Posted on 11/25/2007 7:45:05 AM PST by madprof98
Former professional basketball player Jason Caffey had two children with his wife, and at least six other children with women in metro Atlanta, Alabama, Louisiana and Illinois.
Professional football player Travis Henry, a Denver Broncos running back with a $25 million contract, has nine children by nine women in four Southern states, including a Lithonia boy fathered out of wedlock three years ago.
Caffey, who earned as much as $5 million a season in a 10-year NBA career with the Chicago Bulls, Golden State Warriors and Milwaukee Bucks, filed for bankruptcy in Alabama in August. His wife, who lives in Roswell, filed for divorce last year after eight years of marriage.
"She didn't know about all of the children," her lawyer told Journal-Constitution reporter Tim Eberly. "She knew about a few. She had no idea he was being that disrespectful to her."
In Henry's case, a propensity to exercise "bad judgment in his spending habits" put him behind on the $3,000-per-month in support payments for the Lithonia boy.
So the judge in that case —- DeKalb Superior Court Judge Clarence Seeliger —- did something that should be mandated by law or become standard practice for judges presiding over child-support cases involving athletes, entertainers and others of means, particularly in cases involving out-of-wedlock births. To guarantee the child's financial security, Seeliger required Henry to create and fund a $250,000 trust on the boy's behalf.
Coincidentally, federal authorities in Richmond, Va., asked for a similar guarantee on behalf of pit bulls. Citing Michael Vick's "deteriorating financial condition," prosecutors asked a U.S. District Court judge to freeze about $928,000 to care for 54 pit bulls seized from his Bad Newz Kennels property in Virginia. Children deserve as much.
The Caffey story coincides with release of a Brookings Institution study by Julia Issacs that tracked incomes of 2,367 families over 30 years. It found that two-thirds of the number, now grown to more than 8,000 families, have inflation-adjusted incomes higher than those of their parents. That's true in about the same percentages for blacks and whites, Issacs finds.
While median family income for both blacks and whites increased over those three decades, an income gap persists. "Between 1974 and 2004, white and black men in their 30s experienced a decline in income, with the largest decline among black men," Issacs writes. Families beat their parents largely because more households had two breadwinners and because of gains in women's incomes.
As framed by The Associated Press —- "decades after the civil rights movement," the black-white income gap persists —- this is a discrimination issue. Yet as Isaacs noted, "the lack of income growth for black men combined with low marriage rates in the black population has had a negative impact on trends in family incomes for black families."
At some point, the nation —- and more importantly, influential blacks of the post-civil rights generation —-really do have to address the harm intentionally inflicted on children by unmarried adults. When 69.3 percent of black children, 46.4 percent of Hispanic children and 24.5 percent of white children are born to unmarried women, the nation has a serious problem.
Rich athletes and entertainers are the Murphy Browns of this era. Fifteen years ago, Murphy Brown was an unmarried television sitcom character who opted to find fulfillment by having a baby rather than buying a puppy. Vice President Dan Quayle created a national stir by criticizing the character for "mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice."
Quayle's point was that role models are obligated to consider the consequences of their actions. Rich actressses and well-educated women with high earning potential can toy with children's lives, just as rich athletes can pleasure themselves at children's expense. But when the poor and uneducated pick up the culturally sanctioned lifestyle, it's deadly for children and for the nation.
> Jim Wooten is the associate editorial page editor. His column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
jwooten@ajc.com
Its a discrimination issue when black men recklessly father children and then refuse to support them?
Perhaps we should change it so it would imply “bastard FATHER” or “bastard MOTHER”.
True it isn’t the child’s fault, and we know that. It’s just the way the un-PC world used to clarify things - and they were right. But the onus should be on the parents.
Neither my husband nor I are college graduates and we managed to keep our offspring in our marriage.
Wow, some common sense from the AJC’s editorial page. Such a rarity!
I expect to now witness porcine aviation.
