Multiple Scandals of Child Support

Reader's Preference (Harold McFarland.
http://readerspreference.com):
The author provides convincing and systematic evidence that much
of what the news media prints is not correct. . . . If you are
interested in factual data about the history of child support, various
common legislative issues, and rate of compliance then you owe it
to yourself to read this book.
Dr. Richard Weiss, Assistant Professor at Auburn College,

Director of DADS of Alabama:
This is the definitive book on child support. Thoroughly researched,
very readable, and carefully thought through, it gently carries the
reader through all the issues and startling contradictions, allowing
the reader to decide. This is an absolute must-read for anyone
having anything to do with child support. It really lays it all out,
clearly.
Janet Darst, mother of 3, family advocate:

This book is a must read for anyone who has anything to do with
child support: parents, legislators and journalists. It’s all here – facts,
issues, evidence and statistic. And most important, K.C. Wilson
wrote it in a way that is understandable to everyone. Wilson has
boldly gone where no writer has dared to go before by bringing the
true scandals to the general public. It does not read like “dry
statistics.” It makes you say, “How can this be happening?” And
after all that, the penetrating analysis of humans and society is a real
eye opener You come away with a greater understanding of men,
women and society.
Trudy Schuett, Desert Light Journal:

An excellent book with a lot of information that a large number of
people need to have. It puts into words and gels a lot of half-formed
ideas that I've had myself from researching this.
The Multiple Scandals of
CHILD SUPPORT
Second Edition, 2003.
A Harbinger Press E-book K.C. Wilson
Harbinger Press, Richmond, VA.

About This E-book
Congratulations on your purchase of this quality e-book from Harbinger

Press of Richmond, Virginia. It is formatted expressly for easy online
reading, contains numerous navigation aids, and offers live links to
referenced source material, all gathered at the Harbinger Press website for
their stability. All links, to inside and outside the book, are in blue and
underlined, except for links that are part of content tables which are
unmarked.
The purpose of Harbinger e-books is accessibility. Each seeks to make
information on significant social matters readily available and
comprehendible.
This e-book is provided without passwords or other impediments to
your full and free enjoyment. Please help us maintain that policy by
following the MAYs and MAY NOTs below. They are generous.
This work is copyrighted as of 2002 by the author, K.C. Wilson, and all
rights are reserved. You’ll see the standard copyright page and catalog
information below. It can be read using either, any version of Adobe®
Acrobat® eBook Reader,™ or Acrobat® Reader™ 3.0 and up. It was
generated using Adobe® Acrobat® 4.05a. Use these links to get the latest
version of either Reader.
You MAY excerpt parts, even whole chapters, for use in your book,
periodical or newsletter – either electronic or paper – or any website, so
long as the source is properly cited. If used in electronic form, a link to
this site must be provided. The total ever excerpted for one publication,
at once or over any length of time, may not exceed 15% of the total book.
http://harbpress.com
iii
You MAY NOT excerpt any part of this book without proper citation.
You MAY NOT resell it, nor give it or a copy of it to any legal entity
(human or corporate). Please give them the link above. You MAY NOT
put it in its entirety on your website, but MAY provide the link above for
its purchase. An affiliate program is available.
This e-book is for your personal use and enjoyment. Thank you.
iv
DISCLAIMER
The author and publisher of this book cannot be held liable for error,
omissions, or any actions that may be taken as a consequence of its use.
HARBINGER PRESS
2711 Buford Road, PMB 383, Richmond, VA, 23235

Copyright © 2003 by K.C. Wilson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopy, recording, or by any information storage, capture or retrieval
system without written permission from the publisher or author, except
as explained under “About This E-book,” above.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wilson, K. C., 1951-

The multiple scandals of child support / K.C. Wilson.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-9723998-1-X
1. Child support--United States. 2. Child support--Government
policy--United States. I. Title.
HV741 .W6745 2003
362.71--dc21
2002154466
For all the children.
May all have mommies and daddies, not a care-giver and money.
About the Second Edition
This edition adds the Census Bureau figures for

1999 child support compliance, released in
October, 2002. Analysis of compliance figures has
been re-worked (the sub-section, “Increase Overall
Compliance”) and charts replace tables. Other
sections have been edited for clarity.
vii
Acknowledgments
The author and publisher wish to thank the many dedicated men, women
and organizations for their many contributions, both direct and indirect.
In particular:
R. Mark Rogers
John Guidubaldi
Murray Steinberg
Cynthia Ewing
Janet Darst
Bruce Eden
Cathy Young
Richard Green
American Coalition for Fathers and Children (ACFC)
Children’s Rights Council (CRC)
Men’s Health America
Ed Bartett
National Coalition of Free Men (NCFM)
Men’s Health Network
Nancy J. White and Timothy Grall of the U.S. Census Bureau
Joani T. Kloth
Bill Wood
Donald J. Bieniewicz
Richard Weiss
Wilbur Street
Stephen Baskerville
The Urban Institute
Kathleen Bowers
Bill Brownfield
viii
Table of Contents
About This E-book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii

DISCLAIMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
About the Second Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii
Charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii
Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii
Sidebars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Premise: Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
PART I – THE FACTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

The Problem, If One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Rumor vs. Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Those With No Orders for Child Support . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Summary of Non-Court-Order Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Compliance with Court Orders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
What We Don’t Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
The Ninety Percent Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
The Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Is It Effective? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Reduce the Cost of Welfare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Smoke and Mirrors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Increase Overall Compliance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
1) Average Payment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2 & 3) Getting All or Some Ordered Child Support
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
ix
4) Total Child Support Owed, That Is Paid . . . . . . 41
Observations and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Closing Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Individual Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
The Bradley Amendment: No Reduction Of Arrears . . . 51
Other Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
The Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Policy Studies Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Lockheed Martin and Maximus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
The Chaos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
The New Child Support Awards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
The Formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Effect of Taxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Cost of Contact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
PART II – ANALYSIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
The 1980s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Welfare Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Alimony Eliminated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Lenore Weitzman and The Divorce Revolution . . . . . . . 88
The Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
What Matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Explanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Alimony and At-Home Parents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Girl / Boy “Truth” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Female Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Feminism Became Mainstream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Ancillary Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
The Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Objectification of Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Beneath the Waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Superiority-cum-Righteousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
x
Dominance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Answers? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
The Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
APPENDIX A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Feminism – Validity and Error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Some Misnomers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Recent European Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Recent European Social History - Version One . . . . . . 139
Version Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
But They Got it Wrong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
APPENDIX B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
US Census Bureau Current Population Reports . . . . . . . . . . 149
APPENDIX C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Spreadsheet of All Chart and Table Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Other Publications by K.C. Wilson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

Other Books by Harbinger Press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
xi
Charts
1: Reasons Support Not Sought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2: Reasons Support Not Sought - Consolidated . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3: Average Due Vs. Average Payment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4: Number of Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
5: Percent Getting All or Some . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
6: Unemployment Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
7: Due Vs. Paid in Dollars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
8: Percent Paid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Tables
1: Percent of Total Support Owed That Is Paid, 1978 - 89 . . . . 13
2: Percent Who Comply, 1978 - 89 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3: Overall Compliance: 1980s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4: Paying for Welfare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
5: OCSE Performance Ratios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
9: Effect of Taxes - Low Income . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
10: Effect of Taxes - Middle Income . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Sidebars
Are There Still Sundown Dads? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Access Interference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Paternity Establishment Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Rebuttable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Incentives for Divorce . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
xii
INTRODUCTION
The common perception is that the child support enforcement measures

put in place over the last two decades of the 20th century are both
warranted (if not long overdue) and effective. We examine both
assumptions.
The finding in looking at this is an array of contradictions and strong
emotions. This characterizes a society in transition. A society with obvious
contradictions in its formal culture (the “public thinking” level) is usually
still adjusting its group thinking in response to underlying structural
change. Since that is the principle finding, it is used as the premise for
presenting the material. That is, the spirit in which this book is written is
that Northern European-based society is still adjusting to
industrialization.
This is not a mainstream premise, which is its advantage. We seek a
bleacher from which to examine mainstream perceptions as part of the
equation: as both their own result and cause.
The story of child support enforcement in all countries primarily
populated by people of Northern European origin is one of misdirections,
multiple complex issues, distorted perceptions because of what we want
to believe, overlapping agendas, ghost agendas, and even intrigue and
suspense. It includes, but is not restricted to, government agencies seeking
validity and growth, women seeking security, politicians seeking popular
election, men and women seeking what each sees as justice, and
corporations seeking profit.
All use children as their justification, which often seems like the use of
“The Name of the Lord” for everything committed for European
expansion between 1500 and 1900. However true it may be, we refrain
from saying anyone has “the best of intentions” because everyone believes
they do, but this does not prevent their use as an instrument of larger
forces.
The Multiple Scandals of Child Support 1 Harbinger Press

Understand the implication: We do not find that any one person or
group has been conspiring with Satan. Every player believes sincerely in
their rightfulness. Our most fundamental assumption is the basic good of
every human, not the evil. The latter is a common view of many European
sects so often underlies the position of many who will differ with this
report.
The above also means that we will refrain from any speculation as to
what may or may not be in “a child’s best interests,” at least until the end.
We only examine what has and is being done and leave the reader to their
own conclusions about what is appropriate or not.
This examination only covers events in the United States, but the same
forces are in play in all Northern European countries. The same things are
happening in Canada, Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom, and all
others with variance in only degree and form. We ultimately seek to
identify the underlying forces – what is really driving these events and why
– as likely the only way to remove the chaff from the grain to see what
may be more productive social policy. But such discussion is withheld
until the “Analysis” section. Until then, observations and comments are
formatted to the side.
The Premise: Context
This Report’s premise was introduced above, and here we clarify it. It is
that the Industrial Revolution is still under way. It is not a thing of the
past, but is currently in its technology leg. How long it will continue
cannot be predicted, and social adjustment to a new economic
environment lags by several generations, so the social discord and
confusion we will see here can be expected to continue beyond any end to
the economic changes. We are still trying to find our humanity in a
context never previously encountered by any human society.
As a simplified model: Before industrialization, men, women and
children were all equally involved in a family’s economic, social, and
religious life. Economic, social, and religious life were indistinguishable.
Education, work, home, philosophy, science and religion were
indistinguishable.
Harbinger Press 2 The Multiple Scandals of Child Support

With industrialization – the child of Northern European disassociation
from nature and the control over it this provided – came the symptoms of
a civilization: general affluence and high degrees of specialization.
Reductionism. Fragmentation. People’s lives became specialized. It
brought fragmentation of the family, the economy, of social and economic
life, all accelerating the fragmentation of the spiritual: the experience of
one’s own life. Before industrialization, we were the barbarians. We are
the ones who sacked Rome, and then Montezuma’s city simply because
we didn’t understand it.1
In the 1700s, brawn was needed for the factories and mines, so men had
to separate from the family to be part of and serve the family. By 1900,
men saw themselves as the slaves: slaves to the economic system, to the
demands of commerce, and saw themselves protecting their wives and
children from it as long as they could. It was male nurturing. A man was
deeply ashamed if his wife had to work. He was not protecting his family,
giving them their opportunity to simply be human and free from use as
industrial cogs. True luxury was when he could join them and not work.
Not working was called being a gentleman.
Imagine that man awakening in the 1970s to find women convinced
that joining that economic machinery was liberating. Imagine his wife
awakening to this. Many like to imagine his wife would be pleased rather
than shocked and dismayed, but I suggest that would just be to retro-
justify contemporary perceptions.
Such are the dramatic social changes Euro-rooted society has been
enduring since the 1700s, each generation facing its own challenges to its
1
The Middle Ages refers to the period between Roman civilization and
North Europe’s own, whose earliest assertion may be considered the independence
of the Dutch Republic from the Hapsburgs in 1581. But generally, until the
1700s, one has difficulty classifying the few, scattered European cities of no more
than 10,000 as a civilization when at the same time what we now call Mexico City
had a population estimated at one million. The European invasion of many
societies closely resembles that of the Mongolians into China, where they
destroyed whatever they didn’t understand. I contend that we have barely lifted
ourselves from this state, that we are simply the most recent civilization on earth,
and that our brutal habits from the recent past are among the forces with which
we still contend. See, Where’s Daddy? : The Mythologies behind Custody-
Access-Support for a more detailed discussion of how our past still haunts us.

humanity, seeking social adjustment. Do we really have any idea what
caused that one change just mentioned above, from work as slavery to
liberty? Do we even understand what the change is, or are we only finding
excuses for it that satisfy its own new desires?
If one prefers conspiracies, one might blame the above on industrialists
who saw in women an untapped source of labor to keep its cost down.
They were even smart enough to pit men and women against each other
to distract us from their villainy.
The twist I just gave may not be the current mainstream view, but could
become so, and is not without merit. Does it make more sense or less than
a mass conspiracy by men to keep women oppressed?
The point is that the most essential skill for the political scientist,
cultural anthropologist, or any social scientist is to see through others’
eyes, and ultimately, see one’s own eyes. It is to even invent new
paradigms to examine all the same things fully and empathetically to know
the validity of each. That is lesson number one.
Child support and its enforcement at the start of the 21st century
provides a vivid, living laboratory for the student of political science,
cultural anthropology, sociology, public policy, and any social science: It
is a chance to examine firsthand the kinds of forces that can and do forge
a society’s practices and conventions. Conventions must reforge when a
society’s economic context changes, as has been discovered by any who
have experienced such change. That is lesson number two. But delving
into something as immediate as this is its own very challenging test. We’ll
need all the help we can get with a more distant objectivity.
So that is the spirit in which this Report is written. For the purposes of
this book – if only to be better able to examine current mainstream
conventions and assumptions – we do not assume a mass conspiracy
against an eternally oppressed woman, nor a business conspiracy, nor any
conspiracy by anyone against anything. Rather, we assume that our
society has been and will for some time be adjusting to huge and dramatic
changes in the drastically different context created by industrialization;
that it is seeking its soul in a new world, and that any conspiracy theories
are as much a product of this as are many other conventions and popular
precepts. This may not be correct, but it gives us a very different view.
And our assumption is that any mainstream precepts are equally part of
valid – if occasionally misguided – efforts to find that soul.

PART I
THE FACTS
The Problem, If One
Rumor vs. Reality
< “$34 billion in child support is not being paid.” [$17.1

billion was paid in 1997.]
< “Half of all child support is not paid.”

or, “Half the single mothers are not getting child support
(/ the support to which they are entitled).”
or, “Half of all fathers do not pay their child support (/ do
not live up to their obligations).”
Any form of the second one is attributed to Census Bureau data and even
appeared in at least one book review, intended as a contradiction to the
study the book described. (She hadn’t read the book, but was an expert
on its topic.) Both are what one commonly hears and are uncritically
reported and quoted and re-quoted, accepted as fact.
Is it true?
The only way one can claim that $34 billion in child support should be
collected (a claim President Clinton made several times, referenced in a
report by the Urban Institute which mentions it to contradict it) is by
making all the following assumptions:
1. All custodial parents have orders for child support. (Commonly,

44 to 48% do not seek one.)
2. Those without orders are getting no child support. (At least 32%
say they are.)
3. There is no joint custody. (Between 10 to 15% of currently
divorced couples use joint custody.)

4. All cases have their child support amounts set according to the
recently introduced Wisconsin Guidelines (which less than one-
third of all states use).
5. All obligors (noncustodial parents; fathers) are making average or
better incomes and able to pay these amounts.
[Literary Convention: CP will hereafter be used for

custodial parent, and NCP for noncustodial parent.
However, these terms can be used to mask one
dimension. Since at least 85% of CPs are women it
would not be inaccurate to replace CP with mother and
NCP with father. Child support is commonly used as a
gender issue and a cover for gender wars.]
We will go over the Census Bureau figures, and I am not sure what is
being used for “half of support is not paid,” either from the 1980s or ’90s.
We start by looking at the Census Bureau’s own findings about those who
do not have child support orders, then those who do.

Those With No Orders for Child Support
Why do over 44% of CPs not seek child support? Are they examples of
poor, helpless women who don’t know any better or don’t have the
resources to get one? Do they want one? Are they afraid to ask? Should
society ensure that every
divorce with children has court-
Available online: The Census Bureau
ordered child support for their report from which the numbers for not
own protection, and never leave seeking a court order are taken is at
http://harbpress.com/files/97CS_Census.pdf
this up to couples?
Every two years during the
1990s, the Census Bureau has asked those 44% their reasons for not
seeking a court order. Consolidating some of the figures from page 3 of the
1997 Current Population Report [P60-212, issued October, 2000], their
reasons are:
A: NCP Not Found

B: Paternity Not Legally Established
C: Not Want Contact with NCP

E: Not Want NCP to Pay
F: NCP Cannot Pay

G: Child Too Old + Other
H: Child With NCP Part of time

I: NCP Provides What They Can
J: Not Feel Need to Make Legal
0 10 20 30 40
Chart 1: Reasons Support Not Sought

This is difficult to interpret for two reasons: Respondents can check
multiple boxes so the above percentages add up to 172.9%; and only CPs
are polled, not NCPs. The last point is to say that all Census Bureau data
on child support is questionable as there is no corresponding survey of
NCPs for their version of what is going on and no cross-check of the two
surveys. However, since it is equally questionable for the same reasons
every year, the data are useful for year-to-year comparisons, but not for
absolute statements about how much child support is being paid.
Simply for discussion, we attempt some consolidation of the above
numbers. For instance, does “E: Not Want NCP to Pay” overlap with C or
any of H, I, and J, and by how much? One could imagine “J: Not Feel
Need to Make Legal” can overlap with everything, so may be eliminated.
If we eliminate both E and J, we still have about 122%. Also, combine H
and I for the minimum number of “Made Own Arrangements,” and we
have:
A: NCP Not Found - 13.3
B: Paternity Not Legally Established - 17.5
C: Not Want Contact with NCP - 15.9
F: NCP Cannot Pay - 24.5
G: Child Too Old + Other - 15.2
H: Own Arrangements - 35.6
0 10 20 30 40
Chart 2: Reasons Support Not Sought - Consolidate

“H: Own Arrangements,” at 35.6%, is surely the least we can assume to
represents those who would not welcome society’s intrusion. There is also
likely overlap between it and “F: Cannot Pay.” It is common among the
poor for a nonresident father to help out with chores, babysitting, and
other indirect support, being involved and giving all he can when he can,
making the lack of cash palatable. So the 35.6% figure could be low.
Also buried somewhere will be reconciliations and allowing-for
reconciliations.
Should all people have support orders whether they like it or not? If
there is a possible reconciliation or reasonable hope of some involvement
from the father, using force could just drive that away.
There are other questions. Out of “A: NCP Not Found,” “B: Paternity
Not Legally Established,” “C: Not Want Contact with NCP,” and “G:
Other,” how many are situations in which the CP is either of the two
common concerns: afraid of the NCP or not aware they could do
something?
Since it is difficult to imagine many mothers being so isolated as to be
unaware of welfare and support options, the ignorance factor can be
presumed low. The fear factor is being addressed by regulations allowing
welfare workers to waive naming of the NCP for “good reason,” though
both the regulations and their effectiveness are very controversial. Still,
those numbers – however debatable – are relatively low.
On the other hand, it would not be unreasonable to imagine that
categories A, B, C, and G may be masking much larger numbers of child
abductions than cases of fear or ignorance. (Where the mother is hiding
the child, even the fact there is one, from its father; a mother who simply
wants the child all to herself.) We don’t know, and no one is asking
fathers or possible fathers. There are an estimated 350,000 parental child
abductions a year, most by mothers.
Question: What constitutes justification for child abduction,

and what percentage of such women meet that criteria? Silence
upon this endorses the notion that women decide whether a
child has a father, a surprising degree of power to grant only
half of society.

How many of those with no support orders would get them if they could
and if the money were there (if the NCP could pay)? The most one could
mark that figure at is A + B + C = 46.5% of those with no order. But
overcoming the obstacles these categories represent is not simply a matter
of public policy or public will. Many, if not most, may never pay under
any circumstances. Some of those fathers are dead, in jail, or of poor
health, or not even well enough known to the mother to be identifiable.
What percentage can barely support themselves much less a family, and
would only move over to “F: Cannot Pay?”
The last item of interest is F. 24.5% of CPs themselves know that the
NCP simply cannot pay, so a court order is useless. This is a lower
percentage for “cannot pay” than we will find in the set of CPs that have
court orders.

Summary of Non-Court-Order Cases
For all the reasons above, there is little to be gained – especially in gauging
rates of compliance – by including cases which have never sought a court
order for child support. The Census Bureau itself pays no further attention
other than to survey for the reasons for their large numbers. There are
only questions and doubts, not answers.

Compliance with Court Orders
One might gauge overall compliance in several ways:
C % of the total child support owed that is actually paid.

C % of CPs getting some or all of their ordered child support.
C % of CPs getting all ordered child support.
We seek an historical base to use as a benchmark for progression through

the 1990s, but reliable figures are only available from 1978, so below are
the Census Bureau’s figures for 1978 through 1989. Remember that this
is only what the CPs say. There has been no survey of NCPs by the Census
Bureau or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).
All figures below are from the Census Bureau’s reports and the pages for
each year comprise Appendix B. All values are in 1989 dollars, exactly as
reported by Census.
Number of Total Due Avg.

Orders (,000) ($ billions) % Paid Payment
1978 3424 12.6 64.3 $2,370
1981 4043 13.7 61.3 $2,080
1983 3995 12.5 70.4 $2,215
1985 4381 12.6 65.9 $1,892
1987 4840 15.9 68.6 $2,247
1989 4953 16.3 68.7 $2,252
Table 1: Percent of Total Support Owed That Is Paid, 1978 - 89
The values are surprisingly erratic, but remove the highest and lowest
figures and it seems to hover at about a two-thirds compliance rate. One
anomaly in trying to interpret this is that these are the numbers of CP
households owed child support. Is the number of NCPs the same or lower?
That is, how many cases are there of one father to 2 or more households?
How many cases of a man fully compliant toward one household but not

another? Are there enough to make a difference on our impression of the
numbers of fathers at least paying something?
During the late 1980s, Sanford Braver of Arizona State University did
what the Census Bureau does not: cross-checked the stories from both
recipient and payer as part of the largest and most comprehensive study
ever done on divorced families in the United States. His team found that
the average overall compliance rate was, in fact, 70%, which would seem
a more reliable figure to use for that period.
(The values for the 1990s correspond with increased enforcement
measures and other things, and will be addressed starting on page 34.
Here we establish an historical base.)
So at issue is either 30% of all payments, or . . . how many men?
# Owed Child % Who

Support Paid Part
Yr. (,000) % Paid All or All
1978 3424 48.9 71.7
1981 4043 46.7 71.8
1983 3995 50.5 76.0
1985 4381 48.2 74.0
1987 4840 51.3 76.1
1989 4953 51.4 75.2
Table 2: Percentage Who Comply, 1978 - 89
During the 1980s, only around half of CPs having orders said they got all
they claimed to be entitled to. Is this the mysterious “half of support not
paid?” Is “getting all” the fairest measure of compliance? Probably the first
one is more reasonable – percentage of total child support dollars due that
were paid – as partial payments indicate people at least doing something.
(Whether doing all they can or all they reasonably can are two other
issues, and probably where both sides of the story should be equally
factored. Percentage of compliance – particularly how many are actually
in full compliance – is likely the area of greatest conflict of stories between
CPs and NCPs.)

Something else to consider as possibly depressing the compliance
numbers besides assuming a 1:1 ratio of CPs to NCPs, is female NCPs.
Although they comprise only some 10% to 15% of NCPs and have about
one-third as many court orders against them as male NCPs, the value of
those orders is about half that for fathers, and they default at about twice
the rate. So although the numbers above use the Census Bureau’s
composite values for all NCPs, when you look at the numbers for fathers
only, compliance is slightly higher.
Still, the numbers we will use from the ’80s for future performance
comparison for our three possible compliance indicators turn out to be:
Total child support owed, that is paid 70%
CPs getting all or some ordered child support 70%
CPs getting all ordered child support 50%

Table 3: Overall Compliance: 1980s
This is what the public concern has been over, and it is noticeably
different from what advocates have claimed, though certainly not trivial.
At issue is 30% of all moneys due and 30% of all NCPs. Notice that the
25% to 32% of those paying nothing resembles the number we saw among
CPs without orders but where even the CP knew they could not pay
(24.5%).
An important inference may be drawn from the Census numbers. As a
typical example, the 1991 Population Report [Current Population
Reports Series P60-187] shows that 32% of CPs live below the poverty
line. (3,720,000 of 11,502,000.) What percentage of NCPs do? Are all
NCPs rich at the expense of their families, living in Bermuda and driving
Porsches, or is it more reasonable to assume that people mate within their
socio-economic realm? If fathers are as poor as mothers, if the number of
poverty-level fathers is the same 32% and only 24.8% of NCPs are in total
default, the above figures show a remarkably high compliance rate.
Several sources give some indication:

< According to the 1997
Available online: “Poor Dads Who Don’t
National Survey of
Pay Child Support”
America’s Families, 2.6 http://harbpress.com/files/PoorDads.pdf
million nonresident
fathers [23% of the 11.1
million cases in 1997] have family incomes below the poverty line
and most of them face multiple employment barriers.
[Elaine Sorensen & Chava Zibman,“Poor Dads Who Don’t Pay
Child Support: Deadbeats or Disadvantaged?” Urban Institute,
Series B, No. B-30, April 2001.]
Comment: In the same report, Sorensen makes the mistake

the Census Bureau avoids: balloons the number of NCP who
pay nothing to 64% of all NCPs by including those who simply
do not pay through official legal channels or have no court
order. While Sorensen has done a lot of important research
and thinking about NCPs, some quoted here, she frequently
lapses back into “the box.” Also, her solution to any imbalance
or inequity is always new bureaucracy to counter what the first
one created, not correcting the first.
< 95% of fathers having no employment problems for the past five
years pay their ordered child support regularly; 81% in full and on
time. Among noncustodial fathers having experienced any
unemployment, one-third have stopped paying altogether.
[Judi Bartfeld and Daniel R. Meyer, “Are There Really Deadbeat
Dads? The Relationship Between Ability to Pay, Enforcement, and
Compliance in Normal Child Support Cases.” Social Service
Review, Vol. 68, 1994.]
< “Many noncustodial

fathers who do not pay Available online: The executive summary
child support have of “Noncustodial Fathers: Can They Afford
to Pay More Child Support?”
established new families, http://harbpress.com/files/NonCustPay.htm
placing additional
economic constraints on
their ability to pay child support.”

