Free Republic

American families changed suddenly and dramatically in the 1960s. Marriage rates fell while divorces and nonmarital births increased (Lundberg and Pollak 2007). The share of mothers who were not married quadrupled between 1960 and 2010 (Figure 1). At the same time, married women’s employment and unmarried women’s welfare participation skyrocketed (Moffitt 1987, Goldin 2006). By 1980, mothers brought in one-third of family income, double their share in 1960. In 1991, Gary Becker reflected that “the family in the Western world has been radically altered— some claim almost destroyed—by the events of the last three decades” (Becker 1991, p. 1) Understanding...

Another video on YouTube promotes the Bro-choice mentality that if a woman is pregnant she should be forced to have an abortion. Brochoicers are pro-choice men who favor abortion! The video highlights Andre’s Mobile Abortion Clinic which will was started after Andre’s girlfriend became pregnant a number of times, “I founded this business 14 years ago when my girlfriend was pregnant for the 8th time, and no clinic would abort her baby without her consent and I ain’t hav’n none of that,” Andre the abortion clinic CEO says. The abortion clinic’s slogan, “Pregnant today – Happy Tomorrow! Three months, nine...

If Octo-Mom annoyed you, then you haven't seen welfare mom Angel Adams, a 39 year old Black single mother of 15 young children, 12 of which were in her care.

It was reported the other day on an inside page of the Pioneer Press, and without nearly enough fanfare, that more than six out of 10 women who give birth in their early 20s are unmarried. That is census data, from census demographers, from the very government that then becomes responsible for many, if not most, of those unmarried women and children. If that isn't an astonishing statistic, it should be. Why, to any logical person's way of thinking, it explains everything in terms of government at all levels bloating out of control. Supposing that even angels might fear to...

A judge has jailed a man who fathered 23 children by 14 different women - then refused to pay support. Judge Denis Lieber branded Howard Veal, 44, who owes more than $500,000 (£316,350) in child support, 'outrageous' and 'an insult to every responsible father'. The judge in Grand Rapids, western Michigan, was so appalled that he far exceeded the state guidelines by sentencing Veal to up to four years. The judge told him: 'You are the poster child for irresponsibility. You’re an insult to every responsible father who sacrifices to provide for their children. 'Animals procreate, human beings are supposed...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- The teen father of Sarah Palin's grandson has been ordered to make interim child support payments of $1,750 per month to Palin's daughter. The amount is 20 percent of 19-year-old Levi Johnston's adjusted annual income as set out in Alaska statute.

Deadbeat parents rounded up in 'Operation Tough Love' Round-up conducted on Valentine's Day azfamily.com PHOENIX – Another deadbeat parent round-up was conducted on Valentine’s Day by Maricopa County Sheriff's deputies. "Operation Tough Love" targeted parents with arrest warrants on Saturday for refusing to pay child support. The sheriff's office said the top offenders owe more than $1 million. Helen Montgomery, who is owed child support, says, “Nothing would be done if I wasn't coming down here and finding information and trying to get him arrested 'cause I think it's the tent that’s gonna make him pay, not 'cause his son's...

"Mothers are being forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars to men who paid child support over decades but were wrongly named as fathers....Ken Rodgers obtained orders for the repayment of $60,000 after making child-support contributions for a decade to a woman who refused to send him even a photograph of his alleged child... "The money is being garnished from mothers' incomes in the same way that payments are taken from fathers." Some good news, particularly given how badly paternity fraud cases usually go. ... read more

According to Jackson, a Fox News microphone picked up comments he meant to deliver privately that seemed to disparage the presumptive Democratic nominee for appearing to lecture the black community on morality. "For any harm or hurt that this hot mic private conversation may have caused, I apologize," Jackson said in a statement issued to CNN. "My support for Senator Obama’s campaign is wide, deep and unequivocal. I cherish this redemptive and historical moment."

The article below is illustrative of the problems with the child support system in many ways:1) I've often made the point that when we jail or threaten to jail child support debtors and they pay money to stay out of jail, this money often is not theirs but instead money they've borrowed from their family and friends. Yet inevitably whatever chest-thumping/publicity-seeking DA who's behind the latest crackdown will tell you, "See? The deadbeats have the money and the threat of jail makes them pay!"In this article, a judge is admitting that threatening to jail people means they borrow money from...

Fathers Important Protection Against Poverty from staff reports New York mayor proposes tax incentives to keep dads in the home. In a speech at the National Press Club, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said missing fathers contribute to poverty and government should do what it can to bring them back into the home. Bloomberg proposed withholding tax refunds from deadbeat dads, increasing participation in the Earned Income Tax Credit and doing away with the marriage penalty tax. Gerald Prante, a staff economist at the Tax Foundation, said the mayor's proposals make good economic sense. "The Earned Income Tax Credit is...

