[House Hearing, 106 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
FATHERHOOD
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 27, 1999
__________
Serial 106-41
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Ways and Means
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
65-694 CC WASHINGTON : 2000
_______________________________________________________________________
For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office
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20402
COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
BILL ARCHER, Texas, Chairman
PHILIP M. CRANE, Illinois CHARLES B. RANGEL, New York
BILL THOMAS, California FORTNEY PETE STARK, California
E. CLAY SHAW, Jr., Florida ROBERT T. MATSUI, California
NANCY L. JOHNSON, Connecticut WILLIAM J. COYNE, Pennsylvania
AMO HOUGHTON, New York SANDER M. LEVIN, Michigan
WALLY HERGER, California BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland
JIM McCRERY, Louisiana JIM McDERMOTT, Washington
DAVE CAMP, Michigan GERALD D. KLECZKA, Wisconsin
JIM RAMSTAD, Minnesota JOHN LEWIS, Georgia
JIM NUSSLE, Iowa RICHARD E. NEAL, Massachusetts
SAM JOHNSON, Texas MICHAEL R. McNULTY, New York
JENNIFER DUNN, Washington WILLIAM J. JEFFERSON, Louisiana
MAC COLLINS, Georgia JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio XAVIER BECERRA, California
PHILIP S. ENGLISH, Pennsylvania KAREN L. THURMAN, Florida
WES WATKINS, Oklahoma LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
J.D. HAYWORTH, Arizona
JERRY WELLER, Illinois
KENNY HULSHOF, Missouri
SCOTT McINNIS, Colorado
RON LEWIS, Kentucky
MARK FOLEY, Florida
A.L. Singleton, Chief of Staff
Janice Mays, Minority Chief Counsel
------
Subcommittee on Human Resources
NANCY L. JOHNSON, Connecticut, Chairman
PHILIP S. ENGLISH, Pennsylvania BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland
WES WATKINS, Oklahoma FORTNEY PETE STARK, California
RON LEWIS, Kentucky ROBERT T. MATSUI, California
MARK FOLEY, Florida WILLIAM J. COYNE, Pennsylvania
SCOTT McINNIS, Colorado WILLIAM J. JEFFERSON, Louisiana
JIM McCRERY, Louisiana
DAVE CAMP, Michigan
Pursuant to clause 2(e)(4) of Rule XI of the Rules of the House, public
hearing records of the Committee on Ways and Means are also published
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C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Advisory of April 20, 1999, announcing the hearing............... 2
WITNESSES
U.S. Department of Labor, Raymond J. Uhalde, Deputy Assistant
Secretary, Employment and Training............................. 6
------
Center for Law and Social Policy, Vicki Turetsky................. 68
Institute for Responsible Fatherhood and Family Revitalization,
Charles Augustus Ballard....................................... 44
Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, Gordon L. Berlin.... 14
National Center for Strategic Nonprofit Planning and Community
Leadership, Jeffery M. Johnson................................. 49
National Fatherhood Initiative, Wade F. Horn..................... 27
McLanahan, Sara S., Princeton University......................... 22
Raesz, Robert E., Jr., Austin, TX................................ 58
Tate George Dream Shot Foundation, Lisa A. Nkonoki............... 60
UFW Baptist Church, George L. Gay................................ 56
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
ACSW/LMFT, Detroit, MI, David L. Manville, statement and
attachments.................................................... 81
Alliance for Non-Custodial Parents' Rights, Burbank, CA, John
Smith, statement and attachments............................... 83
American Fathers Alliance, Bill Harrington, statement............ 90
American Fathers Coalition, Stuart A. Miller, statement and
Attachments.................................................... 93
Men's Health Network, Cory J. Jensen, statement and attachments.. 95
National Child Support Enforcement Association and Child Support
Enforcement, Austin, TX, Richard ``Casey'' Hoffman, statement.. 100
Oklahomans For Families Alliance, Oklahoma City, OK, Gregory J.
Palumbo, statement............................................. 101
Stoutimore, John R., Forth Worth, letter and attachments......... 105
FATHERHOOD
----------
TUESDAY, APRIL 27, 1999
House of Representatives,
Committee on Ways and Means,
Subcommittee on Human Resources,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:04 p.m., in
room B-318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Nancy L.
Johnson (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
[The advisory announcing the hearing follows:]
ADVISORY
FROM THE
COMMITTEE
ON WAYS
AND
MEANS
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
CONTACT: (202) 225-1025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 20, 1999
No. HR-5
Johnson Announces Hearing on
Fatherhood
Congresswoman Nancy L. Johnson (R-CT), Chairman, Subcommittee on
Human Resources of the Committee on Ways and Means, today announced
that the Subcommittee will hold a hearing on fatherhood. The hearing
will take place on Tuesday, April 27, 1999, in room B-318 of the
Rayburn House Office Building, beginning at 2 p.m.
Oral testimony at this hearing will be from invited witnesses only.
Witnesses will include representatives from the Administration,
researchers, program administrators, and advocacy groups. However, any
individual or organization not scheduled for an oral appearance may
submit a written statement for consideration by the Committee and for
inclusion in the printed record of the hearing.
BACKGROUND:
Numerous studies suggest that unmarried fathers tend to have lower
levels of education and income as well as elevated rates of
unemployment and incarceration as compared with other fathers. These
problems make it difficult for them to marry and to play a positive
role in the rearing of their children. Studies also show that the
consequence of father absence is that children, especially boys, are at
risk for developing the same problems that afflict their fathers, thus
creating an intergenerational cycle of school failure, delinquency and
crime, unemployment, and nonmarital childbirths and child rearing.
Expert witnesses have been invited to discuss what research tells
us about the economic and social circumstances of unmarried fathers as
well as the effects of programs designed to help these fathers improve
their economic status and improve their relationships with the children
and their children's mothers.
Members of the Subcommittee introduced fatherhood legislation, H.R.
3314, the ``Fathers Count Act of 1998'' last year, but it was not acted
on by the Committee. This hearing is the first step in renewing that
effort.
In announcing the hearing, Chairman Johnson stated: ``The 1996
welfare reform law has been very successful in helping poor mothers get
jobs and improve their economic circumstances. The next logical step in
reforming welfare is to help poor fathers improve their economic
circumstances and participate directly in the rearing of their
children. We are holding this hearing to learn about new research on
the relationship between these young men and women and the prospects
that they can form two-parent families or at a minimum, work together
to rear their children. Our Subcommittee is especially interested in
learning about programs that are now attempting to work directly with
fathers to achieve these goals.
FOCUS OF THE HEARING:
The purpose of this hearing is to continue the Subcommittee's
examination of the difficulties faced by unmarried fathers of children
on welfare. The hearing will focus on two issues. First, the
Subcommittee will hear about new research on the outcomes of programs
for low-income fathers as well as research on the relationship between
poor mothers and fathers who have children outside marriage. Second,
the Subcommittee will hear ahout programs, including the Welfare-to-
Work program authorized under Title IV-A of the Social Security Act,
that are now being conducted in inner city areas by community-based
organizations to help unmarried fathers improve their economic status
and to promote marriage.
DETAILS FOR SUBMISSION OF WRITTEN COMMENTS:
Any person or organization wishing to submit a written statement
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and hearing date noted on a label, by the close of business, Tuesday,
May 11, 1999, to A.L. Singleton, Chief of Staff, Committee on Ways and
Means, U.S. House of Representatives, 1102 Longworth House Office
Building, Washington, DC 20515. If those filing written statements wish
to have their statements distributed to the press and interested public
at the hearing, they may deliver 200 additional copies for this purpose
to the Subcommittee on Human Resources office, room B-317 Rayburn House
Office Building, by close of business the day before the hearing.
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Note: All Committee advisories and news releases are available on
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The Committee seeks to make its facilities accessible to persons
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materials in alternative formats) may be directed to the Committee as
noted above.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Good afternoon. I begin by
welcoming all our witnesses this afternoon. We are fortunate to
have such an excellent group of witnesses on the topic of
problems of fathers. I look forward to learning from them, and
this Committee looks forward to writing legislation that will
address some of the new needs that we see out there.
We do know a few things already. First and foremost is that
one-third of America's children are born outside of marriage.
Tragically, the hard fact is that these babies are more likely
to be abused, to fail in school, to be delinquent, to be on
welfare, to have non-marital births themselves, and to be
unemployed and on welfare as adults. But, there are strengths
within these families that we now ignore. As we will see today,
at the time these babies are born, their parents have a close
relationship. Indeed, in many cases they are cohabiting at the
time of birth. So, these babies are not the result of one-night
stands.
While the parents are in a close and often even loving
relationship at the time of birth, research shows that within 2
years after birth only 7 percent of these children are living
in a household with their father. Less than one-third of these
fathers see their children at least weekly, and fully half have
no contact at all with their children. This is a national
tragedy for both the parents and the children.
Last year, my friend and colleague, Clay Shaw, did the
Nation a great service by introducing his Fathers Count
legislation. Mr. Cardin and I are now working on legislation
that is similar, and we have every intent of marking it up
before the August recess. We are focusing this legislation on
two goals: first, we want to help these young fathers to
improve their economic status, whether that means helping them
find employment or whether it means helping them improve their
skills so that they can qualify for better jobs. As a result of
welfare reform, most States are conducting effective employment
programs that help young mothers improve their economic status,
and now we need to do a far more effective job of helping young
fathers improve theirs.
The second goal of these programs must be to strengthen the
bonds between these young fathers and their children and the
child's mother. Why does the positive relationship between
mothers and fathers at the time of their child's birth
dissipate so quickly? What can be done to strengthen these
bonds and to prevent that dissipation? We want to help these
fathers meet both their economic and emotional obligations to
their children.
We also want to support the development of the kind of
strong adult ties a child's world depends on and help these
young couples stay together as friends, as a family unit or to
form lasting secure marriages. As we reach out to strengthen
these relationships, the Nation's churches and other community-
based organizations can and should play a major role.
Since assuming the chairmanship of this Subcommittee, I
have had occasion to meet and talk with several people who are
conducting programs specifically designed to help these young
fathers achieve the goals of work and marriage I have just
outlined. Several of these people will testify today. Although
the early evaluations of these programs have not shown that
they can achieve easy victories, we should not be discouraged.
It may take many years, substantial resources, and lots of
blood, sweat, and tears before we can develop truly successful
programs to help young fathers and their incipient families.
But, imagine the public policy working through both
Government and community-based organizations, reconnecting
fathers with their children, and even bringing fathers,
mothers, and children together into stable, secure families.
Does anyone doubt that this would represent the greatest policy
achievement of our generation?
Our hearing this morning is simply one more step along that
path, and it signals my own and I believe my colleague Mr.
Cardin's commitment as well as that of the Ways and Means
Committee to attacking this problem. Helping fathers fully
contribute to and participate in family life is truly the right
next step in welfare reform.
Mr. Cardin.
Mr. Cardin. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to concur in
your statement. I agree with everything you have said, and I
congratulate you for your leadership on this issue in getting
this Subcommittee and Congress to deal with the issues of
fatherhood. I am glad that you mentioned Clay Shaw and his work
last year. I would also like to thank Ron Haskins, our Chief of
Staff of this Subcommittee, for helping us to focus on what we
can do constructively in the next step on welfare reform.
Madam Chair, there is no greater responsibility than the
duty of a parent to love, support, and care for their children.
To ensure that both parents meet at least the financial
portions of their obligations, in 1996 we passed legislation
that dealt with child support enforcement, and both you and I
strongly supported that legislation knowing that a prerequisite
for a parent is to financially support his or her child. These
provisions targeted non-custodial parents who were able but
unwilling to support their children. Well, we are here today to
talk about fathers on the opposite side of the spectrum; those
who want to support their children but they are unable to
because of a lack of regular employment. These are dead broke
dads not dead beat dads.
Fortunately, we have an existing program that can help us
deal with this situation, the Welfare-to-Work program. It was
established by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 to promote the
employment of long-term welfare recipients and non-custodial
fathers of children on welfare. Welfare-to-Work funds can be
used for a wide array of employment-related services, including
wage subsidies, on-the-job training, job placement services,
community service programs, and post-employment services.
Many communities have developed specific proposals to use
Welfare-to-Work funds to help fathers, including my own city of
Baltimore, which has received in the 1998 Welfare-to-Work
Competitive Grant $3.3 million to provide comprehensive
services to recipients and non-custodial fathers in public
housing. Under this program, recipients will have a 6-month
supported job and then be placed in unsubsidized employment.
While the Welfare-to-Work grants have stimulated this type
of positive local initiatives, the program could even be more
productive if States and communities had greater discretion
determining eligibility for the program. Therefore, along with
my Democratic colleagues on the Subcommittee, I have recently
introduced legislation proposed by President Clinton to
reauthorize the Welfare-to-Work program in fiscal year 2000 and
to increase State and local flexibility in administering this
program.
The Welfare-to-Work amendments of 1999, H.R. 1482, would
allow States to enroll many more low-income fathers by
broadening the program's eligibility criteria. For example,
under the bill, non-custodial parents would simply have to be
unemployed or underemployed and have a child receiving TANF,
food stamps, Medicaid, CHIP, or SSI to be eligible for the
program rather than being required to comply with two of the
three specific barriers to employment. Furthermore, to ensure
that every State attempts to help low-income fathers, the
legislation would require the States to spend at least 20
percent of their new formula funding to help non-custodial
parents support their children.
By increasing resources and local flexibility in the
Welfare-to-Work program, we can build an employment
infrastructure for low-income fathers in the same way many
States have used TANF to promote employment for low-income
mothers. I hope we can pursue this opportunity on a bipartisan
basis this year.
Before I conclude, I would like to mention one more way to
promote greater involvement between non-custodial fathers and
their children and that is passing child support payments
through to the family on welfare. Because child support paid on
behalf of TANF families now goes to State welfare agencies
rather than the family, low-income fathers face an obvious
disincentive to pay child support. In fact, there was a recent
MDRC study on the Parents' Fair Share Fatherhood Program, found
that many low-income fathers resented the fact that their child
support payments were not going to their children.
I look forward to listening to the witnesses that we have
here today, and I join the Chair in acknowledging that we have
real experts that are with us today. I hope you will share with
us ways that we can improve the Federal Government's
participation in this next chapter of welfare reform. Thank
you, Madam Chair.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Thank you. I would like to
call the first panel of witnesses forward, please. Ray Uhalde,
Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Employment and Training
Administration, the U.S. Department of Labor, Gordon Berlin,
senior vice president, Manpower Demonstration Research
Corporation of New York; Sara McLanahan, Office of Population
and Research, Princeton University, and Wade Horn, president of
the National Fatherhood Initiative of Washington, DC. We
welcome you, and thank you for being here. We are looking
forward to your testimony.
I would also like to recognize my other colleagues who are
here, and thank you very much.
Let us start with Mr. Uhalde.
STATEMENT OF RAYMOND J. UHALDE, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY,
EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
Mr. Uhalde. Thank you, Madam Chair and Members of the
Subcommittee, for the opportunity to appear before you today to
discuss fatherhood and the Administration's Welfare-to-Work
reauthorization proposal. The Administration proposal is
intended to maintain the focus of Welfare-to-Work programs on
the hardest to employ welfare recipients while offering
expanded opportunities to help low-income fathers better
support their children.
For welfare reform to succeed, Secretary Herman recognized
early that only a part of the job is to promote work among
welfare recipients. We must also strengthen families and the
well-being and life success of children on welfare, and find
ways to bring fathers back into their children's lives. This
means at least financial support of their children, but it also
means the emotional, nurturing, and coaching support the
fathers should provide to their children.
Enacted as part of the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, Welfare-
to-Work is a key component of the Administration's welfare
reform policy. While welfare caseloads have declined
dramatically, many individuals remaining on welfare are long-
term recipients who face significant employment barriers. As
time limits on TANF assistance begin to take effect, these
individuals are in particular need of the Welfare-to-Work
program's employment-related services.
State and local workforce systems established under the
Workforce Investment Act administer the program and provide
labor market information and link welfare and workforce
investment systems together. Welfare-to-Work also provides the
services non-custodial parents need to become active
contributors to the emotional and financial well-being of their
children.
My formal testimony provides a demographic profile of low-
income, non-custodial fathers. In 1990, let me just say that
there were approximately 3.4 million non-custodial fathers with
income below 200 percent of the poverty line. Twenty-nine
percent were unemployed or not in the labor force; less than
one-third worked full-time, year-round. The average wage for
the employed, non-custodial father is only slightly above the
minimum wage. Clearly, these fathers have only limited
resources to support themselves and their families.
The Department of Labor has had a longstanding interest in
improving the employment and earnings of low-income fathers. We
have participated in two demonstration projects focused on
young, unwed fathers or non-custodial parents. The Public
Private Ventures Young Unwed Fathers Demonstration and Parents'
Fair Share. We now participate in a Partners for Fragile
Families Demonstration through the Welfare-to-Work competitive
grants.
Parents' Fair Share demonstrated to us the many challenges
we face in improving the employment prospects of low-income,
non-custodial fathers. However, there is evidence from
evaluations of other employment training programs that they can
succeed and be effective in serving this target group. The
Welfare-to-Work Grants Program makes a sizable investment in
the future economic well-being of non-custodial individuals and
their families. My formal testimony, again, gives examples of
projects that have a substantial focus on serving non-custodial
fathers.
Based on our experience with Welfare-to-Work and the
previous research, I believe there are seven principles that
should govern our approach to serving non-custodial fathers,
and we have attempted to incorporate these into the Welfare-to-
Work reauthorization. First, for many non-custodial fathers,
improving the employment and earnings is a pre-condition for
substantially raising the resources they provide to their
families. Second, early intervention and formal commitment of
the non-custodial parent are important. Fathers who feel they
do not have anything to contribute to the family often do not
stay connected to their family. Third, we have a window of
opportunity right now since labor markets are very tight and
employers are seeking new sources of workers. Many employers
are experiencing high job vacancy rates and seem more open to
hiring those with disadvantages. Fourth, appropriate work-
focused employment services are essential. It is important to
develop a range of services that combine work and skill-
building. Experience indicates non-custodial fathers want
income-producing jobs quickly; on-the-job training is
particularly suited to this. Fifth, post-employment services
that are sustained over a period of time are very important.
