[KorbenDallas]

Deadbeat Dad's Myth

I keep digging down the rabbit hole and I keep finding that the truth is far stranger than fiction.

I was not alive in 1985 when the family court/divorce system was overhauled. But sociologist Lenore Weitzman's, was. This was the woman whose report on the difference in living standards of men and women after divorce caused a national uproar and the momentum to overhaul the system. She claimed men were living the high life while their ex wives were relegated to poverty, basically.

Well, it turns out, her numbers were completely wrong, and SHE ADMITS IT. She claims it was A TYPO. Her numbers were reported on all over the country and caused a national uproar which led to the system being changed and she admits it was bullshit.

The numbers she was putting out were used in the media to mostly blame black fathers, and it was complete bullshit. Black guys weren't abandoning taking care of their kids, it was only after the family law system was put in place where men started abandoning their posts based on the abuse they started taking from the system.

[vinman]

Good find!

[Walderschmidt]

Sent that link to my parents.

Wald

[Samseau]

"The Campaign Against Deadbeat Dads" was probably the single most destructive law ever passed against American families. Pretty sure we're the only country in the world that will throw a man in prison for a felony crime because of failure to pay a debt.

No other law has caused as much harm to American life than this one. It is tyranny.

Many other countries have child support, yet you don't see men killing themselves or killing their families when faced with the prospect of going to family court. That's because child support in most countries is small, reasonable, and failure to pay just means lower monthly payments.

[Ryre]

The rabbit hole goes even deeper. Besides the plain errors Weitzman made, the methodology of most studies of economic well-being after divorce have been inadequate in several ways.

1) Counting gross income, not net income after taxes, thus not taking into account disparate tax impacts on men and women, e.g.: custodial parents can claim head-of-household status, and the children as dependents; child support is paid from after-tax income, but is tax-free to the recipient; tax credit for child-care payments; etc. (pg. 13-15 of the linked document).

2) Treating fathers as if child support is the sole expenditure they make to support their children, when in fact many divorced fathers buy clothes for their kids, maintain a residence large enough to have the kids there during visitation weekends, and pay for food, activities, etc. during the time when they have their kids. In other words, even if a father has his children every other weekend and a few weeks during the summer, paying for food, outings, etc., he is treated as if he never has them and spends nothing on them when it comes to collecting these statistics. (pg. 18-21).

http://www.fathersunite.org/ChildSupport...ivorce.pdf

I am not an economist or family lawyer, but my feeling is the typical scenario is mom and kids living in the family home while dad squeezes into dismal apartment, not mom living in poverty while dad drives around in a sports car. Certainly that is what my male married-with-kids friends fear will happen if their marriages fail.

[Ensam]

That article is from 1996!

So nearly 20 years later and policy is still being based on faulty numbers.

[Culdesachero]

(06-06-2014 12:52 PM)Ensam Wrote:  

That article is from 1996!

So nearly 20 years later and policy is still being based on faulty numbers.

I would love to see some more modern figures on this. Most divorced dads I know are in fairly rough situations financially. They still seem to be brainwashed into thinking that they need to be serving a woman and jump at the chance get hitched again to another women.

Not that all these women are bad people, either. They just have a mindset of privilege that allows them to justify dumping their man if he doesn't meet their expectations and taking his money in child support with no moral quandary at all. Society supports them no matter what, so they have no need to question their way of thinking.

[L M McCoy]

Saw a post on FB where some hoe was bragging how she's going to go to vegas with the child support she was got, around 6k.

6k a month for child support, what the fuck brah