I agree with Card; unfortunately, child support enforcement rarely has anything to do with a man abandoning anyone. The fact is that in America about 52 percent of marriages end up in divorce, and in about 90% of these cases the wife files for divorce, and the man gets the boot. This is hardly abandonment, eh? I did a personal study of this phenomenon for a Father's Group in Massaschuetts. I spent days and days pouring over divorce files in "Family Court" in a large city to obtain statistics. Results: 90% of the divorces were filed by the wife, (no surprise there, they are the ones who lose nothing but what the want to lose, the husband. Women are almost always awarded the house, the kids, the furnishings, the bank account, and a sizeable chunk of ex-hubby's income - typically a third of his gross in my state). Conversely, the men lose their family, their home, and 2/3rds of their income, (the govt. gets 1/3, the ex gets the other). Men were awared custody of their children in only 10% of the cases I examined, and usually this was due to gross behavior by the wife, such as drug addiction or severe neglect of the children.
I'm all for supporting the children, to whatever degree possible, after a divorce. But my experience working in a Father's Group was that the men not only did not abandon their children, they had to go to extraordinary measures just to get to see them. In our State, the State Department of Revenue now collects child support from the guys, (I say 'guys' because so few women are ever ordered to pay child support they are irrelevent to any serious discussion). The Dept. of Revenue is chartered as a tax collection beurocracy of the state, how they got involved in child support payments is interesting. While I understand there are good-for-nothing bums who get women pregnant and then leave them high and dry, I have known many a professional man who was compeltely broken down, financially and emotionally, after divorce. Most men are decent human beings, and they want to be a part of their children's lives. And most men have to fight like hell to make this happen; many get discouraged at the incredible difficulty and just give up. Though most fathers try hard to keep their children in their lives, the Courts grant only the customary bi-weekly "visitation" of their children. (fyi, "visitation" was a word first used in prisons when a family member visited an inmate). The system is corrupt, unfair, and utterly biased against men. I hear about the guys who skip out on the kids, but all the divorced men I've known have had to literally go broke with attorney's fees just trying to keep their children in their lives.