I've often criticized what one might call the "paternal abandonment script"--the standard assumption that if a father doesn't remain in his children's lives after a divorce or separation, it's because he "abandoned the family" and/or chose to remove himself from his children's lives. One example is my blog entry Dick Allen & the Misleading 'Paternal Abandonment Script' [http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=323]. Recently I've been watching and following the ESPN mini-series The Bronx Is Burning [http://www.bronxisburning.com/]. The series discusses the year 1977 in New York--the famous power outage and subsequent riots and looting, the "Son of Sam" killings, the upset in the mayoral election,...

One of the most surprising scenes in the new Harry Potter book occurs in the chapter "The Bribe" (pages 210-215)--a scene which reflects our sharply anti-father political environment. (As an aside, even though J.K. Rowling is an avowed single mother advocate, in the Harry Potter series she mercifully spares us any nonsense on the glories of single motherhood.) The scene involves Harry and Lupin (pictured, with Harry), a former teacher at the school who is also a werewolf. Lupin is married to Tonks, and Tonks is pregnant with their child. Lord Voldemort (the devil in the Harry Potter series) has...

The television station shows three general laborers, three construction laborers, a landscaper, a salesman and two tradesmen, most of them Latino men with dour expressions on their faces. Are they the featured men in a report about hard times for blue-collar workers in the state of Texas? The hopefuls for a local job training program? No—they are Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s “Top 10 Most Wanted Child Support Evaders.” The 10 men collectively owe nearly $700,000 in back child support. Not one appears to have an education, and the big wage earner in the group is a plumber. Abbott says...

[Just as women should not be punished for choosing to terminate a pregnancy, men should not be punished when those women choose not to.] For pro-choicers like myself, Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s position regarding spousal consent for abortion seems like one more loose rock in the ongoing erosion of Roe vs. Wade. ...[but]I wonder if this idea of choice is being fairly applied. ...[W]hat about the kind of life men want to lead? ...why shouldn't men have the right during at least the first trimester of pregnancy to terminate their legal and financial rights and responsibilities to...

JEFFERSON CITY - Some Republican legislators want to charge unwed fathers thousands of dollars for hospital birth costs incurred by low-income mothers on Medicaid. "But the last time I checked, it takes two people to make a baby. And there is some responsibility, not just for child support, but for the cost of bringing that child successfully into the world," said Shields, R-St. Joseph. Medicaid pays for 43 percent of the births in Missouri. At an average cost of $3,286 a birth, the tab hit $120.6 million last year. Nearly two-thirds of the moms on Medicaid are unmarried. Critics say...

On Oct. 1, Michigan launched a new crackdown on "deadbeats"— noncustodial parents who are behind on paying child support. The overwhelmingly majority of "deadbeats" are dads. Custodial parents cheered; father’s rights groups objected. Children were caught in between. But Attorney General Mike Cox doesn’t seem concerned about keeping children as non-combatants in the war between their parents. In conjunction with the website PayKids, a site Cox established to track down deadbeats, Cox announced a contest in which children are to draw pictures "that clearly convey the message of encouraging the payment of child support." The contest’s prize: "The first 250...

NEWPORT, Ky. (AP) -- For some men showing up in court for being habitually behind in child support, their choice is jail or a vasectomy. Family Court Judge D. Michael "Mickey" Foellger has given the option to a few men who had multiple children and were tens of thousands of dollars behind on their child support. Foellger said he considers it an effective way to get his message across - that having children is a responsibility. "If these children are in poverty because these guys are not paying their child support, I have no qualms about it," he said of...

<p>A man who had sex with a married woman when he was 14 owes child support for their now teenage son, even though under state law, the sex act was likely a crime, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled in a decision released Friday.</p>

Operation Iceberg seizes car for overdue debt By Bill Vidonic, Times Staff 09/25/2002 BEAVER - Operation Iceberg is afloat. Tuesday, the Beaver County District Attorney's Office and the county's Domestic Relations Department displayed a 1993 Cadillac Seville - a symbol of a first step to squeeze drug dealers for child-support payments, fraudulently obtained welfare payments and delinquent state income taxes. The car was seized Friday from Damien Jefferson, 29, of 1156 Franklin Ave., Aliquippa, who owes about $16,000 in back child support. The car will be sold at a sheriff's sale Oct. 4, and county officials are hoping to get...