arrears would grow by 60% in a decade. Remarkably, the ACF figures on pages 90 and 91 show that, over five years, arrears grew from about $12.18 billion to $15.84 billion, an increase of 30%, i.e. exactly in line with AFC estimates.

In short, what we’ve long known and what Steve Fischer remains blissfully ignorant of, remains true. Courts set support levels too high, obtaining a downward modification is too difficult and expensive and interest rates make matters worse. The overwhelming majority of child support debt will never be paid for the good and sufficient reason that obligors can’t do so.

All that entertains the august Mr. Fischer, but, to the responsible among us, it’s a tragedy. It’s a tragedy produced entirely by misguided policies that have long assumed that fathers are deadbeats who don’t care about their children and will do anything to avoid supporting them. Fischer has swallowed those assumptions hook, line and sinker without bothering to do the few minutes of online research that would definitively show him how wrong he is.

But doing so would mean he couldn’t amble into child support court and get his entertainment at the expense of the poor and poorly educated. And we can’t have that, now can we.

 

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National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#childsupport, #poorfathers, #TexasTribune

A Personal Message from Ned Holstein

National Parents Organization has launched a nationwide search for a new, full time, professional Executive Director! Having an experienced, accomplished, full time, well-paid Executive Director will vastly improve our strength and effectiveness. If you like NPO now, wait til you see 2018!

At considerable expense, we have contracted with a major national executive search firm in New York City that specializes in non-profits. Known as DRG, they have successfully placed high executives ranging from non-profits smaller than ours to behemoths. DRG has thousands of nationwide contacts they can tap to locate good candidates. And they are experienced in how to use social media for maximum effectiveness in recruiting.

We hope to have chosen a candidate and reached an agreement with her/him by the end of January, 2018. We are excited that the Search Consultant we will work with at DRG already understands the family law issues and does not need an education in these matters.

We will be offering a substantial salary, because NPO’s success will hinge on the quality of the Executive Director we are able to attract. Candidates will be able to stay where they currently live, if they so desire. Our key people are already distributed around the country, and we work from a “virtual office.” With growth, we may need to establish a central office, but that is for the future.

Since I work without compensation, this change will cause a substantial increase in our expenses. So we do need you to continue and to even increase the gifts you have made to support this organization.

Imagine: many more media appearances; much more social media action; many more interactions with thought leaders in the areas of family court, child development and justice; much more lobbying; many more online and in-person campaigns; many more state affiliates getting much more support from the national organization; many more meetings and rallies; in short, much more of everything!

That is, much more of everything if you support us, which you can do by clicking here.

If you are interested to learn about this position, click here to see the job posting that has already gone out through multiple platforms. If you are personally interested in the position, please note that you should reply to our Search Consultant, Sara Lundberg, not to me.

Which brings up a personal note. I have been running National Parents Organization off and on since 1998 — with lots of help from many others. During these years, we have also had Dan Hogan, Glenn Sacks and Rita Fuerst Adams as Executive Directors for many of those years. Now we are taking a major step upwards towards more highly paid, experienced and professional non-profit leadership. The time is ripe for renewal, new blood, and change.

I will continue on the Board of Directors for at least one year, to ensure continuity and success with our new Executive Director. I will also lead a few specific projects, with the agreement of the new leader. So you can be sure there will be continuity, effectiveness and dynamism at the top.

We ain’t seen nothing yet!

Looking forward with excitement to the next chapter…

Together with you in the love of our children,

Ned Holstein