Sixth, programs need to stress improvements in parenting
skills, support for partnering, peer support, and the like.
Finally, partnerships between the workforce investment system
and the child support system to support fathers are beneficial,
even essential.
Providing increased employment services to non-custodial
fathers is essential to reducing poverty among children. And to
do this requires generating stable employment for such fathers.
These lessons are the basis for the bill introduced by
Representative Cardin, H.R. 1482. These amendments reflect the
Administration's proposal to maintain the focus of Welfare-to-
Work on the hardest to employ welfare recipients while
expanding employment opportunities for low-income fathers.
Primary features of Welfare-to-Work are retained--a focus
on work, targeting resources to individuals and communities
with the greatest need, being locally administered with
business-led workforce investment systems. The amendments
simplify the eligibility and provide greater flexibility to
States and localities to serve the hard-to-employ welfare
recipients. Second, the greater focus is on non-custodial
parents. To promote this objective, the amendments provide that
at least 20 percent of the formula funds allotted to a State
are to be used to serve non-custodial parents. The amendments
add an important feature to strengthen the commitment of the
non-custodial parent and the Welfare-to-Work program to
increase child support. Each non-custodial parent participating
in the program is to enter into an individual responsibility
contract with the local Welfare-to-Work program and the State
child support agency. The Welfare-to-Work amendments of 1999
also increase resources to Indian tribes where the need is
greatest.
Madam Chair, this concludes my formal testimony. We need to
work in a bipartisan manner to help the hardest to serve
welfare recipients, non-custodial fathers, and their children,
and I look forward to working with you and other Members of
this Subcommittee in this important area.
[The prepared statement follows:]
Statement of Raymond J. Uhalde, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Employment
and Training, U.S. Department of Labor
Madam Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank you
for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss
fatherhood and the Administration's Welfare-to-Work
reauthorization proposal. The Administration's proposal is
intended to maintain the focus of the Welfare-to-Work program
on the hardest-to-serve welfare recipients, while offering
expanded opportunities to help low-income fathers better
support their children. Fatherhood is an issue that has been
important to me for a long time, both in a personal and
professional sense. For welfare reform to succeed, Secretary
Herman recognized early on that only a part of the job is to
promote work among welfare recipients. We must also strengthen
families. The well-being and life success of children on
welfare requires that we find ways to bring fathers back into
their children's lives. This means, at least, financial support
of their children. But it also means the emotional, nurturing
and coaching support that fathers should provide to their
children.
Welfare-to-Work Program
Enacted as part of the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, Welfare-
to-Work is a key component of the Administration's welfare
reform policy. While welfare caseloads have declined
dramatically, many individuals remaining on welfare are long-
term recipients who face significant employment barriers. As
time limits on TANF assistance begin to take effect, these
individuals are in particular need of the Welfare-to-Work
program's employment-related services. Administered by the
Department of Labor and the State and local workforce system
established under the Workforce Investment Act, the Welfare-to-
Work program links the welfare and workforce investment
systems, providing labor market information, employment-related
services, and connections to employers to help hard-to-employ
welfare recipients find and keep jobs. Welfare-to-Work also
provides the services noncustodial parents need to become
active contributors to the emotional and financial well-being
of their children.
Characteristics of Noncustodial Fathers
Statistics on the characteristics of low-income
noncustodial fathers present a compelling case for increasing
the focus of Welfare-to-Work on this disadvantaged population.
These are men who live on the margins of society, and cannot
support their families. The 1990 Survey of Income and Program
Participation indicated that there were 3.4 million
noncustodial fathers with incomes below 200 percent of poverty.
Forty-three percent of these low-income noncustodial fathers
were ages 25 to 34, and 16 percent were under 25 years. Twenty-
nine percent were unemployed or not in the labor force. Less
than one-third worked on a full-time, year-round basis. Average
wages for employed noncustodial fathers were slightly above the
minimum wage. Clearly, these fathers have only limited
resources to support themselves and their children.
Poor educational attainment contributes to the labor market
problems of low-income noncustodial fathers About 43% of these
individuals are high school dropouts. The labor market in the
United States has gone through rapid technological changes in
the last 25 years. Most jobs now require more social, cognitive
and technical skills than in the past. This is an era of
deteriorating labor market prospects for individuals with
limited skills and education. The past two decades have brought
real declines in the wages for such individuals.
The poor labor market prospects of these low-income
noncustodial fathers affect families and neighborhoods. At
least three fourths of these fathers have been arrested or have
on going legal problems. And 46% of them have been convicted of
a crime. Research indicates that once a young man has been
incarcerated, his employment and earnings are substantially
reduced for many years to come.
Many low-income noncustodial fathers live in central cities
that are distant both physically and psychologically from the
growing job opportunities in the suburbs. Discrimination in
employment may also complicate the employment prospects for
minority noncustodial fathers. These noncustodial fathers are
disproportionately minority; 38% are African-American and 19%
are Hispanic. The numbers are daunting: almost two million
minority men live apart from their children and are not working
full time, year round.
Noncustodial parents also lack access to social networks
that can be critical in locating employment. A large proportion
of jobs is filled by informal recruitment among employers who
seek referrals from their current employees and other
acquaintances. Many noncustodial fathers are not a part of
these social networks, which can greatly enhance employment
prospects.
Noncustodial Parent Demonstration Projects
The Department of Labor has had a long-standing interest in
improving the employment and earnings of low-income fathers. We
have participated in two demonstration projects focused on
young unwed fathers or non-custodial parents: the Public
Private Ventures Young Unwed Fathers Demonstration and the
Parents' Fair Share Demonstration. We are now participating in
the Partners for Fragile Families Demonstration through our
Welfare-to-Work competitive grants program. In addition, many
of our training programs and demonstration projects, such as
JOBSTART the Center for Employment and Training (CET), serve
unwed fathers.
Parents' Fair Share
Parents' Fair Share demonstrated to us the many challenges
we face in improving the employment prospects of low income
noncustodial fathers. The evaluation found that the program
increased child support payments, mostly from men who were
already working but not paying child support before
participating in the program. This was encouraging news. The
discouraging finding was that the Parents' Fair Share
Demonstration did not improve the employment and earnings of
participants compared to those of a control group, although
both groups had significant employment rates. Unfortunately,
the original program design for the Parents' Fair Share
Demonstration, which included an intensive high support on-the-
job training model, was never implemented. This was, in part,
due to operational difficulties between the child support and
employment and training systems, and, in part, due to
reluctance of employers to participate. Recent changes in the
workforce and child support systems, and the improved economy,
would likely enhance the prospects for successfully
implementing the high support on-the-job-training model. The
Welfare-to-Work program, which operates through the workforce
system and includes on-the-job training, is ideally suited to
ensure fathers receive the employment services they need so
they can support their children.
JOBSTART and CET
Evaluation evidence suggests that employment and training
programs can be effective in serving low-income men, and at-
risk youth who are likely to be unwed fathers. The JOBSTART
demonstration attempted to replicate the successes of Job Corps
in serving severely disadvantaged high school dropouts in less
intensive nonresidential settings. The Center for Employment
Training (CET) site in the JOBSTART evaluation was 50 percent
male, and this site raised the earnings of participants by
$3,000 a year over the control group, during the last two years
of a four year follow-up. The JOBSTART demonstration overall
raised the earnings of males with prior arrest records by
$1,500 during the last year of follow up. In addition, the
National JTPA Study also found positive results for adult males
receiving services under JTPA. On-the-job training was
particularly effective in assisting men, resulting in earnings
gains of over $2,100, or 10 percent, over the 30-month follow-
up period.
Welfare-to-Work and Noncustodial Fathers
The Welfare-to-Work (WtW) Grants Program is making a
sizeable investment in the future economic well being of
noncustodial individuals and their families through both
formula and competitive grants. Expected dividends include
increased child support payments and reduced welfare
dependency, and an increase in tax paying individuals capable
of supporting their families.
Many states are using Welfare-to-Work formula grants to
assist noncustodial parents. In FY 1998, over three-quarters of
the approved State plans indicated that they would expend some
portion of formula funds on noncustodial parents. This includes
several States that indicated they would expend the majority of
formula funds to serve this population.
Welfare-to-Work grants currently finance a range of
activities that are designed to move low-income fathers into
jobs, with an emphasis on jobs that have the potential for
increased earnings. The Welfare-to-Work funds can be used
broadly for employment-related activities including: wage
subsidies in the public or private sector; on-the-job training;
job readiness; job placement services; post-employment
services; job vouchers for job readiness; placement or post
placement services; community service or work experience; job
retention services and supportive services.
The Department of Labor announced Round 1 Welfare-to-Work
competitive grant awards in May 1998; 8 of 51 grants had a
substantial focus on serving noncustodial parents. Most of
these grants planned for at least 25% of program participants
to be noncustodial parents, and two planned to serve
exclusively noncustodial parents. Of these, five projects had
specific services and strategies targeted to the needs and
barriers facing noncustodial parents. These services included
legal services to help participants be more attractive to
employers; peer support groups; emphasis on life skills,
integrity and family responsibility; and outreach and
recruitment through the courts system. Two grantees planned to
build on past experience in serving hard-to-employ groups such
as the homeless and disabled individuals in providing supported
work environments for noncustodial parents.
Round 2 Welfare-to-Work competitive grants were awarded in
November 1998. Twelve of the 75 competitive grantees, with
funding totalling just over $39 million, proposed to serve at
least 30% noncustodial parents. Two of these projects will
serve noncustodial parents exclusively. In reviewing Round Two
grants targeted on noncustodial parents, certain themes in
service strategies arose. These grant proposals tended to
emphasize:
(1) commitment to family and fatherhood, combined with
parenting skills training;
(2) job readiness, stressing positive attitudinal change
(workplace behavior, employer expectations, dress,
interpersonal skills, interviewing skills, job search
techniques, coping with stress, anger management, etc);
(3) services to address employment barriers associated with
substance abuse and a criminal record;
(4) intensive job retention and supportive services
including case management, coaching, and peer support
activities; and
(5) strategies to recruit noncustodial parents, especially
working with the court system and child support enforcement
agencies.
The Department plans to announce Round 3 Competitive Grants
in late summer 1999. This round identified noncustodial parents
as one of five priority populations.
Some examples of what Welfare-to-Work grants are funding
for fathers include:
Institute for Responsible Fathers. The Institute for
Responsible Fatherhood and Family Revitalization, located in
Washington, D.C., provides direct services to low income, non-
custodial fathers. The program's goal is to bring the father
back into the family structure to provide leadership, economic
and social support, love and nurturing. Services provided
include: employer connections, a ``people to jobs''
transportation network, car donations and repairs and
automotive training.
Los Angeles County Private Industry Council. Los Angeles
County's Noncustodial Parent to Work Project assists long-term
TANF recipients end their welfare dependency by increasing
child support payments from 1,625 noncustodial parents of TANF
supported children. To do so, the project helps unemployed
noncustodial parents find unsubsidized employment, and helps
underemployed noncustodial parents increase their earnings--
enabling them to pay more child support. Innovative features of
this project include developing both parents' capacity to
financially support their children; bringing together a wide
range of public and private agencies; addressing noncustodial
parents' legal issues; providing noncustodial parents with
access to information concerning child support; and providing
peer support groups to work to change noncustodial parents'
attitudes about child support and child rearing.
DeKalb Economic Opportunity Authority. This Georgia project
will be conducted as an integral part of the DeKalb Workforce
Center, which is the county's state-of-the-art One-Stop center.
The program will be tied into the County's network of five
Family Resource Centers, three public housing sites and two
Head Start/Family Development Centers. These centers will be
important for recruiting and are located in DeKalb's most
impoverished communities.
A range of services will be provided to assist noncustodial
parents in retaining employment and supporting their children.
This project is an example of how Welfare-to-Work grantees are
using One-Stop centers to provide services. The specific
services include: assessment (including commitment to
responsible fatherhood); substance abuse services; legal
assistance; job readiness and work maturity (including attitude
and behavioral issues, workplace behavior, employer
expectations, dress, interpersonal skills, anger management,
interviewing skills, job search techniques, and coping with
stress); parenting skills; case management and job coaching;
post-placement training (including literacy and GED
preparation, occupational skills training); ongoing
transitional support (peer support, job clubs, and case
management).
City of Minneapolis. The Fostering Actions To Help Earning
and Responsibility (FATHER) Program focuses on achieving self-
sufficiency for noncustodial fathers in Northside, Camden,
Phillips, Central and Powderhorn, Minnesota. The program is an
innovative attempt to integrate family and employment services
for noncustodial fathers. Participants will have access to job
counselors, a database of job openings and transportation that
will help individuals from the city reach jobs in the suburbs.
Additionally, child support enforcement officials will work to
create a flexible child support payment plan and encourage
fathers to develop and maintain strong emotional bonds with
their children.
Private Industry Council of Milwaukee County. Welfare-to-
Work Milwaukee is a collaborative project of the Private
Industry Council of Milwaukee County and the five local
agencies responsible for the implementation of Wisconsin Works
in the county's six regions. The project addresses the long-
term needs of participants, including noncustodial parents
whose legal problems combined with poor academic and work
skills bar them from sustained employment. The project uses
community-based vendors and performance-based contracts. Legal
services are provided in addition to job placement and post-
employment services.
Houston Works. Houston Works is the workforce development
entity for the City of Houston and is collaborating with the
Houston Community College System, Texas Southern University,
Southwest Memorial Hospital, Continental Airlines, SEARCH
Homeless project, HUD, Baylor College of Medicine and the
Houston Housing Authority. Participants receive job readiness
counseling; temporary and permanent job placement services,
post-employment and academic enrichment services. Participants
also receive life skills, case management and family-based
assistance and counseling, and transportation services.
Eastern Workforce Development Board Inc, Muskogee,
Oklahoma. This project will expand and supplement the Welfare-
to-Work formula program, targeting noncustodial parents. It
will develop an intensive job retention and employer incentive
program. The project uses a case management approach and
leverages resources from other training programs to serve
children and other family members of participants. The program
plans to establish an independent Employee Assistance Program
for employers to help retain new workers.
Lessons Learned
Based on our experience to date with the Welfare-to-Work
program, and previous demonstrations, research and programs, I
believe there are certain principles that should govern our
approach to serving noncustodial fathers. The themes underling
our Welfare-to-Work reauthorization proposal include:
For many low-income, noncustodial fathers,
improving employment and earnings is a precondition to
substantially increasing the resources they provide to their
families. This requires interventions that address the many
labor market problems and barriers these fathers face, as well
as turnover and upward mobility problems. Thus, a wide range of
services and approaches are important.
Early intervention and a formal commitment of the
noncustodial parent are important. Fathers who feel that they
do not have anything to contribute to the family often do not
stay connected to their family. We know that early intervention
is crucial to establishing paternity, to helping men assume
responsibility for their children and to increasing access and
visitation. The most promising strategy to assist low income
noncustodial fathers in becoming better parents and productive
workers is to intervene early with a broad array of employment
services and interventions that are designed to promote family
and job stability. Such interventions must help these fathers
accept the responsibility and obligation of supporting their
children.
We have a window of opportunity right now, since
labor markets are very tight and employers are seeking new
sources of workers. The poor skills and criminal records that
many poor fathers bring to the labor market are major
disincentives to employers hiring them under the usual
circumstances. However, many employers are experiencing high
job vacancy rates and report difficulties finding workers. Many
employers seem more open to hiring those with disadvantages.
This is clearly true for welfare recipients and is likely true
for low-income fathers.
Appropriate work-focused employment services are
essential. It is important to develop a range of services that
combines work and skill building. Experience indicates that
non-custodial fathers want income producing employment quickly.
On-the-job training is a particularly effective strategy for
this group of workers. Further attention needs to be given to
developing an enhanced on-the-job training strategy for
noncustodial fathers.
Post-employment services that are sustained over a
period of time are important. Most noncustodial fathers work
sporadically or part-time and few have full-time employment on
a year-round basis. Post-employment services are critical to
help the fathers keep their jobs and increase their wages.
Programs need to stress improvements in parenting
skills, support for partnering, peer support, and the like.
Program experience suggests that fathers benefit from services
focused on conflict resolution and strengthening parent-child
relationships.
Partnerships between the workforce investment
system and the child support system are beneficial. It is
important to build local partnerships to support fathers. If
programs are to increase employment and increase child support,
close collaboration between the workforce development agency,
the community-based providers, and the child support system is
necessary.
Providing increased employment services to noncustodial
fathers is essential to reducing poverty among children.
Chronically unemployed, underemployed and uneducated fathers
with criminal records, substance abuse or other such problems,
living apart from their children and the mothers of those
children, are unlikely to be able to assume the responsibility
of a nurturing and supportive parent. To assume such
responsibility requires stable employment, which in turn
requires skill development, accompanied by the supportive and
family services necessary to succeed in the labor market and
society.
The Welfare-to-Work Amendments of 1999
These lessons and others we have learned from the first two
years of the Welfare-to-Work experience are the basis for the
bill introduced by Representative Cardin last week as H.R.
1482, the Welfare-to-Work Amendments of 1999. These amendments
include the Administration's proposal and are intended to
maintain the focus of the Welfare-to-Work program on the
hardest-to-serve welfare recipients, while expanding employment
opportunities to help low-income fathers better support their
children.
The primary features of the program are retained--including
the focus on work, targeting resources to individuals and
communities with the greatest need, and administration through
the locally administered, business-led workforce investment
system. There are several important enhancements to the current
law.
First, the amendments simplify the eligibility criteria and
provide greater flexibility to States and localities to provide
services to additional categories of hard-to-employ welfare
recipients and noncustodial parents. Concerns have been raised
by State and local officials and program operators that the
current eligibility criteria are too complex and narrow, with
the result that a significant proportion of the least job ready
welfare recipients and noncustodial parents are excluded from
participation. Specifically, the current law requires that at
least 70 percent of funds must be expended to assist
participants who have at least two of three specified barriers
to employment and that the recipient or minor child be a long-
term recipient.