[Elaine Sorensen, “Noncustodial Fathers: Can They Afford to Pay
More Child Support?” The Urban Institute, February 1995]
< Welfare programs account for more than 30% of poor mothers'
household budgets, but only 17% of poor fathers' budgets.
[Elaine Sorensen & Chava Zibman, “Poor Dads Who Don't Pay
Child Support: Deadbeats or Disadvantaged?” Urban Institute
Report, Series B, No. B-30, April 2001.]
< “13 to 26 percent of noncustodial fathers are already poor or have

extremely low incomes. Asking these noncustodial fathers to pay
child support may result in shifting poverty from one group to
another rather than in alleviating it. Almost 90 percent of these
poor or low-income men were not working in 1990 or were working
intermittently, and almost half had not completed high school.”
[Elaine Sorenson, “Noncustodial Fathers: Can They Afford to
Pay More Child Support?” Urban Institute, February 1995]
< 80% of the homeless are men.
To what extent are we not seeing evidence of non-compliance so much as

evidence of the extent of poverty in the United States, specifically that of
men? If that is the case, surely very different social programs are indicated
than child support enforcement.

What We Don’t Know
The Urban Institute has performed the closest thing to any form of study
of NCPs, some of which are cited above. They are all purely statistical
studies, deriving and extrapolating numbers from other statistics, which
leaves them without verification and with many gaps.
Of those where child
support has been sought Are There Still Sundown Dads?
but the NCP is not Welfare Reform of 1996 removed the 60-
year-old “man in the house” rule: no
paying, how many are
welfare for a household in which there
actually resisting (able to was an able-bodied man. This had
pay but not)? We don’t produced “Sundown Dads:” fathers who
know. We can only draw moved out to avoid the social agency
enforcement visits but remained as
inferences, as above,
involved as they could. However, since
which are imprecise, any household income reduces benefits,
making them susceptible some pressure remains for anyone with a
to the injection of job – especially a temporary one – to
personal agendas. remove themselves from the household.
Further, how long before long-ingrained
Why do whatever habits are replaced?
number of NCPs not pay
support? We don’t
know. The most obvious reason (they can’t) is only speculated upon
above.
Of those not paying, how many are really Sundown Dads being hidden?
Of those not paying, how many have Porches and trophy wives?
Of those not paying, how many are unaware of the whereabouts of their
children or that they have any?

Of that whatever
Access Interference
percentage who are truly There is information on overall CP
resisting (who can pay but interference. Wallerstein reported that
don’t), how many are 25% of CPs in her study group actively
uncaring, and how many tried to sabotage the father’s presence
in the children’s lives, and another 25%
are particularly caring?
actively or passively interfered. Other
That is, to what extent are studies show that 42% to 70% of CPs
we facing another freedom- interfere to some degree or other.
fighter versus terrorist Census Bureau data already shows a
conundrum? strong positive correlation between low
contact and low payment. While this is
inexact, we can see that there is a
< How many are being problem and its scope.
prevented from seeing
their children by the
CP, with neither sympathy nor support from society?
< How many simply feel or have found that “visiting” four days a
month is an inadequate structure within which to be a parent, so feel
no obligation to pay a stranger to raise what they feel they have been
told are not their children, to the degree they will risk jail?
How many of the very fathers who care most about being fathers – who
are the most sensitive to it and the ones we should most want in their
children’s lives – are we eliminating by not providing them with the same
protection of their relationship that we provide mothers?
Before setting up an Office of Child Support Enforcement, and for the
27 years since, the Department of Health and Human Services, Congress,
nor any branch of government has conducted any form of study on the
reason for its existence: those who do not pay child support. Almost
nothing is known about them, their conditions or reasons. The Urban
Institute has tried to do some of this, but their reports, dependent on
government funding, are careful to flatter the government even while
explaining that what they are doing is dangerously flawed.

The Ninety Percent Solution
In every news release it can, the Census Bureau is careful to mention

another statistic that consistently shows in all its reports: an 87% - 90%
compliance rate among parents having joint custody. This is rarely
reported by the media.
Question: Are we too fond of there being a problem to see the

solution in front of us?

The Solution
I am sick of hearing how pitiful these men who dont pay their childsupport are. They
dont pay simply because they dont want to pay. They wait until they get 18 years behind
and when it finally gets to court and they owe $100,000.00 the judge simlpy dismisses
all of it. And yes I do live in the projects because my ex-husband owes $10,000.00 and
I cant afford daycare for our little boy. And please dont tell me about the wonderful
system and its help to pay for daycare because I have been on a waiting list for over a
year. If society would make these irrisponsible men take their responsibility for their
children then these children wouldnt have to live in proverty. And until you have been
"here" and experenice it for yourself, what you think dont mean a hill of beans to me.
Thank you,
— E-mail received by the author, 2001. Name withheld
With no well-defined problem but only the emotion expressed in the

above e-mail, the following solution has been attempted. The progression
of child support
enforcement regulations
is chronicled here so the Available online: Section 9 of the 1996 Ways
reader knows what is in and Means Green Book.
place today and where it http://harbpress.com/files/CS_WMhistory.txt
Warning: it is exhaustive and a text file over
came from. The most 350K in size.
detailed publicly
available account of all
legislation is Section 9 of the 1996 House Ways and Means Committee’s
Green Book. [WMCP: 104-14.].
1975: The Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE – only called CSE
then) is created within the federal Department of Health and
Human Services (DHHS) by an amendment to the Social Security
Act, creating Title IV-D. Its purpose is to reclaim welfare payments

(at that time called AFDC, now Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families – TANF – and any following family relief) and foster care
costs from noncustodial parents back to the government. It is not
to ensure single mothers get ordered child support. It does not
address the welfare of men, as federal assistance never has. It is to
maximize the number of child support orders for “welfare moms”
and have the payments made to the government to reimburse the
middle and upper classes for the cost of welfare.
Clarification: The pre-existing rules for relief require

there be no able-bodied man live in the household. (The
man-in-the-house rule.) Since the 1930s, welfare in the
United States is not for people, but only families, which
must be fatherless. Family is defined as mother and
children. Welfare has always been only for single
mothers. Under a different federal law, food stamps were
made available to all people, but not cash or housing.
Comment: From the 1930s, “care of children” has been
the only accepted basis for any social program, and it is
assumed only done by women. Children are the only way
to get any relief and assistance for anyone.
< Requires that anyone applying for family assistance must give
someone’s name as the father of each child who is to receive
assistance. No verification of accuracy of such designation is
required, the person named must prove his innocence. If there
is no court order for that man-child declaration, the state agency
is to apply for one itself. One will often be assigned without the
designated father knowing. (A default order.)
Observation: Assume a sundown dad: living apart so his

family can get welfare, contributing what he can when he
earns it. If she reports him and anything he earns is
taken by the government, her children lose that extra
benefit, and possibly their father. If she does not report,
she gets no welfare.

< State agencies have 75% of their costs reimbursed with federal
money (reduced to 66% in 1990) and they keep 42% of TANF
collections, plus 14% of the federal share of TANF collections,
called Incentive Payments.
< Incentives for affixing paternity and creating court orders for
child support.
< Child support obligations are made exempt from bankruptcy.
Like all federal programs, it defined the rules by which state social
service agencies got federal money. OCSE does research, lobbying,
and defines policies and practices. State agencies are arms and legs.
1984: The Child Support Enforcement Amendments (Public Law 98-

378).
Clarification: This law, and the one in 1996, simply

made it mandatory for states to have these measures in
place to receive federal money. Especially in 1996, and
even in 1984, many states had already implemented
many of the measures, but this is how federal programs
dictate state laws and make practices uniform.
< State agencies are required to offer collection for non-welfare

cases. That is, all child support awards are available to the state
agencies for enforcement. Non-welfare obligees (CPs) must apply
and pay a $25 application fee. An applicant has all legal costs
covered; the accused has none covered. (Also done for later
modifications to any existing order.) The federal government still
covers 66% of all administrative costs.
Clarification: This, and other provisions in this bill, is

the initial extension to non-welfare cases. The federal
government may not deal with family law unless there is
a nexus between it and a federal area. Welfare was that
nexus, but extending to non-welfare cases raises
constitutional questions about federal money being used

to collect non-federal money, still outstanding as of this
writing. The rational is that all women are a threat to
becoming welfare cases.
< Mandatory garnishment of any registered NCP who falls behind

by one month.
Observation: This measure also adds non-TANF cases to

state agencies.
< Interception of income tax refunds and unemployment benefits

for arrears for all registered cases, welfare or non-welfare.
< Arrearage reported to credit bureaus.
< Asset seizure (liens) for arrearage in all registered cases.
< Creates administrative child support orders.
Definition: State agencies no longer need to go to court.

Without due process, an agency can assign a child
support award. The only requirement is that a letter be
sent to the accused’s last known address and wait six
months. They also may decide disputed cases of
paternity and are not required to ensure that the man
understands what he is accused of nor provide council.
Men will find out years later they are supposed to be a
father, and have a large debt. (See 1986 for what
happens to any arrearage.)
< Encourages the states to create standard guidelines within each

state for setting child support awards, but did not require their
use.
< Alimony to be included in state agency mandates.
< Allow establishment of paternity 18 years after birth. Child
support could be retroactively charged for up to 18 years.
< Medical insurance must be added as a separate item in child
support orders.

Clarification: This has almost universally been
interpreted such that the father pays for medical
insurance on top of child support, even when that child
support calculation, by its nature, includes such costs, as
is the case in the new presumptive awards. (See section
“The New Child Support Awards.”)
1986: “The Bradley Amendment.” The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation

Act of 1986 (Public Law 99-509) includes a rider amending Title
IV-D of the Social Security Act:
< No retroactive modification of child support awards or arrearage
for any reason, ever.
1988: Family Support Act (Public Law 100-485)

< States have until October of 1989 (less than one year) to enact
statewide guidelines that all judges are to follow in all cases. If a
judge does not fully abide by the guidelines in a case, he must
give their rebuttal (the reasons he did not) in the written
findings. Guidelines must be reviewed every four years, but the
appointment of the committee and much of the review process
is left to the states.
< Child support must be automatically garnished from wages for
TANF cases by 1990, and for all cases by 1994. No application
need be made.
Clarification: Now all cases must be administered by

state agencies. They are the collection agent for all CPs,
and once in the system, all provisions apply. All divorced
fathers are to have their wages garnished automatically,
irrespective of the wishes of both parents.
< A paternity testing program is introduced. OCSE will pay 90% of

the state’s cost for laboratory tests and provisions encourage its
wide use.

Observation: No federal money is available for tests for
breast cancer, prostate cancer, heart disease, or any other
more common life threat.
< 90% matching federal funds for the states to develop and
operate a system for tracking cases and garnishments. To be in
place by October, 1995.
< Denial of passports for NCPs owing $5,000 or more.
< Both parents must furnish their Social Security Number for a
birth certificate to be issued unless the state finds good cause not
to do so.
< Sweeping provisions to facilitate interstate collection, making it
far easier to obtain and enforce an order on an out-of-state
obligor.
Observation: However, if a man in one state is having

his wages garnished and paid to another, and asks for the
address of the obligee (and his children), he is told that
would violate custodial parent confidentiality. These laws
not only facilitate child abduction, but finance it. The
same may occur within a state, but litigation for
abduction is less complex. Interstate abduction has no
similar facility for resolution. It is legally as complex and
difficult as interstate child support collections were
before the ‘80s. International abduction has clearer
recourse as the US is a signature to the Hague
Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Comment: Legislators, the media, and even researchers
like the Urban Institute do not acknowledge child
abduction as an issue although there are some 350,000
per year. This is silent authorization of the one-parent
system, allowing the mother to unilaterally decide
whether the child has a father.

1992: Child Support Recovery Act (Public Law 102-521).
< It is a federal offense to be in arrears in child support to a CP in
another state by more than $5,000, or any arrearage for over
one year.
Observation: Again, irrespective of whether a case of

abduction.
1994: Small Business Administration (Public Law 103-403).

< Any arrearage makes a parent ineligible for a small business loan.
1996: Welfare Reform Act: The Personal Responsibility and Work

Opportunity Reconciliation Act.
< All companies are required to report all new hires and wages to
a new, central database by 1998.
< All financial institutions (banks, insurance, brokers, etc.) must
match a government-provided list of names against their
accounts and send information on matches to their state agency
to facilitate asset seizures, to start in 1999. There is no check to
ensure that only the names of parents in arrears of child support
are submitted to these companies.
< Revocation of drivers, business, and other state licenses for
arrearage.
< All child support must be automatically garnished from wages
for all cases. (This was re-enacted because the 1994 deadline for
the same thing in the ’88 law had passed without full
compliance. More money was made available to the states to
build their computerized systems.)
< $10 million a year for visitation enforcement, nationwide, per
year.
Observation: In 2000, the OCSE budget was $4.5 billion.

Although there is over twice the violation of visitation
orders by CPs, for every $1 spent to enforce visitation,
$450 is spent to enforce support.

< All child support orders must provide for health coverage. This
is in addition to base child support awards. (Again, a re-enacted
measure, this time with forced compliance.)
< States must identify a father in 90% of nonmarital births or lose
funding. These are all nonmarital births, whether welfare is
involved or not.
2000: DHHS announces that fathers in arrears by more than $2,500 will
be denied food stamps. They estimate a saving to taxpayers of $25
million a year, no money for children.

Is It Effective?
More Custodial Parents Receive Full Amount

of Child Support, Census Bureau Reports
— Census Bureau news release, 12:01 am Friday, October 13, 2000
Introduction
Are the provisions listed in the previous section having the desired effect?
To look at OCSE news releases, obviously so. We examine two possible
desired effects:
1. Reduce the cost of welfare to the taxpayers, even pay for welfare.
2. Increase overall child support compliance.
Comment: When and how was “increase overall

compliance” added? This was to relieve poor
single mothers and reduce taxes. Do the people
know their government is collection agent for the
well-to-do, that it considers all women at risk of
joining welfare roles, but no men?

Reduce the Cost of Welfare
If the desired effect was to pay for welfare, here are the OCSE expenditures
versus TANF- / Foster Care-related child support collections for the 1990s.
All values are from OCSE’s annual reports. (From 2000, OCSE uses three
categories: Assistance Cases, Former Assistance Cases, Never Assisted
Cases. This effectively splits TANF collections making future comparisons
more difficult.)
OCSE TANF
Expenditures Collections
Yr. ($ Billions) ($ Billions)
1991 1.8 2.0
1992 2.0 2.3
1993 2.2 2.4
1994 2.6 2.5
1995 3.0 2.7
1996 3.0 2.8
1997 3.5 2.8
1998 3.6 2.6
1999 4.0 2.5
2000 4.5 2.6
Table 4: Paying for Welfare
The decrease in collections toward 2000 can be accounted for by a

decrease in TANF cases during economic expansion. The increasing cost of
collecting it can be accounted for by increasingly collecting for all cases,
not just welfare cases, which began in 1989.
Still, however far back one goes, the cost-benefit ratio on reclaiming
welfare is poor. If OCSE cannot collect enough to cover its own budget, it’s
not likely to pay for welfare. However much the alleged deadbeat dads
were costing taxpayers before, they are now costing considerably more.

Government agencies are not politically myopic. There is a Government
Accounting Office and no entity strives for its extinction. The poor TANF
cost-benefit ratio added motivation for OCSE, the state agencies, and those
who want child support enforcement for whatever reason to seek the
addition of non-TANF cases. This multiplied its constituency and made the
much larger amounts collected make it all appear worthwhile.
But such non-TANF money would go to CPs and this effort would still
not pay for welfare, only add costs to taxpayers.
Would adding non-TANF cases increase overall compliance? No study
was attempted, it was just assumed that it would, and child support
enforcement became the latest growth spurt of the already $600 billion a
year divorce industry, a spurt within government which is less known for
its ability to cut back in the face of economic realities and policy failure.

Smoke and Mirrors
Record $18 Billion Child Support Collected
100% Increase in Collections
These and similar headlines and statements by OCSE and political leaders
started appearing at the end of the 1990s. (Both the above are from
2001.) Here are all the OCSE figures for the same years as above, showing
both welfare and non-welfare collections in each year’s dollars. The only
thing increasing is non-TANF collections.
OCSE TANF Non-TANF Total

Expenditures Collections ($ Cost-Benefit Colectgions Collections Cost-Benefit
Yr. ($ Billions) Billions) Ratio, TANF ($ Billions) ($ Billions) Ratio, Total
1991 1.8 2 1.11 4.9 6.9 3.83
1992 2.0 2.3 1.15 5.7 8.0 4.00
1993 2.2 2.4 1.09 6.5 8.9 4.05
1994 2.6 2.5 0.96 7.3 9.8 3.77
1995 3.0 2.7 0.90 8.1 10.8 3.60
1996 3.0 2.8 0.93 9.2 12.0 4.00
1997 3.5 2.8 0.80 10.5 13.3 3.80
1998 3.6 2.6 0.72 11.7 14.3 3.97
1999 4.0 2.5 0.63 13.4 15.9 3.98
2000 4.5 2.6 0.58 15.3 17.9 3.97
Table 5: OCSE Performance Ratios
The “Record $18 Billion Collected” in 2000 was not necessarily child
support never before paid or would not have otherwise been paid. (Not
necessarily. We examine than in the next section.) It just started to be
paid to the government instead of mothers. (Even the TANF amounts were

not necessarily previously unpaid. Both amounts were simply never
previously collect by government agencies.)
The increase in OCSE collections is from non-TANF cases increasingly
added to their docket, a process which only began in earnest in 1989, and
whose moneys flow through to CPs while 66% of the cost of doing this is
paid by the federal budget. The “100% Increase (from 1993)” is the same
thing – only due to the same money now flowing through the agencies and
not any additional benefit to people, but OCSE can claim something about
which to brag, even try to take credit for, and the media obliged.
Since 1989, only due to adding what may not be within federal
jurisdiction, OCSE’s overall cost-benefit ratio has been moving steadily
toward a more comfortable 4 (their stated target is 4.15), but with no
offset to pay for it.
Also, notice that when the government defensively says what a huge
percent of the moneys they collect now goes to single mothers, that, too,
is due only to non-TANF cases. Since 1996, welfare mothers have received
only 8% of the child support money state agencies collect in their names.

Increase Overall Compliance
Increased government spending can be accepted if private citizens benefit.

If more single mothers and their children are better off, the government
is finally doing something for its own citizens, not just the military,
industry, or foreign countries.
Are these measures increasing the amount of child support actually paid
or just introduced a new middleman to take credit for the weather?
“The sad fact is that children living with single mothers

are no more likely to receive child support today [1999]
than they were two decades ago. The figure was around
31 percent then, and it is around 31 percent today”
— Elaine Sorensen, Principle Research Associate,
Urban Institute, “Dead-Broke Dads,” June 1,
1999, Washington Post.
“You’re not going to try to tell us that all that ballyhoo and those
measures have done nothing?”
Actually, it may be worse.
We return to exclusive use of Census data, because the Bureau performs
an independent survey every two years, and their numbers have nothing
to do with whether the money goes through OCSE or not. (Though they
perform it under the direction of its customer, DHHS.)
This time we include the 1990 figures, during which time OCSE
expanded to all cases, introduced new guidelines to “strengthen” (increase)
child support awards (discussed in “The New Child Support Awards,”
below), and implemented the strongest enforcement measures. The 1999
figures were only released in late October of 2002. (That’s how long the
time delay is for Census numbers.)
We will use four aggregate measures of overall compliance:

1. Average Payment
2. CPs getting some ordered child support
3. CPs getting all ordered child support
4. Total child support owed, that is paid.
If any of the efforts to increase compliance have merit, all should rise.
There is a trick in examining these values. In 1993, DHHS changed one
critical question from “How much were you owed for last year” to “What
was the total amount owed to you last year, both during and previously
outstanding,”2 to include past due amounts. While tracking arrearage is
reasonable, instead of making it two questions to separate the values, they
are always combined. Past due has very different behavior so one would
expect it to be separately tracked. Failing to do this obscures what may
really be happening.
(Since a large percentage of any debt older than one year will never be
paid but stay on the books forever, “Amount Due” will now perpetually
escalate. One has to wonder if DHHS did this to increase evidence of their
ineffectiveness, to prevent comparison between the ’80s and ’90s, or to
make compliance look as bad as possible for increased funding.)
Still, it does not mean, as the Census Bureau claims, that figures from
before and after 1993 cannot be compared. Rather, it means being aware
of the change while comparing.
Our first measure (Average Payment) is unaffected as that is an
absolute. The last measure will be affected, and 2 and 3 may be somewhat
affected but let’s see.
Additional Observation. Another problem with not

separating the values is that it increases an existing
unreliability. Consider how the data is collected. For the
1999 values, the Census Bureau called thousands of
custodial parents only (not the payers, only payees) in
April of 2000. They were asked to report the total child
support they (believe they) were entitled to and what
2
These are not exact quotes of the questions but are to show what was
being asked.

they remember receiving during the year that ended four
months prior. Some of us have difficulty remembering
what conditions we lived under last month, so this
already carries a margin of error, compounding the lack
of double-checking. If they are then also asked for the
total still outstanding from all years before that, there
can only be even greater guessing. Will this be over-
reported or under? No measures have been made.
Since it is likely a consistent margin of error among
years that use the same method, for purposes of
comparisons it may not be a great problem. Still, the
public is inclined to take any value as an absolute rather
than in context.
All numbers and charts below are from raw Census Bureau numbers
provided in Appendix B, and converted to 1999 dollars. The spreadsheet
showing all values, conversions, and calculations is Appendix C. In all
charts, 1993 is flagged with a dotted line for when arrearage began to be
added.
The results are ambiguous.
The QuatroPro spreadsheet itself, used to

perform these calculations, is available online
http://harbpress.com/files/AllCPNumbers.wb3

1) Average Payment
Chart 3: Average Due Vs. Average Payment
This chart shows the total amount due divided by the number of cases,
and the total paid divided by cases. While there seems to be an uptrend
in the average child support award from 1985, beginning well before
including arrearage, how much is paid is flat to down. (It is interesting
that including arrearage saw a temporary drop in the average due, but we’ll
see that there was simultaneously a mysterious jump in cases.)
The amount paid is an absolute, unaffected by calculation of what is
due, and that seems to be showing a slight decline.
Single mothers are getting no more money than ever. On average, they
may be getting less, and certainly a lower proportion of what is due.
Are more single mothers than ever getting money, even if a lower
overall amount? For that we look at measures 2 and 3.

2 & 3) Getting All or Some Ordered Child Support
Chart 4: Number of Cases
Chart 5: Percent Getting All or Some
We start with the raw number of cases, and number of custodial parents
getting all and getting some. Then, in the second graph, show the all and
some categories as percentages of total cases for whether the proportion of
those getting payments has risen.

The first thing that leaps out from the top chart is that the same year
the Census Bureau added past due to amount due (1993), the number of
cases also shows a sudden jump of 25%. Such a large increase in cases has
never been seen before or since. Is this because of some other procedural
change by the Census Bureau? We cannot rule that out, but if it is, it is
deeply buried in Census documentation. Some will be cases that only have
a past due amount without any current due, but how many? More
important, is this increase because of success in the paternity establishment
program:? (See sidebar, “Paternity,” page 43.) Are there now a higher
proportion of cases with court orders?
There is no evidence to suggest that. Even in 1999, 46.5% of all
custodial parents chose to not have court orders (so are not included in
these numbers), the same proportion or higher than in the 1980s. (See
page 8.) The hundreds of millions of dollars spent annually on paternity
establishment to force everyone into uniform, regulated arrangements is
having no impact.
Is a higher proportion of mothers getting money they never did before?
This is the only area that shows some encouragement, but even that is
qualified.
First, consider the “all or some” set (in green). While it took a “hit”
from the 1993 change, it continued a slight decline before somewhat
recovering in 1999. Is this an increase or decrease in the proportion of
mothers getting child support? Are we seeing a real decline or is it due to
“past due” infinitely accumulating? Because of the way DHHS collects the
data, we’ll never know, but DHHS is supposed to be improving this, one
way or another. For all the effort and money spent on enforcement, we
should see a definite increase, and we do not.
Taking those who received all ordered child support (in blue), this
measure took the biggest “hit” from the 1993 change as we would expect.
It fell from a performance rate of 51.5% to 34.1%, but has been steadily
rising since. Of the four measures, this is the only one that suggests any
improvement in compliance. But that is for a limited set of cases.
All this suggests that there is no reason to believe any more mothers are
getting child support, but one group is now getting all, which would
suggests the measures are having some of their intended effect.

Until you consider the economy and employment for the same period.
Chart 6: Unemployment Rate
The ’90s saw the biggest and longest economic expansion in US history,
and the lowest unemployment since the 1950s. What will any of these
numbers look like for the first decade of the 21st century? What will they
look like if unemployment approaches the 10% seen in the 1980s? The
1999 numbers will likely be a highwater mark for years to come.
In fact, were all these numbers factored for unemployment, one could
imagine they’d show a consistent decline in compliance. The highest
compliance rates were in the 1980s, before the emphasis on enforcement,
before the new, higher child support awards, and during the highest
unemployment. As employment has increased, compliance has been flat to
down.
Our first measure suggested that whoever is getting child support is, on
average, getting a little less. These two are ambiguous about whether any
more mothers are getting those fewer dollars. But possibly more to the
point, there is little reason for optimism that they ever will.

4) Total Child Support Owed, That Is Paid
Chart 7: Due Vs. Paid in Dollars
Chart 8: Percent Paid
This is not the number of CPs getting any child support, but the total
amount of child support due all recipients and the total paid. As an
aggregate, it is similar to the first measure (average amount paid), but will
be more sensitive to including past due with current due.

Again, we first show the actual dollar totals converted to 1999 dollars,
then the proportion of the total being paid below it. (The issue is not a rise
in the total dollars paid, but in the percentage of what is owed being paid.)
The first thing revealed in the top graph is that, at most, only 22% of
1993's “Total Due” can be attributed to adding arrearage. ($16.3 billion
in 1991 to $20.9 billion in 1993.)
Looking at the line graph of the proportion that is paid, we see the
expected drop in 1993, but if the enforcement measures were being
successful we’d see the line steadily rise both before and after. Instead, it
continues a decline during the boom years that had started well before,
and in 1999 stood at an all time low of 58.7% of all amounts due. With
or without arrearage, less of what is owed is being paid.
Again, it is possible that some of the post-1993 decline is due to
increasing accumulation of arrearage. It is also possible that some of the
increase in what is owed (contributing to the decline in performance) is
not only arrearage infinitely growing but also the increases in child support
awards beyond people’s ability to pay. (See “The New Child Support
Awards.”) Still, were that the case, the line to the right of the 1993 marker
should at least be flat to show that our enforcement measures had any
meaning. Instead, a fall continues that started a decade earlier.

