Deadbeat Fathers and Return of Imprisonment for Debt

Letter here.

'Regarding Robert Doar’s “Making It Easier to Skip Paying Child Support” (op-ed, March 10): The most consequential problem with child support isn’t the back-end collection of child support but rather the front-end calculation of child support. As calculated in most states today, mothers are enriched, fathers are impoverished and there is no accountability mechanism to be sure that the money is being spent on the children of divorce.

Mr. Doar keeps referring to “absent parents” as if all fathers are fleeing from their children in unprecedented droves. Fathers are absent visitors because the family courts order them to be absent. Involved fathers are much more likely to remain current even on absurdly calculated child-support awards if they are deeply involved in their children’s lives.

Most important for any man contemplating marriage and fatherhood, the draconian enforcement types like Mr. Doar love “debtors prison laws.” In the U.S. today, the only citizens who can be imprisoned for debt are fathers in arrears for child support. The parent-to-prison pathway generally goes something like this: Fall behind in child support, and the state takes away all professional and drivers’ licenses. This makes it impossible for fathers to generate income, and so the arrears increase, the father goes to debtors prison, and with a prison record it becomes exceedingly difficult to impossible to ever get a job in the aboveground economy. The future prospects of the children of imprisoned fathers are uniformly bleak, especially when compounded with the well-established findings that children from single-mother families have the worst developmental outcomes of all family forms.

Em. Prof. Gordon E. Finley
Florida Intl. University
Miami'