NPO: OCSE Commissioner to Report Sexism Concerns to Massachusetts Child Support Agency

Article here. Excerpt:

'Two years ago, the National Parents Organization’s Ned Holstein reported the shocking news that, in Massachusetts, non-custodial fathers who are behind on their child support payments are eight times as likely to be sent to jail as non-custodial mothers in arrears. That information came to NPO courtesy of the yeoman work of Terry Brennan who dogged the sheriff’s departments of all Bay State counties for their data on child support enforcement. The results were astonishing: between 95% and 98.5% of those incarcerated in every county were fathers.

U.S. Census Bureau figures on child support payment demonstrate that mothers with child support arrears are incarcerated at approximately one-eighth of the rate that would be justified by their numbers if fathers and mothers in arrears were treated equally. Mothers in arrears are incarcerated at lower rates even though they have higher rates of incomplete payment, pay a smaller percentage of their child support order, and have larger arrears than fathers. In the absence of other explanations, these data suggest that gender bias against fathers plays a large role in family court-ordered incarcerations.'