Paternity Establishment Program
While the following is outlined above under “Society’s Solution: Political
Chronology,” it is worth consolidating here.
OCSE policy has always been to maximize the number of orders for child
support (attempt to reduce or eliminate that 44% having none), though how
it was decided this was advisable or desirable is not clear.
It has taken two forms: the Paternity Establishment program, and
administrative child support orders.
Paternity Establishment takes the form of: requiring mothers who apply for
welfare to name the father of each child; hospitals patrol maternity wards for
men to demand they filled in forms or they may not allow the birth or its
registration; and OCSE pays 90% of the costs for paternity lab tests.
In 1984, states were also required to implement non-court-ordered child
support awards. On only the word of the mother, paternity may be assigned,
income imputed, and an award made by anyone appointed by the agency.
Orders may be retroactive, assigning arrearage. There is no due process.
Procedure, admission of evidence, and outcome are at the discretion of the
adjudicator who must not be a judge or magistrate.
Let’s follow the case of a mother applying for TANF. She may only guess as
to the father and / or his address. The agency sends a letter to that address
and waits six months for a reply. If he is found, he is usually a teenager being
asked to sign papers when he may not know what paternity is. He has no
lawyer and may not understand the implications of what he is being asked to
sign. If he is not found, he has income imputed and an administrative order
issued in his absence. He is unaware he is accused of fatherhood and years
later is told he has a large debt so must go to jail.
Administrative child support awards may also be varied administratively.
The mother gives testimony of higher income of the father; the (alleged)
father is not there.
Even if a court is involved, all the CP’s legal costs are carried by the state
agency, none of the NCP’s are. Indeed, he may additionally be charged with the
mother’s costs to accuse him. Even a non-welfare mother can pay $25 to
receive all the same services while her ex must pay for all of his.
In 1989, when child support awards became presumptive by way of fixed
numeric formulas, this process was facilitated and has been increasingly used.
The amount of the award was out of the hands of judgement, weighing of
evidence, and judges.
The extent of their use and how they are used is in each state’s hands, but
OCSE offers monetary incentives for official assignments of paternity and
numbers of cases, irrespective of how they are accomplished.

Factoid: According to a study performed by Policy
Studies Inc. on California’s 1999 child support
enforcement performance, in Los Angeles County,
79% of child support orders were default orders. (The
accused was not present). No numbers are given on
how many had actually received notification.
— Reported in the LA Times by Greg
Krikorian, January 2002
Observations and Conclusions

Our four measures of child support compliance are ambiguous, but
generally seem flat to down. Billions of dollars a year, hundreds of
thousands of fathers in jail, seized assets, suspended licences, terminated
businesses, and government taking on the management of all child support
has not increasing compliance.
One can imagine four possible reasons:
a. However much resented, at least child support used to be paid to

a human. Paid to the government, it resembles taxes. Contributing
to someone’s well-being is replace with obedience.
b. The increased numbers of men in jail and committing suicide. A
lost or destroyed life with no hope of recovery (no possibility of
paying off an accumulated arrearage so eternally sent to jail) can
hardly be involved with a child’s life much less ever financially
contribute. No official estimates are available for what these
numbers are. For instance, federal counts of prisoners only include
those serving over a year.
c. The increase in the amount of child support awards has pushed
more men beyond their ability to pay it. (See “The New Child
Support Awards.”)
d. There is a natural law: the more you force, the less you get. (Some
would say that if you have to force it, it’s the wrong thing in the
first place.)

One way or another, three conclusions can be drawn with considerable
confidence:
1. Any increases in what the agencies are collecting since 1988 are
only because they are now taking on all cases of custodial
parenthood, TANF or not. It is not because mothers are getting
more money.
2. The paternity establishment program is a failure. The proportion
of custodial parents without orders for child support is unchanged
or higher. (Probably they don’t have court orders because they
don’t want them. Who is served by its being forced?)
3. Child support enforcement is a failure. Single mothers are no better
off. Indeed, it may be counter-productive.
We are not the only ones to reach the third conclusion. It was not only
reached by the Urban Institute (quoted at the top of this chapter), but the
House Ways and Means
Committee in 1996.
Based only on Census Available online, Section 9 of the 1996 Ways
Bureau figures up to and Means Green Book:
http://harbpress.com/files/CS_WMhistory.txt
1991, and OCSE figures to Warning: it is exhaustive and a text file over
1995, none of which 350K in size.
have improved since
then, its 1996 Green
Book, Section 9, reads:
In summary, it appears that the performance of the

Nation's child support system is modest and that few if any
of the measures of national performance have improved in
nearly two decades.
The failure of child support enforcement faces society with three options:
a. Use still more force.

b. Return things to the way they were. Eliminate OCSE and repeal all
federal child support laws in the hopes of a return to previous

levels of compliance, just to spare spending so much money on
nothing.
c. Eliminate child support.
You either make it work, or admit it doesn’t and find something that does.
Closing Remarks
I will indulge in a small amount of analysis. Whenever you see the
phenomenon of trying harder and harder with less and less result, you are
usually trying to fix the wrong thing.
OCSE was created to fix “child support not being paid.” Is that the real
problem, or a symptom of something else? Is it what can most profitably
occupy our attention?
Thinking about this lead some to decide that the problem to fix is
divorce: there shouldn’t be so many. (This would hardly help cases where
divorce occurs, nor increase child support compliance when it did.)
Conservative interest in promoting marriage has liberals understandably
concerned (though now that it’s conservatives who want to curtail personal
liberties you’d think they’d be chortling). If we’ll stop at nothing to force
fathers to pay child support whether they can or not, what measures can
we expect to “encourage” marriage?
No one seems to think that the problem is neither child support nor
divorce. No one notices that when we introduced no-fault divorce we left
in the fault-based divorce arrangements, keeping lawyers nicely employed
with the same adversarial system. Few notice that all those studies that
show how bad divorce is for children have not studied the effects of
divorce, but the effects of parental elimination and high parental conflict.
No one considers that it may be our divorce practices themselves which,
by their very nature, require formal child support, that might be the thing
to fix. All are too busy isolating on only one aspect of those divorce
customs, trying to force only it to work when none of it ever has or will.3
3
Only one author I know of has written a book that describes a way to
accommodate the separation of the parents, sought by divorce or being never
married, while keeping the child’s family intact, that eliminates any reason for
child support in most cases. Author’s name on request.

Individual Measures
This doesn’t make sense. We keep hearing about the successes of

garnishment, license revocation, jail and all the others.
In Florida last year [1998], taxpayers paid $4.5 million for the
state to collect $162,000 from deadbeat parents, mostly fathers,
and clean up the child-support bureaucracy. The money went to
two private companies -- Lockheed Martin IMS, a New Jersey
subsidiary of the huge defense concern, and Maximus Inc., a
consulting firm in Virginia.
. . . Maximus closed 46,692 of 89,560 cases and was paid
$2.25 million. It got 12 deadbeats to cough up $5,867.
— Kathleen Parker, The Orlando
Sentinel, January 24 1999.
Possibly more telling is how little we hear. For the few things we do hear,
how successful something sounds has as much to do with the context in
which it is presented, as many of the above media citations illustrates.
< Passports.
1998 was the first year of passport denial for fathers owing over
$5,000. OCSE bragged 14,000 denials resulting in $4 million in lump
sum payments.
OCSE does not say how many of the 14,000 made a lump sum
payment, but one can imagine that people who travel generally have
money, so one would expect this to, in fact, hit those who can afford
to pay but do not. Until you realize that the amount collected is an
average of $285.71 per passport denial, and the cost of the program
is buried in other departmental budgets like the State Department.
< Seizing accounts.

A more successful measure – at least at first blush – was the seizure of
bank accounts.

“As of December 2001, nearly 800,000 individuals
delinquent in their child support had been matched with
their accounts. The value of those accounts was nearly
$2.8 billion.”
— DHHS 2001 Preliminary Report
This sounds impressive until you do the arithmetic and see that the
average seized was $3,500. First, will it ever again enjoy such success?
Did we clean out all we ever will and those who are hiding assets now
know where not to leave them?
Second, if you do the statistically responsible thing and remove the
top and bottom 10% of the accounts seized, by how much would that
average drop? A very few may have been very large and the intended
targets, but overstate the real story. Add the fact that “delinquent”
does not mean “nonperforming” (that some of those affected were
making payments, however behind they were), and some percentage
of what was seized was next month’s regular payment.
This measure made the agency look good at the expense of obligors,
and can be expected to have little lasting effect. Also, much of the cost
is buried, this time in company budgets. Even the take from the initial
implementation has no cost-benefits numbers.
< Garnishment.
Irving Thornbur reported in the Washington Times, [November 21,
1999] that Wisconsin initiated a pilot program of mandatory
garnishment of all NCPs in 10 counties. Average child support
collections rose by 2.89%.
< Drivers licenses.

When the state of Maryland suspended the drivers licenses of 9,000
NCPs, 800 (9%) made sufficient payments to regain them. How many
of the remaining 8,200 lost their jobs, were less able to work, or
simply kept driving without a license? That was not tallied.

< Just pay.
In 1991, the OCSE initiated a program under which obligors were
rounded up and told that they could either go to jail or charge their
arrearage on their credit cards. “Just pay.” A later OCSE memo noted
that this program had been dropped because, “the majority of obligors
– most of them from non-AFDC [not on welfare] families – had neither
charge cards nor checking accounts.” [DHHS, “Charge It, Please,”
Child Support Report, 1991, p. 6.]
< Jail.
“The problem is, chronic non-supporters do not have
dependable jobs, nor tax refunds, nor seizeable property. That's
why they are chronic. . . . As cruel as it sounds, the one remedy
that almost always works is incarceration. We family court
judges call it ‘the magic fountain.’ . . . Of course, there is no
magic. The money is paid by his mother, or by the second wife,
or by some other innocent who perhaps had to liquidate her
life’s savings.”
— Family Court Judge L. Mendel Rivers, Jr.,
“The Magic Fountain,” Post and Courier,
Charleston, S.C., June 27, 1992, p. 15A.
A jail sentence does not cause the obligor to pay. The “remedy” for
inability to pay is not relieving his poverty, but hold him for ransom
for his friends and family to pay, assuming he has them and they have
money. Judges can send an NCP to jail for up to one year and may
overlap sentences so they go on for longer than a year, which has been
done.
Question: Was the intention of enforcement,

“we don’t care who pays so long as its not the
tax-paying middle and upper classes?”
For the record, in 1798, America’s second president, John Adams,

signed a law that stated, “no debtor’s prison shall be created.” It is jail
without a crime, though this is why some seek that nonpayment be
added to the criminal code.

There is no question that some of those caught by these measures are,
indeed, cads and would not otherwise have coughed up the money, caring
little for their children. (Or freedom fighters who care greatly about them.
We don’t know.) The question is, are there enough of them and are the
results sufficient to justify:
a) The public cost?

b) The persecution of the innocent, of all fathers, or even of only the
poor should one feel poverty should be punished?
Today, simply being a divorced father instantly subjects you to being

treated with contempt by your state government. State agencies universally
regard mothers as their customer to serve and protect, and fathers as forced
supplier, not gender-neutral parents of the same children. This is the
structural bias inevitably created by only enforcing one side of an equation.

The Bradley Amendment: No Reduction Of Arrears
“Only 4% of non-custodial parents whose earnings drop

by more than 15% are able to get a reduction in support
payments.”
— Elaine Sorensen, “A Little Help for Some
‘Deadbeat’ Dads,” Washington Post, November 15,
1995, p. A25.
In 1986, the Bradley Amendment to the Social Security Act made it

impossible for any judge to ever reduce or remove child support arrearage
that had accumulated for any reason. (See page 25.) The results are the
same as for any “zero tolerance” or mandatory measure.
< In 1990, Lockheed employee and divorced father Bobby Sherrill was
captured in Kuwait and spent nearly five months as an Iraqi hostage.
The night after his release, Mr. Sherrill was arrested for not paying
$1,425 in child support while a hostage.
< In 1980, Texas high school janitor Clarence Brandley was wrongly
accused of murder. He spent nearly 10 years in prison until his
exoneration in January 1990. On his release, the state gave him a bill
for nearly $50,000 in child support that Mr. Brandley hadn’t paid
while in prison.
<
Prisons Offer No Escape From Paying Child Support
DURHAM, N.C., Sept. 16, 2000 (AP) — As federal and state officials intensify
efforts to collect unpaid child support, prisoners and recently released offenders are
attracting more attention than ever from enforcement agencies.

In some areas, this can take the form of unforgiving policies that may whisk a
man back to prison because he could not pay debts that built up while he was
behind bars. Elsewhere, authorities are more flexible, helping fathers fresh out of
prison find jobs and negotiating a reduction in support payments.
The disparity in policies was discussed here this week at the National
Conference of Fathers Behind Bars and in the Streets, a three-day session that
ended Friday.
...
Ms. Pearson runs an experimental program in Denver that helps recently
released fathers get jobs and meet their child-support obligations. Most of the
participants emerge from prison owing $13,000 to $18,000 and obtain jobs in the
$10-an-hour range, making debt repayment almost impossible.
Ms. Pearson said some Colorado judges considered prison time to be “voluntary
unemployment,” and thus not a justification for lowering support payments.
...
Jacquelyn Boggess, who works with low-income fathers in Madison, Wis., said
some men are arrested for nonpayment of support almost immediately upon release
from prison.
— [Edited for space.]
< From an e-mail received from a mother and member of the State of
Ohio Shareholders Group to Reform Child Support., May 1, 2002.
The things we have uncovered are heart wrenching! For example I have met with
a disabled veteran who just found out he has a 13 year old son. He never knew
the child existed. The childs mother passed on and her parents found him,
through DNA he is proved to be the father. He is now raising his child but the
Child Support Bureau is after him for 13 years of back child support, they emptied
his bank account, and put a lien on his home. Now remember the mother is dead
and there is no one to actually pay the support to and this man has custody of his
son. He also has no way to earn more money as he is disabled.

Other Costs
< E-mail from Joan T. Kloth, CT, Mon, 4 February, 2002. [Edited for
space.]
When I was forced homeless and on welfare, I was also forced to divulge my
daughter's father's name so they could collect support from him, despite the fact that
he had serious psychological problems, one of which was related to his alcohol abuse
and subsequent violence. Once off of welfare, I repeatedly called Child Support
Enforcement asking them to please leave him alone when he was in the arrearages as
I knew that it meant he had lost his job or had been laid off. I repeatedly told them
that the $50 a week was not going to make or break us, that I was putting it in a
savings account anyway for my daughter and that I did not care if he owed
arrearages to her after she was 18. I also was very adamant about them not locking
him up in jail as I did not want him to have a bad taste in his mouth for his daughter
whom someday might want to meet her father. They said they agreed and
understood.
Yet, this past month, they dragged him up to CT from NJ and tried to throw him in
jail.They were horrible to him.He had no income and was struggling with his own
personal demons and low-self-esteem, believing that he could never do anything
right. Well, this was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Last Monday, after a heavy weekend of drinking, he died in his sleep of heart
failure. No, he was not over weight or in poor physical health. But the stresses and
burdens of child support for his child that he never ever saw and his other children
were pushing him further and further over the deep end. NOW MY DAUGHTER WILL
NEVER EVER BE ABLE TO MEET HER FATHER.
...
And their excuse that he owes the state? Please, he owed them a whole big $936
dollars.

< From an article by Stephen Baskerville, professor of political
science, Howard University, in Insight Magazine, May 1, 2000.
[Edited for space.]
A 41-year-old welder from Milford, N.H., recently received what some are
calling a death sentence for losing his job. That is not how the charges against
him read of course, nor could they, because he was never charged with or tried
for any crime.
Brian Armstrong was a father who lost his job and allegedly fell behind on
child support. Though actively looking for work, he was jailed Jan. 11. One week
later he was dead, apparently the victim of a beating by correctional officers. No
one alleges Armstrong did anything to provoke the beating. Another inmate saw
him taken to a room with a “restraining chair” and then heard screaming for 15
minutes before seeing Armstrong dragged away. Medical workers told his mother
that his body was covered with bruises and that he died of a massive head injury,
though more than two months later she is unable to get a death certificate with
an official cause of death. “I feel there is something very remiss,” Armstrong’s
mother told me.
...
Another fatality that recently has come to light exemplifies a much more
common form of “death sentence” routinely meted out to fathers. In March,
Darrin White of Prince George, British Columbia, was denied all contact with
three of his children, evicted from his home and ordered to pay $2,071 a month
out of his $2,200 monthly salary for child and spousal support. White also was
required to pay double court costs for a divorce that, according to his family, he
never sought or agreed to. In fact, the judgment was even more severe, since
White paid an additional $439 to support a fourth child from a previous
marriage. According to sources close to White’s family, the stress of losing his
children rendered him medically unfit for his job as a locomotive engineer,
leaving him $950 a month in disability pay. In March, White hanged himself
from a tree near his home. No evidence of any wrongdoing was ever presented
against him.

< A letter to the editors of the Atlanta Journal from Adrian C. Banks
of Anderson SC. Wed., March 20, 2002. Unpublished. [Edited for
space.]
Ken’s ordeal began around 7 years ago after he went through his separation and
divorce. Today, his “support obligation” is $150/week. He is a carpenter who
makes $12.50/hour. Do the math. According to the Census Bureau, all forms of
taxation take around half his labor, so you might as well say his real pay is
$6.25/hour. This leaves Ken around $100/week to try and live on assuming he
can work 40 hour work weeks, which is not always possible due to weather. He
is behind and has to appear in Family Court again soon.
Around seven years ago Ken was injured on the job. He was unable to
work for a time and accumulated an arrearage of $1,500. He was summonsed to
Family Court. He was thrown in jail without the right to a jury trial because he
could not pay the ransom the court demanded. He was in jail for 6 months and
the child support continued to be charged against him while incarcerated. This
is absurd and creates a debt from which there is no escape.
...
Ken estimates that 4 of the last 7 years have been jail time and work
release time - all of this with no criminal charges or the right to a trial by jury;
and people like Ken have become legion in our society. Is there any wonder then
why around 300,000 people have committed suicide over the last 10 years? The
majority of these suicides are men who have been victimized by the family
court/child support enforcement system.
Costs of child support enforcement include an estimated 5,000 additional

suicides a year and 100,000 additional men in jail at any point in time. It
is costing additional unemployment, and countless fathers driven further
from their children. The same legislators also pass “Responsible
Fatherhood Laws” for billboard campaigns to encourage fathers to stay
involved with their children.

The Industry
Policy Studies Inc.
1983 Robert Williams, Ph.D. in public administration, is hired as a

consultant by OCSE to direct research and provide technical
assistance for the Child Support Guidelines Project. This project
addresses inconsistent child support awards throughout the country
and is to define requirements for states to devise and apply
universal guidelines for child support calculations.
1984 Robert Williams creates a private company, Policy Studies, Inc.
(PSI) of Denver, CO. Three employees.
1987 Robert Williams introduces the Income Shares Model for child
support calculations in the paper, “Development of Guidelines for
Child Support Orders: Advisory Panel Recommendations and Final
Report,“ submitted to OCSE as a paid consultant close to and
effecting policy development.
PSI starts to offer the Income Shares Model for sale to state
governments, taken from this report. It is proprietary to PSI,
although developed at public expense.
1988 OCSE gives the states one year (until October of 1989) to
implement state-wide uniform guidelines for child support
calculations.
PSI is the only company selling a formula for use as a child
support guideline. PSI is hired by 33 states and territories.
(Wisconsin develops one that is adopted by 17 states, and 3 adopt
a hybrid called the Melson formula.)
1990 Robert Williams leaves OCSE to exclusively run PSI.
1991 PSI adds collection of child support to its products. Tennessee is
their first customer. They are paid a percentage of what they collect,

giving the a company a vested interest in the highest possible
awards, which are calculated by its consulting division.
2000 PSI is the collection agent in 16 states, paid between 10% and 32%
of what it collects, giving it a vested interest in higher awards. They
are active in Canada, Australia and the US Virgin Islands, worth
$40 million, and still the only commercial company in the world
vending and supporting a child support formula.

Lockheed Martin and Maximus
There are two other companies in this business, and they contract to state
governments as collection agents. Lockheed Martin (the large defense
contractor) used to have a computer consulting division until the 1990s
when child support collection proved so profitable that it took over that
division.
Maximus is a 25-year-old Virginia company that provides contracted labor
to state governments. Nine states have contracted Maximus to act as their
child support collection agency. (Often the contract is at the county level.)
There have been allegations in Maryland about opening and closing cases to
improve performance measures and funneling money between counties. At
the time of this writing, no investigation has been ordered.
There is no requirement to audit child support collection activities and the
records of these companies or state agencies. The companies are normally
paid according to cases closed and amounts collected, which they self-report.
OCSE audits each state every three years for compliance with federal
regulations. There is no provision for auditing collections: are they the right
amounts and handled appropriately? All three companies act as financial
intermediaries as they keep accounts on behalf of third parties, accept checks,
and disperse funds. All other financial intermediaries, such as banks,
brokerages and insurance companies, are tightly regulated and specially
audited. These have no auditing requirements.
Frequently, all three child support collection companies will not just act
as administrator but adjudicator, issuing administrative child support orders.
That is, they set and alter the amounts of support in cases for which they are
paid a percentage of what they collect and / or a fee for opening and closing
cases.
Three Supreme Court rulings [Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510 (1927),
Ward v. Monroeville, 409 U.S. 57 (1972), and Gibson v. Berryhill, 411 U.S.
564 (1973)] found that no one can be considered an objective adjudicator
where much of the revenue that pays them comes from that over which they
adjudicate.4
4
Thanks to Bruce Eden of New Jersey for the case citations.

The Chaos
Bear in mind that all the citations below have happened more than ten
years after the states assumed responsibility for all child support, not just
TANF-related cases. This is not a sudden administrative problem.
Comment: In reviewing the below, one wonders if we are

simply seeing inherent folly in any attempt to regulate so
much small detail of so many private lives. One can say
that mistakes are inevitable and there will always be a
percentage of them, but in this area, their effects can be
profound and alter personal lives. Every case is unique,
but all are handled as though they were one problem and
one issue.
1)
Child Support: Crying Foul

‘Maybe it’s the system that’s deadbeat’
By CATHY DYSON, The Free Lance-Star, October 22, 2000

The federal agency that collects child-support payments is being criticized for
being as deadbeat as the parents it goes after.
According to a recent report, the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement
had not paid out all the money it had collected from parents. As of June 1999, the
agency had not distributed $560 million nationwide.
Virginia had $4.7 million on its books at the time, the 17th-highest amount
among the 50 states.
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which
oversees child-support collections, said more than two-thirds of the undistributed
money was tied up in government red tape.
But a group that works to get all parents to pay their part believes the agency
is making excuses.
“Maybe the parents aren’t as deadbeat as we think; maybe it’s the system that’s
deadbeat,” said Leslie Sorkhe of the Association for Children for Enforcement of
Support.
Sorkhe leads the Spotsylvania County chapter of ACES. She’s one of 40,000
ACES members nationwide working for stricter enforcement of child-support
orders and faster collection of payments.

Recently, some ACES members in other states wondered why they weren’t
getting their monthly support. Their ex-spouses swore they had sent the payments
to the Office of Child Support Enforcement or had the money withheld from their
paychecks.
A paper trail began, and ACES filed a Freedom of Information request with the
federal agency, according to an ACES report. ACES members wanted to know how
much each state had collected, but had not paid out to families.
They were shocked by the numbers.
“How can you tie up that much money?” Sorkhe asked. “I guess they don’t have
a very good accounting system because they obviously can’t match the kids to the
checks coming in. It’s horrifying. It’s a disgrace. There’s no excuse for it.”
— Edited for space. DHHS pointed out that $560

million was only 4% of the total collected in the
year. Financial analysts point out that any other
financial intermediary showing that high an error
rate would be closed.
Question: What is the overnight interest on $560

million? If a company is doing collections, have they
incentive for delays? Is this monitored?
2) E-mail to syndicated Florida columnist Kathleen Parker, May 24,

2001. Name withheld.
Greetings Kathleen,
I now am a felon as described by the newest law signed by Jeb Bush. It is alleged that I did
not pay child support for my daughter for about 14 months. I have been fighting the system
for years trying to provide for my daughter while being branded a non-paying non-custodial
parent by the State of Florida's Department of Revenue.
I have paid each and every penny ordered by the court! I buy my daughter nearly everything
she has ever had in addition to the money I send for her support at her mothers! I take her
to nearly all of her medical appointments, she is afflicted with Dermatomyositis! Even though
my income has plummeted and I have been forced to borrow over $25,000. I dutifully paid
for my daughter's (and her mother's) support.
Conversely, her mother has lived solely off the money sent to support my daughter since she
was six months old ! She buys everything: rent, electric, food, clothing, phone, gas, auto
repairs, cigarettes, beer, everything; using only the money paid to help support my precious,

young daughter. She has never contributed in any way toward our daughters financial support
or her own!
How can it be, that I am now a felon? The problems began when the Depository where I was
ordered to pay my child support decided to hold my daughters money for months at a time.
This created a very difficult hardship for my daughter (and her mother because child support
is their only income). I also had to pay for the privilege of sending in the money to the
depository.
To ensure that my daughter received the money I was sending and allow me to spend the
depository fee on my daughter directly; the mother and me wrote a "stipulation and
agreement". The agreement simply stated the above mentioned problems with the child
support system, I was going to send the child support directly to the mother and the
Department of Revenue was dismissed from the case. Knowing that such an agreement
needed to become part of the court record it was submitted to Judge Maynard Swanson to
become an official order of the court.
About 14 months later the Department of Revenue petitioned a hearings officer to have the
stipulation and agreement "set aside". I do not know what interest the State of Florida and the
Department of Revenue have in my daughters child support or why it must be paid only to the
State. Is there another agenda here?
I am still not sure why the State is involved with my divorce case. I was never married to the
State of Florida, the Department of Revenue, or any other of the individuals and entities
named in the various legal fillings. Yet these entities have taken charge of the divorce case
causing damage to me and my daughter that will never be healed. I guess that the State has
superior rights when it comes to divorce issues. What good has become of the actions being
brought by the state? Is my daughter any better off? No! Am I better off? No! Is the mother
any better off? No!
Is the State better off? Yes, of course it is! The money is now sent to the Department of
Revenue in Tallahassee. The lawyer for the state and all of the others who have involved
themselves are paid quite handsomely for pursuing a "dead beat like" me! They can even
chalk up a new felon to go into the ever expanding debtors prisons we are building here!
By "setting aside" the court order I dutifully followed, paying for my daughters support, an
instant arrearage was created. Being over a year in duration and over $5000.00, I am now,
by the new law, a felon!
I gave the court copies of all records proving I paid every cent to the mother for those 14
months. The mother has testified that I have paid in full. She has even gone as far as to hire
all these people. It's all been on file for over 2 years. I have written to "governor Jeb" hoping
that he would help get this mess straightened out, no action. I've contacted my elected

"representatives" for help, they say let the courts decide. I went to the district and even in
appellate court trying to ask why the State of Florida is prosecuting me! I've paid in full! I've
provided them all documentation proving the payment without a doubt! The State and the
prosecuting entities offered no good answer!
I guess now I have my answer! I am to be convicted as a felon and thrown into prison until
I can pay the state of Florida, again, the money I sent directly to my daughters mother. Plus
the court costs, attorneys fees and other fees to be assessed by these entities for bringing
the actions against me.
I wonder, if I was somehow able to raise the money to get out of prison what the state would
do with the additional money I allegedly owe in child support. Give it to my daughters mother?
She'd have quite a chunk of change. Probably enough to move far away from the felonious,
dead beat dad who was actually a beat dead father who did his absolute best in every way
to provide for his daughter.
Will this help my daughter and me have a better relationship? No! Will it stop the
embezzlement of funds from a child? No! Can I ever pay for all of the senseless prosecution
against me? No! For just what purpose am I now a felon?
Awaiting charges,
N.H.
3)
This Women on Other Side of Battle for Child Support
By Allen G. Breed - The Associated Press. January 28, 2002.