The proposed amendments provide for separate eligibility
requirements for recipients and noncustodial parents. With
respect to recipients, while retaining the requirement for
long-term recipiency, the amendments provide that they must
meet one rather than two specified barriers to employment. In
addition, the amendments simplify the first specified barrier
to employment, which currently requires that the recipient has
failed to complete secondary school or obtain a GED and has low
skills in reading or math. There have been many reports that
due to past practices, such as social promotion, a significant
number of recipients who have diplomas still have low basic
skills and those low skills are a major barrier to employment.
Therefore, the amendments divide these criteria into two
separate barriers that allow assistance to recipients who lack
a high school diploma (or a GED) or have reading, computing or
math skills at or below the 8th grade level. The amendments
also add long-term recipients with disabilities, long-term
recipients who are homeless, and long-term recipients who are
victims of domestic violence to the categories of recipients
with employment barriers who may be served by the Welfare-to-
Work program.
With respect to noncustodial parents, the new criteria
provide that they be unemployed, underemployed, or having
difficulty paying child support obligations, and that the minor
child of the noncustodial parent meets the current requirements
for long-term recipiency, is eligible for or receiving TANF
benefits, has received TANF benefits within the preceding year
but is no longer receiving benefits, or is eligible for or
receiving Food Stamps, Supplemental Security Income, Medicaid,
or Childrens' Health Improvement Program assistance. In
determining the eligible noncustodial parents to be served, a
preference is to be provided for those parents with minor
children who are long-term recipients. While providing greater
flexibility to States and localities, these criteria
effectively link eligibility for services to both the needs of
the noncustodial parent and the child.
Second, the amendments provide a greater focus on
increasing the employment of noncustodial parents to better
enable such parents to contribute child support payments and
other assistance to their children. To promote these objectives
in all States, the amendments provide that at least 20 percent
of the formula funds allotted to a State are to be used to
serve noncustodial parents. This threshold may be met through
any combination of expenditures under both the 15 percent State
reserve and the 85 percent of funds allocated to local areas
under the substate formula. The State plan is to describe how
these projects will be coordinated to accomplish this result.
In addition, the amendments add an important feature to
strengthen the commitment of the noncustodial parent and the
Welfare-to-Work program to increased child support. Each
noncustodial parent participating in the program is to enter
into a personal responsibility contract with the local Welfare-
to-Work program and the State child support agency under which
the noncustodial parent commits to cooperate in the
establishment of paternity and in the establishment or
appropriate modification of a child support order, to make
regular payments of child support, and to participate in
services that the program reciprocally commits to provide to
assist the noncustodial parent in finding and keeping
employment. In order to protect custodial parents and their
children who may be at risk of domestic violence, the
amendments clarify that the Welfare-to-Work program does not
create new obligations or alter existing requirements or
protections related to child support cooperation. This contract
makes clear the expectations and responsibilities of the
parties involved and provides a framework for attaining the
program's objectives.
By expanding eligibility, providing a 20 percent spending
floor, and incorporating personal responsibility contracts,
these amendments would build on the existing program to ensure
the establishment of an infrastructure in every State for
providing effective services to noncustodial parents. The
amended program incorporates the previously described lessons
learned in serving this population.
In addition, the Welfare-to-Work Amendments of 1999 would
enhance current law by:
Increasing resources to Indian tribes from the
current 1 percent of the total to 3 percent, and authorizing
Indian tribes to apply directly to the Department of Labor for
Welfare-to-Work Competitive Grants.
Improving resource allocation by recapturing
unallotted formula funds for competitive grants in the
subsequent year, and providing a preference in awarding these
funds to those local applicants and Indian tribes from States
that did not receive formula grants.
Streamlining reporting requirements through the
Department of Labor.
Promoting best practices by reserving funds for
technical assistance, including disseminating innovative
strategies for serving noncustodial parents.
In sum, these amendments would reauthorize and enhance the
WtW program. While our welfare reform efforts have resulted in
some important early successes, much remains to be done.
Enactment of the Welfare-to-Work Amendments of 1999 would
provide significant opportunities to the hard-to-employ welfare
recipients to make the transition to stable employment and
assist noncustodial parents in making meaningful contributions
to their children's well-being.
Madam Chairman, this concludes my formal testimony. We need
to work together in a bipartisan manner to help the hardest-to-
serve welfare recipients, noncustodial fathers, and their
children. I look forward to working with you and other members
of the Subcommittee on this important subject.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Thank you very much for
your testimony.
Mr. Berlin.
STATEMENT OF GORDON L. BERLIN, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, MANPOWER
DEMONSTRATION RESEARCH CORPORATION, NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Mr. Berlin. Thank you very much. I appreciate the
opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the results
from the Parents' Fair Share Demonstration project. This was an
employment and fatherhood program for low-income, unemployed
fathers who owe child support. It was authorized by the Family
Support Act of 1988 with a goal of learning whether the
employment and training services offered to mothers on welfare
could also help fathers. It was a response to three problems:
fathers failure to pay child support, the deteriorating labor
market position of low-income men with limited educational
skills, and persistent poverty among children. It was motivated
by a conviction that it takes two parents to support a child,
both financially and emotionally.
The project had three goals: to increase the employment and
earnings of low-income men, to improve their parenting skills
and their parent involvement, and, third, to increase the child
support that they paid. PFS attempted to accomplish this by
offering four services: employment and training to help fathers
get jobs and better jobs; parent support and instruction to
help them in their fatherhood role; enhanced child support
enforcement to make that system more responsive to the changing
ability of low-income men to pay child support, and, finally,
dispute resolution services because we thought that if fathers
got more involved, there would be more conflicts or
disagreements, with the custodial parent of the children.
What were some of the operational lessons from this
project? First, some lessons about the fathers who
participated. The fathers who were referred to this program
were very poor. All of them came through the child support
enforcement system because they owed child support and weren't
paying it, and they had children who were on AFDC. Fifty
percent lacked a high school diploma; many had no permanent
home, and a surprisingly high 70 percent had an arrest record
of some form. In addition, these low-income fathers were very
involved in the lives of their children. And, finally, we
discovered that the programs were really trying to meet the
needs of two different groups of fathers. One group worked a
lot, but they worked in temporary secondary labor market jobs,
often moving from job to job. They needed better, more stable
jobs. The second group of fathers were hard to employ. They
presented a long list of employment barriers, few skills,
limited formal education, a history of substance abuse,
homelessness and other difficult problems.
Next, what are some of the lessons that emerged about
operating this kind of program? First, building these kinds of
programs, as Mr. Uhalde said, is challenging. We had to develop
one program with one message, and we had five or six different
agencies all trying to coordinate in a partnership to deliver
the PFS package of services. Each of those agencies--child
support, fatherhood programs, welfare departments, and
employment and training programs--had different missions,
different funding sources, different constituencies, and
different services that they offered. This particular
partnership worked best when the child support system played an
active and committed role. In this program, of course, fathers
entered through the child support enforcement system, so it was
very important that that system be a key player in putting the
program together.
A second program lesson is that despite these operational
challenges, the program was successful in engaging fathers in
parenting and job search services. Beginning with parenting, as
noted above, fathers in Parents' Fair Share saw their children
a lot. About 50 percent of them saw their children at least
once a month. But they were unsure of their role as fathers.
Many did not grow up with their own fathers; they were often
discouraged from playing a role by the child's mother's
parents; they lacked experience and role models, and often
parenting know-how. Despite these barriers, fathers' interest
and commitment to their children was demonstrated by their
participation in the Parents' Fair Share parenting services and
fatherhood classes, and I think the fathers' interest and
involvement and commitment to their children is a powerful
leverage point for both programs and policies. One might sum it
up by saying if you build a service network for fathers, they
will come.
However, if fatherhood services are needed, they are not
sufficient. In our society, fathers define their roles as being
providers. Fathers who can't provide often grow estranged from
their children and the mothers of their children, but to be
providers, fathers need jobs that pay enough so that they can
provide both for their children and for themselves.
Unfortunately, getting fathers better jobs via skill upgrading
or other means have proved very difficult to implement. It is a
qualitatively different task than employment and training
programs have faced in the past.
What difference did the Parents' Fair Share Program make?
It made an important difference in increasing the likelihood
that fathers would pay child support, and it also increased the
amount of child support paid. It did this in two ways: one was
by outreach and review of child support cases that the system
wouldn't normally work. By working these cases, child support
officials discovered a number of fathers that actually had
earnings, and they were able to get those fathers to pay child
support. A second way PFS affected the amount of child support
paid was by providing a package of services to fathers who did
not have earings. This package of services, independently, on
top of the case review effect, also increased the amount of
child support paid in some sites and the likelihood that
fathers would pay child support. And, in some places, for
example, Dayton OH, the increase in the average payment was
large, about 55 percent higher than in the control group. From
the point of view of child support administrators, these are
large increases.
What difference did Parents' Fair Share make in the
employment and earnings of these fathers? In this area,
Parents' Fair Share was less successful, although two of the
programs did produce increases in employment rates of about 11
percent. The programmatic challenges of improving the
employment position of low-income fathers have not yet been
surmounted successfully either in PFS or in many other
programs.
What about the programs effect on fathering and parenting?
While we will have more information on this soon, the program
did have an effect on the intensity of father involvement.
Observations of the peer support component, ethnographic
interviews with the fathers as recounted in the just released
MDRC--Russell Sage Foundation published book ``Fathers Fair
Share'' all indicated that the fathers learned a lot about how
to be parents. They applied those lessons in their interactions
with parents. As a result, we have observed increased
involvement with the custodial parent in decisionmaking. In
addition, we have seen some evidence that the fathers of
younger children were the most likely to be involved in the
lives of their children Finally, there was also some evidence
in at least a couple of the sites--Dayton, OH and Jacksonville,
FL--that the fathers participated in additional religious
service-going with their children and the mother of their
children as a part of this program. In summary, PFS did appear
to help fathers become better, more involved parents.
Very briefly, what are some of the elements we should
consider in a next generation program? Again, building these
partnerships among the diverse set of agencies required to meet
the needs of fathers is critical; investments in partnership
building at the front end of this kind of complicated program
is very important. Second, offering fatherhood services can
make a difference in the parenting skills of low-income
fathers; the services are needed, wanted and sought after.
Fathers' interest in and commitment to their children provides
valuable program leverage, which when coupled with the right
services can make a difference in fathers' interaction with
their children. But fatherhood services are necessary but not
sufficient. Last, and most important, we have to learn what
works best for whom in the employment and earnings arena.
Combining skills training in an on-the-job format; combining
work and education; and effective job retention services are
all services that we should be systematically testing to learn
what works. In addition, we have to provide community service
jobs for those who need immediate employment and can't find it.
Next, much more work is needed in meeting the needs of the hard
to employ. The overwhelming majority of the PFS eligibles had
arrest records. More widespread use of the Federal Bonding
program in all programs that serve low-income fathers is
necessary. Finally, it could also be valuable to try to link
programs for the non-custodial parent with programs for the
custodial parent, again, in keeping with the original vision
that I stated of it takes two parents to raise a child, both
emotionally and financially, even when they aren't married.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement follows:]
Statement of Gordon L. Berlin, Senior Vice President, Manpower
Demonstration Research Corporation, New York, New York
My name is Gordon Berlin. I am a senior vice president at
the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC). MDRC is
a non-profit, non-partisan social policy research organization
created in the mid-1970's to test new approaches to the
nation's most pressing social problems. Thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the lessons
learned from Parents' Fair Share (PFS), an important seven-site
test of programs that provide employment, parenting, and other
services to fathers of children receiving welfare, who are
unemployed and unable to meet their child support obligations.
In exchange for current and future cooperation with the child
support system, a partnership of local organizations offered
fathers services designed to help them: (1) find more stable
and better-paying jobs; (2) pay child support on a consistent
basis; and (3) assume a fuller and more responsible parental
role.
Authorized by the Family Support Act of 1988, supported by
a consortium of public and private funders, and operated by
partnerships of local employment and training programs, child
support systems, fatherhood groups, welfare departments, and
family court systems, PFS is the most comprehensive and
carefully studied effort to provide services to noncustodial
parents. The program operated for about five years in seven
sites--Los Angeles, California; Jacksonville, Florida;
Springfield, Massachusetts; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Trenton,
New Jersey; Dayton, Ohio; and Memphis, Tennessee.
The Parents' Fair Share project had three equal goals:
(1) to increase the employment and earnings of low-income
noncustodial parents of children receiving welfare;
(2) to increase child support payments; and
(3) to support, encourage, and improve fathers' parenting skills.
PFS was a deliberate attempt to respond to two interrelated
national concerns: (1) the failure of fathers to establish paternity,
and reliably and consistently pay owed child support; and (2) the
deteriorating labor market situation of less-educated men, whose
inflation adjusted earnings have fallen precipitously over the 23-year
period (1973-1996). Together, these two problems spawned a third--a
quarter or more of the nation's children spending a significant share
of their childhood growing up in a poor, single-parent household, often
without father involvement. Our national response--tougher child
support enforcement rules--was most effective in increasing collections
from noncustodial parents with relatively stable jobs and residence,
so-called middle-class fathers, but it appeared to have the unintended
consequence of driving poor, unemployed fathers farther underground,
and possibly even away from involvement with their children.
Child support administrators and family court judges faced a
dilemma. When a noncustodial parent with little work history claimed he
was unable to pay his child support because of unemployment, it was
frequently difficult to determine the truth of his claim. In practice,
courts and agency staff were left with two unsatisfactory options: (1)
threatening jail in an effort to coerce payment; or (2) sending the
parent out on his own to look for work. While the first option was
appropriate for those able but unwilling to pay, neither option was
appropriate for those who were unable to support their children.
Further, the agencies and courts often struggle to distinguish the
unwilling from the unable.
Parents' Fair Share was designed as a third option that would
enable the child support system to offer help finding a job to fathers
who were not paying because they were unemployed, while its
participation requirement would simultaneously make it difficult for
fathers who were concealing earnings to continue doing so. Recognizing
that the key challenge was getting fathers to pay child support not
just once, but month after month, the program included fatherhood
services and supports. Program designers hypothesized that reinforcing
fathers' involvement with their children would help them to be better
fathers, and better fathers who see their children regularly would be
more likely to pay child support.
The Parents' Fair Share Model
To meet these challenges, program services were built
around four core components:
Peer Support. This component was designed to teach
and encourage positive parenting skills (e.g., supplying
activities for fathers and children that were age appropriate),
to provide a group discussion forum where fathers could discuss
their involvement with their children, to enhance participants'
life skills (e.g., handling conflicts with the child's mother),
to strengthen participants' commitment to work, and to inform
participants about their rights and obligations as noncustodial
parents. Built around a curriculum MDRC supplied, called
Responsible Fatherhood, and run by a trained facilitator, this
component revealed that many of the fathers had a strong
interest in their children's development, and many were already
actively involved. But they were frequently unsure of their
role, having had few role models in their own childhood.
Employment and Training. The goal of these
activities was to help participants secure long-term, stable
employment at a wage level that would allow them to support
themselves and their children. Sites were strongly encouraged
to offer a variety of services, including job-search
assistance, opportunities for education, and skills training.
In addition, since it is preferable to engage participants in
income-producing activities quickly, sites were encouraged to
offer opportunities for on-the-job training, paid-work
experience, and other activities that mix skills training or
education with part-time employment.
Enhanced child support enforcement. One objective
of PFS was to increase support payments made on behalf of
children living in single-parent welfare households. Although a
legal and administrative structure already existed to establish
and enforce child support obligations, demonstration sites were
asked to develop new procedures, services, and incentives in
this area. These included steps to tie orders to the ever-
changing ability of fathers to pay by expediting the
modification of child support awards, and/or flexible rules
that allowed child support orders to be reduced while
noncustodial parents participated in PFS, and special
monitoring of the status of PFS cases.
Mediation. Often disagreements between custodial
and noncustodial parents about visitation, household
expenditures, lifestyles, child care, and school arrangements--
and the roles and actions of other adults in their children's
lives--influence child support payment patterns. Thus,
demonstration sites had to provide opportunities for parents to
mediate their differences using services modeled on those now
provided through many family courts in divorce cases.
The PFS intake process was an important part of the
demonstration. In most cases, noncustodial parents were
referred to PFS during court hearings or appointments scheduled
by CSE staff in response to the parents' failure to make court-
ordered support payments. Several of the sites put in place new
procedures to identify parents who appeared to be eligible for
PFS (whose child support cases would typically have low
enforcement priority) and scheduled special hearings or
appointments to review their reasons for nonpayment. Parents
who cited unemployment as the reason for their nonsupport were
ordered to attend PFS activities until they found a job and
began paying support. In some sites, parents just establishing
paternity were also referred to PFS when they had no means to
meet child support obligations.
Recent Findings
In recent months, MDRC has released two important reports
on the Parents' Fair Share program experience. Building
Opportunities, Enforcing Obligations: Implementation and
Interim Impacts of Parents' Fair Share summarizes the program's
implementation experience and presents the first evidence on
its effects on employment and child support. Fathers' Fair
Share: Helping Poor Men Manage Child Support and Fatherhood, a
book published by the Russell Sage Foundation, provides a rich
ethnographic portrait of PFS-eligible low-income fathers'
lives. A third report, Promoting Non-custodial Parents'
Involvement with their Children, will be released later this
year. It explores the program's effect on parental involvement.
In this summary testimony, I draw primarily on the first
two reports. The impact findings that are presented are only
the first chapter in the PFS story because they rely solely on
administrative records, cover only a part of the full PFS
impact study group, provide only six quarters of follow-up, and
do not cover several key goals of the program. Most of this
information is based on administrative records--child support
and earnings data--maintained by the participating states.
Later this year, we will be analyzing survey data that will
help us get a handle on informal employment and child support
payments and involvement with their children, information that
is not captured in administrative records.
