Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 29, 1993 TAG: 9403180013
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
On Jan. 1, federal law will require that virtually all new child-support awards be withheld from the paychecks of absent parents - absent fathers in the overwhelming majority of cases.
The absent fathers may not like it. Not only will their paychecks be lighter, but those who have every good intention of making child-support payments on time may resent the insinuation that they can't be trusted to do so. They may resent it that their bosses will have the right, even a government mandate, to intrude into their personal affairs.
Employers may not like it either. It will mean additional paperwork for them. Some will object that it puts them in the middle of employees' private lives when they don't want to be there.
Unfortunately, the reasons for this major change in the child-support collection system are compelling.
Far too many absent parents - even those who may have good intentions at the time of separation from their families - eventually renege on their legal obligations to make support payments. And many will go to extraordinary lengths - changing their names, flitting from job to job, making fly-by-night moves from state to state - to stay one jump ahead of those trying to make them pay up.
Their irresponsibility is no longer just their personal shame. It's shame on America.
The deadbeat-dad syndrome is a leading reason why one in every five American children under 18 now lives in poverty; almost one in four among children under 6. America's poverty rate among children is now double the rate in many other industrialized nations, and approaching that of some Third World countries.
Parents who renege on child-support payments are also one reason why many American children go hungry several days a month; why teachers are seeing more children coming to school with serious health problems.
This is a national problem that the nation has to address. It not only puts kids at risk. It threatens to unravel the nation's social fabric, eroding parents' sense of responsibility for their children and placing massive burdens on schools, courts, prisons, the welfare system - and taxpayers.
The new paycheck-withholding system, mandated by the Family Support Act of 1988, will basically extend to all absent parents the system already used to collect support payments for welfare recipients. In the best of all worlds, Big Brother's intervention would not be needed in any case involving parents' duty to do right by their kids. That would be a fundamental family value in any family's structure. Sadly, this isn't the best of all worlds.
Government cannot require what's also needed to improve the lot of America's children: love and nurturing and attention from both parents, regardless of whether they live under the same roof. But government can insist, at the least, that absent parents meet their legally established financial obligations.
by CNB