RED HOUSE, W. Va.-The state's $20 million computer program said Danny
Woodall owed $6,000 in back child support. Lisa Woodall's home-made software
proved that the state actually owed her husband money. She watched helplessly
through seven years and six lawyers as her husband was repeatedly hauled into court
as a “deadbeat dad.” She knew he was making payments to his ex because, as a
second wife, it was affecting her and her two children. “There were times when we
couldn't even put food on the table,” she says. “Thank God for my parents.”
Finally, Mrs. Woodall, a former bookkeeper, went on the offensive.
The software she developed debunked OSCAR, the state’s Online Support
Collections and Receipts system. It was so successful in her husband’s case that their

lawyer suggested she become an expert witness in other cases. Last year she started
a company called Support Scrutiny.
Child support collections are an enormous undertaking in the United States. . .
As with anything that size, there are bound to be errors.
But noncustodial parents complain the problem is not just honest mistakes by
agencies. It’s an attitude.
“Their philosophy is garnish first and ask questions later,” says Dr. Ned
Holstein, a Boston physician and president of the nonprofit advocacy group Fathers
and Families. “They are provided with powers that go way, way beyond anything
that a normal bill collection agency would have the power to do.
“The problem is that their records are routinely incorrect.”
...
How far off can the data get? The Los Angeles Times reported recently that 502
California men pursued by collectors took blood tests to prove they were not the
dads, let alone alleged deadbeats. One man had faced a $206,000 bill.
Dianna Thompson, whose e-mail address identifies her as “A2ndwife,” is
membership director for the American Coalition for Fathers and Children in Lake
Forest, Calif. She says lawyers sometimes advise clients facing such bills, “You
might as well pay the interest. You may not owe that money, but how much is it
going to cost you to prove that you don’t when the agencies themselves won’t sit
down and discuss that with you?”
...
Last June, a legislative audit found that almost one-third of the West Virginia
Child Support Enforcement Division’s files contained incorrect data. Those errors
led the agency to wrongly collect about $1.7 million form 3,788 parents during the
1995-96 fiscal year, the auditors say.
...
In one [case], the state said a coal miner client of lawyer Shawn Bayless owed
nearly $70,000 in back support. Mrs. Woodall figures the state owes him $3,000.
...
— Edited for space.
4)
Child Support Checks Fumbled
By Mike Rutledge, Cincinnati Post staff reporter, December 19, 2000.

The state’s takeover of the child-support system has resulted in many parents not
getting monthly checks and others who have paid their checks being reported as
delinquent, Hamilton County officials say.
...

Among the errors described in the memo:
Child support payments have been sent to the wrong accounts – while others
received no money – when employers send in a check for more than one employee
without listing the employees’ account numbers.
Some have been falsely reported to credit bureaus, the Internal Revenue
Service and Ohio Department of Taxation for being late in making child-support
payments when they were not late, apparently because of wrong Social Security
numbers.
In some cases, the only reason some people were considered late was because
the state had been slow in processing their checks, county officials said. ''We’re not
aware of any of the credit reports being incorrectly submitted,'' [state Family
Services spokesman Jon] Allen said. “If Hamilton County’s got specific instances
where they believe that happened, certainly we would want the county to share that
information with us, and we would investigate, to see what's going on.”
“Notices are sent by (the state’s computer) for no logical reason on cases that
are not in default, do not have outstanding arrears, and may even be overpaid,”
according to a county memo.
Customers can't call Columbus and speak to a human. Instead, they are
supposed to speak to county employees, who say they are powerless to fix many
problems.
“The consumer is constantly asking whom can they call in Columbus,” the
county memo states. “When we explain that there is no number for them to call they
become outraged.”
[County Human Services Director Don] Thomas said officials are so frustrated
with the state’s new system that they have started suggesting people contact their
local lawmakers or the governor’s office to complain.
...
Checking accounts have been improperly credited twice for the same payment.
When officials corrected the problem, without telling the recipients, checks have
bounced, and embarrassed recipients were hit with late charges. Some custodial
parents’ employers have received termination notices from the state, falsely leaving
the custodial parent to believe the child-support case was canceled.
“A lot of our client-service people are threatening to quit because the calls are
becoming unbearable,” Thomas said.
...

The New Child Support Awards
“If fathers knew the foundation for their monthly

child support payments there’d be rebellion. It’s
absolutely absurd.”
— John Guidubaldi, Prof. of Educational
Psychology, Kent State University, opening a
report on the findings from his 2000 Ohio
state-sponsored study of child support
collection practices, delivered to the Children’s
Rights Council convention, May 2001,
Washington, D.C.
Introduction
According to the 1999 “Expenditures on Children by Families,” published by

the Family Economics Research Group, US Department of Agriculture, the
money actually spent to raise one child by households with a total annual
income of $12,000 per year to $90,000 per year ranges from $462 a month
to $995. Most studies find that the national norm of what a household
spends to raise one child is
around $600 a month. Child Available online: The USDA tables are
embedded in “Child Cost Economics and
tax benefits are typically around Litigation Issues”
$200 per month, reducing the http://harbpress.com/files/CostShares.pdf
cost of raising one child to
$400 a month. You would expect child support awards to be about half that:
$200 to $300 a month.
Instead, the norm is $600 to $1,300 for one child. NCPs are being asked
to pay all costs, and a great deal more. Mothers pay nothing.
There being statewide guidelines is not the problem. What was chosen for
them, is. While there were a couple of famous studies during the 1980s about
post-divorce relative household incomes (discussed under “Analysis”), no
such comprehensive ones have been done since the new guidelines were
imposed. But we can see what’s going on.

The Formulas
Before 1989, judges set support orders based upon a state’s or county’s
established costs of children, and evidence was considered on what was
actually spent. In October, 1989, all states were required to replace this
with numeric guidelines to set presumptive (standard, predictable, default)
child support awards. The two models suddenly pressed into use started
from a macro-economic perspective based on false premises, or premises
invalid for the micro level. That is, their approach was like trying to use
Einstein relativity theory to calculate a trip down the street. Large changes
in scale produce different universes, governed by different laws, for which
they did not account. The designer of the one most commonly used is not
even an economist.
The premise of the most popular one – the Income Shares model
(adopted by 33 states and territories) – is that a child should enjoy the
same theoretical “share” of each parent’s income as he would had the
marriage remained intact. Two immediate problems:
1) Nice for divorces, but in 2000, one-third of births were out of

wedlock. There is no marriage nor original household for
comparison.
2) Even assuming an initial marriage, the same total income cannot
sustain two households at the same level as the previous single
household. So this presumption creates a phantom income
suddenly required by one of the parents. The decision to divorce
is similar to the choice a couple makes to have a baby. When a
baby arrives, their income does not magically increase, so they are
implicitly accepting a reduced standard of living to have children.
Direct comparison to a pre-baby standard of living is invalid.
(Economists call this Utility Cost. It is the cost of the personal
pleasure.) By the same token, when a couple chooses to divorce, it
is not reasonable to expect either to live at the same standard of
living they enjoyed before. Direct comparison to a pre-divorce
standard is invalid. There is a utility cost to divorce.

Both flaws are also in the Wisconsin model, and part of the reason neither
reflects reality.
The Income Shares Model was developed by Robert Williams while he
worked under contract for OCSE, but is vended by his company, Policy
Studies Inc. It is the only commercially available guideline. Buying
something means the states got it from an expert, and in this case its
author worked on the federal guidelines committee. The state can feel least
likely to be called non-compliant, and they didn’t have much time to do
it.
Instead of using actual child costs, it derives an assumed total cost by
measuring the difference in spending by households with and without
children on only three sets of items:
C Tobacco
C Alcohol
C Adult clothing
It presumes that, however much household spending in these three areas

decreases in an average household when they have a child, that money is
spent on child-care. Except that five other things accelerate the decline in
this type of spending that have nothing to do with child-care costs:
a) That voluntary reduction in standard of living that we noted above

which a couple assumes so as to have children.
b) Personal and social pressures on adults to reduce such self-
indulgences in any event, children or not.
c) Parents will stop smoking or drinking to be a better example to their
children, not because they must reduce such spending to pay for
diapers.
d) Changing adult tastes.
e) Reduced spending on such items as they age, to create savings for
retirement and to accommodate a wider range of future unknowns.
Comparing pre-child household spending to post-child household spending

on tobacco, alcohol, and adult clothing is simply no way to determine
child-care costs, and no economist (which Robert Williams is not) would

try. Family economics is a branch of economics, and none of the formulas
used ever consulted one.
The second model – used by 17 states – is called the Wisconsin or
percentage of obligor income formula. Its origin is reported in the
Wisconsin regulations:
The percentage standard established in this chapter is based on

an analysis of national studies, including a study done by
Jacques Van der Gaag as part of the Child Support Project of
the Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin,
Madison, entitled “On Measuring the Cost of Children.”
But the early papers on the foundations for Van der Gaag’s study make it
clear that this was never intended for anything but welfare situations. They
also assume a maximum amount of child support, that both parent’s
income be considered, and to exempt some income for self-support. Little
consideration of even these qualifiers are in its implementation, and it is
applied to all income levels, where its authors explicitly say it does not
belong.
This formula is easier to apply because it ignores the CP’s income
altogether, and arbitrarily sets child support at a percentage of the NCP’s
gross income:
1 child 17%
2 children 25%
3 children 29%
4 children 31%
5 or more 34%
The effect is not simply that awards increase in lock-step with income.
(You pay 17% of your income when your income is $9,000 or $100,000.)
It is that awards increase even more as a percentage of after-tax income as
income rises. That is, as you make more money, it assumes you still spend
the same percentage of your after-tax income on your children.
In over 150 years of economic modeling of families, this has never been
seen. There have been hundreds of studies of family costs, all showing that

the amount a family spends on their children rises in proportion to income
only to a limited point, and then levels off. It diminishes as a percentage
of after-tax income. (Are you going to buy your two-year-old a Porsche?
Not even if you are earning $300,000 a year.) How much can any couple
spend on a two-year-old or 11-year-old?
This is what I mean about approaching child support as a macro-
economic problem, rather than the micro-economic issue it is. Neither
model has ever been tested against reality for whether they accomplish in
practice what their theoretical bases postulate.
Observation: If it is desired that a child has the same

“income available for its care” as though it still had both
parents, why not allow it both parents? Why was it
decided to siphon all of one’s income off to the other?
The very assertion of this as an objective for child support
reveals an explicit divorce strategy of parental elimination,
except for money. It would suggest, instead of interest in
the child, use of the child for greed.
Both models:
< Were only developed for low-income families.
< Assume no contact with the children by the NCP.
< Ignore the effects of two households.
< Ignore child tax credits.
< Ignore the effects of taxes caused by child support payments.
< Ignore the age of the children. (An infant is much less expensive
than a teenager.)
< Omits other welfare available only to women, like WIC. (As cited
above, welfare comprises 30% of poor women’s budget and 17% of
men’s.)
< Do not account for previous child support awards. (Each case is
treated as the only case of the man’s children.)
< Do not account for additional children. (A new family.)
< Do not allow for savings.
< The costs are non-rebuttable. That is, since the cost assumptions
are theoretical, one can hardly argue the degree to which your

particular situation diverges from the costs assumed. No costs are
directly or explicitly assumed.
For a thorough description
of both models, see the Available online: “Child Cost Economics
and Litigation Issues”
r e p o r t , “ C h i l d Cost
http://harbpress.com/files/CostShares.pdf
Economics and Litigation
Issues: An Introduction to
Applying Cost Shares Child Support Guidelines,” by former federal
reserve economist R. Mark Rogers, and Donald J. Bieniewicz. The
authors also offer an alternative formula based on the real costs of raising
a child.
We will only examine the impact of taxes and NCP contact.
Rebuttable
The last point in the list of flaws calls the formulas non-rebuttable,
which is correct. The actual costs of care are hidden in assumptions
about spending, making them unassailable. But it should be
understood that the 1988 federal mandate for written guidelines
requires that whatever turns out to be the guideline-based amount (the
“presumptive” amount) be rebuttable to allow for exceptions. This is its
own interesting story.
That requirement has only meant a list of issues a judge may (not
must) consider to reduce or increase the actual support award from the
presumptive amount. Typically, this includes taxes, distance, imputing
income and other things. But doing this would require the judge to
write his reasons for the divergence in his judgement, in unspecified
detail. No one has said what is required to allow each variance, or how
much variance for what reason.
John Guidubaldi of Kent State University was asked by the state of
Ohio to study and report on the actual implementation of their
guidelines in 2000. One of his findings was that judges only vary less
than 2% of all orders. They don’t touch the presumptive amount
without compelling reason, even though they have been expected to.
On the other hand, variance by imputing income to the NCP (you are
out of work, but we’ll assume you are making what you normally do,
all the time) is common.
The law allows legislators to say, “We accounted for that,” without
the practice of actually doing so. This is really the story of moving from
a system of local laws and judicial precedence to one of regulation.

Effect of Taxes
“The authors find that a low-income noncustodial parent

must have earnings 50 to 100 percent higher than the
custodial parent in order to pay child support and taxes
and enjoy the same standard of living as the custodial
family.”
— Laura Wheaton and Elaine Sorensen,
“Noncustodial Parents, Child Support, and the
Earned Income Tax Credit,” The Urban Institute,
November 28, 1997.
Most states allow judges to

factor taxes into the final Available online: “Noncustodial Parents,
Child Support, and the Earned Income
child support award, but since Tax Credit”
it is not part of the base http://harbpress.com/files/TaxCredit.pdf
formula, almost none do. (See
sidebar, “Rebuttable,” page
70.) Cynthia Ewing is a CPA and lawyer, a member of the firm Tomlin,
Temple, & Ewing of Virginia Beach, VA, and has served on the Virginia
Child Support Review Panels since 1994. In her paper, “The Relevance of
Tax Benefits in Child Support Calculations,” published in the Virginia Law
Association’s newsletter in 2001, she chides the system for this, offering
this example of the impact on the working poor.
Two children, each parent earning $6.50 per hour, $120 per week in
child costs, no child contact by the NCP, Virginia (using the Income Shared
Model). For the year, the figures are:

CP NCP
Gross Income: 13,520 13,520
Payroll Taxes -1,034 -1,034
State Income Taxes 0 -356
Federal Income Taxes 3,712 -949
After Tax Income: 16,198 11,181
Child Support 6,520 -6,520
Child-Care Expenses -6,240 0
Net Income: 16,478 4,661
% of Poverty Level: 113% 54%
Table 9: Effect of Taxes - Low Income
The effect of both child support and tax benefits pushes the monthly
income of the CP up from $1,127 gross per month, to $1,373 net or actual
income per month. But the same forces reduce the NCP’s monthly income
from the same $1,127 gross to a $388 actual (net), 46% below the poverty
line. How does this guy pay rent? Any assistance for housing is available
to mothers, not single men. (Eighty percent of the homeless are men.)
Comment: NCPs are often denied visitation by the courts

when they cannot provide reasonable living / visiting
quarters. One cannot help but consider the billboard
campaigns to encourage fathers to stay in their children’s
lives.
When the income shares model is applied to this family, he pays all child
costs out of after-tax income, she pays none of the actual child-care costs
and child support is tax free. This is a violation of equal protection. Equal
treatment by the law would exist if he pays his share of her costs when the
child is with her, and she pays her share of his when the child is with him.
It seems to avoid this by assuming no costs for him (no contact), thus
becoming self-fulfilling.
The benefit to a CP of just the child tax credits is commonly $200 to
$300 a month in additional after-tax income, rarely used to reduce support
payments.

This effect is not limited to the poor. A mother in California earning
$35,000 a year living with two children 75% of the time would get
$15,000 from an ex-husband earning $75,000. After taxes, she would net
$44,000. The father is left with a net income of $34,000, out of which he
must pay the costs of 25% of the children’s time.
Washington D.C. lawyer Ronald Henry gives a second middle-class
example: Maryland, two children. [Reported in Family Law Quarterly, Vol.
33, No. 1, 1999.]
CP NCP
Gross Income: 30,000 40,000

Payroll Taxes -2295 -3,080
State Income Taxes -1,055 -1,825
Federal Income Taxes -1,519 -5,952
After Tax Income: 25,131 29,143
Child Support 8,064 -8,064
Net Income: 33,195 21,079
Table 10: Effect of Taxes - Middle Income
Even if he only has the children for 25% of the time and therefore must
run a household for them as much as does the CP, he faces most of the
same costs as she, but on an income now one-third less than hers, even
though he earns more. If he must pay all travel costs (pick up and leave off
the children), his child-care costs may be equal to or greater than hers, and
if charged with any of the allowed add-ons (health insurance, special
education, and daycare, which may be added on top of a presumptive
award and commonly assigned to the NCP), he pays far more.

Incentives for Divorce
It was not necessary to provide economic incentive for divorce, as a

more powerful one already existed.
Professors Margaret F. Brinig and Douglas Allen wanted to know why
women initiate about 2½ times more divorces than men. Men file for
only about 25% of all divorces, 10% to 12% are mutual, and the rest
all filed by women, which has been consistently the case in the U.S.,
Germany, Australia, the U.K. and the rest of the industrialized world for
the last several decades. (In Australia, 75% are initiated by women
when there are children.)
They studied all the divorces that were filed in 1995 in four randomly
chosen states: 46,000 divorces. Violence was the reason in only 6%,
and there was no significant gender difference. Adultery was cited
against husbands only slightly more frequently than against wives, and
fewer than 20% of divorces were because of an imbalance (one felt
they were contributing much more to the relationship than the other:
an “exploitive” relationship).
“The question of custody absolutely swamps all the other variables,”
says Dr. Brinig in an interview with the New York Times. [July 11,
2000.] “Children are the most important asset in the marriage, and the
partner who expects to get sole custody is by far the most likely to file
for divorce.” Unlike men, women are confident of getting the children
and greater control over them, so are more willing to break up.
“Custody is a way for women to achieve a real show of force over men,”
she concludes.
While Dr. Brinig, a professor of law at the University of Iowa, began
the study believing that making divorce harder to get would reduce its
rate, she now believes, “If you remove that distortion [sole custody],
it’s apt to change the way men and women relate to each other and
their kids. Fathers are more likely to spend more time with kids if they
can expect to still see them if the marriage doesn’t work out. Women
will be more likely to see men as parenting partners, and less likely to
use divorce as a power play.”
[Brinig & Allen, “These Boots Are Made for Walking,”
American Journal of Law and Economics, August 2000.]
Available online: “These Boots Are Made for

Walking”
http://harbpress.com/files/TheseBoots.pdf

Her theory that joint custody would reduce the divorce rate is born
out by another recent study. In 1997, Richard Kuhn and John
Guidubaldi compared the divorce rates of states having a high and
low incidence of joint custody. In states like Wisconsin, where over
30% of divorces are settled with joint custody (high for the US), the
divorce rate is falling at twice the rate of states with only medium
levels of joint custody, and at over four times the rate of states like
Virginia where joint custody is used in less than 10% of divorces.
[Kuhn & Guidubaldi, “Child Custody Policies and
Divorce Rates in the US,” presented at the 11th Annual
Conference of the Children’s Rights Council, October
23-26, 1997, Washington D.C.]
Available online: “Child Custody Policies and Divorce Rates in

the US” http://harbpress.com/files/Custody_DivorceRates.pdf

Cost of Contact
Dr. Paul Henman and Kyle Mitchell performed what seems to be the only
study done on the costs
incurred by a parent in
Available online: “Estimating the Costs of
simply spending time with Contact for Non-resident Parents.”
his child whose primary http://harbpress.com/files/CostofContact.pdf
residence is another
household. They assumed
only 20% of the child’s time with the NCP. The results were published in
the Journal of Social Policy, Cambridge University Press, 2001,
“Estimating the Costs of Contact for Non-resident Parents: A Budget
Standards Approach.”
Costs of contact are found to be high. Where contact is

with one child for 20 per cent of the year, the cost of
this contact represents about 40 per cent of the total
yearly costs of raising that same child in an intact couple
household with a medium income, and more than half
of the total yearly costs of that child in a household with
a low income. Household infrastructure and
transportation are the reasons for high costs
The reason for the high cost is the two households, as pointed to earlier.
One may assume that increased time will not increase the amount of cost
at the same rate. That is, the majority of the costs have already been
incurred simply to spend 20% of the time with the child, likely just for
10% or less. There will be only arithmetic incremental cost for more time,
so any contact can be considered to be 40% to 50% of the costs of raising
a child in an intact household. From there, costs would increase
arithmetically to 100% for 100% of the time.
This seems reasonable: both parents are equally carrying child-care costs.
They are equally single parents.
Let’s not miss the significance of what was just said.

If the child is to spend just 20% (or less) of his or her time with each
parent, both are equally single parents. They are bearing all the same costs,
so might both be considered equally entitled to all the same support,
services, benefits and consideration.
The only reason we do not see it this way is the blinders we put on called
“sole custody,” which says a child can only possibly ever have one parent,
anyone else is a visitor, not a care-giver. We impose this paradigm, and
then cannot understand why fathers cannot remain part of their children’s
lives.
E-mail received by the author, November 31, 2000

Call me Mr. Dead beat!
I received notice last night that I am in arrears on my child support payment!
It very clearly outlined all the things that they can do to me for being so bad!
Never mind that they take the money directly from my paycheck and my paycheck
reflects that. It would seem that if they are missing money they should go after
my employer for taking it from my check, but not giving it to them. I have the kids
50 % of the time and their mother only works part time, since she lives off from
my child support payments. At the same time she tells the kids that she has no
money and does not buy things for them.
They assigned my wages without a hearing for being in arrears on the same
day that the orders for child support were signed. However once wages were
assigned, they gave me a refund because I was ahead on the payments. It seems
that they just like screwing around with me. I am told that people who rape, do so
for control – but I think these people enjoy it as well. Life in Jefferson County,
Colorado in these United States!
Wayne Stillman, Dead Beat Dad!

(Not from being deadbeat, but from being beaten until I am dead)
E-mail received by the author, November 11, 2001, from a member of the
State of Ohio Shareholders Group to Reform Child Support. (Names
changed.)
Thank you so much for taking the time to answer and for the great information.
...
I would like to tell you one story I have been confronted with, and believe me it
is not the exception this type of thing happens everyday. Murray and Joyce had
been married for 13 years, she is a Doctor who makes in excess of $400,000 a

year. After they had 2 children they decided that Joyce would be the breadwinner
for the family and Murray would stay home and take care of the children, a
househusband. Murray had not worked outside the home for 10 years. Joyce has
a great career and great family life never having to worry about her children being
well taken care of.
It kinda came out of the blue when Joyce told Murray she had found someone
else and wanted a divorce, the someone else was also a Doctor. Joyce was given
custody of the 2 children, Murray is ordered to pay child support.
Does anyone care about how much the 2 children are suffering because their
Father is missing when they are used to him being with them and available to them
24 - 7? The answer is no, all the system cares about is the money. Where is
Murray now? He ran. He of course was in arrears, mostly because the support
order was back dated 6 months so he was behind before he got started. He could
not take the threat of jail and starving with no end in sight.
I do not think divorce should be for profit and that one spouse should benefit
more financially from a divorce than they did from a marriage. I know this is a
tough road but it is well worth it. We need to give the children back their parents.
...
Take care and Happy Thanksgiving!
Janet Darst
The State of Ohio Shareholders Group to Reform Child Support

PART II
ANALYSIS
Introduction
How did we become a society in which fathers are beaten to death in jail
cells when they committed no crime, where more money is spent to collect
from the poor than collected from them, where all fathers are persecuted
for the imagined sins of the few with no knowledge of who is not paying
what child support and why? A society in which our efforts to care for
mothers and children have a negative effect, yet everyone believes them
both warranted and effective despite all evidence to the contrary? In which
the unfounded claims of government news releases are uncritically reported
as fact, and where fathers pay all the costs of someone else raising their
children while not allowed to see or know anything about them, and they
may not even be his?
Why does everyone not only think this is good and just, but urge more?
It could only have happened if many, seemingly unrelated forces,
converged. There is much to unravel.
We start with the 1980s, but then look beneath even that. Finally,
possible solutions are not proposed, as though an easy formula, but
directions hinted.

The 1980s Watersheds
Introduction
Four things happened during the ’80s:
< The move toward welfare reform began.
< Alimony was eliminated.
< Lenore Weitzman’s book, The Divorce Revolution was published.
< Feminism became mainstream.
Each had their impact on what happened politically with child support.