Implementation Lessons
Implementing PFS presented significant management
challenges; most sites were able to meet this challenge. To
successfully implement PFS, the local partners had to change
their standard operating procedures in ways that often
conflicted with pre-existing agency priorities. Local child
support enforcement agencies were asked to focus attention on
cases without known income, cases that typically received
little attention. Employment and training agencies that usually
serve volunteers were asked to work with men who were mandated
to participate by the courts, and they were being asked to help
them find better jobs, a qualitatively different task than most
of these agencies had performed in the past. Finally,
community-based fatherhood organizations were now partners in a
program that could sanction men who failed to meet their
mandatory participation requirement.
The majority of the noncustodial parents referred to PFS
were living in poverty, with a recent history of moving from
one low-wage job to another. Many PFS fathers faced substantial
barriers to mainstream employment: nearly 50 percent lacked a
high-school diploma, and about 70 percent had been arrested for
an offense unrelated to child support. Nonetheless, within the
PFS population, there were fathers for whom finding and keeping
a job would be an important advance, and others for whom the
goal was better-paying and more stable employment. Both groups
were poor. These two different groups required different
program strategies, and agencies found it difficult to meet
both needs.
The sites were successful in engaging fathers in PFS' peer
support and job search services. Many noncustodial parents
initially expressed skepticism about the goals and services of
PFS, based on their perception that the child support system
was ``stacked against'' them, which program staff had to
overcome. They did so. Slightly more than two-thirds of the
noncustodial parents referred to PFS participated in at least
one PFS program activity. Peer support was the most
consistently well-run component during the demonstration and
generally was viewed as the central PFS activity, providing a
focal point for participants. Most sites relied heavily on job-
search workshops and job clubs, running these activities and
peer support simultaneously because of parents' strong desire
to find work quickly.
Skill-building services, particularly classroom training,
and on-the-job training, proved to be the PFS activity most
difficult to implement. Two sites that did emphasize the goal
of getting participants better jobs than they could find on
their own made job developers an integral part of their
program. Three sites--Los Angeles, Grand Rapids, and
Springfield--were most successful in putting on-the-job
training and classroom training in place. These sites had
active leadership that focused on increasing the number of
skill-building activities.
Sites in which the child support agency played a leading
role in PFS showed flexibility in developing new approaches to
monitoring the status of cases and encouraging participation in
program services. Because of the differing perspectives of the
local agencies involved in PFS, agencies could choose to focus
on their part of the program and not seriously engage in the
difficult task of coordinating activities. However, in sites in
which the child support agency played a leading role, staff
were well positioned to work as a problem-solving team, with
the child support agency driving the effort. Because fathers
often find it difficult to negotiate the child support system,
sites that were committed to removing obstacles to a father's
participation, and who responded quickly when fathers got jobs,
were more likely to have impacts.
Impacts: The PFS Difference
Child Support
The PFS intake process alone produced significant increases
in child support payments to the CSE agency even before any
referral to PFS services. A special study in three sites--
Dayton, Grand Rapids, and Memphis--isolated the effect of the
extra outreach and case review undertaken for PFS by the child
support agency. This review occurred before any referral to
services. Working with child support cases that the enforcement
system would not normally work because there was no evidence of
income, paid off. In all three sites, the PFS intake process
produced statistically significant increases in both the
percentage paying support to the child support agency, and the
average total child support payment amount. These increases
amounted to nearly an 8 percentage point increase in the
percent who ever paid any child support, and a $173 increase in
the average amount of child support paid over an 18-month
period. While these increases are small, it is important to
remember that the numbers are averages for everyone in the
study, the overwhelming majority of whom were not paying any
child support. Thus, the actual increase in child support paid
by those who paid is much higher. In sum, the increase in child
support payments occurred because the extra outreach and case
review led parents to inform the child support agency of
previously unreported employment.
The full PFS program combining employment, parenting, and
enhanced child support services also had a positive independent
effect on the share of PFS eligibles who ever paid child
support. Six months following enrollment in the study, PFS
eligibles were 4 to 8 percentage points more likely to pay
child support than a group of comparable noncustodial parents
who were not eligible for PFS. Somewhat surprisingly, this
difference only affected average amounts of child support paid
in some follow-up quarters, possibly because PFS lowered child
support orders to make them more compatible with the father's
ability to pay.
These positive impacts on percentage paying support were
mainly the result of substantial impacts in three of the seven
sites--Dayton, Grand Rapids, and Los Angeles. In these three
cities, the program produced substantial impacts on the
percentage of parents paying support, in most quarters ranging
from 10 to 15 percentage points. Often, this amounted to a 15
to 50 percent increase in the proportion of parents paying
support. Typically, these increases in support payments led to
significant increases in the average amount of child support
paid. In Dayton, the increase in the average payment was 55
percent higher than a control group that was not eligible for
PFS services, while in Grand Rapids it was 20 percent.
Employment
Referral to PFS did not produce an overall impact on
employment rates or earnings across the seven sites. At any
given time, about half of the fathers enrolled in the study
were employed. Employment rates among those eligible for PFS
did not differ significantly from those of the control group
who were not eligible for PFS.
Effects on employment varied by site, with two sites
successfully increasing the percentage of parents who worked at
some point during the follow-up period. In two sites--Los
Angeles and Dayton--referral to PFS produced an 11 percentage
point increase in the proportion of parents who worked at some
point during the six quarters of follow-up.
Persistent increases in child support payment rates came
from parents who were employed in the formal economy. This
suggests that helping fathers find and keep mainstream jobs is
indeed essential if the CSE system is going to increase child
support payment amounts beyond those reported above.
Fathers as Parents
PFS does appear to have affected the quality of father
involvement more than the amount of visiting. PFS fathers had a
lot of contact with their children before the program began.
Nearly half of all fathers in this study visited their children
at least once a month. PFS does not appear to have affected the
amount of visiting. Observations of the peer support program in
operation, and ethnographic interviews with the fathers
themselves, suggest that peer support helped participants to be
better fathers. Peer parental support was generally well
received by the noncustodial parents, providing them an
opportunity to relate to a peer group in constructive ways,
discuss troubling personal and societal problems, develop new
problem-solving skills, and have access to an advocate who
believed in their potential. As one father reported, ``. . . It
helped me to be a better father, to get better perspective on
what I'm supposed to do as a father, and I appreciated that.''
In addition, fathers were more likely to get involved in
decisions involving their children and to have more active
disagreements with the custodial parent about these decisions.
Early information suggests that involvement in parenting may be
most likely to occur when the children are younger, suggesting
that programs which intervene earlier may be better positioned
to affect parenting behavior.
Program Design and Policy Implications
The three sites that produced impacts on child support payments
share the following characteristics: (a) strong involvement of the
child support agency in PFS; (b) a strong peer support program that
focused on the importance of supporting children; and (c) in the case
of Dayton, low existing levels of support payments. In two of the three
sites that produced child support impacts, the child support
enforcement agency was in the lead, driving the planning process and
the management of the program, developing procedures to involve cases
that would have been given low enforcement priority, and putting in
place regular reviews of noncompliant cases. In the third site, the
child support enforcement agency and the welfare department worked
hand-in-hand to dramatically change the PFS outreach and intake
process, including targeting cases for whom location information was
weak, developing new forms of legal notice for hearings, and conducting
home visits just prior to hearings to encourage an appearance.
A lack of fit between the employment and training services
emphasized in the sites and the needs of a substantial portion of the
PFS parents--better jobs for most, intensive investments to overcome
barriers to employment for some--as well as, limited job opportunities
within their neighborhoods, contributed to the lack of overall impacts
on employment and earnings. Because the PFS sample was largely made up
of men who had worked--with varying degrees of regularity--at low-
paying jobs, the challenge for the program was helping these men find
better jobs. Job-search assistance and job-club services, the most
common employment services in PFS, are effective in helping more people
find jobs, but they were not well suited to helping people who are
already employed raise their wage rate or stabilize their work history.
In Los Angeles and Memphis, where there was a hint of a trend toward
positive earnings impacts at the end of the follow-up, a much higher
than average percentage of PFS parents participated in skill-building
activities (basic education or occupational training), which might have
been better suited to boost earnings for a group that was already
working.
Experimentation with new combinations of services that show greater
promise is necessary. Finding new ways to combine work and skills-
building services seems important because these parents need income
quickly and also need to develop a plan for wage progression over time.
U.S. Department of Labor requirements under the new welfare-to-work
program that encourage sites that wish to offer skill-building services
to first get a participant into a job and then provide the education or
training, may be particularly well suited to noncustodial fathers.
Job retention services may also be an important program addition.
These services were added to PFS half-way through the demonstration,
but most sites were not successful in fully implementing them.
Jobs were sometimes scarce in these communities and the men had few
means of getting to locations where jobs were more plentiful. This
suggests that there may be a need in some communities for a pool of
time-limited subsidized community service jobs to help men quickly
start earning a paycheck and build a work history that will make them
more appealing.
Low-income noncustodial fathers have a strong commitment to their
children, but they are often unsure of their role and require support.
There is a need for services to help low-income fathers learn about,
and be supported in, the active roles they already play as fathers.
Parenting is a humbling, imperfect, trial and error experience for all
fathers. But most fathers have more resources than the men in PFS to
draw upon in learning how to play that role. Low-income noncustodial
parents could benefit from supports that helped to fill these gaps when
they exist.
While the PFS experience demonstrates that it is possible to build
the agency partnerships required to deliver services to this
population, it requires considerable ongoing work. For a program like
PFS to work, there must be a strong local service partnership, in which
agencies coming from many different perspectives can achieve a common
purpose. Technical assistance investments are a critical part of this
process.
In summary, we have learned much from Parents' Fair Share about the
needs of low-income fathers and about the do's and don'ts of delivering
services. The futures of an important share of the nation's children
depend on our ability to use these lessons wisely to help fathers play
an essential role as parents.
Thank you for this opportunity to present lessons about working
with low-income parents from the Parents' Fair Share project.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Thank you very much.
Sara McLanahan.
STATEMENT OF SARA McLANAHAN, PROFESSOR OF SOCIALOGY AND PUBLIC
AFFAIRS, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
Ms. McLanahan. Madam Chair and Members of the Subcommittee,
thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you today.
I have come here to tell you about a major new study of unwed
parents and their children that my colleagues and I are
conducting and that I think has important implications for the
fatherhood initiative that you are discussing.
As you just said, Chairman Johnson, unwed parents and their
children are the fastest growing family form in the United
States today; one-third of all children are born to unwed
parents. Unfortunately, we know very little about these
families, and the relationships between the parents, and we
know even less about the fathers. Our study is designed to
remedy this situation. We begin at the hospitals by
interviewing the mothers soon after they have given birth.
Next, we interview the fathers, either at the hospitals or
someplace else, as soon as we can find them, and we are finding
a lot of them in the hospital, I should say. And, finally, we
plan to follow both parents for at least 4 years to learn about
their relationships and to learn about how public policies
affect their relationships and their lives.
Today, I want to talk to you about our findings from two
cities: Austin, TX and Oakland, CA. These are two very
different cities, but, surprisingly, the results and the
patterns that we are observing are very similar in both cities,
and I suspect that when we finish collecting data in 20 cities
and have 4,000 births in our study that the findings of these
two cities will also be very similar.
I want to make three points today, and I have included in
your packet a set of tables, if you could just refer to them.
The first point I want to emphasize is that the vast majority
of unwed parents are highly committed to one another and to
their children at least at birth. Over half of the parents in
our study were living together when the child was born, and 80
percent were romantically involved. Nearly 70 percent of the
parents, both the mothers and fathers, said their chances of
marriage were 50/50 or better. With respect to the children, 86
percent of the mothers were planning to put the father's name
on the birth certificate; 78 percent of the fathers had
provided financial support during the pregnancy, and over 90
percent of the mothers wanted the fathers to be involved in
raising the child. Clearly, these figures belie the myths that
the mothers don't know who these fathers are and that the
fathers do not care about their children. The challenge for
policymakers is to nourish rather than undermine these
commitments.
My second point is that most unwed fathers are not in a
good position to support their new families, as you have heard
before. Nearly 40 percent of the men in our study have no high
school degree; another 40 percent have only a high school
degree. So, only 20 percent had any post-high school education,
and in today's labor market, that does not bode well for their
earnings capacity. Those who work have very low earnings, and
about 20 percent of the fathers had not worked at all in the
previous year--worked or gone to school.
Some of the fathers also had personal problems. Eight
percent had problems with drugs or alcohol; 7 percent of the
mothers reported the fathers had hit or slapped them, and 4
percent were in jail at the time of our interviews. We
interviewed some of the fathers in jail, and we plan to follow
them also. In sum, despite their good intentions, many of the
fathers in our study have serious handicaps, both economic and
personal, and will need a lot of help if they are going to
maintain stable families.
My last point speaks to the design of fatherhood
initiatives. I believe these programs can make a difference if
they are targeted on the right men. As you know, the Parents'
Fair Share Program, which Gordon has just spoken about,
produced rather disappointing results. Fathers in the
experimental group ended up paying more child support than the
fathers in the control group, but their earnings and employment
did not improve. These results are not so surprising. Previous
evaluations have shown that improving the prospects of men with
very low skills and low education is a difficult if not
impossible task. The people who run these programs will tell
you that a major reason they fail is that the men who
participate in them are not motivated, and they drop out of the
programs. The fathers who participated in Parents' Fair Share
Program also had very limited skills, and their motivation in
many cases was also poor. Most of them were estranged from
their children when they entered the program, and some
participated in lieu of going to jail. They were participating
out of fear rather than love in some cases. In contrast, new
unwed fathers are highly motivated and are likely to take
advantage of the services that fatherhood programs provide.
They are attached to the mothers and have high hopes for their
future.
The birth of the baby is a magic moment for these men and
their families, and policymakers should not let this moment
slip by. What this means is that we should start at birth, in
the hospitals perhaps; we should offer a wide range of services
to these families, and we should focus on the fathers whose
relationships are in tact. These are the most motivated men,
and the mothers want these men involved. The programs are
likely to have a greater impact if these are the men that are
receiving the services. And, I would just add, today, that I
hope that this is not limited to non-custodial fathers. As I
said, half of the unwed fathers are living with the mothers at
birth. It would be a shame to say to these men, ``You can't get
any help unless you don't live with the mother.'' Thank you
very much.
[The prepared statement follows:]
Statement of Sara McLanahan, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs,
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
Madam Chair and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank you for
the opportunity to testify today on this important piece of
legislation. I have come here to tell you about some findings
from a major new study of unwed parents that my colleagues and
I are conducting. I believe our study has important
implications for the design of fatherhood initiatives. As you
know, unwed parents and their children are the fastest growing
families in the United States, accounting for one third of all
births in 1997. Unfortunately, very little is known about these
families, and hardly anything is known about the fathers. Our
study is designed to remedy this situation. We begin at the
hospitals by interviewing mothers soon after they give birth.
Next we interview the fathers, either at the hospitals or
someplace else, as soon we can find them. And finally, we plan
to follow both parents for at least four years, to study the
relationships in these fragile families, and to learn how
government policies affect their lives.
Today I want to talk to you about our findings from two
cities--Austin, Texas and Oakland, California. These are two
very different cities in terms of their policy environments and
population characteristics. And yet we are finding very similar
patterns among new unwed parents in both places. Eventually we
will have data from 20 cities, and our sample will be
representative of all new unwed parents in large U.S. cities. I
predict that what is true for Austin and Oakland will be true
for the rest of the country.
I want to make three points. First, I want to emphasize
that the vast majority of unwed parents are highly committed to
each other and to their children, at least at birth. Over half
of the parents in our study live together, and 80 percent are
romantically involved. Nearly 70 percent say their chances of
marriage are at least fifty-fifty. With respect to the
children, 86 percent of the mothers are planning to put the
father's name on the birth certificate, 78 percent of the
fathers provided support to the mother during the pregnancy,
and over 90 percent of the mothers want the fathers to help
raise the child. Clearly, these figures belie the myths that
unwed mothers do not know who the fathers are, or that unwed
fathers do not care about their children. The challenge for
policy makers is to nourish rather than undermine these
commitments.
My second point is that most unwed fathers are not in a
good position to support their new families. Nearly 40 percent
of the men in our study have no high school degree, and only 20
percent have any education beyond high school. Almost 20
percent are not employed at a regular job, and those who do
work have very low earnings. Some of the fathers have personal
problems as well. Eight percent have problems with drugs or
alcohol, and 7 percent are physically abusive to the mothers.
Four percent were in jail or prison at the time of our
interview. In sum, despite their good intentions, many of the
fathers in our study have serious handicaps--both economic and
personal--and they will need a lot of help if they are going to
maintain stable families.
My last point speaks directly to the design of fatherhood
initiatives. I believe these programs can make a difference, if
they are target the right men. As you know, the Parents' Fair
Share program produced disappointing results. Fathers in the
experimental group ended up paying more child support than
fathers in the control group. But their earnings and employment
did not improve. These results are not so surprising. Previous
evaluations have shown that improving the prospects of men with
low skills and low education is a difficult, if not impossible,
task. The people who run these programs will tell you that a
major reason they fail is that the men who participate in them
are not motivated and do not stick with the program. The
fathers who participated in Parents Fair Share program had
limited skills, and their motivation was poor. Most were
estranged from their children when they entered the program,
and some participated in lieu of going to jail.
In contrast, new unwed fathers are highly motivated and are
likely to take advantage of the services that fatherhood
programs provide. They are attached to the mothers and have
high hopes for their future. The birth of the baby is a ``magic
moment'' for these men and their families, and policy makers
should not let this moment slip by.
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Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Thank you very much; very
interesting testimony.
Mr. Horn.
STATEMENT OF WADE F. HORN, PH.D., PRESIDENT, NATIONAL
FATHERHOOD INITIATIVE, GAITHERSBURG, MARYLAND
Mr. Horn. Thank you very much, Madam Chair and Members of
the Subcommittee. I appreciate this invitation to address the
issue of fatherhood promotion. There are five things we ought
to do if we are serious about promoting fathers in the lives of
children. First, our culture needs to send a more compelling
message about the critical role that men play as fathers.
