Most men don’t know much at all about post-separation issues such as child support prior to having children. I suspect the reason for this is that most men who are dealing with them don’t like to talk about these things. There are good reasons for this, and not-so-good reasons. The best reason for keeping one’s mouth shut is that the mother of your children may become angry, and it is entirely within her power to make your life miserable. Why? Because the current system of child support puts non-custodial parents – overwhelmingly fathers – essentially on parole. As soon as a child support order is entered, they enter the criminal justice system. This happens whether they are current or not. Their social security number, selective service number and a number of other identifying pieces of information are entered into a state database. Then, the father is assigned a child support enforcement officer, who is something akin to a parole officer.
The enforcement officer keeps track of cases, makes decisions about bank account garnishments, deals with fathers’ employers and reviews cases from time to time. He or she refers to both custodial and non-custodial parents as “clients,” but in truth the officer’s job is to work for the custodial parent — usually the mother. The officer may or may not have compassion for “obligors” (those ordered to pay), but his duty is solely to enforce “compliance.” It is an impersonal relationship, as all relationships between the state and citizens are. This puts non-custodial parents at a fatal disadvantage, and is why child custody is often so absolutely crucial to parents during divorce.
It may not be a nice, comfortable reality about custody, but there are strictly practical, financial factors that influence parents’ decision to fight for children. It is probable, however, that women are more aware of these factors, as they usually have a public and private support network that informs them throughout their lives. Mainstream media, for its part, does a good job of ignoring the fact that decent men are often ruined by women of less than stellar character, which probably goes some ways toward keeping men unprepared for what awaits them following separation from their children’s mothers.
These factors combine to create a climate of ignorance on the one hand, and fear on the other, that conspires to keep young men ill-informed about the realities of life as an abandoned or separated father. However, there is one more problem, and it is what gives this site, along with others like it, an opportunity to make some change: shame.
Too many men who fall into arrears or are put in impossible situations are burdened with a deep sense of failure. Not only have their wives left them, but now they are unable to “support their children.” For many men, it is simply too painful to admit they can’t keep up with their “obligations,” even though they are artificial and arbitrarily imposed. For example, playing with the kids in a park is absolutely irrelevant to legally-recognized obligations. Child care such as changing diapers, feeding kids, and driving them to events and activities, so important in the feminist arguments, means nothing to the law. A father who can contribute a great deal of work and love to raising his children, but who doesn’t have much money, is a deadbeat, while a man who abandons his kids and sends the monthly minimum in the mail is an upstanding father.
It is a brutal, inhuman system, but a lot of selfish people, from feminists and their single-mom cannon-fodder to bureaucrats trying to increase revenue, are invested in it. The only way it can be overcome is if men start to see fatherhood and being a man in a different light. Men and fathers have the same basic human rights and dignity as anyone else, and they have to recognize that they, too, can be oppressed by injustice. As it stands today, our most serious weakness is our illusion of strength, which prevents us from acting in our own interests. If men had never stood up and demanded some recognition of their humanity, we would still mainly be slaves and serfs, bereft of any legal protection and no better treated than common draft animals.
Today, unfortunately, we are falling further and further toward just that status. Our illusion of strength is our yoke. Our shame is the whip that drives us on. They prevent us from advocating for ourselves and our brothers, and prevent us from taking any steps that might give us real, human political strength.