Welfare Reform
While welfare reform culminated with The Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, signed by Bill Clinton in 1996, it
began in the 1980s. But the forces that drove it go back further still. This
section could as easily be titled, “Poverty-Denial in America.”
The first vestiges of welfare in the United States (transfer payments from
the rich to the poor – ones performed officially, not by Robin Hood,
though the rich don’t see any difference) were enacted during the Great
Depression, as was the case in most Euro-based countries. Powerful forces
resisted it. It undermined Darwin and survival of the fittest, the religion
of capitalism: Only the rich should survive, those unable to cope in the
hostile world are meant to perish. Besides, it was transferring the privilege
of those who had it (by whatever means) to those who did not, so some
excuse against it can be expected. People feel entitled to whatever they
have, even if handed them by chance, and feel threatened by any who
don’t have but want it, even when willing to earn it. Welfare today in all
countries is still just enough to assuage consciences, not empower.
America resisted the most and still spends one-tenth of what most
industrial countries do on social services, yet most resents even that.
During the 1930s, the only way any relief act could pass was to make it for
children. That always works, and still is often the only thing that does.
Politicians are loath to see their caricature eating babies in the paper as
electoral democracy does provide some impact.
I will call this extra resistance in the United States, The American-Way-
is-Perfect-So-There-Is-No-Poverty Syndrome. It dates from the 1800s and
says that, since America was free from the feudal baggage of Europe, all
men are equally free to make a living, opportunity for which is infinite.
That had to be the case for America to be special (superior), even give
substance to its existence. Throughout the 1800s and in the early 1900s,
Americans were sharply conscious of being different from their European
fellows – less privileged, less rich, and with less history – so that had to be
made into being better. America needed pride, and they found it in what

was different about them: less historical class system and, given the
boundless frontiers, infinite opportunity. As does anything that makes one
superior it became a religion and came to define America itself: the reason
it existed.
The only reason for not making a living is laziness, not to be rewarded:
the Puritan ethic. The American Dream (the American Difference) is that
you only need to work hard and you, too, will be a millionaire. One result
is six decades of the “man in the house” rule predicated on the conviction
that any able-bodied man is fully capable of earning whatever is needed to
support any sized family.
The American Dream was almost true once, but was killed by trusts and
giant corporations in the late 1800s. They control both their supplies on
the one hand, and their markets on the other. Nothing makes its death
more obvious than today’s popularity of lotteries, even their necessity.
Winning one is now the only way anyone can lift themselves from a
normal existence, normalcy never tolerable to Europeans. Its death is yet
to be recognized in social policies since that would mean confessing to it,
so to get any consideration for anyone you still have to use children.
There is no poverty in America, only “bad people,” the undeserving.
They are poor because they either deserve it (God said so) or are lazy.
We’ll find an excuse to blame them for their lot.
Yet the wealthiest nation on earth is also one of the poorest: 25% of
American children live in poverty, poverty only reported in children. If
anyone pointed out that this might mean that a quarter of Americans are
poor, it would be a shame America could never live down, proving the
falsehood of much that is American. It cannot and must not be true. The
American System cannot, by its very nature, produce poverty, for it is
special, lacking all those European blockages (like finite resources), so
perfect on its own. There cannot be a systemic problem, only a problem
with people. If this is not so, something is wrong with the very reason
America exists. You may as well call apple pie, carcinogenic.
The sad truth is the opposite.
When we study the Middle Ages, we gauge when the economy is in
recession or expansion by examining marriage records. When times are
good, the average age of matrimony for both men and women rises as it

takes a couple longer to acquire the resources for a home of their own. A
falling average age of marriage indicates recession. It doesn’t take much to
be as poorly off as your parents.
As the affluence of a society increases, an increasing percentage of its
members can be expected to never attain the resources for independent
life, simply because of the variety to the human species verses the
specialization of a society.
In the wealthiest country on earth, the resources needed for
independence – including mental and emotional ones – are the highest ever
seen. In 2000, the average age of first marriage for women was 25.1, for
men, 26.8, the highest ever, anywhere. A much higher percentage of the
population can be expected to never attain and sustain an independent
home and life. The slightest learning disability or emotional disorder can
severely limit productivity and ability to support a family much less one’s
self. This compounds as we export blue-collar jobs and only value
professional ones.
Any society is presented with two choices: kill them, or care for them.
Ours has entertained both.
We have evidence that Neanderthal Man cared for the injured and old.
We find skeletons of men with half a limb missing but died well after the
loss. We find graves of people who were clearly crippled with arthritis but
had been kept as part of the community and buried with flowers and
ceremony. Clearly, even Neanderthal had its poor, but found worth in
their fellow beings other than just economic contribution. Neanderthal,
living directly off the land, were not driven by only material consideration
but also what we might call human ones, were we so human.
We are less willing. Their misfortune must be their fault so we seek
excuses and scapegoats.
There is legitimacy to welfare reform. It is not healthy for a society to
encourage nonproductivity. A subculture of dependence does exist in any
country, and reformers sincerely want to see capable members lifted out
and join them in the middle classes. But when it says all people are fully
capable and assistance can only be temporary, it is poverty-denial,
idealizing the American system as having no need of adjustment nor
tuning, not even room for traditional Christian charity.

When the pundits looked at those collecting welfare (or what passes for
it in the United States as it has never been available to men and childless
women — a strong incentive for less-blessed women to have babies which
is an option not open to men only due to convention, so who more
commonly turn to crime), they noticed a huge positive correlation between
fatherlessness and welfare.
What correlation did they expect? It escaped them they had created it.
They had chased men from the family to only pay welfare to fatherless
ones, but within days of his inauguration George W. Bush said, “The only
cause of poverty is fathers abandoning their families.”
The only cause.
He was saying what many had for a decade and Bill Clinton first
articulated: Fatherlessness causes poverty, not that poverty causes
fatherlessness. The enemy is men.
A scapegoat is always two things: abdication of our own responsibility;
a projection of our own evil. We invent a mythical monster – be it
werewolves,“greedy” Jews, “heathen” Indians, or divorced fathers – and use
them as excuse for our own inhumanity. We even create them where they
are not or would not otherwise be, just to satisfy this need.
It used to be racial. Popular mythology used to say that blacks were poor
because they were lazy and stupid, not that they were unmotivated and
uneducated because they were omitted from American schools, society,
and the American Dream for being black. Today, President Bush does not
say that poverty causes fatherlessness, men ashamed of not being able to
support their families nor allowed to be part of them. It would be
admitting that poverty is systemic and an inevitable consequence of the
great American economic system which much be flawless. It would say
poverty required systemic solutions and society should accept
responsibility. This is communist. So we found a new way to blame
poverty on the poor.
Americans today are fond of crying “individual responsibility,” and there
is merit to it. But it can also mask denial of collective social responsibility:
our responsibility to treat every member of our society with equal dignity
and respect, to not invade or violate nor use others as an excuse for our
own failings much less a target of our own brutality.

No one also blames fatherlessness on government policy or social
practices, which would be a similar admission of America’s own failure, a
failure of the American Way and its values. It’s “bad people,” all their
fault, not ours.
Child support transmuted into welfare, its lack, the cause of poverty so
made into its cure. On page 46 I said that federal child support
enforcement was established to solve “child support not being paid.” But
that is not true. It was only set up to end welfare, for the wealthy and
middle classes to avoid the 2% of their taxes5 used to care for the poor by
forcing poor men to pay it. So even when poverty is identified as a
problem we come up with remarkable solutions.
It is not always easy to avoid the Marxist view of child support
enforcement as just another oppression of the poor by the righteously well-
heeled. This is how communism was born. Charles Dickens, too, would
feel frighteningly at home in 2003 America.
5
The 2002 budget for ACF (Administration for Children and Families) was
$44.5 billion, 2% of the $2 trillion federal budget.

Alimony Eliminated
In the 1980s, with the help of feminism – or at least its embarrassed
silence – it became accepted that for women to be entitled to alimony
upon divorce, they had to show how the marriage had made them
incapable of providing for themselves. Women were free.6
6
It was officially killed by a Supreme Court ruling in Orr v. Orr 440 U.S.
268, 278 (S.Ct 1979) on an Alabama statute. But nobody (visibly) blinked.

Lenore Weitzman and The Divorce Revolution
The Story
In 1985, sociologist Lenore Weitzman published the results of a study
she’d done at Stanford University on post-divorce household incomes in
California. The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and Economic
Consequences for Women and Children in America. [New York: The Free
Press, 1985.] It claimed that, after divorce, the standard of living for
women and children dropped by 73%, that of men rose by 42%.
It was a bombshell. Men were making off like bandits from those
suddenly increasing divorces, leaving women and children helpless to starve
in the snow. The media couldn’t have asked for anything better and ran
with it. Legislatures and courts went into an uproar.
It has impacted legislation ever since, and those figures are now cited in
348 social science articles, 250 law review articles, 24 appeals courts cases,
and one US Supreme Court ruling, among other places.
There are just six or seven little things wrong. None of them were
verified for10 years but strongly suspected by most working in the same
area as numbers from similar studies were nothing near these levels. They
commonly showed a 25% decline for women and 10% increase for men,
but the methodology for such studies was still being developed and hotly
debated.
Weitzman refused to give her data to others, an extraordinary act in the
academic community. It was only after she left Stanford that fellow
sociologist Richard Peterson got hold of the original data. There is an
exchange of three articles between them in the American Sociological
Review of June, 1996 [Vol. 61, pp 528 - 536].
As many had suspected, the big numbers were due to a simple arithmetic
error. According to her own data, women’s standard of living in the first
year after divorce dropped to 73%, not by it. That is, their average
standard dropped by 27%, closer to other’s findings.
But even the data was deeply flawed. It was a sloppy study. Peterson
reports large gaps in the data and questionably bridging of those gaps, data

entry errors, as well as missing and questionably filled out worksheets.
(The corrected data also showed men’s average standard of living rising by
only 7%, not 42%.) And even with corrections were the usual
methodological issues of out-dated equivalency tables, no accounting for
taxes, and numerous other issues, none acknowledged in The Divorce
Revolution.
Weitzman acknowledges the error in the big numbers, but says they
were just two numbers in a large study, what’s the big deal? All other gaps
are probably things lost by others on her team, and she blames the
computer people for everything else. (Those who work in computers are
used to this.)
The public remains unaware of the later developments, even of other
studies. The mainstream of all countries still has imbedded in their psyche
that men are greatly advantaged by divorce and women, in dire need; that
men are free from care while all ex-wives are impoverished and struggle
bravely with children, all this another example of marriage, men, and
society exploiting women to the advantage of men. When anyone attempts
to show how men are hurt by divorce or any social policy, they are
dismissed. A whole new gender bias is entrenched.
When Sanford Braver of Arizona State University led the largest study
ever done on divorce in the late 1980s, including economists calculating
post-divorce changes in standards of living and using a methodology that
included the impact of taxes and other variables, they found that men’s
and women’s standards were unchanged one year after divorce. Another
study at about the same time, by Altee Stroup and Gene Pollock of the
College of Wooster in Ohio using a different methodology, found that for
the first year after divorce, professional women experienced an average
decline of 12%, that of unskilled women dropped by 30% – the average for
all women being a decline of 22% – and the living standard of men
declined by 10%. Since there are now two households on the same total
income, this is hardly a surprise. Neither study was sensational; few heard.
I am not aware of any surveys of post-divorce changes in standard of
living that have been done exclusively on post-1989 families (under the
new child support guidelines), but those observing this area are confident

they will show that women now do much better from divorce
economically, men, worse. We already saw that, above. In 1999, federal
reserve economist R. Mark Rogers showed with simple arithmetic that if
a CP is earning just 70% of an NCP’s $24,000 a year, the CP winds up with
a 25% higher standard of living, and that percentage-better-off increases
with either’s income.7 There were no imbalances or persecution of the
innocent before, but there is now.
What Matters
The numbers and what is accurate or not has little importance. What is of
interest and had the impact is the emotional response to Weitzman’s
book: outrage and panic. What exactly was this over and why? Because if
it was the numbers that were a sensation that would have long been
quelled by more accurate ones. Nobody cares about corrected numbers, so
something deeper was touched and is afoot.
I postulate that, with feminists insisting that “A woman needs a man like
a fish needs a bicycle,” calling gender-considerations like opening the door
for a woman, “patronizing,” the elimination of alimony, and the general
assertions of complete female independence from men (if not outright
spurning them as useless), Wietzman tapped into an increasingly urgent
fear of abandonment: that at the very least, not all women welcomed or
felt ready for this new genderless world with women entirely on their own.
This was a fear felt as much by protective men on their behalf as women,
and her book gave it a focal point. One might say she gave this fear
expression without having to acknowledge what it was, as it was
inconsistent with other assertions of the time.
I submit that, at the very least, most people felt they were being pushed
too quickly, too deeply into a too different a paradigm, so the image of
abandonment loomed larger for the majority than the minority pushing for
it would ever acknowledge. This would suggest that those feminists were
7
R. Mark Rogers, “Wisconsin-Style and Income Shares Child Support
Guidelines: Excessive Burdens and Flawed Economic Foundation,” Family Law
Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 1, Spring 1999.

few in number and not representative of how women felt. If this were
acknowledged, it would certainly be a contradiction to what, at the time,
was promoted as women’s fondest desires and all rationales for them.
On what basis do I make this outrageous assertion of a tapped fear of
abandonment from the physical support and care of men?
Assume the numbers were accurate. What could have been made of
them that was not?
If men’s income leaps by 42% after divorce, does that not show the
opportunity-cost of marriage for men? If they are so greedy, why would
they marry at all? Does it not say that marriage exploits men? That any
man makes a huge personal sacrifice to marry? So if a woman initiates a
divorce, surely the husband is entitled to sue her for the 42% of his income
(compounded over the number of years of marriage) that he sacrificed to
be married to her, only for her to abandon it?
This was not the reaction. No one suggested this. If you do not think
this way, start thinking about why, and tell me if you don’t hit upon your
own embedded gender stereotypes that contradict stated convictions.
Second, If men do so much better after divorce, and if children only
need a care-giver and enough money (as so many groups keep claiming),
why wasn’t it obvious that all children should be with their fathers after
divorce? Why create this whole silly system of child support paid to
women obviously incapable of caring for themselves?
No one raised this.
Third, If society was shocked by these numbers because they showed
how lean are the opportunities for women to earn their own living and be
that independent thing feminists were insisting upon, surely society’s
response would have been to immediately and vigorously improve job
opportunities and pay rates for women? That is, the burden would fall
upon society, not the guy she used to be married to, and it would not be
for more money but opportunity. Why would a woman’s post-divorce
standard of living be of any concern to someone to whom she is not
married, much less his responsibility?
While efforts toward more work opportunities for women were also
under way, they were driven by entirely different forces and certainly did
not become suddenly urgent from this. Jobs and pay for women was not

what was jumped upon as a result of these numbers. The emotional
response was over freewheeling, privileged men and helpless, abandoned
women and children. It was a 1920s silent film. Instead, the numbers were
taken to mean that men were bad, getting away with something, shirking
their responsibilities.
What responsibilities has a man toward a woman who was the one who
wanted the divorce? That is contradiction number two. It is the
assumption that a man’s financial obligation to a women should not end
merely because she ends her obligations to him.
If you are going to say that the reason this was a shock was abandoned
children, you just stepped into the most important contradiction and point
of all. As said above, if the concern was for the physical care of children,
the obvious response would have been to award custody to men, being the
ones more capable of that physical care.
“But that would be unfair to women.”
Ahhhh. You see? Think very carefully about that.
This has nothing to do with children. Child support is about women. It
is all about enshrining women as children’s caretaker, indeed, their sole
caretaker. This is about preserving the Victorian structure of family: only
women have children all to themselves, and men must pay.
One can hardly make the case that men are not as capable as care-givers
as women. Until 80 years ago, thousands of women died every year in
childbirth, often leaving previous children. With a divorce rate of 3%,
“single-parent home” was understood to mean headed by a man. (Recall
the TV show, Bonanza. Recall Thomas Jefferson, Sir John A. MacDonald,
and Davy Crockett.) Both men and women have always proved equally
capable of rising to the occasion of single-handedly raising their children
and running a household.
(In passing, we note that this could make vilification of fathers,
desirable. For women to keep children after divorce in the face of equal
participation in commerce and government, any myths about women as
“naturally” better care-givers, or men as unacceptable alternatives, assume
greater urgency. Men seen as nurturing could be a threat to many women’s
identity as a woman, and many men’s identity of men and women. It is

more convenient for there to be irresponsible men. The more fears and
vilification, the less chance of challenge to traditional female power.)
The feelings were about abandoned women and male cads: that women
should not be left without means, even in the face of a divorce they
initiated. It was about female physical dependence on men, that it must
continue, divorce only allowed for women, not for men’s obligation to
them. (The old, one night of sex in exchange for a lifetime of financial
security. And women say they’re exploited!) That was the moral reaction,
and possibly more men reacted more strongly this way than women, men
anxious for women to need their protection, especially from other men.
Men are very susceptible to seeing other men as a threat to women, which
can be exploited.
Weitzman’s false numbers evoked the sacrifice-men-and-save-women-
irrespective-of-right-or-wrong reflex in all society. This instinct meant our
survival while living in trees, but its validity in social policies in an
industrialized 21st century society might be questioned.
As noted above, this casts aspersion on those claiming an interest in
children when they call for higher – or any – child support. Child support
is so women can have and care for children without the inconvenience of
being married to the one paying for that care, nor even (using today’s
guidelines) have to contribute to it themselves. Men are for protecting
women from harsh economic realities, the return of the Victorian family,
the only difference that now, women owe men, nothing.
Notice what we discussed in the previous section: standard of living.
Child support was traditionally calculated in terms of needs and costs.
Traditional case law uses standard of living to calculate alimony. But
groups such as the National Partnership for Women and Families insist on
the use of post-divorce standard of living to validate child support
guidelines.
Simultaneous with welfare, child support mutated into alimony. They
used to be separate, so identifiable. With alimony gone, it must appear in
the one remaining vehicle of transfer payments for women to be saved by
men.
One of the ironies is how child support-as-alimony is hurting almost as
many women and children as it claims to protect. I don’t know how many

testimonials I have seen from second wives that begin, “I used to be a
feminist . . .” A woman who marries a previously married man can expect
her ability to have her own family sharply curtailed. Why is she not
equally entitled to children as the first wife? How did we decide that a
man’s first children are the only ones that matter, the ones for whom he
should be responsible and support disproportionately from the rest? How
did we keep ourselves blind to the overall effect on all children, unless it’s
not about children at all but about protecting first wives, effectively
insisting that marriage is forever? (For men, if not for women.)
Permanent financial dependence on men is contradiction number three.
One of the most interesting phenomenon is how feminism picked up on
the emotional power of poor helpless woman abandoned by selfish man,
and performed an about-face over female financial independence. The
National Organization for Women (NOW), self-appointed champion of all
female issues, rushed to their defense. Suddenly, fish need bicycles and
that bicycle must be forever, even to the point of accommodating her
desire to stop living with her benefactor but retain all benefit.
A striking, recent expression of the new female financial dependence is
the 2001 book, The Price of Motherhood: Why Motherhood Is the Most
Important – and Least Valued – Job in America, by Ann Crittenden.
Instead of separating home and family from pursuit of career and
economic wealth, and identifying trade-offs and free choices between
them, she defines motherhood (but not fatherhood) as a job. Although
parenting makes no direct contribution to the economy, she wants the
economy to directly pay mothers. Not fathers, only mothers. Not parents,
family and parenthood, only mothers and mothering. By definition, that
means paid for by men. If men do not pay for mothering, women are
exploited, not that doing this exploits men.
A supporter of services for parents and families would normally find
some of her points valid, though I cringe at any attempt to call parenting
a job and the commercialization of things human and personal. But the
sheer sexism of her thesis makes it a blatant cry for massive female
dependence on men. While feminists once called this slavery, NOW
prominently featured this book on their website calling it the next
generation of feminism.

Women are in the workforce only for their pleasure, men must be there
for women. Slavery for whom?
Alluding back to welfare reform, if it is unhealthy for a society to
encourage dependence by men, how is it health to encourage it by women?
But then, the target of welfare reform is women. Mostly women are on
welfare and the target is their self-sufficiency. So our policy is self-
sufficiency for women of the lower classes; Crittenden and NOW were
speaking to the middle and upper, who, it would seem, are not under the
same obligation.
Not that I would make a second Marxist allusion to oppression of the
poor. They deserve it. Nor would I suggest for one minute that feminism
is, by now, but a movement of spoiled, upper-middle class white women
as divorced from human and working reality as wealthy Republican men.
Explanations
There are two possible explanations for the fear that was tapped by The
Divorce Revolution, and all that followed, including the flip-flop by
feminism. Either women did not and do not yet feel ready for all that
independence (so it’s just a matter of time for them to get used to it to
pick up the slack, and, conversely, become less a financial burden on men),
or there is something very basic to us as humans that says that men deal
most in the material realm – like physical protection and material well
being – and women, let’s say possibly the emotional, social, and even moral
realm, and that both men and women sense this.
The latter is not politically correct. It is correct to pretend there are no
gender differences. Not simply no gender differences in capability, right to
choices, and opportunities, but no gender differences period, including
preferences. Equality is sameness.
In either event, we will more closely examine alimony – but without the
emotion or false figures – and then examine other elements of this
conundrum.

Alimony and At-Home Parents
My publisher runs several websites for his books, one for mine. The sites
all invite feedback, and this is one e-mailed reacting to some of the
material about equal consideration for fathers which he forwarded to me.
(Name withheld.)
But, there is already a large contingent of working parents. And men, by far, make
much more than women. Shouldn't we change this unfair aspect in society? And if
both mother AND father are working to pay child support...............who takes care of
the most important object that we all focus on????? Who takes care of the
child?????????? NOT the parents, they are too busy making money to pay daycare
workers, babysitters, nannies, etc........................................................... Why do we
need mothers and fathers anyway? Let's just get tax money and put all the children
in government-run homes.
The "system" seems focused on everything else but what is most important, the
child..........The CHILD should come first, not the daddy or mommy, the child...............
Your ideas of fairness and changing the system, though politically correct and
male-friendly, your ideas seem to focus on only the welfare of one "child", the
man..............
I would hope you will realize that this all comes down to one issue, our
CHILDREN...........Their needs and their welfare, not our issues of dominance and
resentment.
M.
Barely recovering from being called politically correct, this lady is actually
making a valid point. She is saying there should be alimony in child
support, unless no parent is ever to be committed to caring for the children
full time. If the universal standard we impose on everyone is that every
parent must work, why waste time with just daycare when we could have
state-run baby farms? Neither women nor men need be bothered with
child-care issues of any kind, but all commit themselves to being half
producers and half consumers, equal (all the same) in the eyes of the Lord
Corporation.
Well, that’s not really alimony or child support, but it is very true and
a real issue which is otherwise being ignored. To rephrase it: which of these
value systems should society impose upon all members?

< All mothers stay at home to raise the children.
< All fathers stay at home to raise the children.
< All fathers and mothers stay home to raise children, paid for by the
few remaining single men and women or those with adult children.
< All fathers and mothers must work to equally pay for their children’s
needs.
The last is imposed by elimination of alimony without a replacement for
strictly this. It requires there be no stay-at-home parent, but all children
raised by institutions, nannies, or mostly non-family members, the cost of
which alone forces both to work.
No wonder there was increased pressure on child support. Is this what
women meant to say: what about the stay-at-home mom? It probably
would have saved a lot of agony had anyone just said it.
We may be looking at yet another example of just going from one
extreme to another: from all women must stay at home, to no women may,
ever. If we attempt such an extreme move of opposites in less than one
generation, it would be reasonable to expect some fairly severe shockwaves.
It would be reasonable to expect a large contingent of women to insist they
still be taken care of by men (so someone can care for children without
having to work), and angry if they are not or may not be allowed to.
Maybe not just anger, but fear. It would be reasonable to find some of
those women considering themselves modern and liberated (wanting all the
good things of the new paradigm), but seeking ways to cling to old
securities.
Irrespective of the suddenness, if we go from all women must stay home
to none may, have we simply gone from one oppression to another? From
one irrational thing imposed on all to another?
Instead, perhaps our divorce laws could more openly recognize that there
is a choice to be made by a couple who have children upon divorce. One
to be made by the couple, not imposed by society. Such an assumptions
would produce four divorce scenarios that I will only note, leaving the
details to others:

C Both agree to work.
No problem here. Both equally contribute to the cost of daycare
this incurs, as both are equally benefitting from that service.
C Both agree that one parent should be at home, until what age, and
which parent it will be.
The amount of money transferred would be dependent upon the
supporting parent’s tolerance for it, which is a pretty fair
measure. This is largely self-regulating. (Which would not please
lawyers.)
C Both agree that one should be at home, but not who. (Also possibly,
until when.)
More to negotiate, but common ground. If there is no major
discrepancy between incomes (like one making twice what the
other does) and both incomes are at reasonable levels to support
this, income should not be a factor. Neither should historical
time with the children, as one may have sacrificed more home
time for a job than the other, for which divorce provides
opportunity to reverse. When most things are equal, they might
rotate who is the stay-at-home parent, or a coin toss may be fair.
The only thing to decide is which parent, the amount of transfer
payments would come out of that.
C Disagree as to whether there should be a stay-at-home parent.
If both have spent more than 20% of their time as parents in the
workforce, the option of a stay-at-home parent can be deemed
forfeited. If they couldn’t afford or didn’t choose to live on one
income until the divorce, no one should suddenly be forced into
providing that one income after it. This choice could also be
forfeited if or once the children are over a certain age such as
going to school or in grade 2, or upon entering highschool.
None of these display insurmountable problems. It introduces parental

transfer payments, not alimony or masking it as something else for misuse.
The only problem it leaves is the reduced choice available to the poor
because of their poverty when they may be more in need of options.
Bridging that would involve social programs and not denying poverty and
its effects.