Currently, fathers are seen as nice to have around; useful as a
second pair of hands, and, certainly, their money is important,
but we don't generally, accept that fathers are important also
as nurturers, disciplinarians, role models, teachers, and so
forth.
One way to change the cultural understanding about the
importance of fathers is through the use of public education
campaigns. Over the last 3 years, the National Fatherhood
Initiative has been implementing a series of national public
service announcement campaigns emphasizing the important role
that fathers play in the lives of their kids. To date, this
public service campaign has garnered in excess of $100 million
in donated broadcast time.
I know there are those who ``pooh-pooh'' the importance of
public education campaigns. However, an independent evaluation
of one particular campaign we implemented in the State of
Virginia suggests otherwise. This evaluation, performed by
researchers at the University of Virginia, found that after
just 1 year, 40,000 fathers in Virginia were spending more time
with their kids as a result of seeing these ads and 100,000
non-fathers reported reaching out to support or encourage a
father in their community, also as a result of this campaign.
Second, we need to implement not only a pro-father but a
pro-marriage policy. All available evidence suggests that the
most effective pathway to an involved, committed, and
responsible father is marriage. Research consistently documents
that unmarried men tend, over time, to become disconnected,
both financially and psychologically, from their children. If
we want to increase the proportion of children growing up with
involved and committed fathers, we will have to increase the
number of children growing up with their married fathers. By
emphasizing the need to increase the number of kids living with
real live, in-the-home, married dads, I don't mean to imply
that we should toss divorce or unwed fathers overboard. We
don't have a father to spare in this country. We ought to work
with divorced and unwed fathers. But at the same time we ought
to be clear that married fatherhood is the ideal. We need to be
clear about that for both the current generation of fathers and
for the next generation of fathers. For their children's sake,
we need to be clear that we expect that men will father
children within the context of marriage and that we stand ready
to support them when they do.
One way to strengthen marriage, particularly in low-income
communities, is to expand participation in Welfare-to-Work
employment programs to include the broader population of low-
income males, not only as a means to increase their own life
prospects but also as a means to increase their
marriageability. There is actually a literature in the
psychological field called ``Mate Selectivity'' where we look
at what makes somebody attractive as a marital partner. What we
find is that women, and particularly low-income women, do not
find men attractive as marital partners if they perceive those
men's economic prospects to be lower than their own. If we
expect to increase the marriageability of these low-income men,
we need to expand their economic opportunities so that they
will, in fact, be more attractive as marital partners to women
in their communities.
In expanding employment services to low-income males, we
should be careful, however, not to condition receipt of
services upon having fathered a child outside of wedlock. To do
so, would only serve to introduce perverse incentives for men
to father children out of wedlock in much the same way that the
old AFDC system provided perverse incentives for women to bear
children out of wedlock.
Third, we need a public policy that supports financially
the growing number of community-based organizations interested
in implementing a local fatherhood program. Just 5 years ago,
at the founding of the National Fatherhood Initiative, we could
barely find 100 fatherhood programs around the country. Today,
we stopped counting at 2,000. There are a lot of fatherhood
programs out there, but most are operating on shoestring
budgets; some on no budgets at all. We need to provide
financial support for those programs in order to ensure that
the fatherhood movement, this expanding field of fatherhood
intervention, does not collapse.
Fourth, we need to provide community-based organizations
with access to information, training, and technical assistance.
Money is not sufficient. They also need to know what model
programs work, and the effectiveness of those programs. They
need to be trained in effective ways of reaching fathers.
And, finally, while supporting fathers, we can't forget the
importance of supporting children growing up in fatherless
households. Four out of ten children tonight will go to sleep
in a home in which their father does not also live. Those
children need our support as much as the fathers do. When a
father is not around, we need to reach out to these fatherless
children. We need to teach fatherless boys what it means to be
a responsible man, and we need to teach fatherless daughters
what to demand from men in their lives.
The good news is we are starting to see for the first time
in the last 30 years a leveling off of the number of kids
growing up in father-absent households. I believe that with
concerted effort we can actually start to reverse the trend,
not just stem the tide of fatherless families. But, doing so
will require that we stand firm on the issue of marriage, for
marriage--imperfect as it may be--is clearly the most effective
pathway to a lifetime father. Simply put, effective public
policy means encouraging more skilled fathering, more work, and
more marriages. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement follows:]
Statement of Wade F. Horn, Ph.D., President, National
Fatherhood Initiative, Gaithersburg, Maryland
My name is Wade F. Horn, Ph.D. I am a clinical child
psychologist and President of the National Fatherhood
Initiative, an organization whose mission is to improve the
well-being of children by increasing the number of children
growing up with an involved, responsible and loving father.
Formerly, I served as Commissioner for Children, Youth and
Families within the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, and served as a member of the National Commission on
Children, the National Commission on Childhood Disability, and
the U.S. Advisory Board on Welfare Indicators. I appreciate
this invitation to testify on promising approaches to promoting
fatherhood.
The Consequences of Fatherlessness
The family is the primary institution through which we
protect and nurture our children, and upon which free societies
depend for establishing social order and promoting individual
liberty and fulfillment. However, over the past several decades
the United States has been experiencing a dramatic decline in
the institution of marriage and reliance on two-parent families
to raise children. Even more precisely, what we have been
experiencing has been a decline of fatherhood, for when
marriages fail, or when children are born out of wedlock, it is
almost always fathers who are absent. The absence of fathers
has, in turn, severely increased the life risks faced by their
children.
Almost 75 percent of American children living in single-
parent families will experience poverty before they turn
eleven-years-old, compared to only 20 percent of children in
two-parent families\1\. Children who grow up absent their
fathers are also more likely to fail at school or to drop
out\2\, experience behavioral or emotional problems requiring
psychiatric treatment\3\, engage in early sexual activity\4\,
and develop drug and alcohol problems\5\.
Children growing up with absent fathers are especially
likely to experience violence. They are three times more likely
to commit suicide as adolescents\6\ and to be victims of child
abuse or neglect\7\. Violent criminals are also overwhelmingly
males who grew up without fathers, including up to 60 percent
of rapists\8\, 75 percent of adolescents charged with
murder\9\, and 70 percent of juveniles in state reform
institutions\10\.
In light of these data, noted developmental psychologist
Urie Bronfenbrenner has concluded:
Controlling for factors such as low income, children growing
up in [father absent] households are at a greater risk for
experiencing a variety of behavioral and educational problems,
including extremes of hyperactivity and withdrawal; lack of
attentiveness in the classroom; difficulty in deferring
gratification; impaired academic achievement; school
misbehavior; absenteeism; dropping out; involvement in socially
alienated peer groups, and the so-called 'teenage syndrome' of
behaviors that tend to hang together--smoking, drinking, early
and frequent sexual experience, and in the more extreme cases,
drugs, suicide, vandalism, violence, and criminal acts.\11\
The Historic Role of the Father in Public Policy
Since the 1950's, the fathers' role in public policy has
been mostly about paternity establishment and child support
enforcement. This is not, of course, without merit. Any man who
fathers a child ought to be held financially responsible for
that child. But as important as paternity establishment and
child support enforcement may be, they are by themselves
unlikely to substantially improve the well-being of children
for several reasons.
First, paternity establishment does not equal child
support. In fact, only one in four single women with children
living below the poverty line receive any child support from
the non-custodial father\12\. Some unwed fathers, especially in
low-income communities, may lack the financial resources to
provide economically for their children. These men may not be
so much ``deadbeat,'' as ``deadbroke.''
Second, even if paternity establishment led to a child
support award, the average level of child support (about $3,400
per year\13\) is unlikely to move large numbers of children out
of poverty. Some may move out of poverty marginally. But,
absent changes in family structure or workforce attachment,
moving from poverty to near poverty is not associated with
significant improvements in child outcomes\14\.
Third, an exclusive emphasis on child support enforcement
may only drive these men farther away from their children. As
word circulates within low-income communities that cooperating
with paternity establishment but failing to comply with child
support orders may result in imprisonment or revocation of
one's driver's license, many may simply choose to become less
involved with their children. Thus, the unintended consequence
of an exclusive focus on child support enforcement may be to
decrease, not increase, the number of children growing up with
an involved father.
Finally, a narrow focus on child support enforcement
ignores the many non-economic contributions that fathers make
to the well-being of their children. While the provision of
economic support is certainly important, it is neither the only
nor the most important role that fathers play. If we want
fathers to be more than just money machines, we will need a
public policy that supports their work as nurturers,
disciplinarians, mentors, moral instructors and skill coaches,
and not just as economic providers.
If paternity establishment and child support enforcement by
themselves are not the answer, then what is?
Recommendations for a Pro-Father Public Policy
First, our culture needs to send a more compelling message
to men as to the critical role they play in the lives of their
children. Currently, fathers are generally seen as ``nice to
have around'' and as a source of economic support, but are not
generally understood as contributing much that is particularly
unique or irreplaceable to the well-being of their children. To
counter this rather limited view of the importance of fathers,
public policy must communicate the critical role fathers play--
as nurturers, as disciplinarians, as teachers, and as role
models--in the healthy development of their children. One way
to do this is through the funding of public education
campaigns.
Over the past several years, the National Fatherhood
Initiative has developed and implemented a series of public
education campaigns designed to highlight the importance of
fathers to the well-being of children, families and
communities. Working in conjunction with the Ad Council, we
developed and distributed nationally a series of TV, radio, and
print public service announcements (PSAs) designed to raise
awareness that fathers make unique and irreplaceable
contributions to the lives of their children, and that
collectively we need to do more to encourage and support men to
be good and responsible fathers. To date, this PSA campaign has
garnered in excess of $100 million in donated broadcasting
time.
We also developed, and distributed nationally, a series of
radio PSAs featuring a mix of celebrities and experts designed
to remind fathers how important it is for them to spend time
with their children. Among those who appear in these PSAs are
General Colin Powell (Ret.), Vice President Al Gore, former HUD
Secretary Jack Kemp, former U.S. Senators Dan Coats and Bill
Bradley, U.S. Representatives J.C. Watts and Steve Largent, and
Penn State football coach Joe Paterno. We also developed a
state-wide public education campaign promoting responsible
fatherhood in partnership with the Virginia Department of
Health.
For those who may believe that PSA campaigns do not have
much of an effect, an independent evaluation of the public
education campaign we developed for the state of Virginia
suggests otherwise. This evaluation, conducted by researchers
at the University of Virginia, found (1) nearly 1 of every 3
adult Virginians could recall having seen the PSAs; (2) 40,000
fathers reported they were spending more time with their
children as a result of seeing the ads; (3) and 100,000 non-
fathers reported reaching out to support or encourage a father
in their community.
Second, a pro-father public policy must also be a pro-
marriage policy. All available evidence suggests that the most
effective pathway to involved, committed and responsible
fatherhood is marriage. Research consistently documents that
unmarried fathers, whether through divorce or out-of-wedlock
fathering, tend over time to become disconnected, both
financially and psychologically, from their children. Forty
percent of children in father absent homes have not seen their
father in at least a year. Of the remaining 60 percent, only
one in five sleeps even one night per month in the father's
home. Overall, only one in six sees their father an average of
once or more per week\15\. More than half of all children who
don't live with their fathers have never even been in their
father's home\16\.
Unwed fathers are particularly unlikely to stay connected
to their children over time. Whereas 57 percent of unwed
fathers are visiting their child at least once per week during
the first two years of their child's life, by the time their
child reaches 7\1/2\ years of age, that percentage drops to
less than 25 percent\17\. Indeed, approximately 75 percent of
men who are not living with their children at the time of their
birth never subsequently live with them\18\.
Even when unwed fathers are cohabitating with the mother at
the time of their child's birth, they are very unlikely to stay
involved in their children's lives over the long term. Although
a quarter of non-marital births occur to cohabitating couples,
only four out of ten cohabitating unwed fathers ever go on to
marry the mother of their children, and those that do are more
likely to eventually divorce than men who father children
within marriage\19\. Remarriage, or, in cases of an unwed
father, marriage to someone other than the child's mother,
makes it especially unlikely that a non-custodial father will
remain in contact with his children\20\.
The inescapable conclusion is this: if we want to increase
the proportion of children growing up with involved and
committed fathers, we will have to increase the number of
children living with their married fathers. Unmarried men, and
especially unwed fathers, are simply unlikely to stay in
contact with their children over the long term.
By emphasizing the need to increase the number of children
living with married dads, I do not mean to imply that divorced
or unwed fathers should be tossed overboard. Children need
their fathers. The fact that their father does not reside in
the same household does not lessen that need. But in working
with divorced and never-married fathers, we should not shy away
from the ideal of married fatherhood. To do otherwise sends an
ambiguous message to the next generation of fathers. For their
future children's sakes, we need to be clearer that men should
wait until they are married before fathering children, and once
married, they should do everything they can to ensure their
marriage stays strong and vital.
One way to strengthen marriage, especially within low-
income communities, is to expand participation in welfare-to-
work employment programs to include the broader population of
low-income males--not only as a means to increase their own
life prospects, but also as a means to increase their
marriageability. Research has found that the availability of a
suitable potential husband, primarily defined as being employed
and not in jail or prison, had a greater effect on marriage and
nonmarital fertility than did AFDC benefit levels\21\. This
literature indicates clearly that if men are employed, they are
more attractive as potential marital partners.
In expanding employment services to low-income males,
however, government should be careful not to condition receipt
of services upon having fathered a child out-of-wedlock. To do
so may only serve to introduce perverse incentives for men to
father children out-of-wedlock, in much the same way that AFDC
provided perverse incentives for women to bear children out-of-
wedlock. The cultural and public policy message must be this:
we stand ready to assist low-income males who play by the rules
and wait to have children until after they are married.
Third, public policy needs to do more to support the
growing number of community-based organizations interested in
implementing local fatherhood programs. At the founding of the
National Fatherhood Initiative just five years ago, we could
barely find a hundred community-based fatherhood programs.
Today, that number has swelled to well over two thousand.
Nearly everywhere one turns in every part of the country, there
seems to be a new interest in implementing fatherhood outreach,
support, and skill building programs.
That's the good news. The bad news is that the fatherhood
field is still quite fragile. Again and again, we hear from
practitioners of the need to build greater capacity within the
emerging fatherhood movement. Building capacity requires
additional resources. Additional resources means money.
While many private foundations today talk a good talk about
the need to reach out to and support fathers, far too few
actually provide any resources to do so. Public funding for
fatherhood promotion, support and skill building programs is
practically non-existent. Consequently, most fatherhood
programs today exist on shoestring budgets. Some on no budgets
at all. Without additional resources, the nascent fatherhood
movement is likely to fail.
In addition, we need more and better evaluations of
existing fatherhood programs. The truth is we don't know what
works best and for whom. While there are many promising
approaches, no approach has yet been proven, using generally
accepted scientific evaluation methods, to yield its intended
effects, especially in the long-term. Whatever government
decides to do in terms of fatherhood promotion, it must also
commit to providing adequate resources to determine the
effectiveness of those efforts.
Fourth, community-based organizations also need access to
information, training, and technical assistance in what works.
Providing funding is not enough. Local, community-based
organizations also need information on effective fatherhood
outreach, support, and skills building programs. The National
Fatherhood Initiative has been providing this kind of
information, resource material, and technical assistance
through its National Resource Center. To date, NFI's National
Resource Center has helped to establish well over 200 local,
community-based fatherhood programs. Every day, we receive
additional requests from community-based organizations
interested in establishing a local fatherhood program or
initiative. We are currently seeking expanded resources in
order for us to even more effectively meet this need.
Fifth, while supporting fathers, we can not forget the
importance of supporting children growing up in father absent
households. The fact is that nearly 4 out of every 10 children
in America today--nearly 24 million overall--are growing up in
a home in which their father does not live. In working with
fathers, we can not forget the importance of reaching out to
the fatherless. Although providing a fatherless child with an
adult male mentor is not the same thing as providing a real
live, in-the-home, love-the-mother, father, it can be very
helpful in teaching fatherless boys what it means to be a
responsible man, and in teaching fatherless daughters what to
demand from men in their lives.
Model Federal Legislation to Combat Fatherlessness
Given these recommendations for a pro-father public policy,
what would effective federal legislation look like?
First, federal legislation should provide support for
public education campaigns to build awareness that fathers
matter and that the most important thing a father can do is to
be involved in his children's lives, emotionally as well as
financially.
Second, federal legislation should provide financial
support for a variety of ways of working with fathers, both
because fathers come in many varieties, and because we do not
yet know what models for providing fathers with outreach,
support, and skills are the most effective. And, of course,
what works with one kind of father in one type of situation,
may not work with another kind of father in a different
situation. Federal legislation while setting certain
priorities, should not hamstring local programs into one
particular fatherhood intervention model or working with one
type of father. Federal legislation should be especially
careful not to condition services to having fathered a child
out-of-wedlock, as the Clinton Administration's welfare-to-work
proposal seems to do.
Third, federal legislation should require that any program
funded through the legislation should promote married
fatherhood as the ideal. This does not mean that local programs
should restrict their efforts to working only with married
fathers. We must, and should, work with unwed and divorced
fathers to help them become and remain involved in their
children's lives. We don't have a father to spare. But at the
same time, it does children no favor to pretend that unwed or
divorced fatherhood is the equivalent of married fatherhood. We
need to be clear that the best situation is for children to
grow up with a real live, in the home, love the mother, married
father. Federal legislation should support this goal.
Fourth, federal legislation should provide support for a
National Resource Center and Clearinghouse to provide local,
grassroots organizations with the resources, training, and
technical assistance they need to provide effective services.
Funds should also be made available to ensure that local
programs are adequately trained in outcome based measurement so
that they can provide more than testimonials as to their
effectiveness.
There are, of course, those who would object to such a
bill. First, there are some who believe government should not
explicitly promote marriage. Government, these critics will
maintain, has no business promoting personal ``values.''
Instead, they insist, government policy ought to be neutral
when it comes to marriage.
This argument might be persuasive if not for the fact that
for the past thirty years government policy, rather than being
neutral, has actually punished marriage. For example, when two-
earner couples head for the altar instead of cohabiting, their
taxes actually go up, costing many middle-income couples $1000
or more.
