Our country has a large amount of good male citizens. Some men are even great citizens. It is, however, the men who are not good citizens that helped contribute to our country's current situation.
Dead Beat Dads are another major factor in the spending of money we don't have. They are primary contributors to the need for a national welfare system. They are all over this country.
Dead Beat Dads are not good citizens. Some men deliberately do not pay their child support and some men want to pay their child support but cannot afford it.
The amounts of child support set in court are fair, however, we might get more accomplished if non-payment of child support were not a go to jail offense. Our prisons are overcrowded. Non-payment of child support is not a violent offense.
We can't make people care about their kids, but we can encourage them to do so. We can commute their child support payments into community service and make them work it off. At least this way we would get something back for the state paid child support given to the mothers. It might also cut down on the need to hire more people to work in State Attorney General's offices to enforce child support orders.
If given this opportunity, some men may volunteer to work off their child support payments. You can't get blood out of a turnip. Just because the amount of child support is fair does not mean all men can afford to pay it. Remember all those male high school drop outs? Minimum wage jobs barely pay the rent.
The possibility of prison doesn't seem to be much of a deterrent for dead beat dads. If we have them do community service we might end up having some better citizens, although men who actually can afford to pay their child support should not have this option.
In addition, men who do their community service may actually end up staying in the same town as their children and using their visitation rights rather than running from the law. Which means we would not only have better citizens for our communities but fewer absentee fathers for our children.
Copyright © 2009 Annette Fortunato
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- ValleyRanchLady
- North Lake College 1993-1994 University of Dallas 1995-1999
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1 comment:
I can not agree that the courts set reasonable child support in most cases. Often it really is unreasonable. On the whole however, I do believe our courts do a good job of setting support obligations.
Rather than sending deadbeat dads to jail. Have them do public service work, and have the state pay them for it. Here in California many organizations pay the state to put up a sign on the highway, and that money is used to hire a road crew.
Have the deadbeat dads do the work and then send the money to the mothers. And by the way there are alot of deadbeat moms, who could be put to work the same way.
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