It may have been better to have more honestly and openly expressed the
underlying issue of stay-at-home parenting than immerse ourselves in a
blind, unanalyzed hysteria and all the ancillary mythology it produced
about evil men.
Girl / Boy “Truth”

Another aspect to the play acted out over The Divorce Revolution is of
interest. Men are furious. They are furious that the numbers were so
wrong, the whole study so flawed, and everyone believed it. It was all based
on a falsehood and they see the misstatements of fact as the cause of
today’s oppressive, irrational child support. Yet Weitzman is cool to all
this, saying the facts and figures don’t matter, the reality is the same. (We
can only presume that reality to be that women were in fear for their
physical care.) Men can’t believe her immorality.
Are we seeing a male-female thing? Are we seeing men living in a more
physical, literal world – that male truth is in hard facts – and women in the
emotional realm – that female truth is emotional, facts and figures of little
meaning?
If so, perhaps both are equally needed for Truth (with a capital T).
Perhaps each needs the balance of the other. (This would also be a vision
of gender equality, but at the human level, not the commercial one.)
For the author’s part, I don’t think The Divorce Revolution with its
erroneous figures is the problem or any part of it. It was just the pin:
Something would have unleashed the underlying fears and conflicts in any
case. The only real problem is that those issues go unresolved to this day,
mostly thanks to nobody bothering to recognize or honestly express what
those issues are – including Weitzman who, however “right” in her
emotional truth was definitely deceitful in its telling – everyone too busy
generating and chasing hobgoblins, which might have also happened in any
case.
But for so long as we practice gender-denial – for so long as we try to
pretend that men and women are the same for our definition of equality;
for so long as we do not see and understand our own uniquenesses and
differences and love ourselves for them – each will fail to hear the other’s

voice. If we do not love ourselves for being either male or female, we can
hardly love and find worth in the other and the two truths will never meet
to become Truth.
Female Power
An important revelation from this story and all it uncovers is in its
outcome and the implications that has about gender and social power.
Men love the flattery of being told they have all the power. That women
know how to distract men with flattery is like discovering that water is
wet, yet it is surprising the number of men who have yet to drink. The
outcome from the child support flurry described above was all to the
advantage of women. Women still get the children after divorce, their
financial needs are met, and they are free to start another family. (They
even bring a dowry.)
All outcome was to the disadvantage of men: no children, no money,
and the ability to have another family, sharply impinged.
Men did this, not women. Or did they? Men have all the power, how
did they come off with nothing? Even today, legislatures are mostly male.
This may be a lesson in female power: how easy men are to control, and
how naive both men and women are about female power: its existence,
where it lies, and how it expresses itself in the actions of men.
If maleness and femaleness are, in fact, different, perhaps they play by
different rules in different arenas. If maleness has mostly to do with the
physical realm, including physical needs and protection, men may only be
able to see male power, and be naive about female power. Men may be
easier to manipulate than they are aware – as with suggestions of “helpless
women” to evoke their protectiveness – exactly because of what they
cannot see. They may be manipulated by what they cannot see because
they cannot see it, and most rely on their sight.
Conversely, if female strength and power lies in the equally human
nonphysical realm, however much it is less materially rewarded by
industrialization, they could only be convinced they have no power if they

adopt other’s values, not looked within themselves for their own. It is a
statement of materialism: only valuing the physical world.
But again, this would require we stop insisting there be no formal
recognition of gender differences or that differences should not find
expression in social structures, as though formal sameness were the formula
for equality.
More troublesome, this might also say that the problem with the
Victorian model of the family was not that there were gender roles, as
widely assumed, but only that those roles, like everything Victorian, were
rigid. That the problem was that no woman was allowed to earn a living as
freely as a man, and just as much, no man allowed to nurture his children
or show as much love as a woman, however much he felt it. How is it an
improvement if now, neither men nor women can nurture, but each be
equally an industrial cog?
That women appear to want both the ability to earn a living and have
children (and not necessarily children exclusively to themselves as few
women are as narrow as those promoted to prominence) is only a
contradiction if we still believe all people must be the same, and as long as
we deny the same choices for men, which we do.
What I am suggesting is that another thing we may have had wrong all
along is that it is not oppressive that there have always been male and
female stereotypes and gender roles, but the same thing that is plaguing us
today: intolerance of individual divergence from the social norm. We may
not have solved a thing but only re-created the same oppression of
conformity in a more contemporary form. This can only come from a lack
of honesty: from looking for reasons in others instead of ourselves; from
looking to blame others for social conditions, not within ourselves for truths.
In Where’s Daddy? I offer that:
1. Equality is equal significance to whatever is the next social level or two
from the individual: equal significance to the family, community,
group, country or whatever.
2. Equality, then, is only derived from our differences. That is, it is only
being different that gives each of us something unique to contribute,
to make us important to others. If they already had it, they wouldn’t

need me. I have to be different to be equally important as someone
else.
It is radical and not much loved as it implies that differences are good, not
something to suppress. Those who do not want equality seek sameness,
including that everyone think the same and see things the same way. That
is a tyranny seeking dominance.
One of the things that makes each person different is being male or
female, so it is also what makes each of us desperately important.
It is likely that the solution to any formal gender structure to society is
very simple: thank God women are now in the workforce to whatever extent
satisfies them, now men can return to the home to the extent that satisfies
them. While the first part has certainly been effected by a social change for
which feminism will forever claim credit whether warranted or not, the
second has not so formally occurred. As we see in the story of child support,
men are still officially required to sustain everyone’s material needs while
being largely hounded out of their children’s lives.
This is only at the formal level. The vast majority of today’s husbands and
wives are fortunate enough to avoid that level – like courts, social workers,
and welfare, all driven by uniform assumptions of what all people must be
like – and have largely managed to strike their own, equitable balance in their
personal lives: their own balance of equal total contribution to the family’s
financial and emotional needs without regard to social convention. Women
can be as commercially active as they like, and welcome rather than resist
their husband’s involvement with the children, knowing its value. With a
working wife, a man does not feel the same pressure to be away from his
family. God bless these people.
The problems do not lie at society’s informal level and never have. They
lie at its formal level, the level that attracts those seeking dominance,
therefore at odds with what is naturally human. The problem for individuals
comes when personal conflict forces issues to that formal level. One party will
find great advantage to themself, and great determent and injustice to the
other.
The contrast between informal and formal level is as true today as it was
in Victorian times or any other. We seem just as far from forming our social
context to our natures. I see little social progress.

Feminism Became Mainstream
Whatever validity may have initiated the post World War II wave of
“women’s movement,” when modern feminism became mainstream in the
1980s it brought along its baggage. Misandry (the pathological hatred of
men) may not have become mainstream, but did become socially
acceptable.
This is not to say there has not always been something very valid about
the women’s movement. That discussion is sectioned off as Appendix A:
“Feminism – Validity and Error.” Here, we limit ourselves to the aspects
that impacted child support.
In the early 1980s, Dworkin, MacKinnon, Steinem, and French, to
name a few, spewed their contempt of men and all things male. Catharine
MacKinnon said, “All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple,
is an act of violence perpetrated against a woman.” Ms Magazine editor
Robin Morgan said, “I feel that ‘man-hating’ is an honorable and viable
political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the
class that is oppressing them,” and Andrea Dworkin proclaimed that, “in
every realm of male expression and action, violence is experienced and
articulated as love and freedom,” and “I want to see a man beaten to a
bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the
mouth of a pig.”
Hatred and bigotry is justified because of what they intentionally
(conspiratorially) did to us. Startling new concept.
Man-hating was not the basis or cause of feminism, but accepted as a
justified result since feminist mythology declares intentional oppression.
It is not significant that there are women who hate men since there are
likely as many men who just as pathologically hate women. What is
significant is that it became generally accepted, that these were the voices
heard (reported) without constraint or contradiction. That alone displays
the extent to which men were themselves happy to go along with it, happy
to be condemned and have women take charge. Men have no better self-
image than women complain of having.

These women were called leaders and their opinion sought on all things.
Their books comprise what is officially called Women’s Study in colleges
and universities, and others call indoctrination. Marilyn French had
written, “All men are rapists and that's all they are,” and in 1999 was
appointed by Al Gore to his presidential campaign. Former Congressman
Barbara Jordan had already proclaimed, “I believe that women have a
capacity for understanding and compassion which man structurally does
not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He's just incapable
of it.” (Biology is destiny, for men.) Catherine Comin, an Assistant Dean
of Students at Vassar, even said, “Men who are unjustly accused of rape
can sometimes gain from the experience.”
Imagine if any of these things were said of women, even a hundred years
ago. Not as exceptional statements, but by leaders and generally accepted.
It is asserted they were said (when I’ve seen scant evidence) to make it
right and good to say them today. Imagine any of them said today of
blacks, jews, or Indians.
Bigotry has not been reduced. The fashionable target changes.
Judy Mann was a daily columnist for the Washington Post from 1978
to 2001. In addressing September 11 in one of her last articles she insisted
that terrorism was not only because maleness is a culture of violence, but
quotes Robin Morgan saying terrorism, “is the ultimate sexual idol of a
male-centered cultural tradition.” (It seems all men get hard-ons when they
see a building collapse.) One can only imagine that the same paper made
liberal use of the ‘N‘ word when it, too, was socially acceptable. The
Washington Post, forever proclaiming its liberalism, just rides the popular
wave.
In 2002, Gloria Steinem, addressing a YWCA luncheon in Florida,
blamed the church pedophile scandal, September 11, Adolf Hitler and
everything evil on men and maleness.
As previously noted, a scapegoat is two things: an abdication of one’s
own responsibilities, and a projection of one’s own evil. Somehow, all the
above forgot Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Albert Schweitzer,
Sir Thomas Moore and the United Nations. They speak as though Mozart,
Handel, Einstein, Newton, and da Vinci never existed. Mann and Steinem

even forgot the rescuers at the World Trade Center: maleness is only sex,
violence, and evil.8
Perhaps the evil they so readily see in others is their own. It’s called
projection.
However much misandry may not be quite mainstream, the net effect
of the constant whisper of men as bad or stupid or useless has been to rob
them of their voice. If there is unfairness or anti-male bias in anything,
complaints are dismissed. Men “made all the rules,” so can hardly
complain when they go against them.
One example is when my publisher e-mailed several parenting
magazines an offer of excerpts from my book, which presumes that having
a father is good for children and asks why that goes unprotected. (The
reasons go much deeper than the current spate of prejudices, the point of
the articles.) One editor wrote back, “I was expecting articles on the needs
of children, not bemoaning the plight of men.” She only saw bemoaning
men, what have they to do with children? He could only reply, “Thank
you for explaining the millions of fatherless children.” He is right. Her
attitude is a stark statement on a real social ill (large scale fatherlessness)
and how we ignore it. How dare anyone raise it.
None of this is without precedent and no one should blame feminists.
After the French and Russian revolutions, those who’d had valid complaint
proved themselves more oppressive and bloodthirsty than those they
replaced.
European Jews were supposed to own all banks and the media and
caused Germany’s defeat in World War I. You’ll still find those who
believe both Jewish privilege and conspiracy. Imputing privilege onto those
who have none, conspiracy theories, and imagined self-victimization are
common justifications for real oppression. This is hardly the first we’ve
seen.
Bigotry has not been reduced. The fashionable target changes.
8
McGill professor Katherine Young and author Paul Nathanson trace this
and a great deal more in their book, Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of
Contempt for Men in Popular Culture. [McGill-Queens University Press, 2001.]

If there is anyone to blame it is ourselves. We deal with prejudice only
by trying to reverse its effects after the fact, not what is behind it as a
constant in our culture. What can we expect in a culture that rewards
bullying, survival of the fittest its adopted driving force. A society so
wealthy none could have imagined it, only to make of itself a jungle. Ours
is a dominance culture, so any solution lies in addressing that, not just this
year’s incarnation of the symptoms.
In the 1980s, we watched feminism change from a grass-roots movement

and voice of the people to the voice of the Establishment. From the voice
of gender equality to that of gender bigotry. From champion of the
independence of women to that of their mass dependence and
helplessness. From a voice for democracy and fairness to one for female
privilege at men’s expense, like enforcing child support but not visitation
when visitation orders are violated at over twice the rate. From promoting
tolerance and new ways of seeing things to imposing mass conformance to
its own doctrine and versions of history and social morality. It has arguably
gone from a progressive movement to one of the most arch-conservative
and reactionary.
None document this metamorphosis better than feminist Christina Hoff
Sommers in her 1994 book, Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have
Betrayed Women. [Simon & Shuster, New York, NY.] She, like most
women, is dismayed. She still seeks her identity as a kind of revolutionary,
certainly a fighter for justice and true equality.
Men have not just been silent but gone along, even largely joined in.
After all, women need their support-cum-protection, and women’s rights
is the perfect modern opportunity for valor. Men are always happy to defer
to women, as though what they live for.
A team of researchers headed by John M. Gottman of Washington
D.C., followed 130 newlyweds for six years to discover why marriages fail
or succeed. The findings startled them.
. . . forget all that psychol-babble about active listening and

validation. If you want your marriage to last for a long time.
. . just do what your wife says. . . . The marriages that did
work all had one thing in common – the husband was

willing to give in to the wife. We found that only those
newlywed men who are accepting of influence from their
wives are ending up in happy, stable marriages.9
Woman is safety and comfort, and men feel safe in her hands. Men seek
that comfort. It is the nature of maleness to do so.
Unfortunately, in this case men were not deferring to Sacred Woman.
It was Medusa, the Sirens, the witch of the Gingerbread House, and
Cinderella’s stepsisters, using the mask of innocent female victim, the one
with the most reliable appeal to men so how could any assail her? All
society gave her license, and women have been as betrayed as men,
possibly more.
If anything is proved or disproved by male complicity in the rise of Evil
Woman, it is the myth of male dominance over women. They don’t want
it, and never have. If men have (or had) all the power and were using it to
repress women, how did women get into government and business at all?
How did they learn to read and write? Women have been welcomed to
anything as soon as they asked. How could there have been this male
oppression when men, by their nature, have always sought to serve
women? Female exploitation of men may be more plausible.
Perhaps any oppression has only been in the eye of the beholder for
their own purposes. It may be that any historical oppression only appears
in the formal pronouncements of societies from which we are so removed
that we easily confuse their references with our current context.
One last aspect is worth mentioning. World War II was caused by the
Treaty of Versailles. One doesn’t hear this acknowledged much now, just
that the Nazis were bad, as though in isolation. But the settlement of
World War I was so oppressive to Germany – so onerous, so heavy-handed
and unfair – the German people not only felt betrayed at being tricked into
signing it, but were truly driven to hardship from triple-digit inflation.
9
J.M. Gottman, J. Coan, S. Carrere, & C. Swanson, C. 1998, “Predicting
Marital Happiness and Stability from Newlywed Interactions,” p. 18. Cited by
Braver & O’Connell, Divorced Dads, Penguin Putnam Inc., 1998, p.140.

They were to pay all the costs of the war to all other countries, a tax
greater than their national production.
So they turned to Adolf Hitler. They sought anything that promised to
save them and restore their dignity. England and France have no one to
blame but themselves for World War II, though you will only see this
acknowledged in the most advanced history books, not those in highschool
or anything on TV. Any continuing references to Germany as evil as
though spontaneously so on its own is misplaced. It is only possible to
create evil with one’s own, and that’s what we all did.
Many are also not aware that the white South African population – who
instituted apartheid – saw themselves as oppressed. They had lost the Boer
War, a conquered people. Oppressed, they oppressed others, and Lord
knows what is going to happen now in reverse.
Need we mention Israel and Palestine? The oppressed become the
oppressor.
Since I study not just history, but societies, I have little problem seeing
the current fluxes of gender wars, shifting prejudices, and so-called welfare
reform as the ever-changing seasons. Each is a reaction to something
before, no one bothering to be sure just what, few interested in what really
needs to be solved, too busy solving short term annoyances not anything
structural.
The only thing that troubles me is this. When I see such forces get out
of hand – when I see a significant group bearing the brunt of other’s
unfounded rage and the resulting growing anger of men as more discover
their betrayal – what worries me is, what will come next? What, then, will
be the next season, our next scapegoat and oppression, who will next bear
our excessive righteousness in this endless cycle?
To complete the look at feminism – with a

unique view of its historical validity and
missteps – see Appendix A: “Feminism –
Validity and Error.”

Ancillary Issues
It would be derelict to ignore three obvious ancillary issues raised by this
examination of child support: the media and its role, the objectification of
men, and privacy.
The Media
The purpose of a newspaper is not to educate but to

startle.
– James Gordon Bennett, father of the founder of
the New York Herald, circa 1880.
The media joins government and industry as the triumvirate of our

society’s power structures. It forever casts itself as the one true guardian of
democracy and only reliable purveyor of truth and arbiter of justice.
Without them we would be hoodwinked by unscrupulous politicians and
cheated by filthy corporations, so they must be given license to violate and
invade all things. They protect us with truth, the only ones who truly hold
our welfare in their heart. In brief, they think we’re stupid.
Their complicity in what we’ve just gone over is enough to make one
think it their creation. (A new conspirator! But like the others, they are not
that smart.)
We have just seen them report government pronouncements as fact
without rudimentary comparisons, allowing governments and politicians
to perform tricks with smoke and mirrors. We have seen that they do the
same with the words of people known for sensationalizing social issues,
giving them the sway they seek, without checking their proclaimed facts.
Half truths and distortions are faithfully reported.

The media happily acts as everybody’s propaganda machine. That is all
we have seen in this tale of child support, just as they did for Joe
McCarthy whom they now merrily condemn as the embodiment of
paranoiac fear-mongering, as though something that only happened in the
past and not a consistent cultural pattern with themselves as its
instrument.
Two reasons might be considered.
The media’s job has never been truth or context. Journalists are trained
to check two or three sources only for protection against lawsuit, not
accuracy. Their job is to convey: convey what others say, especially if it
excites, especially if what they think the public wants to hear and so will
sell. Getting two people to give a similar version is not hard. Questioning
and researching is hard, for which none are given time as the profit margin
comes first.
Every society has this functional component, not always so formally
defined but always an institution. It is called gossip.
Second, there is no free press in America. There is the corporate media.
From exactly when this has been the case is arguable, but certainly since
the 1960s, or even as early as Hearst in the 1880s. A very few companies
own almost all; an editor – who must feed his family – knows what would
upset his boss, and if all have much the same boss there is scant room for
great differences.
In the 1880s, David Rockefeller consolidated the oil industry, J.P.
Morgan did the same to steel, and others, coal and forestry. They did it
with ruthlessness and it was the end of the American Dream. Once huge
corporations owned entire industries and controlled their market, it was
no longer true that a man could simply apply himself with diligence and
make his fortune. Only a few had the fortune already and controlled the
means; the feudal structure swiftly returned. Attempts to “bust the trusts”
were too little too late as a culture of mutual interest was well entrenched.
Each industry knew its members and where and how its bread was
buttered.
In the 1920s, AT&T did the same with communications. General
Motors, Ford and Chrysler in the 1940s. In the 1960s, IBM and the
computer industry. In the 1980s, Intel and Microsoft with small systems

and software, in the 1990s, the new entries into electronic media
consolidated as Turner, for one, sold out to Time Warner. All industries
consolidate soon after birth. True competition might last a decade, no
more.
It is also true that these consolidations ended great waste. Until they
happened, everyone was digging oil wells and sucking them dry as fast as
they could with no regard for tomorrow. With many companies, customers
have no idea what they might get. Now you can confidently call your aunt
in Florida, and know that when you buy a CD your PC will read it.
Is industrial consolidation (now globalization) good or bad? I do not
know. Perhaps it simply is. All I know is that in India they believe they
know the underlying force. They call it the Play of the Universe: the one
seeks to be many; the many seek to be one. It is acted out by atoms, cells,
species, individuals, solar systems and galaxies. Companies could hardly be
different.
What does this mean for the media, whether print or electronic, now
also in only a few giant hands?
The very wealthy of any society – be they individuals or corporations
– are those most rewarded by its current form, rules and conditions: the
status quo. They have the greatest interest in the status quo as it sustains
them. A large commercial interest does not seek to offend, reducing its
market share. For instance, a 1996 Gallup Poll found that 79.1% of
Americans feel "the most significant family or social problem facing
America is the physical absence of the father from the home." To watch the
media you’d never know. It’s not even acknowledge as an issue, but you
will see sensational stories.
Divorce it is not a safe topic. It makes messy copy. You can be sure of
offending someone as there are so many parties with conflicting, powerful
emotions. Better to stick with things that are black and whit. So they cover
people who everyone can hate, even create them. There can’t be anything
wrong with society, it’s not our fault but theirs. The “free” media has its
constraints as has any industry with a mass market. The larger and broader
one’s market, the fewer can be offended, the more important serving
existing interests and avoiding risk.

As another example, they did not cover abortion, either, only the
warring factions. They covered it as old-fashioned versus new, like a
football game. What were or are the issues involved and to be considered?
Did anyone list them for individuals to discuss and make decisions about?
With a multidimensional, complex issue, the media’s leadership went no
deeper than “yes” versus “no” and who’s ahead today by what score. They
exist to convey, not inform. Not for truth, information, accuracy, public
debate, democracy or anything holy. We can expect nothing else.
The lesson is simple and a surprise to few: watch the news or read the
paper only to study current folklore. If it is information or knowledge you
seek, there are wonderful libraries run by quiet people truly committed to
free thinking, possibly the best thing this society ever did for itself.

Objectification of Men
In 1995, Dr. Gary R. Brooks wrote, The Centerfold Syndrome: How Men
Can Overcome Objectification and Achieve Intimacy with Women. It is a
well-researched work from a man who has worked for years with men and
their sexuality. It traces the cultural icons and misdirections – not to
mention lack of sexual guidance for boys – from 1930s pinup girls to
fantasy images of ideal women to which few women care to aspire. Men
addicted to these images have difficulty with gender-based intimacy.
Brooks works exclusively with men, but rejects the popular notion of
only male sexual dysfunction. There is simply less material on women’s,
possibly because it is not currently polite to find much fault in them.
But female objectification of men seems less sexual than material. By all
the same tokens, women have been led to see the magic male as infinite
wealth: the prince who will never let you want, allow women their
emotional dominion without the intrusion of material concern. One has
to wonder if they are as robbed of intimacy from setting similarly
unreasonable ideals which only create disappointment?
The evidence from our society’s obsession with child support suggests
that this is a far more rampant problem than any objectification of women
by men. It is widely believed that the reason child support enforcement is
needed is the fact that some 30% of single mothers live below the poverty
line – and similar percentages of children grow up poor – and somehow this
is all men’s fault. Men are responsible for the material welfare of women
and children, so any poverty is the father’s fault.
One implicit assumption to that leap in logic is that every child was
each father’s choice. In fact, only women decide whether a child is born,
men have no say. Women can choose parenthood or not, men are subject
to what women decide. (And women have support services for their
parenting, men have punishment.)
But the more telling implicit assumption is that all men must be that
magic male, capable of all needed resources. The premise for all child
support measures is: inability to pay is no excuse. It’s men’s fault for not

all being Donald Trump, like their supposed to be, so we’ll punish those
who are just as subject to poverty as women, even though they have no
choice about their parenthood.
Women’s expectations of men effects men’s expectations of themselves.
(It defines them.) The measure of a man, his only worth (certainly as a
father), is to pay the mother for child-care. Men use that standard for
themselves. Those who take pride in paying their child support are the
most indignant toward those who don’t.
Some think that a father having anything to do with the children is a
nice little bonus, but many women outright resent and resist it, insisting
on only the money. The only thing driving social practice is, pay up, not
anything human. Then the same people lament father-absence, blaming it,
too, on men.
Our divorce practices have long made men but ATMs and revolving
bank accounts – not fathers – denying men their humanness and setting
up female disappointment, even anger when they don’t do what the
unrealistic dreams prescribe. Men and women who really do believe in
complete, human families can barely get a bill through Congress for a few
million dollars for fathers. Unlike NOW, which opposes all such bills and
believes there should be no consideration of fathers, at least Geraldine
Jensen, leader of the Association for Children for Enforcement of Support
Inc., will go along with some father programs. But only if they facilitate
child support for mothers.
We need programs that are effective, not just a “we feel

good about fatherhood” program. The moms are already out
there working two jobs. If Mom can work two jobs, Dad can
work two jobs.”
— Quoted by Cheryl Wetzstein, Washington
Times, May, 2001. “Study: Poor fathers need
help with jobs to pay child support.”
Never mind this sentimental nonsense about kids having dads, women
need money. Hand over the dough. (According to the Department of
Labor, more men hold multiple jobs than women.)

War is men’s other use. Feminists insist upon equal opportunity in a
peacetime army while oddly silent about the draft, and no one is
complaining about President Bush’s decision to send only males to
Afghanistan.
Income and cannon fodder. Not very human. Sounds like
objectification of men on a massive scale and institutionalized. They are
to serve women and keep their complaints to themselves.
Even if you accept the theory “men have all the power (and wealth),”
to treat each man as a spigot into that infinite wealth is what economists
call the fallacy of composition: what may be true at the macro level cannot
be assumed for the micro. In this case, it is dehumanizing to both men and
women.
There seems little to choose between the pinup girl and men as income
and warrior. There may be some truth to each, but taken to extreme or to
the exclusion of humanness, both are equally self-destructive delusions. It
is not just damaging men and women, but children.
There is every evidence that women’s objectification of men is a greater
and more general problem than men’s objectification of women. However
inadvertently, in child support nonpayment, large numbers of men may be
saying, in their silent, manly way, “You’ve got the wrong idea about us.
You’ve got to treat us differently.”
Is anyone listening?

Privacy
Some see privacy as one issue raised in child support enforcement, so we
examine it.
Part of the 1996 act was to build a central database of private citizens.
All companies are required to register all new hires and their salaries via
state agencies. Also, all banks and financial institutions are to do monthly
searches of their accounts based only on names submitted to them by
OCSE, and hand over all information on matches. These companies have
no way of checking that the names on that list are, in fact, NCPs, much less
in arrears.
Small banks objected to the cost, so every month they just hand over
all information on all accounts. That is, if your account is with a
neighborhood bank, the state and federal governments are maintaining
record of all your account balances.
All this is to allow searches for the maybe 0.005% of the population
that are non-paying NCPs – most of whom never work anyway – to seizure
their assets.
Some observers believe the federal government has wanted a database
on all citizens since the technology for one this size appeared on the
horizon, and the myth of deadbeat dads presented an opportunity for
starting it, but so does terrorism. How could anyone object? The ultimate
reasons for tracking everything about everyone may be taxes, national
security, crime, or anything else. It’s that “anything else” has some
concerned. Even within living memory there have been presidents who
abused their power and government facilities.
But it is difficult to take any objection to this seriously in a society that
has never made a general statement of principles defining boundaries
between society as a whole (whether represented by its government or its
media) and its members. It is difficult to take concerns seriously when the
media is allowed license, under a self-asserted and unbounded “public’s
right to know,” to deny any individual holding public office – or any
person they choose – a private life. Anyone’s religious practices, personal
finances, sex life, and dealings are fair game; no limits or conditions are set.

A society where this “right to know” promotes private trials to public
circuses. While advocates of televised trials say the people get to monitor
their judicial system, the people see it as the usual entertainment, like a
public executions. They don’t monitor anything. As seen with both O.J.
Simpson and Andrea Yates, the effect is to promote a trial about micro
issues – like a murder – to macro issues of the community as a whole, like
whites versus blacks getting away with crime and whether women are held
to the same account as men. This, along with undermining whatever
pretense has remained of “innocent until proven guilty.”
Why would the ordinary citizen care about the government keeping
detailed records on every citizen? “I have nothing to hide.” The majority
of Americans would welcome a giant database on everyone if they were
told it was to protect them or punish evildoers. They already have.
In the 1920s, ’30s, and even early ’40s, hundreds of idealistic young
Americans joined the Communist Party. (See the Warren Beatty film,
Reds.) But by the 1950s, being a Communist was subversive. Suddenly,
Communists were seen as as much a threat as members of al Qaeda are
today. Joe McCarthy dragged thousands of Americans before his Senate
Committee on Un-American Activities, ruining private lives and entire
families by dredging out-of-context associations, then thousands of
completely innocent lives when he ran out of real Communists. He taught
us that it’s not a matter of having anything to hide, but what others may
make of it.
That is what privacy is, and we don’t seem to have learned. Whose
business are your associations, income and expenditures, how you spend
your own time, and what your beliefs are? Who knows these things should
probably only be regulated by the individual if there is to be anything one
can call freedom. For as anyone who has spent time in a totalitarian
country will tell you, if you have to spend your time looking over your
shoulder and watching what you say, there is no freedom.
Not debating the issue of boundaries between society (whether in the
form of its government, media, courts, or any other it may take) and
individuals, while the technology to obliterate any boundaries grows and
grows, is like waiting to debate the morals of cloning until an army of
Hitlers is at your door.

One must admit some amusement at the thought of the powerful
American Gun Lobby insisting that every American has the right to arm
themself in case of foreign invasion (an invasion for which the rifles and
pistols they defend would be peashooters and slingshots). The threat to
their freedom is the very society they patriotically defend. Are these brave
soldiers fighting the right war? They might find more public support were
they to forget about guns and alter their constitution to fight for
something now more vulnerable, and probably better represents what they
mean to defend.

