Defiant Dads: Fathers' Rights Activists in America

5. Money Changes Everything, or American Child Support Policy

Gathered on this cool fall day in an urban center on the West Coast are the two leaders of Dads Love Their Kids, Jasper and Veronica, and fourteen racially diverse members, of whom only one, besides Veronica , is a woman. The room in the YMCA where the group is meeting is obviously used to teach young children about important personal values . Signs hanging from the walls reinforce these values by proclaiming “Welcome!” “Respect,” “Caring,” and “Responsibility.” With Veronica primarily silent and Jasper running through the agenda, this fathers’ group meeting carries an air of a gospel revival. Every time Jasper makes a statement, the group answers with exclamations such as “Amen,” “Yes,” and “Right on.” The meeting begins with Jasper asking members to identify themselves , tell how many children they have and the ages, and how often they see their children. After these introductions, Jasper describes his philosophy about the court system to a resounding series of clapping and other forms of verbal approbation from his audience. Jasper: I really want to get cameras in court, but I cannot do this alone. What is my purpose? Tapes are cheaper than transcriptions. Cameras also get people to act properly in court. All of the crooked 5 Money Changes Everything, or American Child Support Policy 108 Defiant Dads judges in the system need to be scared. Judges are like tyrants. They rule over the court and the transcriptionists listen to them. Anytime they do something wrong, the transcriptionist will write “inaudible” on the transcript to cover up for the judge. (This philosophy about the court’s abuse of power pervades the group meeting. At the end, Jasper cuts to the chase of his argument, especially as it relates to child support.) Jasper: Judges are too powerful today. They are simply political hacks. Dads Love Their Kids Member 1: Sometimes my ex uses child support money to buy things for herself. Jasper: Your lawyer’s job should be to get you to pay the least amount in child support. From this snapshot of a fathers’ rights group in action, it is clear that men want to pay less or no child support to women. But what would this type of reform, if enacted, do to the financial well-being of America ’s female-headed households? There is little debate that women in the United States have made strong socioeconomic gains since the 1970s. More specifically, between 1970 and 2002, women increased their presence in the labor market, moving from a participation rate of 43 percent to 60 percent.1 They also are obtaining better jobs and holding onto more lucrative careers. In 1983, only 22 percent of all women were in professional or managerial occupations; by 2002, this number had grown to 34 percent. Commensurate with these gains has been their increase in educational attainment. Over the last three decades, the percentage of women between the ages of 25 and 64 with a four-year college degree tripled from 11 percent to 32 percent. At the opposite end of the educational attainment spectrum, the percentage of women in the labor force who were high school dropouts decreased from 34 percent to only 8 percent. Yet despite these gains, other statistics demonstrate that women still have a long way to go in order to catch up with their male counterparts. 1. All statistics from these first two paragraphs are from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2004. Money Changes Everything 109 Perhaps most pointedly, dollar for dollar, women earn far less money than men. As of 2002, women brought home only 78 percent of what men earned. They tend to be crowded into part-time jobs, which ultimately has negative ramifications for their pensions, and little to no maternity leave protection, especially in comparison to women in other industrialized countries (Gornick and Meyers 2003). Occupational segregation is still rampant as well. Even though women are filling professional and managerial positions in greater numbers, within these broad categories, there is still hyper, sex-based segregation. For example, even though both professions can enable one to achieve a middle-class lifestyle , engineers tend to earn much more than early education teachers . Yet only 11 percent of all engineers are women, but 98 percent of all preschool and kindergarten teachers are women. Among those with lower skill levels, women suffer in comparison with men as well. Women age 25 and older are...