Posted on 11/25/2007 7:45:05 AM PST by madprof98
Former professional basketball player Jason Caffey had two children with his wife, and at least six other children with women in metro Atlanta, Alabama, Louisiana and Illinois.
Professional football player Travis Henry, a Denver Broncos running back with a $25 million contract, has nine children by nine women in four Southern states, including a Lithonia boy fathered out of wedlock three years ago.
Caffey, who earned as much as $5 million a season in a 10-year NBA career with the Chicago Bulls, Golden State Warriors and Milwaukee Bucks, filed for bankruptcy in Alabama in August. His wife, who lives in Roswell, filed for divorce last year after eight years of marriage.
"She didn't know about all of the children," her lawyer told Journal-Constitution reporter Tim Eberly. "She knew about a few. She had no idea he was being that disrespectful to her."
In Henry's case, a propensity to exercise "bad judgment in his spending habits" put him behind on the $3,000-per-month in support payments for the Lithonia boy.
So the judge in that case —- DeKalb Superior Court Judge Clarence Seeliger —- did something that should be mandated by law or become standard practice for judges presiding over child-support cases involving athletes, entertainers and others of means, particularly in cases involving out-of-wedlock births. To guarantee the child's financial security, Seeliger required Henry to create and fund a $250,000 trust on the boy's behalf.
Coincidentally, federal authorities in Richmond, Va., asked for a similar guarantee on behalf of pit bulls. Citing Michael Vick's "deteriorating financial condition," prosecutors asked a U.S. District Court judge to freeze about $928,000 to care for 54 pit bulls seized from his Bad Newz Kennels property in Virginia. Children deserve as much.
The Caffey story coincides with release of a Brookings Institution study by Julia Issacs that tracked incomes of 2,367 families over 30 years. It found that two-thirds of the number, now grown to more than 8,000 families, have inflation-adjusted incomes higher than those of their parents. That's true in about the same percentages for blacks and whites, Issacs finds.
While median family income for both blacks and whites increased over those three decades, an income gap persists. "Between 1974 and 2004, white and black men in their 30s experienced a decline in income, with the largest decline among black men," Issacs writes. Families beat their parents largely because more households had two breadwinners and because of gains in women's incomes.
As framed by The Associated Press —- "decades after the civil rights movement," the black-white income gap persists —- this is a discrimination issue. Yet as Isaacs noted, "the lack of income growth for black men combined with low marriage rates in the black population has had a negative impact on trends in family incomes for black families."
At some point, the nation —- and more importantly, influential blacks of the post-civil rights generation —-really do have to address the harm intentionally inflicted on children by unmarried adults. When 69.3 percent of black children, 46.4 percent of Hispanic children and 24.5 percent of white children are born to unmarried women, the nation has a serious problem.
Rich athletes and entertainers are the Murphy Browns of this era. Fifteen years ago, Murphy Brown was an unmarried television sitcom character who opted to find fulfillment by having a baby rather than buying a puppy. Vice President Dan Quayle created a national stir by criticizing the character for "mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice."
Quayle's point was that role models are obligated to consider the consequences of their actions. Rich actressses and well-educated women with high earning potential can toy with children's lives, just as rich athletes can pleasure themselves at children's expense. But when the poor and uneducated pick up the culturally sanctioned lifestyle, it's deadly for children and for the nation.
> Jim Wooten is the associate editorial page editor. His column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
jwooten@ajc.com
Ah I see thanks for the clarification. I would guess that in a heavily stratified area like defense contracting that would be the case.
I work as a software engineer in Silicon Valley, and it seems the opposite to me — almost everyone I work with is young and many are quite well off due to high salaries and stock options and whatnot.
I see very few older folks, but maybe that is because they don’t need to work anymore... :)
Should read, “Nation’s Children Harmed by Unmarried Parents”
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