Things are even worse for low-income couples. In fact,
should a single mother on welfare choose to marry a low-wage
earner and, in doing so, give her children a real live in-the-
home dad instead of a child support check, her benefits are
frequently reduced, if not eliminated. According to
calculations by Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute, when a
man working full-time at a minimum wage job marries a mother on
welfare with two children, the new family's combined earnings
plus benefits would be $3,862 less than if the couple did not
marry and the woman stayed on welfare\22\. Hardly an incentive
to get or stay married.
This wouldn't be so bad if marriage didn't matter. But it
does. And not just a little. It matters a lot. Children fare
much better when raised in a married, intact, two-parent
household. In addition, research indicates that both married
men and married women are happier, healthier, and wealthier
than their unmarried counterparts. Furthermore, the best
indicator of the violent crime rate in a community is not race,
ethnicity or even income, but the prevalence of marriage. Given
that marriage is good for children, adults and society, public
policy should not shy away from encouraging more of it.
A second objection will be that government ought not to be
in the business of social engineering. But the truth is that in
some low-income communities, fatherhood and marriage have
nearly disappeared. And not just recently; but for many
generations.
How in the world does a young male growing up in a fourth
generation fatherless household and in a community largely
without dads of the married variety, come to understand what
responsible fatherhood and marriage are all about? How does
simply dismantling government teach these young men the skills
to be good, involved and committed dads? And what of the
children of these fathers? Do we just sit back and say, ``Gee,
you should have chosen your pop better.''
Given the clear connection between fatherlessness and such
social ills as poverty, crime, educational failure, and
substance abuse, we can not afford social indifference on this
issue. Government can not solve all of our nation's ills, but
what it can do it must. The stakes for our nation's children
are too high for government to be absent on this issue.
I want to be clear. I'm not suggesting that merely passing
a piece of legislation is going to magically transform our
increasingly fatherless nation into a nation of real fathers
and good husbands. But it would be a start. And start we must,
for until we solve this crisis of fatherlessness we will be a
nation in decline.
Conclusion
There exists today no greater single threat to the long-
term well-being of children, our communities or our nation,
than the increasing number of children being raised without a
committed, responsible and loving father. Our nation is known
for its optimism and fondness for reforms of many sorts that
promise to make society safer, stronger, and richer. Yet, all
social reforms we have attempted in the past, or may attempt in
the future, will likely pale in comparison to the good that
would come if we could turn back the tide of fatherlessness.
This tide will not be turned easily, and certainly not by
changes in public policy alone. But public policy can have a
significant effect upon how potential parents view marriage and
parental responsibilities.
The good news is that we are starting to see, for the first
time in over thirty years, a leveling off of the number of
children growing up in father absent homes. I believe that with
concerted effort we can actually reverse the trend toward
fatherlessness within the next five years. Not simply stop the
rise in fatherlessness, but reverse it. Doing so will require
that we stand firm on the issue of marriage, for marriage is
the most likely--not perfect, but certainly the most likely--
pathway to a lifetime father.
Simply put: children need their fathers, and men need
marriage to be good fathers. Effective public policy means
encouraging more skilled fathering, more work, and more
marriages.
I thank you for the opportunity to provide you with this
testimony, and would be pleased to answer any questions you
might have concerning my testimony.
Endnotes
1. National Commission on Children, ``Just the Facts: A
Summary of Recent Information on America's Children and Their
Families,'' (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1993).
2. Debra Dawson, ``Family Structure and Children's Well-
Being: Data from the 1988 National Health Survey,'' Journal of
Marriage and Family 53 (1991); U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics, ``Survey
of Child Health,'' (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1993).
3. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National
Center for Health Statistics, ``National Health Interview
Survey,'' (Hyattsville, MD: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1988).
4. Irwin Garfinkel and Sara McLanahan, Single Mothers and
Their Children (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press, 1986);
Susan Newcomer and J. Richard Udry, ``Parental Marital Status
Effects on Adolescent Sexual Behavior,'' Journal of Marriage
and the Family (May 1987): 235-240.
5. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National
Center for Health Statistics, ``Survey on Child Health,''
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993).
6. Patricia L. McCall and Kenneth C. Land, ``Trends in
White Male Adolescent Young-Adults and Elderly Suicide: Are
There Common Underlying Structural Factors?'' Social Science
Research 23 (1994): 57-81; U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, National Center for Health Statistics, ``Survey on
Child Health,'' (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1993).
7. Catherine M. Malkin and Michael E. Lamb, ``Child
Maltreatment: A Test of Sociobiological Theory,'' Journal of
Comparative Family Studies 25 (1994): 121-130.
8. Nicholas Davidson, ``Life Without Father,'' Policy
Review (1990).
9. Dewey Cornell, et al., ``Characteristics of Adolescents
Charged with Homicide,'' Behavioral Sciences and the Law 5
(1987): 11-23.
10. M. Eileen Matlock, et al., ``Family Correlates of
Social Skills Deficits in Incarcerated and Nonincarcerated
Adolescents, Adolescence 29 (1994): 119-130.
11. Urie Bronfenbrenner, ``What do Families do?'' Family
Affairs (Winter/Spring 1991): 1-6.
12. Ways and Means Committee, U.S. House of
Representatives, 1996 Green Book. Washington, D.C., 1996, p.
580.
13. Lydia Scoon-Rogers, ``Child Support for Custodial
Mothers and Fathers: 1995.'' U.S. Census Bureau (Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1999).
14. See, for example, Kristen A. Moore, Donna Ruane
Morrison, Martha Zaslow and Dana A. Glei, Ebbing and Flowing,
Learning and Growing: Family Economic Resources and Children's
Development. Paper presented at the Workshop on Welfare and
Child Development sponsored by the Board of Children and
Families of the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development's Family and Child Well-Being Network.
15. Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., and Christine Winquist Nord,
``Parenting Apart: Patterns of Child Rearing After Marital
Disruption,'' Journal of Marriage and the Family, (November
1985): 896.
16. Frank Furstenberg and Andrew Cherlin, Divided Families:
What Happens to Children When Parents Part (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1991).
17. Robert Lerman and Theodora Ooms, Young Unwed Fathers:
Changing Roles and Emerging Policies (Philadelphia, PA: Temple,
1993): 45.
18. Ibid.
19. Moore, Kristin A., ``Nonmarital Childbearing in the
United States.'' In: U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, ``Report to Congress on Out-of-Wedlock
Childbearing,'' DHHS Pub. no. (PHS) 95-1257, (Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995): vii.
20. Linda S. Stephens, ``Will Johnny See Daddy This Week?''
Journal of Family Issues 17 (1996): 466-494.
21. William J. Darity, Jr., and Samuel L. Myers, `` Family
Structure and the Marginalization of Black Men: Policy
Implications.'' In M. Belinda Tucker and Claudia Mitchell-
Kernan, eds. The Decline in Marriage Among African-Americans.
New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1995, pp. 263-321; see also
Randall Stokes and Albert Chevan, ``Female-Headed Families:
Social and Economic Context of Racial Differences,'' Journal of
Urban Affairs, 18, 1996, pp. 245-268.
22. Gene Steuerle, ``Removing Marriage Penalties: Is This a
Preventative Strategy?'' Presentation at The American
Enterprise Institute conference on ``America's Disconnected
Youth: Toward a Preventative Strategy.'' Washington, D.C., May
16, 1996.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Thank you very much. I
appreciate the testimony of the panelists; it was excellent.
Mr. Uhalde, I certainly agree that we have an opportunity
to work in a bipartisan fashion to accomplish some important
objectives this session. I was very pleased that the
Administration is as interested as the legislators are on this
subject, but I did want to ask you--and also I appreciated in
your testimony the many examples you give of programs that the
Labor Department has had contact with. It does seem to me that
the Labor Department is well suited to help us with what is a
fundamental issue here; that is, how do we help these young men
into employment, and how do we improve their employability and
enable them to get better paying jobs? And, I think you have
many new tools, including the more flexible job training
programs that we have provided in recent years to help you do
that.
But, you are not--you have not been traditionally
associated with the level of human services and family services
that these programs clearly provide, and in your testimony--I
can't seem to find exactly where, although, actually, I should
open this question to Mr. Berlin--as well, this issue of
coordination; you know, to get a whole new Department of Labor
involved in services that primarily the Department of Health
and Human Services has provided--and in my State, I know, the
biggest problem in welfare reform has been the turf issues. So,
I am concerned about taking the Welfare-to-Work program and
trying to turn it into an employment human service program
within the Department of Labor.
Mr. Berlin, states in his testimony, ``The experience
demonstrates that it is possible to build agency partnerships,
the agency partnerships required to deliver services to this
population.'' Of course, it is possible. In the 1970's, I was
chairman of the Family Services Child Guidance Clinic in my own
community. There were three children's services groups in my
little tiny town of 70,000, and we could only coordinate
verbally and on paper. But over the decades, now, we are
coordinating better, but I hate to pour a lot of money into a
new program when the agency relationships and the coordinated
agreements are still embryonic after, really, now, probably in
the last 4 years since welfare reform, the most dramatic
incentive to collaborate and cooperate that really has ever
been amongst us from any level of government. So, I am
concerned, and I have been told not to ask this question, raise
this hornet's nest, but I am really concerned about getting
fatherhood into the Department of Labor. [Laughter.]
I am also uncontrollable, so, I mean, you just----
[Laughter.]
But, I do learn from experience; that is why I hold
hearings.
Mr. Uhalde. Well, I guess I would start by saying we are in
the fatherhood business. We are not getting into it. In the
Workforce Investment Act and, before it, the Job Training
Partnership Act, we serve fathers; we serve males. Our issue
has been with relatively low-income males and with dislocated
workers. We have served many, many hundreds of thousands of
them over the years. Except for particular efforts, we have not
focused our attention on making the link with child support
enforcement agencies to make sure that those increases in
earnings that fathers had achieved who were non-custodial are
translated into child support payments. So, we are about the
business of providing better employment and training services
for males; that is a principal part of our business.
Second, the Workforce Investment Act that recently passed
on a bipartisan basis by the Congress and was signed in August
of last year, creates a workforce investment system and one-
stop career center that is, again, about 14 different
Government agencies and programs formally agreeing to partner
to provide services from vocational rehabilitation, adult basic
education and literacy, TANF, Welfare-to-Work. So----
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. I appreciate that, and I--
--
Mr. Uhalde [continuing]. This has to be our business.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. I do appreciate that
change is occurring. It is also occurring very slowly.
Connecticut was one of the States that got one of the
demonstration projects from the Department of Labor about a
decade ago to create one-stop centers, and they really had made
a dramatic difference, and they provided a wonderful platform
from which to enlarge the services under welfare reform. But,
for example, even in your testimony, you say early intervention
is critical and Ms. McLanahan talks about early intervention
being at the hospital and shows charts about how 80 percent at
birth are romantically involved, but we lose that so early, and
while you can be there for the education services--I mean, for
the employment services, for the training services that should
be integral to this, it is sort of breathtaking to imagine the
Department of Labor running the social service programs for a
holistic approach to family development problems starting at
the hospital.
Mr. Uhalde. Well, child support would also--and in the
legislation that Mr. Cardin has introduced--be a party to it.
We would be active partners in that process and the design of
that program.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Well, we will discuss this
much more, because we have lots of questions and another big
panel, and I know we are going to hear testimony from those who
want to work with the child support enforcement agency--which
is the natural nexus for fathers for this panoply of services.
But, I would just have to say that I am very concerned
about the development of parallel service systems. In my
experience, we have got to do far better in child protective
services in Connecticut where we have a number of waivers. We
are getting much family focused, much more flexible, better
integrated, and I am concerned. I do think you are doing a
wonderful job developing employment services, career
advancement services, and the next round of welfare evolution
has got to be able to help people get higher paying jobs. And,
you certainly are focusing on that and developing, I think,
some tools to do those things, but I really hate to distract
you into being in the hospital, trying to deal with the fathers
in terms of parenting skills and involvement, and I also was
very surprised--but I will have to come back to this later--
that Mrs. McLanahan says only 10 percent of the fathers had
drug problems. So, my concept of how we rewrite the Welfare-to-
Work grant is, at this point, probably quite different from
yours, and I looking forward to working with you on that.
I yield to my colleague, Mr. Cardin.
Mr. Cardin. Thank you. I am having a hard time trying to
reconcile some of Mrs. McLanahan's numbers with common
observations as well as one of the observations by Mr. Berlin.
And, that is if we have such a relationship between the father
and mother; that is, 78 percent of the fathers helping the
mother during pregnancy and 81 percent being romantically
involved, and yet Mr. Berlin makes the observation in his
report that one of the problems was getting non-custodial
parents to stress skepticism about the goals and services of
PFS based on their perception that the child support system was
stacked against them. So, if the fathers believe the child
support system is stacked against them, one observation could
be because the monies paid through child support rarely goes
directly to the family; maybe that is the explanation. What are
the reasons that fathers don't trust the child support system?
Mr. Berlin. Well, one of the things that often happens
either soon after Sara's single mother leaves the hospital, or
while she is still there, the hospital completes an application
and enrolls her in Medicaid, so Medicaid can be billed for the
cost of child birth. The father, then, when he establishes
paternity is immediately saddled with these Medicaid costs in
the form of thousands of dollars of child support debts.
Fathers, in association with child support, start off in debt
and they are being hounded for life by the child support system
to pay that debt and they face the risk of being jailed for
failure to appear at a hearing on child support. Moreover, the
payments fathers make typically go to the welfare system rather
than to their children.
Mr. Cardin. How fast have these numbers dropped? Ms.
McLanahan, do you know how fast the father's and mother's
relationship deteriorates once the child is born?
Ms. McLanahan. We don't know, really, and that is why we
are doing this study. I mean, we have got some estimates that
will show you sort of years later that their fathers aren't
around--we gave some of those numbers earlier--but I think
another big difference between what I am saying and what Gordon
is talking about is he is talking about men who are not with
their children; who have not paid child support; who have then
been ordered by the judge to participate in this program, and I
am talking about the birth period. So, it is a different
population of men. We are in the field right now to reinterview
these families in Oakland and Austin. We will see how many are
still around.
Mr. Cardin. Well, one number, 52 percent that you have
cohabitating, is certainly radically different than what the
statistics that we have had on the number of families that are
participating in TANF being single-parent families. So, this
is--we don't have half our caseload coming into the two-parent
programs.
Ms. McLanahan. Half of these families are on TANF.
Mr. Cardin. But half----
Mr. Berlin. But half are not.
Ms. McLanahan. But half are not. So, that is the point.
This would be a preventive initiative too. These families
aren't all on TANF, partly, because the fathers are there, but
the fact that 80 percent of them have only a high school degree
or less tells you about their ability to make it.
Mr. Cardin. So, you are giving us the whole universe here.
Ms. McLanahan. I am giving you--this is a representative
sample of all non-marital births.
Mr. Cardin. OK.
Ms. McLanahan. And, these----
Mr. Cardin. Fifty percent of these births will end up
receiving some form of public assistance?
Ms. McLanahan. They already are receiving--50 percent are
receiving public assistance at the time of the birth of the
child, and these numbers are consistent with what demographers
are now finding. A decade ago, it looked like about 30 percent
of new, unwed parents were cohabitating; the number in 5 years
was up to 40 percent, and now it looks like it is closer to 50
percent. So, we have this big increase in cohabitation and
births occurring to cohabiting parents but sort of going along
outside the welfare population, but many of these people are in
the welfare population, and some of them will go onto welfare.
Mr. Cardin. Back to Mr. Berlin on the attitude of the non-
custodial parent toward the child support system. There is a
mistrust because the first contacts are confrontational,
adversarial?
Mr. Berlin. Too often, the child support system is saying
to fathers that they ought to establish paternity, ``You ought
to do the right thing, but if you lose your job, instead of
adjusting the amount owed, we will continue adding to the
amount of money that you are going to owe the child support
system, so arrearages keep building.'' We had a lot of examples
of fathers who were paying regularly. They called the system
and said, ``I just lost my job, can you cut my order back?''
And, the system said, ``No.'' So, part of our mission in
Parents' Fair Share was getting the child support system to be
more responsive to the actual ability of fathers to pay.
Mr. Cardin. Let me just make one more observation. It
appears from all of your testimony that one of the areas that
we need to concentrate is follow-up services to the father who
may be working but the prospect for long-term employment is not
very good, and the level of income that the father is receiving
is not very high, so that we can't just say that we have a
success when the father is working; we need to have services
that follow the father so that he can have more predictable
income. I guess, we all agree with that.
Ms. McLanahan. Yes.
Mr. Uhalde. Yes, and I would just say that is not unlike
with the custodial parents, as well, especially with a good
economy; it is keeping jobs and increasing the earning
capacity, and that is difficult, because it means mixing work
and learning while people are working, and we are learning how
to do that. On-the-job training--high support on-the-job
training was one initiative for that, and we need to keep
finding ways and techniques to do it, so we can grow these
earnings.
Mr. Cardin. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Mr. English.
Mr. English. Thank you, Madam Chair. Dr. Horn, welcome; it
is good to hear from you again. In examining your testimony, I
noticed that you state that a pro-father public policy must
also be a pro-marriage policy. In your view, can a well-
designed program aimed at fathers increase marriage rates, and
is that a reasonable outcome that we should demand of these
programs?
Mr. Horn. That remains to be seen, because most programs
don't try to do that; some do. Charles Ballard's program, for
example, tries to work to move a couple toward marriage, so
does Jeff Johnson's program. Efforts to evaluate those programs
are too new to know precisely the degree to which we can
achieve success in this area--and I will let them speak about
their programs in the second panel--but I think it has to be a
part of what we do.
The idea that cohabitation rates are going up is not such
great news if, in the long term, the couples break up, and the
father disappears from a child's life. As a child psychologist,
I know from clinical experience, but there is also research
evidence to back this up, that it is actually worse for a child
to establish an attachment relationship with a father in the
early years of the child's life only to have that father
disappear when the child enters elementary school. The fact
that we have higher rates of cohabitation, does not necessarily
translate into more permanent relationships between the child
and the father. So, I think marriage has to be a piece of what
we do.