Beneath the Waves
Introduction
We reviewed the events of the 1980s to understand how, by 2002, we
found ourselves with oppressive measures and policies toward, not just
fathers, but children, mothers and families – and certainly the poor – in the
name of child support, while the custodial parents for whom it has been
done gained no benefit. Child support became both welfare and alimony,
and feminist misandry combined with male chivalry to robbed men of any
voice with which to object.
But all the above are mere symptoms. We’ve seen it all before. They are
themselves the results of much deeper issues. There are elements to our
culture that go far deeper and facilitate this whenever a crisis arises.
Here, we identify only two: superiority and dominance. They are
principle characteristics of Northern-European-rooted civilization and
surprisingly unique to it.

Superiority-cum-Righteousness
The following is an actual sequence of e-mails that crossed a list in early
2002. The names are changed and they are slightly edited.
I just caught a glimpse of the discussion about donating books to Afghanistan. Recently, I read
an article about the "morality police" in Saudi Arabia. Apparently they have a real problem with
showing affection. Valentine's day is taboo. You better not wear red on that day, or else. And, the
morality police go around picking up any love Teddy Bears they see--those are the little Teddy
Bears holding the heart that say "I Love You." Better not have one of those, or else. Personally,
I'm tired of pandering to these socially backward nations. Let's air drop 50,000 "I Love You
Teddy Bears" on Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Blue
Dear Mr. Blue:

We might want to clean up the morality police in your own country first.
Personally, I applaud the efforts of nations like China and Saudi Arabia at resisting
Westernization. I consider one-dimensionalism (everyone the same) not simply unhealthy, but
repressive.
For a man who has read as broadly as you, I am disappointed to see the attitude that
everyone should be American, it's the One True Way, and a desire to force our values on all the
world. Perhaps those "socially backward nations" see themselves as protecting themselves from
morally backward ones, of which you present a fine example.
Mr. Red
I apologize to the list. Mr. Blue’s remarks were off the list’s topic, and so were mine. Mr. Blue
displayed intolerance, and I displayed my own.
Mr. Red

The teddy bears are sorry too. We were off topic. We apologize.
I probably was a bit hot when I posted the joke. The article I read about the morality police
in Saudi Arabia also mentioned a group of about 14 school girls who were trapped in a fire. The
religious and morality police felt that those particular girls weren't appropriately dressed to go
outside, so they prevented the rescuers from helping the girls, and so the girls burned to death.
Then, the article mentioned the teddy bears. And, I just lost it. I know I should try and be more
tolerant, and I try. I do. I really do.
Mr. Blue.
Off-list, direct to Mr. Blue:
Dear Mr. Blue:

The article you reference was written to explicitly elicit that response. 60 Minutes, Sally Jesse
Raphael, Judge Judy – all the media know the European addiction to superiority. They know how
to sell their product, what buttons to push.
How much truth there may have been in that article would be hard to gauge. So, again,
instead of finding reasons for feeling superior toward others, we might address ourselves. We
could start with that lust for superiority. Like anything, it feeds itself, finds and even invents its
justification. It has a long and sorry history for us, simply finding new forms with changing
fashions.
Mr. Red
Consider de Soto’s murderous trail through Florida. Think of our

treatment of slaves, our massacres of Indians, the Nazi Holocaust, My Lai,
and Joe McCarthy. All rode the same force: righteousness.
It’s ironic: We feel most god-like (filled with righteous indignation
where good and bad are absolutes), when we are most the devil’s tool.
Consider “zero tolerance” today. It is our own sense of being basically
wicked that we project onto others, giving our abusiveness a target.
The popularity of shows like Sally Jesse Raphael and Jerry Springer are
stark testament to an addiction to abuse: being abused and doing it to

others, very like the bloodlust of the Roman Forum. We surround
ourselves with it. Could there be a connection between it and fits of
superiority? Do they not speak of an as yet insecure people?
Before industrialization and the expansion it facilitated, Europe was
anybody’s booty. The Roman Empire took and deserted us at its leisure.
When Genghis Khan took Venice, Europeans ran to the churches to pray.
That was our defense. We were nothing, undignified, poor, incapable and
incompetent, subject to other’s whims for thousands of years. Hardly a
surprise that when we started to find we had strength we treated others
that way. Not everyone had treated us like that. Only those few who
became expansionist and ran into us, but they were the only ones we saw.
A superiority fixation is a symptom of insecurity. If all Euro-rooted
society is still suffering feelings of inferiority and powerlessness from our
recent barbaric past (entirely understandable as it was not so long ago;
evidence of still treating ourselves very badly abounds), then the answer
lies within ourselves and our own healing, not other’s behavior. It lies with
providing ourselves with a safe, secure context, not making it more hostile.

Dominance
This is related to the other: superiority.
After studying other cultures for a few years it sinks in. The vast
majority of peoples who have ever existed look out upon the world and see
balance resulting from complements. It is the Oriental yin and yang, the
Mesoamerican sun and moon. The whole world is in balance from
opposites, each the mirror necessity of the other. When the Mayan doctor
is faced with an illness, he seeks which force is out of balance – which
dominating – and offers increased homage to the other. All shamanism can
be described as sustaining or restoring natural flows and balances, the
natural opposites: night and day; male and female; good and evil; winter
and summer; sky and earth.
We – and Rome, which is where we got it – are two of the very few one
will find that look upon the same world and instead see dominance as a
solution to conflict.
This describes many things, including our solution to post-divorce child
care. A common reaction to the notion of co-parenting after divorce is,
“But that would cause more conflict.” The only solution is dominance: one
parent. There can only be one parent, like the one true great authority for
all things: Rome. We cannot see balance resulting from complements: two
different people doing different things with well-defined boundaries to
separate them, retaining the child’s family irrespective of hostile feelings
between only the parents.
Despite all our rhetoric, we have no real, operational definition of
equality. It’s only rhetoric. (See the author’s offering on page 101.) In
many ways we have less social equality than the cultures we call
“backward.” As a dominance culture, we can hardly be surprised when any
group – be it capitalists, socialists, or feminists – seeks what we have taught
them to seek and shown them how to get it: dominance by bullying. We
are still a bully culture.
I remember a television news item I watched as a teenager about a
single mother who’d been committed to a mental health institution. Her
one-year-old had been cared for by a foster couple for three years, and they

wanted to adopt her. The mother improved and was released, and expected
her daughter back. The item was about the court case to decide which
would be the child’s parents.
There had been no divorces in my family. I didn’t even know anyone
who’d been divorced; had no concept of the issues. But even then,
watching that item, it came across so clearly: Why is our assumption that
a child must have only one or one set of parents? Why are all parties, who
all equally love this child, not negotiating how to share showing that love,
but fighting for exclusive expression and the elimination of the other? This
is our system at work, and we created it. How is it in a child’s interests to
minimize the number of care-givers, not maximize them?
Believe it or not, some 40 years later, the central function of our divorce
practices is still to minimize a child’s care-givers for the sake of eliminating
conflict, not maximize them to achieve balance and wholeness. This is why
there is such a thing as child support at all: as substitution for a parent.
“We have met the enemy . . . and he is us!”10
10
Walt Kelly, “Pogo” comic strip, 1971.

Answers?
The Children
As promised, we carefully avoided use of “best interests of the child” and
any speculation on what that may or may not be, as that banner
commonly hides other agendas. We start with more examples of its use.
In her book, It Takes a Village, Hillary Clinton is more democratic than
most. She does not say that fathers are useless and incompetent so should
be eliminated from children’s lives except for their money. She says all
parents are useless and incompetent and should be replaced by society. To
save children, society should care for them directly. There is scant mention
of services for parents.
There are those who campaign to end child poverty. That’s a strange
idea. How can you end child poverty unless you end poverty? Why only
child poverty? Is their plan to stop the poor from having children?
Many will tell you in all sincerity that they do not care about the adults,
only the children.
All are child advocates. However sincerely they care about children, are
their solutions more harmful to children and in reality, self-serving?
Under the Clinton administration, state governments started to be paid
$24,000 for every child they took into custody. Foster placements soared.
In 1998 in New Jersey, Kansas and Pennsylvania, 43% of the children put
in foster care were taken from homes without any substantiated report of
child maltreatment. Adoptions in New Jersey jumped 55% as the new law
also requires that children be moved quickly to get money, giving their
family less chance to recover.
Children in foster care are 11 times more likely to be sexually abused,
and twice as likely to suffer neglect or physical abuse. That does not
include the emotional toll on all parties. This may simply be more
punishment for being poor, and society avoiding supporting and

strengthening existing family structures. Avoiding programs for parents,
not just children.
There was a time – in living memory – when no principal of a school
would go against a parent’s wishes. Today, you do what they tell you or
you or your child may be punished.
There is a related issue. In 2000, upon the death of the mother, a
Pennsylvania Supreme Court judge awarded custody to the stepfather
despite the fact the biological father was in any way unfit. The judge said
he approved of the approach that, “discards the presumption that a parent
has a prima facie right to custody against third parties.” Blood is as thin as
water.
This is the machine concept of family: made of interchangeable parts.
It is the father who remarries and tells his six-year-old daughter, “This is
your new mother.” It is the Child Protective Services agency that says if
you move a child from a “bad” (usually meaning poor) household to a
better one, the child is better off, irrespective of the child’s feelings. It is
our divorce practices that say a child only needs a care-giver and money,
with the mother chosen as that one caregiver in 85% of all cases, more out
of sentiment than merit.
On the other hand, most psychologists report that the single most
reliable predictor of the long-term well being of any human is that vital
primary bond between a child and its family. Not just with the mother,
but both parents, siblings, and all of each parent’s family. That is to say,
if you want to create criminals, mess with those bonds. Is it coincidence
that the country with 5% of the world’s population houses 25% of its
prisoners while practicing family-as-machine?
Family is an ecological system of multiple interrelationships: aunts,
uncles, grandparents, on both parental sides. It is a child’s emotional-
spiritual womb, rooted in its very biology and as delicate and significant
as the physical one from which it came. Its variety is part of its vitality. If
you try to “improve” it by introducing, or removing one component, you
cannot predict the long-term effect on all. It’s like introducing rabbits to
Australia. It is better supported as is. Your family is your womb for life.
Child-care is not a matter of “better” or “more competent,” as though
mere mechanics. It is a matter of who is best to give it: who cares most

deeply in the giving, how broad that caring (the numbers giving it and
their variety), and that it is for life.
The 1997 National Incidence Survey on Child Maltreatment in the
U.S. found an incidence rate of child abuse of 2.6%. What many seem to
fail to see in this is that over 97% of parents are loving, caring, decent
people trying to do the best they can for their children. Yet some act as
though good parents were a minority and all should be discarded or
ignored.
Perhaps we need fewer child advocates, and more family ones. Perhaps
those who really care about children help and protect their families: the
parents as their parents and all those family bonds. Perhaps it is not
possible to separate children’s rights from those of parents. Perhaps
protecting parents is the same as protecting children.
“Child advocate.” Is there a better definition for “parent?” Exactly what
a parent is and does is advocate for every aspect of their children’s lives,
and they the better to do so as none other cares more deeply nor forever.
Those who claim this title for themselves may be more interested in power
for themselves than advantage for any child. Perhaps those who truly care
about children care about parents, and support them at it, not undermine
them, as few will take a greater interest in a child as a person – not as an
object – than its own flesh and blood.
What is in the best interests of children? Simply their family as a whole.
If we can give home-care to the elderly, why not the same for those with
less parental skills but who are no less a parent and no less loving, instead
of snatching children from that womb however poor its mechanics? Mrs.
Clinton would do better with policies to support the family and the dignity
of all. Instead of giving society’s resources to children, give them to parents
to be the parents they want to be. Give them to the natural care-givers,
don’t seek to replace them. There is a world of difference between helping
parents, and replacing them.
This does not necessarily mean protecting marriage, though we could
certainly remove the incentives for divorce. It means protecting family.
God made family ties; humans invented marriage as an expression of them,
but not their only form. Divorce is less a threat to the family than the
assaults listed above.

I submit two children’s rights and only two:
1. The same right as any member of society to freedom from abuse and
exploitation. This does not require special laws but applying those
we have. “Children are our future.” Untrue. They are part of society
now and entitled to that consideration.
2. The right to his or her entire family. The right to the advocacy, care,
and nurturing of both its parents equally, and through them, the
parentÊs families. Why should the parent’s divorce have anything to
do with this?

Solution
Imagine a society which does not believe it is up to it to regulate marriage
and divorce, but that to whom one is married, when, is personal choice and
whatever arrangements one makes for it is up to them.
Imagine this society only sees its responsibility as protecting the
integrity of any child’s family: That family is defined by blood, not
marriage, and every child is entitled to both its parents, equally, because
a parent is not money nor care-taking but mostly “human element” and
each parent is half that child’s heritage. A society that believes a child’s
family remains intact irrespective of what happens between its parents, so
protects that fact, protects the natural laws alone, nor regulating marriage
or divorce.
It would be a society where a child born out of marriage would not be
born fatherless, but recognizes that every child has and always will have a
full family, and protects that fact.
Imagine this society believes in gender equality in parenthood. That
each parent loves their children as much as the other and is of equal
importance to that child, however much in their own way, until or unless
a parent proves otherwise. That parenting or family is not just one thing,
but many, and like any ecology, not to be disrupted, but protected and
supported as it is, at least until or unless there is real evidence of danger to
the child, and then only the danger removed, not the rest of the family.
Such a society would have to be capable of seeing the good in itself and
its members, not the bad, until someone betrays that trust and not before.
This will be difficult from where we are, as it would be a society with far
fewer family lawyers, social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists. Just
parents. Parents supported at being parents, because that is tough enough
without interference. Help is when someone asks. Interference is when no
one does.
While we took one step toward this with no-fault divorce, we left in all
the fault-based, punitive divorce arrangements. We left in the structures

of villains and victims and Roman “winner take all,” and left the child’s
family behind. When we leave any part of its family behind, we have
betrayed the child, not protected it.
One thing I propose is the Principle of Family Member Substitution. It
says that should one parent die or be removed due to proven danger or jail
or true desertion, other members of that parent’s family may take his or
her place in the child’s life, either individually or collectively, to the extent
they can. This means the loss or absence of one parent could not be used
as license by the other to break other family bonds. It protects the
nurturing of grandparents and other close family members, helping to fill
the hole left by an absent parent, and minimizing damage to the child’s
contact with his total origins.
Most societies assume this principle. Ours is one of the few that forgot,
leaving children exposed.
We have much work to do.

APPENDIX A
Feminism – Validity and Error

Introduction
Reviewing this book after its completion, I have to admit that without this
section the reader might feel left in the lurch. It was not originally planned,
feminism as a whole, out of scope. But so much has been said of it because
of its impact on child support (its impact on everything during the last
three decades of the 20th century), so much that raises questions about it,
that in fairness the picture should be completed.
From the start, we chose a very non-mainstream bleacher from which
to observe and describe. We did that explicitly to view what is mainstream,
and that bleacher is what is left to complete. I start by making an
allowance for much of what we will see here.
When one reviews the body of feminist literature – especially the
misandric material – two emotions are consistent and seem behind it all:
1. Fear of men (most commonly represented by physical strength).

2. Impotence: feelings of powerlessness.
This is not to be trivialized. These are real feelings and real issues to be
addressed. Most men would be surprised at the female fear of their
physical strength, but by the same token, were women to listen to men
they would be equally surprised at their fear of women and the sway
women actually have over them, even without the new feminist
intimidations.
We will not address those emotional messages here. The first will be
dealt with in a separate work on domestic violence. The second is, in fact,
somewhat addressed here, but not directly.
Rather, we continue with what this book has always done: identify the
mythologies built up to NOT directly admit these feelings, to AVOID
ownership of such feelings by finding things to blame which are external,
thus misdirecting action and only recasting those issues while creating new
ones. We will continue to examine how we generate delusions to avoid
reality.

Some Misnomers
We are all familiar with the current, required version of history: women
have been exploited and oppressed by men. All history must be seen in
these terms, just as the old Soviet Union rewrote history in terms of class
struggle. (Both are the usual European tribalism, but liberals and
conservatives have little with which to distinguish themselves in that.)
While both have merit and can explain many things, alone they are
narrow. Never use one pair of eyes. So I will offer a version that is neither
whatever “male history” came before, nor the female one popular today.
In fact, we will use two stories, hopefully neither liked by either patriarchal
control freaks nor feminists, which would be an advantage. We will see if
ours is as good at explaining the contemporary feminist movement.
First, a premise.
Those who believe in the emancipation of women are saying women
have been slaves. This is not a flattering picture of women, and those who
hold it project it onto others as the only ones who have it in accusation.
The central tenant of feminism is the eternally oppressed woman. This
is not to appeal to women as few find much flattery in it. It says women
have always been stupid and incompetent, allowing themselves to be
exploited; only today’s women, only in Euro-based countries, have figured
out freedom and managed to get it. Not very flattering to other races,
either. Of course, others have always so deeply appreciated our attempts
to “liberate” them.
Author and columnist Cathy Young – who calls herself a “disenchanted
feminist” – calls this the infantization of women. It is victimology, which,
along with martyrdom and helplessness, are common distortions of female
energy and dishonest means of getting men to do what women want.
Indeed, it is one of the worst female cliches: playing helpless for male
servitude. (Incredible the numbers of men who don’t catch on, to the great
dismay of most women.)
It is not meant to appeal to women. It is to appeal to men. Men love to
think this: It gives opportunity for chivalry, and rescuing women is to die
for. Literally.

I have studied many countries and societies. Of great interest are revolts
and revolutions as they reveal so much about what is really going on.
When I studied China, I believe I counted 11 full revolutions, seven of
them peasant. Europe’s brief history brags only two: against the Roman
Church, and the socialist revolution that changed industrial Europe in the
1860s. (Interestingly, the second left the US unscathed. Another story.)
There has never, ever, in any society but our own contemporary one,
been a women’s movement, revolt, or revolution.
Why? Why only us?
If the reason other women didn’t revolt is fear of men as men are
physically stronger and control everything, how is that different from
today? What is the change that got our women moving? There are three
possible answers:
1. There have been revolts, but all record has been expunged by men
writing history. (Which means all such revolts save our own, failed
or were reversed, and require a truly massive conspiracy by the very
people feminists accuse of the greatest stupidity, plus that women
now must really fear for their lives because men will reverse it all
again.)
2. All women are stupid and incompetent or at least cowardly, except
contemporary European ones. (Possibly something in our food.)
3. No other women have seen the need to revolt, have not felt
oppressed but felt equally as important to the well being of their
society as have men. Only our modern women feel oppressed or
convinced themselves of it.
That last one would be upsetting to many people. If we assume it, is there
anything unique to Northern Euro-origin civilization with which this
women’s revolution may correspond?
Industrialization. Nobody else did that, either, and it enjoys an
absolutely lock-step time-wise correspondence. Could there be a
connection?
There would be a serious problem here. Saying a female revolt was at
least triggered if not outright necessitated by industrialization says there
has been no mass oppression, only structural changes to society requiring
social and gender-myth adjustment. In that event, those anxious for female

victimhood would have to say that, while there will indeed be an
adjustment with some accommodation of women, the final resting point
can only inevitably be the same oppression. Such a postulation leaves no
counter-argument.
And saying these changes were caused by industrialization itself – not
by courageous women – also calls them all but inevitable, which would
disappoint those fond of an historic sisterhood of courage and revolt. I’m
not sure they should feel disappointed. Any movement, however
predictable, still must find its leaders. There must always be those
individuals courageous enough to say what others only think but dare not
or have not found the words, and they always deserve our admiration and
gratitude. However inevitable that someone would have eventually said
and done something, only a few specific people did.

Recent European Past
One of the great chauvinisms is not of gender, but culture. If we project
our own context back in time and onto other societies, their practices seem
strange. We look around us today and see that the only social power
structures are government, industry, and the media. We have only three.
To assume they are the only ones that have ever existed in any society,
much less have always carried the same weight, is cultural chauvinism. For
instance, it was only in the 1930s that government started to assume the
role we know today of intrinsic impact upon everyone’s daily life. Until
then, the newspapers were full of stories of Newport and rich people: what
today we’d call Hollywood gossip. (Everyone loves to watch the rich in
scandal.)
Before the 1930s, politics had all the relevance of the Super Bowl.
Which is an excellent analogy: it was sport, having only to do with distant
notions and places. (Coincidentally, professional sport in the Americas,
Europe, Australia and other such countries only started their assent from
the same 1930s.)
Before this time, three social power structures held more significance to
people’s lives but have since all but disappeared. They still have as much
influence where industry is weak: the church, home, and community.
Without industry to supply food, shelter, and clothing, home was where
everything was at. The household was central to everyone’s lives, including
the base for all economic activity, whether artisan or farmer. Nothing was
more important nor held more sway.
Close behind and needed to sustain it was the immediate community
(very small by today’s standards of cities). A single household was but a
part of one, government of whatever form was distant, and “industry” was
in the home and community, not some factory off god-knows where.
If today we look at other societies and say that since women were not
(very visibly) involved in government or commerce (the only things we see
as power-bases for us), we conclude that women were powerless.
That would be true for us today. Today, if women were not part of
government and industry and did not have equal voice and opportunity

therein – not to mention in the media, though one could argue that
women have always controlled that – they would certainly be oppressed.
It would be grossly unfair, and a prejudice as clear as anything racial from
our past. That hardly makes it unfair for others in an entirely different
context. They might be very happy with the social balances they’d struck
long before.
This is a reflection of our own, current context, not others. To project
it onto others is not much rooted in a grasp of reality, but chauvinism and
ignorance.
For instance, many years ago I had occasion to examine the voting
records of an Ontario town in the 1820s. At that time, who voted and how
was publicly recorded. Having been lead to expect what everyone said was
the case, I was astonished to find that up to one-fifth of the names were
“Mrs. James MacKinnon, Miss Henrietta Jones,” etc. Women voted. Back
when our current mythology says they couldn’t. (Wasn’t there some big
social movement about that between then and now?)
Why the contradiction?
A large part of the answer is that during the 1800s, the smallest unit of
society was not the individual, as today, but the household. The law was
never “one man, one vote,” but one household, one vote, a revolutionary
practice itself at the time, but the operative factor was still ownership of
land. Representing a household to the outside world commonly fell upon
the male. Being but a single unit, only one person could represent it to the
world, and if maleness is external energy, it would commonly fall to him.
(Most government census agencies still use the term “head of household,”
as though there can only be one.) This while the inner energy and
sustenance of the household would be female. (Note the equal significance
of internal and external. From where this notion comes will be covered
below.)
But if the male head of household was dead, or just on a trip, or ill, or
there never was one, obviously casting that vote fell to the next adult. And
it did, very frequently. The purpose of recording who voted what was to
ensure only one vote from each household.

At that time, women commonly voted through their men, were they so
lucky to have one. Today, we like to project our current politics onto
others.
So it is possible that the story of the change from one vote per
household to one per individual (including from people with land or not,
and not limited to the struggle for the vote for women) can be as easily
expressed as that of the devolution of society’s smallest unit of measure –
the “rise” of the individual, during which process those not yet
enfranchised would feel cheated – rather than the story of oppression.

Recent European Social History - Version One
Even early industrialization did not undermine the importance of women,
it simply distilled a clear, and then ridged, gender divide. During the initial
heavy industry phase of the Industrial Revolution, the economic live and
support for the home became separated from the home itself.
But that home still needed competence, skill and imagination, at least
as much as that needed to run any business. And home was still supremely
important. No man could live without one and the one who ran it. While
gender roles became more sharply defined, few of either persuasion
questioned the necessity and vitality of the other. Women and what they
did was just as essential to a family and society as anything men did.
Debates about equality then may have really been about sameness: that
men and women were not the same. Turf wars, not whether one was more
important than another. (A confusion which still haunts us today.) In
records of the old debates are references to being “most suited” to one turf
or another, not that either turf had more meaning. So all we see is
Victorian rigidity, not inequality. (See the author’s definition of equality,
page 101.)
However, it is certainly true that a great mythology grew up around
innate abilities defined by gender to justify that rigidity of the new divide.
Women were not in business because they were “too emotional” for the
cold calculation; men too cold for children. So it is also true that those
men who’d rather tend to their family, and those women who’d rather
tend a shop and records, were frustrated. Again, that issue is rigidity, not
equality.
And let’s not forget that industry was happy even then to put women
and children to work where brawn was not required. No one need feel
slighted: all workers were equally treated as trash. If you were sick or
injured, your misfortune. There were others to do the job. Yes, the
factories were dangerous, so the owners simply went through workers and
could treat them however they pleased. Even African-Americans need not
feel too privileged: the treatment of and regard for the common European
until the mid-1800s was not much different from that of slaves. Consider
the Highland Clearances and Irish Potato Famine. In both cases, the

gentry and scholars considered it good to cull the herd. Canada, Australia
and the United States owe their modern existence to this attitude; not
only Africans came here against their will or desire. It was a sad and
oppressive time for all (compared to today) except for the few making
obscene amounts off expansion. Equal oppression to all. (We do not have
a proud history of treating any people well, including ourselves.)
So far, according to this, no need of gender revolution. Everyone, man
and woman, is of equal value to the whole. (Or at least of equal value to
each other, and equally disposable to the well-off.)
What changed for women was the vitality of their separate
contribution. I submit that the story of any and all “women’s movement”
in our society, occurring only in recent times, parallels that of encroaching
consumerism: the consumer-goods phase of industrialization.
Many still claim the birth control pill heralded woman’s definitive
emancipation from home and family. It is but a speck on the landscape. Of
far greater impact was consumer goods, the explosion of population and
sprawling suburbs far from work.
Today, with a refrigerator, washing machine, dryer and vacuum I can
run a household on four or five hour’s labor a week and still maintain a
career. I do not go into town once a month for supplies, but hop in my car
on a whim to buy bread and peanut butter at the local convenience store
made by industry, and making clothes is more expensive than buying
them.
It is no longer important for a wife to have tea with the banker’s wife
(and help her husband’s loan), nor teach Sunday School to the tailor’s son.
The female network that exists today is purely self-serving and political,
not for the benefit of home and community. The whole female world and
all its power structures were trivialized in just some two or three
generations, slow enough to be unclear to each generation, but fast enough
to avoid smooth adjustment.
Instead, the only thing that matters became money. Only being a
consumer gives one voice or gets attention, not knowing people or teaching
their children Sunday School. Not personal connections or the skills and
effort to feed and clothe a family.

By the time Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique in the 1960s,
she was absolutely right. A dreadful hollowness – a meaninglessness – had
entered the lives of woman in the industrialized world, certainly any trying
to live the conventional life. Talk about a book that struck a chord,
because the truth was, she was right. If we accept that equality is not in
sameness, but equal significance, women had none. They could disappear
from society and never be missed; relegated to decoration.
No wonder it was important to Gloria Steinem to say the same of men.
(“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”) It was simultaneously
defensive and assertive. No wonder women responded in droves.
What Friedan was wrong about – according to this version of events –
was the cause. Indeed, the entire book only describes what existed for
women in the ’60s and how meaningless it was, giving little thought to
why or what had happened. (In fairness, she only sought a solution. But
there is folly in seeking solution without an identified cause.) That left a
great gap for mythologies to fill, and a perennial favorite in this country for
anything is conspiracy. Given the underlying sense of oppression to
European peoples as a whole, women gave themselves their own source:
men. Something close at hand to howl at and to blame, to make
responsible for everything they felt, and from which to seek restitution.

