Posted on 06/14/2011 11:12:49 AM PDT by Kaslin
With Father's Day coming up, we should ponder the sad plight of the 20 million American children who are growing up without their fathers in the home. In 1993, Charles Murray identified "illegitimacy as the single most important social problem of our time ... because it drives everything else."
Murray was whistling in the wind. Last year, the U.S. illegitimacy rate had grown to 41 percent, and among whites it was 29 percent.
Prior to Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, husbands and fathers provided for their families. The 1.7 million out-of-wedlock babies born last year and their unmarried moms now look to Big Brother as their financial provider.
The left is content to let this problem persist because 70 percent of unmarried women voted for Barack Obama for president. They vote for the party that offers the richer subsidies.
Means-tested welfare handouts cost federal taxpayers $700 billion last year (not counting programs into which people pay, such as Social Security and Medicare). Spending by the states raises the annual total to nearly $900 billion -- more than we are spending on national defense -- and most of these programs subsidize non-marriage.
The 77 means-tested programs include Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), food stamps, housing subsidies, Medicaid, daycare, WIC, EITC (which can be as much as $5,657 a year to low-income families), school lunches, school breakfasts, summer food, SSI, Head Start and S-CHIP. The Heritage Foundation estimates that these benefits amount to $16,800 per person in poverty.
Ronald Reagan's advice is still on target. If we subsidize something, we'll get more of it; if we tax it, we'll get less.
The financial subsidies that encourage non-marriage are the biggest reason why federal spending is out of control. There is no way to make significant cuts in the federal deficit unless we address the marriage-absence problem.
Poverty is massively greater for children living with a single, divorced or cohabiting parent than with parents who are married to each other. The poverty rate for single parents with children is 37 percent, but only 6 percent for married couples with children.
Marriage breakdown is a double-edged sword. At the same time that it forces government to become the financial provider for millions of children and their caregivers, it also reduces the government's tax receipts to pay for the handouts.
Income tax day now divides us into two almost equal classes: those who pay for government services and freeloaders. In 2009, 47 percent paid no federal income taxes, and the bottom 40 percent receive cash or benefits financed by the 53 percent who do pay income taxes.
Among other unfortunate effects, the trends toward non-marriage and toward same-sex marriage are a direct attack on fathers. The bond between a child and his mother is an obvious fact of nature, but marriage is the relationship that establishes the link between a child and his father.
There are many causes for the dramatic reduction in marriage, starting with unilateral divorce, which spread across the United States in the 1960s and '70s, putting government on the side of marriage breakup. Then came the legalizing of abortion, diminishing the custom of shotgun marriages, which in earlier years was often the response to surprise pregnancies.
The feminist notion that women should be independent of men, followed by affirmative-action/female quotas in employment, tended to carry out the goal stated by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that the concept of husband-breadwinner and wife-homemaker "must be eliminated." These feminist ideas and practices demean marriage by discriminating against men and also against fulltime homemakers.
Since the federal government created the child-support bureaucracy, the majority of divorces have been initiated by women. They confidently expect that pro-feminist family courts will award them a steady income for which they will never be held accountable.
The more child support that divorced fathers are ordered to pay, the more federal funds flow through the hands of the states, which compete for federal bonuses given to states that collect the most child support. It is profitable to state bureaucrats to make sure that fathers are permitted to see their own children only a few days per month so support payments can be set at the highest possible level.
Women have discovered they can use a request for an Order of Protection against their husband as "the gamesmanship of divorce" (in the words of the Illinois Bar Journal) in order to get sole child custody plus generous so-called child support. It's easy to get such orders without any evidence of abuse or even a threat, without notice to the husband and with no danger of prosecution for perjury.
Federal and state laws and subsidies that undermine marriage are the biggest fiscal as well as cultural issue of our times.
That’s nothing compared to what a missing birth certificate has cost us...just sayin’
Fathers Day AND Mothers Day sucks for me - both of my parents abandoned their parental responsibilities.
”Rebuilding the Family by Rebuilding the Man”...
HOORAY Jesse Lee Peterson!!!
(ping)
Very good article, Kaslin. Thanks for posting.
Spaying xor neutering people who cause these problems will go a long way towards remedying this issue.
Take a “positive” revenge by breaking the cycle. It ends with you.
The truth is that 99% of them aren't missing.
They are hiding under the bed in the back room when the child services, welfare people or police visit.
Or they are next door impregnating the younnger sister, or best friend, or the grandmother.
Or all three.
Or they are in jail.
Or they are out looking for some dope to share with the baby momma.
Or they are shacked up across the street with another "single mother" or two.
Or hiding out somewhere until last night's carjacking blows over.
“Spaying xor neutering people who cause these problems will go a long way towards remedying this issue.”
Hundred percent no. Who is going to be in charge of deciding/enforcing the spay/neuter? The Dept. of Health and Human Services? I have no doubt they’d like to stop FReepers among others from reproducing.
At a parole hearing, I once heard a felon put forward the argument that he needed release “to spend time with the kids”. That is a common rationale. What was uncommon was that he had 40 children by a couple dozen or so women.
Yes, the pardon board confirmed the record. 40 children.
His petition was denied.
THanks for the ping, I’ll send it on to Pat and the gang.
I am sorry. From your moniker though, it appears that you are determined to reject such selfishness. Good for you, and may God bless you.
Oh it ended.
Me, my half-siblings (there are a few) and my cousins are all decent, well educated, well employed, and most importantly, good parents.
It’s funny how both sides of my bio-family were scum bags until my generation.
Of course, some freepers may still think ill of me...I’m a Federal Employee that owns a Pit Bull........
I have 4 - two bio, 2 adopted.
I was raised in a foster home. It provided empathy for others with even lessor options. My two adopted kids lived in orphanages in China.
Ever child deserves, and wants, a Mom and Dad and a home.
Even when they’re my age.
I’d rather have FReepers as fed employees. . . anyway we are pretty much for limited government, right? Not “no government.”
Wow, he sure got around
He was fairly young, too. Early 40s. Ugly, not that smart, but lots of swagger. He was a career drug dealer, which was probably his main attraction for the females.
I am sure he has been released and convicted yet again since then. Most of his adult life had been spent in jails or prisons, with shortish terms but lots of them. Stayed busy during the intervals of release, apparently.
I hate having these culls in my memory. I wish there was a selective delete function at times, to jettison the rubbish.
DEFUND socialist collectives!
Fathers? What a quaint notion. That's a phrase that only applies to the male parents of legitimate children, these days. The rest of 'em are called "babydaddies" and the are sperm donors who live to impregnate their "b*tches", who once impregnated, become "babymommas", and go off to raise their little bastards alone, with public assistance of course...
But hey, what do I know. I'm an old guy, I'm probably too old fashioned. My parents were married until they died. I've been married to the same woman for 41 years. I'm way out of date.
I thought this was going to be a nice tribute to fathers but instead it ends up being another “women are evil” posting....
I'd make being spayed or neutered a condition of being on welfare. The problem is, these people continue to spawn and yield litters of more and more humans who will not support themselves. The rest of us are taxed higher and higher to cover the costs, so much so that WE cannot afford more children of our own. I am sick of over half my paycheck being taken away to cover these costs, which is exactly whu I propose such an effective, yet humane, solution to the problem.
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