One obvious questions is, why aren't they getting married?
If 80 percent of unwed, low-income couples are romantically
involved and 52 percent are cohabiting, why aren't they getting
married? I think one of the reasons is that we never bring up
the topic. When was the last time you went into a welfare
office and saw a poster on a wall that said marriage was a good
thing? When was the last time you went to a welfare office and
they had brochures available providing referrals to pre-marital
counseling sessions? How many welfare offices even ask the
couple: ``Are you thinking about getting married? What is
standing in your way? How can we help you with that?'' We see
these kinds of questions as off-limits when it comes to what
the welfare offices are intending to do. I think we have to
start bringing up the topic and encouraging people to get
married particularly when they are telling us that they want
to.
Mr. English. Dr. Horn, in your testimony--you express
concern about programs that condition receipt of services upon
having fathered a child out of wedlock. How do you design an
intervention, in your view, that avoids that problem?
Mr. Horn. This concern was heightened for me at a
fatherhood conference a couple of years ago. Someone brought in
a poster from New York, and the poster said, ``Unwed father? Do
we have a program for you, including a state-of-the-art
physical fitness facility,'' and everybody applauded and said,
``That is a wonderful thing. Isn't that a great program?'' And,
I sat there, and I said, ``Where is the program for the guy who
plays by the rules and doesn't father a child out of wedlock?
Where is his state-of-the-art physical fitness facility?'' The
answer is they don't have one. I think what we have to do is
target low-income communities in terms of economic employment
opportunities and expanding them as opposed to targeting a
specific father, a non-custodial father, particularly one who
has fathered a child out of wedlock. It doesn't mean we say,
``If you are an unwed father or non-custodial, you can't come
and be part of this employment program.'' But at least we ought
to say to those who aren't yet fathers but living in those same
communities, ``You are absolutely welcome to be a part of this
program.''
Mr. English. Doctor, you called for support of a national
resource center and clearinghouse. Could you offer us some
details about the goals of such an organization and how it
would operate?
Mr. Horn. We operate such a resource center. We get calls
everyday from community-based organizations wanting to do
something in the area of fatherhood promotion and intervention.
They come from a variety of different perspectives; they are
different types of agencies; they have access to different
types of fathers, and so forth. The first goal when that phone
call comes in is to help them think through what are their
access points to fathers? What is their passion? What is it
they can really do given their sphere of influence? If, it is a
hospital administrator, you will give a very different sense
about what they can do versus a school administrator versus
someone who works in the child support enforcement arena versus
somebody who works in a boys and girls club in an inner city.
What a good resource center does is, rather than trying to fit
every peg into the same shape hole, is say ``What does your peg
look like, and let us go find a good program that will fit that
peg.''
Mr. English. Madam Chair, I am almost out of time, but I
want to compliment this panel on the presentation they have
made. It has certainly given us a lot of material that can be
the basis for us moving forward this year, and I certainly hope
we have the opportunity to do that. Thank you very much, and I
yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Thank you very much. Mr.
Lewis.
Mr. Lewis of Kentucky. Thank you, Madam Chair. Dr. Horn,
Dr. Johnson, who is on the second panel, says in his testimony
that poor fathers must first get jobs and take responsibility
for their children before marriage makes sense. Do you agree
with that or what would be your--?
Mr. Horn. I have great sympathy for the idea that we ought
to help low-income men get good jobs, keep good jobs, and all
of that. I think that is very important. I, perhaps, have just
a slightly different lens through which I view this issue. I
think it is important that we don't reinforce the idea that
unless you have a good paying job you can't be a good father to
your children. What that suggests is, for example, my two
brothers, who are househusbands, are not doing it right,
because they are not in the paid labor force. At the same time,
I recognize that a lot of men come to the table with the idea
that economic provision is a central piece of what they do as
fathers, and so we ought to pay attention to that. But at the
same time we ought to help those men expand the notion of what
they can contribute to their children by disabusing them of the
notion that it is all about money, it is all about a job. One
has to do that delicately; one has to do that sensitively. But
it seems to me that we need to expand the understanding of men
about what good fathers do and what good men have to contribute
to the institution of marriage. It is not just about money; it
is not just about the size of your paycheck that makes you a
good husband. It is about caring for your wife; it is about
supporting the wife; it is about encouraging her.
Mr. Lewis of Kentucky. OK, thank you. Mr. Berlin, Dayton
increased their child support payments by 50 percent. What are
your ideas about why they were so successful in that?
Mr. Berlin. It was an unusual program. First, they did have
a strong partnership, and they did an extraordinary amount of
outreach. Most child support workers sit at their desk and look
for matches on computer screens to tell them that there is
income. In Dayton, staff actually went out and knocked on
people's door at the last known address and found many fathers
that nobody thought could be located and got them involved in
the program. Some of them were working and weren't reporting
earnings that the Dayton system was not capturing. Others of
them who eventually would have gone to work got into the
service part of this program and went to work, and the system
knew immediately when they did, and that increased the amount
of child support paid.
Mr. Lewis of Kentucky. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Yes, go ahead.
Mr. McInnis. Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I find the
testimony interesting, but the testimony that I find most
compelling on the panel here is Dr. Horn. I must admit that at
the beginning I had some skepticism about a public relations
effort that is going to actually enhance fatherhood, but I
found the rest of your testimony so absolutely compelling that
I am now wondering would you mind providing for me, say, a copy
of some of the print ads or some of the things that you have
done?
Mr. Horn. I would be happy to do that.
[The information had not been received at the time of
printing.]
Mr. McInnis. I mean, maybe it works. Maybe I am--and along
the same line as Ms. McLanahan has done tracking, what is the
fall-off rate once the commercials stop? I mean, is there any
kind of long-lasting effect as a result of this?
Mr. Horn. I will also supply you with the evaluation of our
work in the State of Virginia. In just the first year of our
intensive public education campaign, there were clear impacts;
as I said, 40,000 fathers were now spending more time with
their kids; 100,000 non-fathers reaching out to a father in
their community and providing support and encouragement. Then
they stopped running the ads. A year later, there was
backtracking--not completely--but there was backtracking on
those results.
Anybody who works in the area of cultural and attitudinal
change knows that you have to be consistent with your messages,
and if you suddenly stop giving the message that marriage
matters, or that fathers matters, that littering is a bad
thing, there is backtracking in terms of the cultural attitudes
about this stuff.
Mr. McInnis. As you know, the State that I represent is
Colorado, and I had preplanned town meetings for the weekend
which we weren't able to cancel in light of the events that
took place in Colorado, but, needless to say, during these town
meetings that was the topic of discussion, and of course the
family issue comes up, an issue which I think is fundamental to
some of the difficulties that we face. I just want to tell you,
I wish I could have had you in Colorado. I think your testimony
is excellent, and I appreciate all the panel, but, Dr. Horn, I
found yours especially helpful to me, so I appreciate the
effort you are putting into this. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Thank you very much, Mr.
McInnis, and I thank the panel. To what extent do you all think
it is important to get involved at birth?
Mr. Berlin. I think the sooner that programs intervene the
better. It is logical. In PFS, we have seen some evidence that
fathers with younger children were more likely to be involved
in their children's lives as a result of PFS.
Mr. Horn. I agree. I think it is critical. There is a
wonderful hospital-based program called Boot Camp for New Dads
that uses a father-father mentoring model, between fathers
whose partners gave birth in that hospital 3 to 6 months prior
and fathers who have expectant partners. It is a very nice way
of teaching skills for the expectant fathers and encouraging
their involvement with their children when they are young. And,
what we know from developmental psychology is the more
interaction between the father and the child early on, the
greater the attachment between the child and the father and
between the father and the child. The stronger that attachment,
the less likely it is that father will fade out of that child's
life. But, if you wait till the child is 6, 7, or 8 years of
age and the only incentive this guy has to be involved in his
child's life is that you are making him pay child support, but
he doesn't have a clue who this kid is, because he has never
been around the child, it is unlikely that that sort of
intervention will be effective.
Mr. Uhalde. The Administration's bill, as reflected in Mr.
Cardin's legislation that he introduced, recognizes both early
intervention--because there is more likelihood of success with
early intervention--but also focuses on the children that are
in greatest need, those that are longest-term welfare
recipients or approaching the time limits; 19 States of which
will hit time limits this year. And, so it gives a priority to
those but allows early intervention as well.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. I would be terribly,
terribly concerned to get a fatherhood program in place and
have it any way mixed up with all these other dates, because
then you would have program people up--I mean, this is why
Welfare-to-Work hasn't worked, because you can't have program
people out there and looking through these fathers to see who
is part of the about to expire 3 months from--even if you open
up the criteria, I am very concerned about the welfare--the
whole goal of the Welfare-to-Work was to get at the longest-
term welfare recipients, but a lot of the babies are being born
to people that are much more recently into the system, and they
would not fit into the welfare reform criteria nor should they.
So, I think we really are going to have to give a lot of
attention to the fact that we may take money from Welfare-to-
Work to do this, but we cannot be limited by the Welfare-to-
Work focus on the adults.
Mr. Uhalde. We would agree, and our proposal doesn't limit
it to that; that is correct.
Ms. McLanahan. I obviously think it is a good idea. I think
another appealing part of it is that the mothers want the
fathers involved, and there is a lot of discussion in some of
these issues when they come up about whether the father is
dangerous or whether the mothers want the fathers, and about
the conflict between the parents. Clearly, these data suggest
that 90 percent of the mothers want these fathers involved. So,
when you start early, you do not have to deal with those other
issues of whether the parents are in a conflictual
relationship, or whether you are actually making things worse
for the family or the children.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Well, all of you have
dealt with the bureaucratic structure that delivers services in
this country, from the Federal Government down to the States,
the local government, the non-profit sector, and I honestly
think we have to take very, very, very seriously the profound
problems that could emerge from trying to have something that
starts in the hospital, a Department of Labor program. Now,
with all due respect, and I certainly want you in there,
because the husband, the male, is there and needs your
services, and if you don't get at them and if we don't get this
going, we can't do it without you, but it is also true that you
really can't do the motherhood training, all of the things that
mother needs and the father needs. We have to find a holistic
approach to these units, and hope that we can help them
understand what it means to be a family and also why marriage
creates a more stable environment for a child.
So, I don't want turf issues to interfere with my trying to
find a solution to this problem. I don't want you to want--
although I know it is a natural deep-seeded and distinct that
my comment will not overcome--but we have got to get the
agencies out of the way while we think about what has to be
done and then find a way to get you back in to do what you need
to do. But, because the Welfare-to-Work money is in the
Department of Labor and because this program is not going to be
focused on the group that the Welfare-to-Work group was focused
on, I think we have to face realistically that we are going to
have to do some rewriting here, and I was pleased that the
Administration got this out from under the criteria that
governs the Welfare-to-Work program.
I really do respect what you do. What you do is terribly
important. You are getting far better with teenagers than you
ever were, and we need you, but I think we really have to think
through how we get a holistic approach to these families.
The other thing that we will have to go into in more detail
at some other time is this problem of health insurance and the
uncovered father, since he is not covered under Medicaid, and
what could we do about that? And maybe there is a way to bring
him into Medicaid when he takes on his support programs until
his income increases or something, but we do have to think
about those things or if we do provide him with so many
disincentives--I would also feel very resentful of an agency
that penalized me every time I tried to do my duty.
So, thank you very much for your testimony. We do have a
long way to go. This is a very important issue. We are not
going to drop it, and so you better put your nose to the
grindstone or your shoulder to the grindstone or something. OK,
thanks.
The next panel is Charles Ballard, the founder and chief
executive officer of the Institute for Responsible Fatherhood
and Family Revitalization; Jeffery Johnson, the president and
chief executive officer of the National Center for Strategic
Nonprofit Planning and Community Leadership; George Gay, the
pastor of UFW Baptist Church in New Britain; Robert Raesz,
attorney from Austin, TX, and Vicki Turetsky, senior staff
attorney, the Center for Law and Social Policy. And also Lisa
Nkonoki--good, thank you; I am glad you are here--a co-founder
and executive director of the Tate George Dreamshot Foundation
from Newington, CT.
Mr. Ballard, would you open, please.
STATEMENT OF CHARLES AUGUSTUS BALLARD, FOUNDER AND CHIEF
EXECUTIVE OFFICER, INSTITUTE FOR RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD AND
FAMILY REVITALIZATION
Mr. Ballard. Madam Chair, thank you very much for the
opportunity to appear before your Committee today. I think I am
well qualified to talk on this subject. I have a 43-year-old
son, a 38-year-old son, a 14-year-old son, a 12-year-old
daughter, and 4\1/2\-year-old son, so I think I have had a lot
of practice in this area.
I began my work with fathers 22 years ago in Cleveland, OH
at a hospital, and what we discovered is that the earlier the
father was involved in a pregnancy the better, not only for the
child but for the mother as well. We found out that men who are
involved in the pregnancy actually can increase the weight of
the baby, which can reduce infant mortality. Now, I think the
problem that we are facing is what I call fatherlessness, and
that is a condition that is created when there is no loving,
compassionate man in the home to care for his family, and of
course we know what happens from this lack of family support.
Now, fatherlessness shows up in three areas: dysfunctional
single fatherhood, dysfunctional divorce fatherhood, and
dysfunctional married fatherhood, because we sometimes see a
problem in marriages in which children are not being cared for
properly. Now, even when a father provides financial care--
financial support, it does not affect those statistics that I
just gave you.
Now, what is the solution to this problem? No. 1, we
believe that marriage--good, loving, compassionate marriages--
must be supported. A man who is not married is high-risk for
homicide, suicide, homelessness, educational failure, gang
membership, joblessness, drug abuse, and poor health. In fact,
this year, 150,000 African males, mostly fathers, are going to
die a premature death--heart attacks and so on. Now, on the
contrary, a man who is a good, loving, compassionate father in
a marriage is not affected as much by these risk factors.
Children grow up much healthier and go out of the community,
out of the home, to bless the community.
No. 2, we must have those working with fathers to have a
risk-free lifestyle. I indicated that this year we are going to
lose over 150,000 men to high-risk diseases. Some are caused by
smoking, drug use, alcoholism, and so on. And, so those who
work with these individuals must themselves be drug-free,
cigarette-free, as well as domestic violence-free. The staff
must not only talk the talk, but the staff must walk the walk.
And, No. 3, staff must live where the people are they are
servicing. I remember before integration, the problem we have
today did not exist, because all the sages, all of the doctors
and lawyers lived among the poor, and they were good role
models. So, we are suggesting very strongly that those who work
with fathers must be where the fathers are living in order to
provide their services.
No. 4, we need to be available 24-7. We found out that most
agencies close between the hours of 5 p.m. and 8 a.m. The
majority of people's problems take place after 5 and on
weekends, so we need to have a program in the community that is
available 24-7 by pager.
No. 5, the protege must be the locus of control. Now, what
I mean by that is that most agencies will create a plan for a
father or a mother and say ``You must follow this if you are
going to see your child.'' We believe that when a man comes up
with his own plan, he will include jobs; he will include
education; he will include time with the child. So, when he
does that, we just need to provide the kind of support to him
that is so desperately needed.
And the other thing that I want to point out is that we
must find fathers by going door to door. Our program actually
reaches out into the community. We walk the street where people
live, and we go into those homes, and we lease and own homes in
those communities. Now, why is that so important? Because the
people believe that coming to conventional offices is very
intimidating. By going to them on their turf, you create a
rapport and a sense of relaxation.
Now, we specialize in five areas. No. 1, enhanced intra-
personal development, assisting a father in creating a sense of
self-worth and balance in order for him to get off drugs and
alcohol. No. 2, enhanced family development, assisting a father
and supporting him in establishing a loving and secure
relationship with his family through marriage, paternity
acknowledgement, pre-and post-marital counseling as well as
child growth and development. No. 3, enhanced community
development. Many times non-custodial fathers are involved in
gang membership, resulting in homicide and break-ins. So, we
work with fathers to create a relationship with his neighbor,
so they can work together. No. 4, enhanced educational
development. It was said earlier that many of the fathers don't
have educations. We work with them to secure a GED on literacy.
Twelve percent go onto college. No. 5, enhanced
entrepreneurship skill development; helping a father not only
to get a job but to treat the job like it is a business so that
he will be promoted throughout that company.
Last year, we received a Welfare-to-Work grant to go into
six cities, ``Reconnecting Fathers to their Families and to the
Workplace.'' Now, I will just share with you some of the
results of that program thus far. Since July 1998, we have
placed 222 hard-to-place individuals, because we live in that
community, and we have that trust--143 males and 79 females--
and we have, right now, 190 still retaining a job; over a 72
percent success rate of retention. Now, we want to advance our
program into other States and to other cities, and we have
chosen several cities to do that: Virginia, Pennsylvania,
Indiana, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Colorado, Maryland,
Califorina, and Louisiana. I believe that as we help fathers
become more loving, more understanding, and more compassionate,
we can see a safer community, not only for our children but for
the community as a whole. Thank you.
[The prepared statement follows:]
Statement of Charles Augustus Ballard, Founder and Chief Executive
Officer, Institute for Responsible Fatherhood and Family Revitalization
Thank you Chairman Johnson. I am very pleased that this
Committee is convening this hearing today on the issue of
fatherlessness and responsible fatherhood solutions, which
indicates that the Nation has begun to realize this is the
vital next step in our welfare reform campaign.
Fatherlessness in a child's life unlike being fatherless
(largely because of the father's death) is a condition created
when there is no father in or out of the home who is willing to
project a positive, risk-free lifestyle model through
nurturing, compassion, love, affection and security. Children
brought up under such wise and loving guidance will have no
desire to wander around in search of pleasure and
companionship. Gangs will not be attractive to them. Their
characters are molded in the home and they form habits and
principles that will provide them with a strong defense against
drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, violence and school failure. They
will go forth from the home to bless the world.