Version Two
This second version of recent European social history requires a definition
of masculinity and femininity for its premise. Those who want gender
differences to be only physical, anything else, culturally induced and not
“real,” will be uncomfortable, but there are three scientific bases for deeper
definition:
Cultural anthropology: When many societies, never directly connected,

all display the same or closely related behavior and / or structures, it is
taken to mean something inherent to the nature of mankind.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of the brain:. Also see the book
Brain Sex [Anne Moir & David Jessel, Dell, 1992] for the findings of
gender differences in the very structure and mechanics of the brain. The
principle finding: men’s brains and brain activity is more specialized
(localized), while women use more parts to perform the same functions.
Men and women are equal in abilities but achieve that by different
means, and different things come more readily to each.
Nurturing: Research into male

and female child-care finds that See the author’s Special Report,
Male Nurturing : Is There Such a
both are equally vital to a child’s Thing, and Does It Matter, for sale
development, but for different at http://harbpress.com/sr
reasons. Essentially, mother is
commonly comfort and safety,
father, gateway to the world. Both boys and girls with involved, caring
fathers have better developed social, moral, and intellectual skills.
(Herein my earlier reference to male outer world and female inner.)
We also rely heavily on archetypes for descriptions, for which Carl Gustav
Jung was the early European master.
Given the above, I postulate the following:

Sacred Woman is sanctuary. It is comfort, safety, and inner peace.
Sacred Man is the energy to define and maintain sanctuary. To give
it form.
One cannot exist without the other, the very existence of one creates
the other: equal halves of the same whole, they seek each other’s
comfort. Life made two from its oneness.
I submit that the above essences are why the young male cannot just walk
down the street, but must leap to grab a branch or yell to the end of the
street to catch his friend. Maleness has to do with limits and boundaries,
and a man only comes to know himself by knowing his. This is why sports
are important to more men – to bang against their limits – and accounts
for male protectiveness.
It is also why young women feign repulsion toward these brash male
behaviors, yet are strangely attracted. Women must learn how to control
this powerful, independent energy. Almost any little girl can twist her
daddy around her little finger. They must learn this. Survival skills.
Man needs woman, and woman needs man, equally, simple because
each is the other’s complement. Life made two from one, to seek itself.
It is why male strength is in overcoming; female, in endurance. Woman
has always been as strong as Man, simply in Her own time frame, and no
society can long survive without both. Both are equally important, each
with their occasion.
I also postulate that, to be whole or at least balanced, each person must
develop both masculine and feminine characteristics, and each of us do to
varying degrees. We may develop different male and female traits, but the
greater the number and development, the greater the wholeness: personal
integration; personal growth. (This is different from, “Getting in touch
with my female side,”which suggests denial of the masculine to do so. It is
not a question of denying or touching anything, but developing multiple
facets, each useful for their own talent / contribution.)
In another book I postulate that one could define male pathology as the
absence of emotion: action without compassion or feeling. And female
pathology as pure emotion without constraint of abstracts such as fairness.

But more basic is humanness: that we all face the realities of human
existence, principally, consciousness of our own end. It is from the reality
of our brief individual existence (however conscious any life form may be
of it) that comes the need for procreation, that need itself giving rise to the
genders, so it is clearly deeper than gender difference. Therefore, a child
means as much and is loved as deeply by both mother and father. It means
the same to both: the realization of their wholeness and continuation.
With this image of masculinity and femininity, I offer the second historical
scenario.
During the 1800s, European society adopted classical materialism as its
basic philosophy as part of overthrowing Mother Church, freeing the
material world for secular exploitation. It was to create the secular world.
Classical materialism is not what we understand today: money. It is
much more basic, so different you’ll be shocked to realize how
fundamental it now is to all our thinking.
It is the physical-only definition of reality. It says that only what can be
measured (exists in the physical world) is real. Things that cannot be
measured cannot be scientifically proven, so are discounted as superstition.
They don’t exist. It began with scientists in the 1700s,11 and in the
beginning was as appalling and revolutionary to the Establishment as
Darwinism 150 years later. But economics drives social policy, and
throughout the 1800s, with commerce increasingly proving profitable to
increasing numbers of people and therefore increasingly dominating
everything, and with the Church and all things spiritual increasingly
discredited, Materialism was adopted as the only valid and official way of
describing and dealing with the universe.
Its zenith came in the 1950s with psychologist B. F. Skinner saying, “If
it can’t be measured, forget it.” Everyone agreed, even when it came to the
human mind.
The philosophy of materialism fueled the technology behind
Industrialization, but also meant that a purely male orientation (a purely
physical one) came to dominate European formal culture and all formal
thinking.
11
It really traces to very early Greek philosophers, rediscovered by French
scientists in the 1700s, but we are concerned with its appearance in and influence
upon European society. We are also less interested in it as a scientific philosophy
than its social impact, adaptation, and manifestations.

No wonder, by the 1960s, women felt they were in a “male-dominated
society.” It was not a society dominated by men with no influence from
women so much as one in which maleness was the only accepted view of
the world and only means of expression. A society in which female
strengths were accorded little value: there was little reward for inner truth,
instinct, and feeling. This reached a dreadful extreme in Naziism,
characterized by total denial of “sentiment.” You could say the first half
of the 20th century was the age of Evil Man. Masculinity certainly
discredited itself, but all that did was open the door to Evil Woman.
Even today, seekers of inner realities are viewed with suspicion. There’s
no money in it.
It is also not surprising that during the 1800s, women entrenched
themselves in child-care, the one intangible still accorded great merit and
the only mystery upon which science, with its instruments, did not yet
intrude.

But They Got it Wrong
Just as much as the feminist version of history, both above lead to the
ground being laid by the 1960s for a good old-fashioned revolution,
though without the convenience of a scapegoat or plot but everyone part
of the “conspiracy.” Still, the setup certainly allows that the only things
mainstream did not only exclude women, but was entirely defined and
driven by male values, visions, perspectives, and measures. Women’s
Liberation (-cum-feminism) was born. Could anything be more inevitable?
Except they got it wrong. They made the same mistake as much of what
was (effectively) “oppressing” them.
They said, “There must be room for women in careers.” “Room must be
made for women in government.” They did not say, “There must be room
for femininity in industry, government, society.” They saw only the literal,
physical, material.
We should have known from the start. Modern feminism was heralded
by the burning of bras and cries that “biology is destiny,” blaming being
a women as a disadvantage: it was a matter of physical gender, not a
matter of metaphysical balance and room for femininity.
This was a movement bred of envy of others, not pride of self. They
sought other’s power, did not look within for their own. There was no
questioning how the context might be changed to recognize the meaning
of womanhood, only “Give us all the same things you have” (material
sameness), and sameness became the measure of equality as in half of all
seats in the legislature, the same total money income, the same budget for
girls’ sports as boys’, and identical performance in school in the same
subjects (ignoring the subjects at which girls excel and boys lag). Not what
is unique and special about femininity or how it was being omitted from
industry and how it could be made an equal partner with maleness in any
major social power structure. They sought the existing form, which they
themselves had called male.
In spite of all this, many positive things happened. All women can now
choose whatever commercial role in society gives them satisfaction, to at
least the same extent as can men. (Though we note that choices still only

increase with one’s beginning position in the economic scale. In the US,
the poor and lower-middle classes cannot afford college, while in most
other countries they can.) Women can also decide on the extent to which
they choose between home or career. Men have somewhat less career
pressure, and can choose more home life, but still to a much smaller degree
than women. The influx of women into the corporate world and
government may have caused an increase in its humanity (variety is good),
though that may be arguable.
Whether feminists can take credit for these changes . . . if men had all
the power, it would seem it was done by them, and women might be more
appreciating and less vilifying. Either that, or women have always had
whatever power they needed to get whatever they want, this an example,
it’s just not as officially recognized as elections. (Historically, other
examples of female power include child labor laws and Prohibition. The
pattern seems to be that women have always set social policy, and always
had the power.)
Still, one of the ironies of something calling itself feminism is how little
it has to do with femininity. It has nothing to do with the realization of
the real power to Sacred Woman, even identifying its strengths and depth,
much less finding a role for it in this new, commerce-only society. It has
as often demeaned Sacred Woman as a tool of men or relic of the past. To
be modern and have a role and meaning, women must adopt what they
identify as male: competitiveness, greed, and bullying. (An awfully negative
image of maleness at that.) Feminism a female man-ism, and a much
distorted version of it for it is debatable how male any of those things are
really male versus culture-bound.
Femininity is still omitted, leaving many women confused. They are
told to want the same things as men yet somehow few do. To the chagrin
of NOW and its sameness agenda, women gravitate toward child-care,
teaching, family law, social work, the media (gossip), and human resources.
That’s what they like. Few opt for government, corporate power or the
sciences, so NOW can continually cry “glass ceiling,” still refusing to
recognize different male and female natures unless something they can lord
over men.
Taking pride or power from others does not transfer them to one’s self.

Feminists have also been unwilling to give up what they had – children
– either to gain new participation or simply because there was fair
exchange to be had. Not surprisingly, men are blamed for this, not social
structures and practices. Shared parenting was gaining ground in the 1970s
until feminists started opposing it and they’ve blocked it ever since. Until
recently, the NOW website had a link claiming that their research showed
that children may be better off without a father. There have been recent,
modest fatherhood bills in Congress, all vehemently opposed by NOW,
including ones for job training that are explicitly only so poor fathers can
pay child support, not so they can be fathers.
There is still much work to do. Can we clear away the false premises
and mis-directions to discover it?
My personal opinion is that there will be no gender equality until men
stop being naive about female power and how easy they are to control, and
women look within themselves for their own strengths instead of seeking
others’.

APPENDIX B
US Census Bureau Current Population Reports -

Child Support.
For each year on record
The following pages are captured from the US Bureau of Census’s reports
for their respective years. For years 1991 to 1997, the full report is
available from the Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov).
The first and latter years are not in that year’s main report, but are
subsections available only on the Internet. Blue text in all these pages,
faithfully reproduced, are not live links within these documents.
The first 3 pages are the summary of years 1978 through 1989, taken
from the 1989 report. Each following report-year has its own page.
The numbers for 1999 are due to be release in October of 2002.

Child Support and Alimony: 1989
Census
Bureau
Table F. Child Support Payments Due and Actually Received:

1978 to 1989
(Aggregates in billions of dollars. In 1989 dollars using the

CPI-U and
CPI-U-X1 1/)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Characteristics In 1989 dollars2/
---------------------------------------------
1989 1987r 1987 1985
1983
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Women due child support
payments:
--total thousands 4,953 4,840 4,829 4,381
3,995
Mean payments (dollars)1/:

--Due $3,292 $3,287 $3,293 $2,877
$3,139
--Received 2,252 2,247 2,252 1,892
2,215
--Deficit 1,040 1,039 1,041 986
file:///C|/Work/WP/Book/Research/Support/89_census_support_table.html (1 of 4) [2002/04/08 1:24:58 PM]
925
Aggregate payments (in billions

of dollars):
--Child support due 16.3 15.9 15.9 12.6
12.5
--Child support received 11.2 10.9 10.9 8.3
8.8
--Aggregate child support
deficit 5.1 5.0 5.0 4.3
3.7
Percent of aggregate due

actually received 68.7 68.6 68.6 65.9
70.4
-------------------------------------------------------------
Mean child support
Characteristic In 1989 dollars2/ (Using CPI-U)
------------------------------------
1981 1978 1981 1978
-------------------------------------------------------------
Women due child support
payments:
--total thousands 4,043 3,424 4,043 3,424
Mean payments (dollars)1/:

--Due $3,382 $3,680 $3,352 $3,810
--Received 2,080 2,370 2,063 2,454
--Deficit 1,301 1,310 1,289 1,357
Aggregate payments (in billions

of dollars):
--Child support due 13.7 12.6 13.6 13.0
--Child support received 8.4 8.1 8.3 8.4
--Aggregate child support
deficit 5.3 4.5 5.2 4.6
Percent of aggregate due

actually received 61.3 64.3 61.0 64.6
----------------------------------------------------------------------
r Revised.
1/ For a discussion of the CPI-U-X1 and CPI-U, see Appendix B of
Current
Population Reports, Series P60, No. 173, "Child Support and
Alimony: 1989"
2/ Based on the CPI-U for 1983-1989 and CPI-U-X1 for 1978 and
1981.
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census

Contact the Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division
at 301-457-3242 or mail to hhes-info@census.gov for further information.
Go to Child Support Statistics
Last Revised: Wednesday, 13-Dec-00 11:12:07
Census 2000 | Subjects A to Z | Search | Product Catalog | Data Tools | FOIA | Quality | Privacy · Policies | Contact Us | Home
Skip
this U.S. Census Bureau: Helping You Make
main Informed Decisions
site
10
Figure 6.
Mean Income of Custodial Parents in 1991 by Child Support Award Status and Sex: 1991
Awarded Not Awarded Not

child support Awarded child support Awarded
payments1 child payments1 child
support support
payments payments
Received Did not Received Did not
payments receive payments receive
payments payments
$33,579
$2,292
$27,578
$25,184
$18,144
$3,011 $31,287
$14,602
$10,226
$15,133
3,728 1,156 4,376 278 164 936

Number of women Number of men
(In thousands) (In thousands)
1 Excludes a small number who were awarded payments but were not supposed to receive them in 1991.
Table D. Child Support Payments Due and Award and Receipt of Child Support by Type
Actually Received by Sex: 1991 of Arrangement
(Custodial parents 15 years and older with own children under 21
years of age present from absent parent as of spring 1992) Approximately 72 percent of the women due child
support payments in 1991 were expecting payments
Custodial Custodial Custodial from a court order. An additional 23 percent of women
Characteristic
parents mothers fathers
had voluntary written agreements. 12 Only 5 percent of
Custodial Parents Due Child women had some other type of agreement. The percent-
Support Payments ages of custodial fathers having each type of arrange-
Total . . . . . . . . . (thous.). . 5,326 4,883 443 ment were comparable to custodial mothers (see table
Mean Payments 6).
Specifically concerning custodial mothers, the mean
Due . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (dols.). . 3,321 3,375 2,715
Received. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,227 2,298 1,442 amount of child support received by women with volun-
Deficit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,094 1,077 1,273 tary child support awards was $3,597, one-third higher
Aggregate Payments than the mean amount received by women with court-
ordered agreements ($2,811).
Child support due . . . (bil. dols.). . 17.7 16.5 1.2
Child support received . . . . . . . . . . 11.9 11.2 0.6
Aggregate child support Inclusion of Health Care Benefits in Award
deficit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.8 5.3 0.6
Of the 6.2 million parents awarded child support
Percent of aggregate due actu- payments as of 1992, 41 percent had health insurance
ally received. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67.1 68.1 53.1
12
Voluntary written agreements are agreements not ordered by the
courts. However, these agreements may have been recognized by the
courts as part of the divorce or separation proceedings.
Child Support 1994
Census
Bureau
Child Support 1994

Table 1. Child Support Payments Due and Actually Received, by Gender: 1993
(People 15 years and older with own children under 21 years of age present from an
absent parent as of spring 1994)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Characteristics
Custodial Custodial
Custodial
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Custodial parents due child support payments:
Total (thousands) 6,685 5,907 778
Mean payments (dollars):
Due $3,576 $3,616 $3,272

Received $2,205 $2,291 $1,553
Deficit $1,371 $1,325 $1,719
Aggregate payments (billions of dollars):
Child support due $23.9 $21.4 $2.5

Child support received $14.7 $13.5 $1.2
Aggregate child support deficit $9.2 $7.8 $1.3
Percent of aggregate due actually received 61.7 63.4 47.5
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
Source: April 1994 Current Population Survey, U.S. Bureau of the Census.
Go to Child Support 1994

Census 2000 | Subjects A to Z | Search | Product Catalog | Data Access Tools | FOIA | Privacy · Policies | Contact Us | Home
_
U.S. Census Bureau: Helping
You Make Informed Decisions
Child Support 1996
Census
Bureau
Child Support 1996

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Characteristics
Custodial Custodial
Custodial
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Due $4,057 $4,126 $3,468

Received $2,555 $2,631 $1,910
Deficit $1,502 $1,495 $1,558

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
Source: April 1996 Current Population Survey, U.S. Bureau of the Census.

_
Child Support 1997
Census
Bureau
Child Support 1997

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Custodial Custodial Custodial

Characteristics
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Due $4,152 $4,172 $3,965

Received $2,440 $2,503 $1,856
Deficit $1,712 $1,669 $2,109

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, April 1998
Created: September 18, 2000

Last Revised: October 13, 2000
_
APPENDIX C
Spreadsheet of All Chart and Table Values
The following pages are a copy of the spreadsheet used to produce all the
charts and tables in this book based on Census Bureau data. It gives the
Census Bureau’s original figures, what year’s dollars those numbers where
reported in, how they are converted to both consistent 1989 dollars and
1999 dollars, and all calculated amounts. It is useful for getting the exact
numbers for each year rather than trying to determine them from charts.
Each successive page is a continuation of the previous page, to its right.
The actual spreadsheet is available online at
http://harbpress.com/files/AllCSNumbers.wb3

# Court Total Avg Total Avg. All 4 Amts' Rebased Re-rebase CPI-U-
Orders Due ($ Due*** Paid ($ Payment Yr's $ CPI-U-R, R From 1989 to
(,000) Billion Billions) 1989 = 1999
s) 100
* 1978 3,424 12.6 $3,679.91 8.1 $2,370.00 1989 55.6 1.3074054342
* 1981 4,043 13.7 $3,388.57 8.4 $2,080.00 1989 73.9 1.3074054342
* 1983 3,995 12.5 $3,128.91 8.8 $2,215.00 1989 81.6 1.3074054342
* 1985 4,381 12.6 $2,876.06 8.3 $1,892.00 1989 87.8 1.3074054342
* 1987 4,840 15.9 $3,285.12 10.9 $2,247.00 1989 92.5 1.3074054342
* 1989 4,953 16.3 $3,290.93 11.2 $2,252.00 1989 100.0 1.3074054342
1991 5,326 17.7 $3,323.32 11.9 $2,227.00 1991 108.9 1.3074054342
** 1993 6,685 23.9 $3,575.17 14.7 $2,203.00 1993 114.6 1.3074054342
** 1995 6,966 28.3 $4,062.59 17.8 $2,555.00 1995 120.2 1.3074054342
** 1997 7,006 29.1 $4,153.58 17.1 $2,440.00 1997 126.2 1.3074054342
** 1999 6,791 32.3 $4,756.30 19.0 $2,791.00 1999 130.7 1.3074054342
* All $ values reported in 1989 $s by US Census

** Census added past due amounts. Previously, only tracked amounts
due that year.
*** From 1993, "Avg Due" is NOT the amount of the child support award
since it includes past due.
Avg Due
In 1999
$s
1978 $4,811.13
1981 $4,430.24
1983 $4,090.76
1985 $3,760.17
1987 $4,294.99
1989 $4,302.59
1991 $4,344.93
1993 $4,078.70
1995 $4,418.85
1997 $4,303.02
1999 $4,757.77

Total Due ($ Billions) Total Paid ($
Billions)
In In % In In % % Paid # Paid % Paid # Paid % of Total
1989 1999 Change 1989 1999 Chang All All All or All or Due, Paid
$s $s From ‘78 $s $s e from Some Some
‘78
1978 12.6 16.5 0.00 8.1 10.6 0.00 48.9 1,674 71.7 2,455 64.3
1981 13.7 17.9 8.73 8.4 11.0 3.70 46.7 1,888 71.8 2,903 61.3
1983 12.5 16.3 -0.79 8.8 11.5 8.64 50.5 2,017 76.0 3,036 70.4
1985 12.6 16.5 0.00 8.3 10.9 2.47 48.2 2,112 74.0 3,242 65.9
1987 15.9 20.8 26.19 10.9 14.3 34.57 51.3 2,483 76.1 3,683 68.6
1989 16.3 21.3 29.37 11.2 14.6 38.27 51.4 2,546 75.2 3,725 68.7
1991 16.3 21.2 29.00 10.9 14.3 34.91 51.5 2,743 75.2 4,005 67.1
1993 20.9 27.3 65.52 12.8 16.8 58.36 34.1 2,280 69.0 4,613 62.7
1995 23.5 30.8 86.86 14.8 19.4 82.82 39.0 2,717 68.4 4,765 63.0
1997 23.1 30.1 83.01 13.5 17.7 67.28 40.9 2,865 67.4 4,722 58.8
1999 24.7 32.3 96.14 14.5 19.0 79.47 45.1 3,063 73.7 5,005 58.7

Average Payment
In 1989 $s In 1999 $s % Change

From ‘78
$2,370.00 $3,098.55 0
$2,080.00 $2,719.40 -12.24
$2,215.00 $2,895.90 -6.54
$1,892.00 $2,473.61 -20.17
$2,247.00 $2,937.74 -5.19
$2,252.00 $2,944.28 -4.98
$2,045.00 $2,673.64 -13.71
$1,922.34 $2,513.28 -18.89
$2,125.62 $2,779.05 -10.31
$1,933.44 $2,527.79 -18.42
$2,135.42 $2,791.87 -9.9

Other Publications
by K.C. Wilson
Where’s Daddy? The Mythologies behind Custody-Access-Support

Hardcover, 6 x 9, 256 pages.
PDF.
http://wheres-daddy.com
What really underlies our divorce practices, and how to fix them.
Co-parenting for Everyone: Context Definition Co-parenting.

E-book and Workbook. In PDF.
Separate the parents and keep the child’s family intact.
Delusions of Violence: The Secrets Behind Domestic Violence Myths

In PDF.
Since women commit more domestic violence than men, why has
everyone been anxious to believe the opposite?
Male Nurturing : Is There Such a Thing, and Does It Matter?

Special Report. In PDF.
Extensive annotated bibliographies of research, statistics and other

readings, with a summary and brief discussions.

Other Books
by Harbinger Press
The Ultimate Survival Guide for the Single Father

By Thomas Hoerner
Guy-talk on running a household and raising your children.
Paperback, 5½ x 8½, 220 pages.
PDF
http://single-father.com
This Child of Mine : A Therapist’s Journey.

By Martha Wakenshaw
A child therapist recounts her 15 years of treating neglected and abused
children.
Paperback, 5½ x 8½, 220 pages.
PDF
http://thischildofmine.com
Co-parenting for Everyone: Context Definition Co-parenting.

By K.C. Wilson
Separate the parents and keep the child’s family intact.
E-book and Workbook.
In PDF.
Delusions of Violence: The Secrets Behind Domestic Violence Myths

By K.C. Wilson
Since women commit more domestic violence than men, why has
everyone been anxious to believe the opposite?
In PDF.

About the Author
K.C. Wilson is a reclusive social scientist living in Toronto, Canada

with his cat, Fur. While his background is in cultural anthropology, he
has spent the last 14 years studying our divorce practices and
everything surrounding them. He and members of his family either
went through divorce, or came too close, and it was life-altering for all.
He found it astonishing the gaps between expressed convictions about
care of children and equality among adults, and actual practice. Such
gaps beg many questions about rationales, “group think,” and
children’s needs, upon which he set to work. Where’s Daddy? : The
Mythologies behind Custody-Access-Support is one of the results, as
are Delusions of Violence, Co-parenting for Everyone, and The
Multiple Scandals of Child Support.
K.C.’s articles on male nurturing, co-parenting and gender have
appeared in parenting magazines and newspapers throughout North
America.

Multiple Scandals of Child Support

Încărcat de

Informații document

Drepturi de autor

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Multiple Scandals of Child Support

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Reader's Preference (Harold McFarland.

Dr. Richard Weiss, Assistant Professor at Auburn College,

Janet Darst, mother of 3, family advocate:

Trudy Schuett, Desert Light Journal:

Second Edition, 2003.

A Harbinger Press E-book K.C. Wilson

Harbinger Press, Richmond, VA.

Congratulations on your purchase of this quality e-book from Harbinger

2711 Buford Road, PMB 383, Richmond, VA, 23235

Copyright © 2003 by K.C. Wilson

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wilson, K. C., 1951-

This edition adds the Census Bureau figures for

About This E-book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii

PART I – THE FACTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Other Publications by K.C. Wilson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

The common perception is that the child support enforcement measures

The Multiple Scandals of Child Support 1 Harbinger Press

The Premise: Context

Harbinger Press 2 The Multiple Scandals of Child Support

The Multiple Scandals of Child Support 3 Harbinger Press

Harbinger Press 4 The Multiple Scandals of Child Support

Rumor vs. Reality

< “$34 billion in child support is not being paid.” [$17.1

< “Half of all child support is not paid.”

1. All custodial parents have orders for child support. (Commonly,

Harbinger Press 6 The Multiple Scandals of Child Support

[Literary Convention: CP will hereafter be used for

The Multiple Scandals of Child Support 7 Harbinger Press

A: NCP Not Found

C: Not Want Contact with NCP

F: NCP Cannot Pay

H: Child With NCP Part of time

Chart 1: Reasons Support Not Sought

Harbinger Press 8 The Multiple Scandals of Child Support

A: NCP Not Found - 13.3

B: Paternity Not Legally Established - 17.5

C: Not Want Contact with NCP - 15.9

F: NCP Cannot Pay - 24.5

G: Child Too Old + Other - 15.2

H: Own Arrangements - 35.6

Chart 2: Reasons Support Not Sought - Consolidate

The Multiple Scandals of Child Support 9 Harbinger Press

Question: What constitutes justification for child abduction,

Harbinger Press 10 The Multiple Scandals of Child Support

The Multiple Scandals of Child Support 11 Harbinger Press

Harbinger Press 12 The Multiple Scandals of Child Support

One might gauge overall compliance in several ways:

C % of the total child support owed that is actually paid.

We seek an historical base to use as a benchmark for progression through

Number of Total Due Avg.

The Multiple Scandals of Child Support 13 Harbinger Press

# Owed Child % Who

Harbinger Press 14 The Multiple Scandals of Child Support

Total child support owed, that is paid 70%

CPs getting all or some ordered child support 70%

CPs getting all ordered child support 50%

The Multiple Scandals of Child Support 15 Harbinger Press

Comment: In the same report, Sorensen makes the mistake

< “Many noncustodial

Harbinger Press 16 The Multiple Scandals of Child Support

< “13 to 26 percent of noncustodial fathers are already poor or have

< 80% of the homeless are men.

To what extent are we not seeing evidence of non-compliance so much as

The Multiple Scandals of Child Support 17 Harbinger Press

Harbinger Press 18 The Multiple Scandals of Child Support

The Multiple Scandals of Child Support 19 Harbinger Press