Father’s Rights: For Some Men, Support Can Keep Them from Children
Even for the hundreds of thousands of divorced fathers across the country who desperately want to be involved with their children, the uphill battle they must fight through the United States family court system often makes running seem alluring, says Greg McClain, a father of one from Tulsa, Ok., who has spent the last several years chasing the mother of his 3-year-old son across the country.
No one could ever accuse McClain of not being involved with his son. When the mother of his son told him she was moving to Texas, McClain took a job in Dallas. But she never moved.
Instead, just one month later, she decided to move to Tulsa. McClain decided to go with them. I moved to Tulsa and got a lower paying job just to see my son more. “Everything was going all right, until two months ago when she decided to move to Oklahoma City. Now I have to take her back to court to try and get custody,” McClain says.
Still, his expectations are low. By Oklahoma law, she is supposed to petition the court before she moves with him, however, when she moved to Tulsa she failed to file anything, “a point we brought up during our last ordeal in court, but the judge simply offered a warning and consequences for moving.” McClain’s story is different than the one painted by so many child enforcement agencies: the father who has no interest in seeing his child, who flees to avoid paying what he owes and lives a life of leisure somewhere tropical.
In fact, McClain’s desire to be a part of his child’s life has driven almost every adult decision he has made. Despite his devotion, things have not changed. “The mother of my son has literally done everything within her ability to keep me from getting “equal” time with him and the courts refuse to do anything about it,” says McClain. “I am a visitor in my own son’s life.”
Although McClain says he would never consider leaving, the reality is, sometimes he can understand why non-custodial parents would just give up. “I have been tempted to just leave this whole situation simply because at times its just so frustrating and I know the impact it will inevitably have on my son,” he says. “When he is older he will want to know where I was, and I will have to explain to him that a guy he never met, when he was very young, argued by two people who had no interest in his life, decided how much I could see him. The police department can’t help, my lawyer gets tired of my phone calls and, in the end, I’m out $6,000 and still can’t see him any more than 4 days a month.”
“There does seem to be incentive for dads who don’t want to be visitors in their child’s life to just give up. Then society calls them deadbeats,” says McClain.
The experts agree. “There are many inequalities built into the family legal system that revolve around two dimensions of fatherhood. The first is that women have implied legal rights to decisions to keep (developing) children (while in utero) even if the man wants the child, or, alternatively, may make the decision to keep the child even if the man does not want to raise a child,” says Dr. Scott Haltzman, a psychiatrist and assistant professor at Brown University who specializes in relationships and men’s issues.
“Ultimately, after the fertilization of an egg, the woman, and the woman alone, has the right to make the decision about what to do next. The man must sit on the corner and accept the consequence, even if the woman has misrepresented whether or not she was fertile at the time of sex,” Haltzman says.
As of now, fathers, or non-custodial parents — are expected to accept their full share of financial responsibility for children even if they have little to no say about the care of the children. “In most cases, the mother of the child has the right to decide how the money should be used to secure the child’s needs,” says Haltzman.
For McClain, whose first experience with family court was during his parent’s divorce in 1986, the fact that nothing has changed in more than 20 years was quite a shock. “I would have thought that the father’s role has changed at least a little bit since 1986,” says McClain who was given the exact same visiting schedule, four days a month and every other holiday, as his father was back then.
According to Ned Holstein, executive director of Fathers and Families, a Massachusetts-based family court reform organization, that is the reality across the country. “The only place where it is still the 1950’s is in family court,” says Holstein.
There, women are the caretakers and men are the breadwinners. Meanwhile, outside the family courts, father’s roles are evolving dramatically. Stay-at-home dads blog their daily adventures with their children, fathers write parenting memoirs like Neal Pollack’s Alternadad, they join support groups and even have an annual convention. They infiltrate the once predominantly female “Mommy and Me” classes and PTA meetings. Across the country, men’s restrooms sport diaper-changing tables and a few companies are marketing exclusively male diaper bags, like “Diaper Dude.”
But in family court, the non-custodial parent is not given the benefit of the doubt, says Dr. Haltzman. “When it comes to child support, most court systems defaults to consider the worse aspects of the parent who owes child support,” he says. “There is a predominant belief that all able-bodied men should work, and that in good faith the majority of their money should go to supporting their family. This is a good goal when possible”, says Holstein. But for many of the so-called deadbeat dads, a term Dr. Holstein dislikes, after all people who default on almost any other kind of loan are rarely called deadbeats — there may be an explanation beyond simply not wanting to pay. Still, their photos are showing up on most wanted posters, their crimes visible for all to see, subject to public scorn.
“There are six questions I ask myself when I read about ‘deadbeat dads’ in the media,” says Dr. Holstein. “Was the order a reasonable one? Are the records accurate? Has there been a job loss or illness? When the money is paid, does it go to the state or to the child? What is the custodial parent’s financial situation? And finally, is it an act of civil disobedience?”
If a non-custodial parent loses his job, the likelihood that the court will give any leniency is low, says Dr. Haltzman. “When a man doesn’t earn money, or doesn’t have enough money to give to the care of his child, the courts are not inclined to forgive, or seek other arrangements,” he says. “For instance, many men who are out of work would love to be the primary care giver of the children but few courts give men such an option.”
In Indiana, child support enforcement falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Child Services, which also handles child abuse and neglect (www.mychildsupport.in.gov). “In Indiana, we saw child support as a key prevention piece in terms of abuse,” says Susan Tielking, spokeswoman for the department who works directly with county prosecutors tracking down parents who are behind on their child support. “We see it as trying to help families get the resources they need,” said Tielking. She stresses that both mothers and fathers can be deadbeats,” although most wanted posters include only pictures of wanted fathers.
“When a single father, or the man living without his family loses his job, the court accuses him of being lazy, and, worse, in contempt of court. It’s often shameful enough to be out of work, he doesn’t need to deal with the shame brought on him by the court system as well,” says Haltzman.
Child support orders vary by state, but inMassachusettss, for one child, a father, or non-custodial parent must forfeit one-third of his salary for child support. If he also gives a third to taxes, he is left with only one-third of his money to live on. Often this is not enough to secure adequate, safe housing where his children can visit him.
In fact, two-thirds of the men with the most outrageous arrearages — $100,000; $200,000 earn poverty-level wages (less than $40,000 per year), according to the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement.
“For many, it is not an issue of desire to pay, but an issue of poverty,” says Holstein whose organization is hard at work, not only helping to reform the family courts and child support, but also to change the way society views fathers. “The data on how badly our children are doing without fathers is dismaying,” he says.
“Men must attempt to demonstrate devotion to their children even when there are obstacles to easily doing this,” Haltzman says. “It’s critical not to let the hostility that he may be feeling toward the mother of their children to interfere with his relationship with his children, or, for that matter, his children’s’ relationship with their mother.”
For McClain, no matter how bad things get, he keeps fighting because, ultimately, he wants to be a part of his son’s life. “I may never get to experience the joy of seeing my only son wake up on Christmas morning. I can never these years back,” McClain says. “So what else can I do but keep trying?”
About the author: Sasha Brown-Worsham is a freelance writer in Boston, Mass. who has written for the Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Technology Review, Babble.com and many other publications.
