Brent Wellman's Response
To the President's
State of the Union Address

To strengthen the family, we must do everything we can to keep the teen pregnancy rate going down. It is still far too high. Tonight I am pleased to announce that a group of prominent Americans is responding to that challenge by forming an organization that will support grass roots community efforts in a national campaign against teen pregnancy. And I challenge every American to join them.

. . .

In particular, I challenge fathers to love and care for their children. If your family has separated, you must pay your child support. We are doing more than ever to make sure you do, and we are going to do more. But let's all admit: A check will never be a substitute for a father's love and guidance, and only you can make the decision to help raise your children -- no matter who you are, it is your most basic human duty.

President William Jefferson Clinton
excerpted from: The State of the Union Address
January 23, 1996

Mr. President, I appreciate your using your high office to recognize the contributions fathers make in the lives of their children. You're right; a check can never substitute for that.

Figures from the Department of Commerce show that girls from fatherless homes account for 21% of girls, yet are responsible for 71% of the teenage pregnancies. They are 5 times more likely to become pregnant as teenagers than their cohorts in either intact families or joint custody situations.

Teen pregnancy is not the only social pathology that is associated with fatherlessness. Department of Justice numbers reveal that 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes. 81% of the violent rapists in our prisons are from fatherless homes.

Mr. President, if someone were to offer you a solution to the problem of teen pregnancy that would reduce its incidence by 60%, how vigorously would you pursue it? If the reduction were only 30%, how vigorously would you pursue it? There is a simple remedy:

Mr. President, I can report to you that there are literally millions of fathers out here who would be only too willing to rise up and answer your call to perform our "most basic human duty." Yet we are prevented from doing so by institutional barriers such as antiquated sole custody arrangements, a court system that casts parents into the role of adversaries, and a government collection bureaucracy that only values our dollars.

Your own Secretary of HUD, Henry Cisneros said it well, "One of the most important things we have to do is to find ways to re-engage fathers in the lives of their children." The Boston Globe, November 29, 1994. He has already shared that sentiment with you.

Mr. President, if you found that the Department of Agriculture were paving the national forests, would you stand for it? If the Interior Department capped Old Faithful to heat the ranger station or pulverized El Capitan for railroad bedding, just how long would the responsible parties hold a job with you as President? Not too long, I'd wager. So why do you allow your government to squander a national treasure such as dads?

The federal, state and local governments in this land have overwhelmingly adopted policies doomed to squander this treasure. Even you, in your last State of the Union Address, announced Executive Order 12953, a well-intentioned effort to get Federal workers to own up to their financial obligations. It, like the vast majority of public policy in this area, is an unbalanced enforcement measure, designed solely to punish non-compliance, not to induce voluntary compliance.

Figures from the Department of Commerce have consistently shown the correlation between contact with least-seen parents, and their compliance with child support orders is strong. Mr. President, if you want the result that fathers pay their rightfully owed child support, is it such a stretch to imagine the possibility of providing them contact with what they are paying for, as a means to that end?

Allow me to suggest to you a more balanced approach, for which you, as Chief Executive, can set the example.

Here are some specific policies that can be implemented at modest to no cost, which will reap rich dividends for children and the future of this great nation:

• Mandatory classes for high school boys in parenting skills and in the responsibilities of fatherhood.

• Job training for young fathers, willing but unable to pay their child support.

• Federal mandate of a joint custody presumption for all the states.

• Amnesty programs, which allow non-custodial parents to come forward, set up a plan for their financial support, re-enter their children's lives, and basically stop being an enforcement headache. The government's sole price: waiver of fines and imprisonment; the benefit: reduction in caseload and the dollars associated in maintaining it ($2 million annually in my own county).

• Repeal of statutes which categorically disallow visitation.

• Temporarily rescind Executive Order 12953 during periods of Federal employee furlough (this is more effective for the example it sets than anything else).

• Authorize the use of "locate" resources, developed for the tracking down of non-paying parents, to allow least-seen parents to find children concealed from them by their custodial parents.

• Introduce legislation requiring states to enact laws based on the draft Interstate Child Visitation Act of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws.

• Authorize full or partial personal exemptions for supported children on federal taxes (you pay, you deduct).

• Allow tax deductions for travel expenses to visit children over 500 miles distant. This should go to either parent, depending on who pays, not who travels. To qualify, they should be current on their child support. This will tell least-seen parents, "We value your time with the kids."

These do not sound like the enforcement measures you are used to seeing proposed, but each is calculated to increase the rate of compliance with child support payments, and to reduce the scourge of fatherlessness on our society. They represent a reinvention of the child support collection process.

The problem of fatherlessness and the associated social blight will not disappear overnight, and the bad habits of seen and least-seen parents alike will take time to turn about after decades of reproach, recriminations and pursuit. But you as leader can take the initiative to be a positive influence on the recovery from fatherlessness by enacting policies that are positive and proactive and preventative such as those I have outlined above. They will lead to government which works better and costs less.

And they can prepare our children for the challenges to come...

image Copyright © 1995 PhotoDisc, Inc.

Sincerely,

Brent Wellman
wellman@vix.com
Associate Director, The Fathers' Rights and Equality Exchange