Apparently People Magazine at times still has more decorum than Free Republic.
That would be horrible! Why penalize a child for the parents' sin? The child certainly had nothing to do with it. Rather, feel sorry for the child who has two such parents, who collect children like trinkets for a charm bracelet.
I had to look it up on wikipedia to see if A.J. even HAD a child. Yes, she gave birth to her own child. (She has 3 adopted children and 1 natural child. (I think. It's hard to keep up with all the children she's collecting.)
But her lifestyle is certainly worrisome. A proponent of BDSM (as I read on wikipedia), which I'd never even heard of, at least not with that acronym. Angelina is one sick person. So please don't blame the child! That includes not stigmatizing her. It's going to be a hard enough life for her, without throwing evil name-calling at her.
People have been saying the same thing for 100 years -- usally when running against incumbents. It hasn't been true yet, and there's no reason to think it will be true now. You can look at a data series going back to 1790 (admittedly the early stats are debatable), and real per capita income growth over 20 years (1 generation) runs around 40-50%, for the whole period, with the lowest in the very early years of the republic. In 40 years it runs a bit over 100% on average.
Most of the people whining about how we're doing worse don't see that we're really "doing different." I grew up in a pretty average family for my town -- 900 square foot house, eat out twice a year, one black-and white TV. Travel 1000 miles away every 2 years. If you live that way today, you can do it with a much lower class job than my Dad had back then with a stay-at-home Mom. If you want a 2500 square foot house, eat out twice a week, 2 Plasma HDTV, go on vacation to at least to Fla or the Caribbean every year --- you need a lot more income -- and the average person actually has it.
I don't mean to rag on you personally, but that's the facts, and the "average" person is out there making it happen, every day.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic Ping List:
Please ping me to all note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of interest.
Absolutely. No child brings him/herself into this world. They should never be labeled illigitimate or otherwise. They are beautiful babies and deserve to be happy and respected. It’s the people who make it happen that should be the ones responsible. I’m not for abortion because to me it is out and out murder. However, if someone wants one that should be between them and their maker...but I don’t want to pay for it with our hard earned money. I don’t ask them to pay for my hospital bill when I have a baby so I don’t want to pay for theirs when they murder a baby.
I think the answer is that mothers of small children should not be in the work force. (I am one of them too.) Maybe then the rest of employees could A) not need much time off work and B) earn more.
We need to preserve civilization. Forcing our children to live most of their day without being in mom’s bosom is really not the greatest idea for civilization. Day care and all-day schooling IS a Brave New World; the media has twisted us around to think it’s normal.
Now there's something to ponder.
Kevin McCullough wrote a good column about this subject for Townhall today:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KevinMcCullough/2007/11/25/no-fault_=_no_kids
And as parents have children later in life, grandparents may be too infirmed (or deceased) to help out with the grandkids in any substantive way.
That's the case with my family situation. I'm working part-time at home, while raising a 3 year-old and keeping an eye on my Mother, whose health took a turn for the worse this year. My father passed away 7 years ago, and my wife's parents are in poor health.
Wooten is their token whitey conservative.
But before we do so, perhaps you'll consider that it might be you who is putting the negative spin on a word that is straightforward. Note that William the Conqueror was known in state documents as "William the Bastard."
Don’t care what William was called...it’s still a terrible label to hang on a child.
Believe it or not, about every 15 or 20 columns, Cynthia Tucker makes some sense. Now, that one column doesn’t come even *close* to overcoming the idiocy in those other 14 or 19 columns.
This is not Cynthia. This is Jim Wooten, the token conservative on the editorial board. He is allowed to write stuff like this because Cynthia sorta/kinda agrees but wouldn’t put her name to it.
Oh, I know. Just pointing out that even CT can make some sense from time to time.
Wooten, they keep on a very short leash.
1) Marry before having children
2) Both parents work toward keeping the family intact and
3) Live below your means.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.