How Anti-Poverty Programs Marginalize Fathers

Article here. This is story on how welfare programs marginalize fathers. Major media is just starting discover the unintended consequences of government payments. Excerpt:

'U.S. government programs designed to help such families, however, haven’t evolved with the population. Based on decades-old stereotypes that single mothers are raising children alone and single dads are “deadbeats,” the majority of United States anti-poverty programs almost exclusively serve women and children, said Jacquelyn Boggess, co-director of the Center for Family Policy and Practice, a Wisconsin-based think tank that focuses on supporting low-income parents. The welfare system, as a result, can become a muddled mess of rearranging rather than relieving poverty. Single, non-custodial fathers bear the brunt. But dads don’t suffer alone. Because the poor pull together to support one another, everyone absorbs the pinch.

“It’s like seven people in bed together, sharing a very small blanket,” Boggess said. “If you move the blanket over to cover up one person who’s chilly, someone else is going to get cold.”
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Historically, funding for both government and nonprofit programs to help men has been scarce, said Joy Moses, a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress. A recent survey from the Center for Family Policy and Practice shows the top two ways that nonprofit service providers connect with men is through parole and child support enforcement programs. “As a low-income man, you almost have to get in trouble to get help,” Moses said.
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Many noncustodial fathers in his situation aren’t so lucky. More aggressive child support enforcement was a key component of welfare reform in the 1990s, said Boggess, of the family-policy center. Because the welfare system was designed to act as a sort of “surrogate husband” to single mothers, the government looked to fathers as a way to get people off the dole, she said.

Now, men across the country owe $111 billion in unpaid child support, according to the Office of Child Support Enforcement. Many have racked up debts in the tens of thousands, Boggess said. But most, like Frandy, make less than $10,000 a year. “These men can’t pay,” she said.

Even if a man can come up with the cash, it may not benefit his children, said Kristin Harknett, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania. If a woman receives government cash assistance under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, any money her children’s father contributes is earmarked to pay back the government.

In some ways, child-support enforcement is actually having a negative effect on children, Harknett said. Mothers often keep fathers from spending time with their children to encourage them to pay up. Many fathers go underground to avoid doing jail time for falling into arrears. Often, as in Frandy’s case, other impoverished family members pick up the bill. “Basically we give money to one poor person, and then we find the nearest poor person connected to that child and ask for it back,” Harknett said.'