In all that we do, the end product must be children who
feel that parents are directing them with tenderness, care and
compassion. It is the work I've been involved in for the past
22 years. I began this work because I saw the many problems
faced by the family. These problems were brought on by both in-
home and out-of-home fathers. At that time it became very clear
that in order to create enhanced opportunity for the child and
mother, comprehensive outreach and home-based services must be
provided to the father.
It has been projected that over 200,000 African-Americans
will lose their lives prematurely. Of this group, a vast
majority will be African-American males, mostly fathers. The
cause of these premature deaths are: heart disease (over
40,000), cancer (33,000), HIV (11,000), Injuries (9,000),
Homicides (8,200), Stroke (8,100), Pneumonia/Influenza (4,300),
Diabetes (4,300), Lung Disease (4,100), and Perinatal
conditions (2,700).
I am very concerned about the premature deaths, but we have
even a greater problem: high rates of morbidity. The higher the
morbidity in a community, the greater the mortality. Children
who are exposed to the high risk life style of the father are
predisposed to higher rates of deaths.
By the year 2000, more than 2 million American will be
incarcerated. It has been estimated that although African-
American males are less than 8% of this country, over 50% of
this group will be African-American males.
This condition creates situations in the home which causes
children to be placed in foster homes and juvenile detention
centers. The combined number for this group is nearly 1
million! African-American children and youth make up more than
50% of this group as well. This, along with youth involvement
in gangs, drug abuse, school failure, including suspension and
expulsion only aggravate an already bad situation.
It seems that most urban communities seem predisposed to
experiencing early death, inordinate levels of foster care,
family breakdown, and high levels of incarceration, all of
which has an appalling impact on the responsibilities of
parents and fathers. Helping fathers to become loving,
nurturing, and compassionate parents and assisting them in
providing safe havens for their families will go a long way in
alleviating the problem of ``fatherlessness.''
The Fathers Counts Bill and the attention given to this
issue by Congress and the Administration will not only aid
groups like ours in helping fathers to be responsible from a
nuturing and economic standpoint, but it will also promote
self-sufficiency, good health and a reduction in crime by
allowing us to empower fathers to be there for their children
and wives--5, 10, 15 years and beyond.
When I founded the Institute over 16 years ago in
Cleveland, OH, I knew that ``turning the hearts of fathers to
their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers''
would provide the foundational basis to restore safe and secure
family environments. Independent evaluations of our work by
Case Western Reserve and the University of Tennessee have
attested to our results, and reinforced the vital importance of
re-establishing role models of loving and compassionate
marriages in our inner cities.
Key elements of our program are:
1. Targeting 16,000 mostly female head of households.
2 Re-seeding the targeted community with loving and secure,
married couples who model a risk-free lifestyle.
3. All managing partners and support staff must live in the
target community.
4. All staff must be available 24 hours per day, 7 days per
week to provide services.
5. All staff must be willing to go directly into the
people's home in order to provide services, working with one
father at a time to resolve family problems and other related
issues.
Once we engage the father in our program, we use a
``Comprehensive 5-cylinder'' model of intervention:
1. Enhanced Intra-personal Development: This cylinder leads
the father to a sense of self awareness, self control, self
worth and a desire to be well and in good health.
2. Enhanced Family Development: This leads the whole family
to create a therapeutic environment in order to support all
family members in a positive manner.
3. Enhanced Community Development: Fathers will take
responsibility for their own behavior and work to assist their
neighbors in doing the same.
4. Enhanced Educational Development: Fathers learn the
importance of education for himself and his children. Our
experience is that children whose fathers are in our program
experience an increased letter grade. Some have gone from an F
to an A!
5. Enhanced Entreprenuerial and Employment Development:
African-American males have the highest jobless rates in
America. Much of this is brought on by educational failure, a
prior conviction that may have led to incarceration and a poor
work history. The success of this cylinder has resulted in
fathers being employed and retained at a rate as high as 77.2%.
In 1998, the Institute was awarded a $4.4 million grant in
Round I Welfare-to-Work (WtW) for a six-city pilot initiative,
Reconnecting Fathers to their Families and to the Workplace.
Cited by the Labor Department's own Office of Performance
Audits, the Institute has implemented a cutting edge
demonstration with the following innovations and results to
date.
Placement that exceeded original expectations and
time frames in the IRFFR grant proposal;
Model collaborations between state TANF agencies,
PICs, and community-based programs;
A responsible fatherhood technology embodied in
the principle of ``changing hearts'' and attitudes of non-
custodial fathers. The Institute has proven to be capable of
transforming long-term welfare dependent individuals with
histories of drug abuse, unemployment, domestic violence and
other issues.
State of the art management Information System
(MIS) which calculates 70%-30% eligibility;
Extensive Field Monitoring Manuals, financial
control systems, and accountability mechanisms.
The Institute's innovative program is founded on the
principle that connecting a non-custodial father to his
children with an emotional bond creates within the father, not
only the need, but also the desire to work to support his
family. The foundation for delivery of services is based on the
idea that the father's life has tremendous impact on the lives
of both his child(ren) and their mother(s). When comprehensive
non-traditional services are provided to the father, life
opportunities for the children and mother are enhanced. The
major focus is on fathers, yet services are provided in a
holistic approach to members of the family who impact the
father's life--including the mother of his children who is
receiving TANF.
We realize that the father, the mother, and the child is
one complete unit and not a division of pieces. Any approach to
create healing and move a family from TANF rolls must be
comprehensive, inclusive, and address the father's fundamental
issues which lie at the core of employment barriers. To
overcome these barriers, the Institute believes that the
individual must be strengthened in seven different areas to
develop strong work habits: (1) Spirituality--a sense of right
and wrong, self love, and self discipline; (2) Identity; (3)
Belief system; (4) Purpose; (5) Ability to perform; (6)
Behavior, and (7) Environment.
The target group we serve, primarily hard to place males,
are characterized by multiple barries to employment including
teen parenting, illiteracy, school drop out, limited or
nonexistent work experience, substance abuse, criminal records,
dysfunctional relationships within their own families and with
the mother(s) of his children, and low self worth.
The Institute's WTW program provides proteges (or clients)
with Job Readiness and Placement, Post-Employment Training,
Employment Activities and Support, and Job Retention Services.
To enhance the effectiveness and success of these activities,
proteges participate in Inductive Outreach Modules which assist
them to visualize the possibilities of what can be and actively
pursue the opportunities that allows those visions to manifest
into reality.
The Inductive Outreach Modules are designed to assist
proteges in resolving core issues which contribute to the
barriers which have impeded their active and constructive
participation in their families and society. Inductive Outreach
Modules are self paced sessions covering fathering attitudes
and feelings about one's self, his child(ren)'s mother, his
child(ren), the educational system, the welfare system, and the
justice system. Resolving these issues creates an environment
for the protege to experience self awareness and individual
responsibility. This foundation sets the framework to assist
proteges to acquire skills, behaviors, motivation, and
knowledge to maximize job placement, job retention, and
increased earnings potential.
Because of our success in not only reaching fathers, but
moving them successfully through our program and supporting
them in becoming responsible fathers, we have received hundreds
of phone calls and letters from across America to expand our
services.
We at the Institute would like to begin the process of
reaching other cities in order to help children across America
smile because their fathers have involved themselves in their
lives. Ask a child, what do you want most from your father? He
will tell you, ``I want him to love me and be kind to my
mother.'' It is this kind of father that the Institute works to
develop. It is these kinds of fathers who will make our homes
and communities safe again.
I would like to commend this committee for its examination
of ways to provide adequate funding as in the Fathers Counts
Bill to help community-based programs like ours to expand our
work into the many high-risk communities that have sought our
services.
This issue is not only an economic one; we must be
concerned with the child's health and safety, teaching men to
become good nurturers who are very compassionate and
responsible. Responsibility cannot just stop with child
support, but must encompass the father's care for the family
and child.
At the Institute, we believe the best gift a father can
give to a child, is to love, honor and respect the child's
mother, as he models a healthy, risk-free life style and
supports his family with love and compassion. Thank you for
your leadership in bring this vital issue to the attention of
Congress.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Thank you very much, Mr.
Ballard. I will remind you as I should have said for the
earlier panel that your entire statements will be entered in
the record. We do have the 5-minute signals, because there is a
lot of people to get through, and it allows for more discussion
thereafter.
Mr. Johnson, president and chief executive officer of the
National Center for Strategic Nonprofit Planning and Community
Leadership. Nice to have you.
STATEMENT OF JEFFERY M. JOHNSON, PH.D., PRESIDENT AND CHIEF
EXECUTIVE OFFICER, NATIONAL CENTER FOR STRATEGIC NONPROFIT
PLANNING AND COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP
Mr. Jeffery Johnson. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and
Members of the Human Resources Committee of the House and Ways
Means Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to testify before
you on the topic of responsible fatherhood. I am the president
and chief executive officer of the National Center Strategic
Nonprofit Planning and Community Leadership, and we are
dedicated to strengthening organizations to help them serve
people and communities for the future.
Madam Chair, I am going to move on and just say that I know
that I have a 5-minute time limit and I did grow up as the son
of a baptist preacher. [Laughter.]
And for those of us who don't know what that means, it is
that it is very difficult for me to get in front of mikes and
the like for 5 minutes, but what I will do is try to stay
focused on my remarks, but I do generally appreciate this
opportunity.
As I entered this work with NPCL, I entered with 20 years
of experience in working with fathers and families on a variety
of issues. I also entered this work having a personal
connection with it. For 12 wonderful years, I had two loving
parents who supported me. My father died when I was 12 years of
age, and I learned much from him in terms of how to go to work
every day; how to respect my mother; how to go to church, and
how to try to do my best in school. And, when my father died,
leaving my mother with 10 children, it was a tremendous
challenge, and I think that my ability to overcome the
challenges that were faced in my family really has contributed
mightily to the insight that I bring to NPCL and the commitment
that my organization has to this whole fatherhood area.
What I would like to do is focus on four things as part of
my oral testimony, and then I am just going to refer you
appropriately to my formal written testimony for other
information. First, I want to tell you about NPCL and what we
do. The mission at NPCL is to enhance the capacity of
community-based organizations to address and identify local
needs primarily through family and neighborhood empowerment.
One critical element of family empowerment particularly in the
inner cities is the return of fathers to families, whether in
traditional or non-traditional ways. Our current focus is
building the capacity of community-based organizations to serve
fathers in a way that will enable them to carry out their
critical roles as nurturers and economic providers. At NPCL,
Y2K means ``Yes to Knowledge,'' and we have the knowledge and
expertise required to effectively work with low-income, hard-
to-serve fathers and the community-based organizations who
serve them.
The ultimate goal of NPCL is to help families and
neighborhoods become safe havens for children. Over the past 3
years, NPCL has successfully provided services to over 3,000
agencies across the country through our customized workshops,
through our customized training, and through our conferences on
fatherhood.
One of the primary initiatives of NPCL is our Partners for
Fragile Families Demonstration that was referred to by the
Under Secretary and was also alluded to by two of our previous
speakers. It is a comprehensive national initiative operating
in 10 test cities designed to help poor, single fathers pull
themselves out of poverty and build stronger links with their
children and their children's mother.
This demonstration, which is administered by NPCL, is a
pioneering effort which is supported by the Ford Foundation,
the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement, and also the
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. This partnership includes
private social agencies, including grassroots community-based
organizations, and child support enforcement, all committed to
helping young fathers take the legal and emotional
responsibility for their children.
In each of our 10 demonstration sites, an impressive
private and public coalition of experts and frontline
providers, including the National Head Start Association and a
number of Welfare-to-Work grantees, work together to supply an
array of services to these young fathers. In total, more than
100 agencies across the 10 sites have agreed to be partners in
this demonstration.
The operative idea here is the formation of partnerships
that leverages resources in a broad coalition working toward a
shared goal of strong, independent families where children are
well cared for by both mothers and fathers. Our guiding
principle is that fathers have value to children even if
fathers do not have money.
What I would like to do now is just talk about the fathers
we serve. The fathers that we serve, we refer to them as dead-
broke dads, and make no mistake, they are very poor and have
very little money. Unlike deadbeat fathers, dead-broke fathers
qualify for food stamps very much like the mothers on welfare.
Dead-broke fathers often have their first child before
finishing high school or acquiring work experience; they are
all practical aspects, unemployable. Dead-broke dads are not
just an inner-city phenomena; 45 percent are white; 37 percent
are black and whether low-income, rural or urban, they often
come from families that have suffered generations of poverty.
The real connection that we make with these young fathers
is that we meet them where they are. The average father enters
this program; comes in with a strong father hunger. Typically,
he has grown up without his father; he has resulting feelings
of anger and resentment. He also feels stereotyped by society
and believes that the playing field isn't level for him as a
worker or as a father. He is typically angry, alienated, and
possibly depressed. He is a tough, tough client. However, there
are two critical components of our demonstration that help to
reach these men's hearts and guide them to responsible
fatherhood. Madam Chair, one is one-on-one case management. The
second is peer support groups.
One of the things that we found from the Parents Fair Share
program, which has really been the predecessor of our program,
is that one of the most successful elements of it was the peer
support groups. I might add here that I, along with Pam Wilson,
who is our senior consultant on peer support, actually authored
that initial peer support curriculum that we used in the unwed
fathers pilot project with PPV, and also with the Parents Fair
Share program. We are very proud of the impact of that
cirriculum.
Finally, I would just say, Madam Chair, that there has been
a lot of discussion about marriage. I do have a position on
marriage. I clearly support it. To me, the issue is not
whether, but when. A lot of our fathers, when they enter the
program, by the testimony of the mothers and by the testimony
of themselves in the community, they are not marriageable. What
the program tries to do is to provide support to the father and
support to the mother to put them in a position so they can see
marriage as a viable option.
I clearly think that the problem that we have with these
programs is that we do not provide these young couples the
exposure they need to make the right decisions about their
relationship and the right relationship about their children.
But with that, I will end, and will be happy to entertain
any questions from Committee members.
[The prepared statement follows:]
Statement of Jeffery M. Johnson, Ph.D., President, and Chief Execitove
Officer, National Center for Strategic Nonprofit Planning and Community
Leadership
Good afternoon. I want to thank Chairman Johnson and
members of the Human Resources Subcommittee of the House Ways
and Means Committee for this opportunity to testify on your
efforts to promote responsible fatherhood. I am Jeffery M.
Johnson, president and CEO of the National Center for Strategic
Nonprofit Planning and Community Leadership, or NPCL, a
national nonprofit dedicated to strengthening organizations to
help them serve people and communities for the future. NPCL is
primarily supported by a public/private partnership involving
the Ford Foundation, the federal Office of Child Support
Enforcement, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.
I commend you for your demonstrated wisdom, foresight and
commitment to fathers, families and children on welfare, as
evidenced by these hearings directed at this long-neglected
aspect of family social policy in America. If you are
successful in passing a Responsible Fatherhood bill, I would
urge the committee to make sure that the law encompasses
efforts to serve low-income, low-skilled dads. It would be a
first step toward building effective and needed post-welfare-
reform policy aimed at helping low-income fathers--the
consistently overlooked factor in the welfare family equation--
to become self-sufficient and accountable to their families and
children. Such a bill would have wide-ranging implications for
greater child support collections and the success of welfare-
to-work initiatives. It should also continue to encourage
public and private partnerships and provide for the
participation of faith-based entities.
My testimony is based on the work I have done over the past
20 years concerning fathers and families, as well as on my
personal experience. For 12 years I had the wonderful
experience of being reared in a family with two loving parents.
Unfortunately, my father died at the age of 39, leaving behind
a widow and 10 children. Despite the positive example set by my
mother, life was a struggle. She struggled to make ends meet
and struggled to find time for all of my brothers and sisters,
who each faced their own unique challenges. It was incredibly
difficult for a single parent.
Personally, I experienced what some researchers call
``father hunger.'' I yearned for my dad and I have often
thought about and been grateful for the lessons he taught me
regarding work, responsibility and parenting. I know firsthand
the importance of fathers in families and I try to bring that
knowledge to my work at NPCL.
The mission of NPCL is to enhance the capacity of
community-based organizations to address identified local
needs, primarily through family and neighborhood empowerment.
One critical element of family empowerment, particularly in the
inner cities, is the return of fathers to their families,
whether in traditional or nontraditional ways. Our current
focus is building the capacity of community-based organizations
to provide services to fathers that will enable them to carry
out their critical roles as nurturers and economic providers.
At NPCL, Y2K means ``Yes to Knowledge!'' and we have the
knowledge and the expertise required to work effectively with
low-income, hard-to-serve fathers and the community-based
organizations that serve them.
When both mothers and fathers are responsible parents
working at legitimate jobs paying a family-sustaining wage,
they are less likely to be dependent on welfare or criminal
endeavor to support themselves and their families which is in
turn beneficial to communities. The ultimate goal of NPCL is to
help families and neighborhoods become safe havens for
children.
Our particular strengths lie in our ability to provide
hands-on technical assistance to community-based groups and to
grow organizations where gaps exist. The aim is a synergy in
which independent organizations encourage similar independence
in the individuals and families who live and work in the
community. And, as we know, strong families are critical for
the health, economic and developmental well-being of children.
Over the past three years, NPCL has successfully provided
services to over 3,000 agencies across the country.
One of NPCL's primary initiatives is the Partners for
Fragile Families (PFF) demonstration project, a comprehensive
national initiative operating in 10 test cities, designed to
help poor, single fathers pull themselves out of poverty and
build stronger links to their children and their children's
mothers. This demonstration, which is administered by NPCL--
with support from the Ford and Charles Stewart Mott
Foundations, the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement,
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S.
Department of Labor--is a pioneering partnership between public
and private social service agencies, including grassroots
community-based organizations and child support enforcement
agencies all committed to helping young fathers take legal, and
emotional responsibility for their children.
In each of our ten PFF demonstration sites, an impressive
public/private coalition of experts and front-line providers,
including the National Head Start Association and a number of
Welfare-to-Work grantees, work together to supply an array of
services that include one-on-one case management, peer support
and parent education groups, help with getting GED and/or post
secondary education, anger management, employment and training
and other services. The federal government cannot and should
not be expected to solve the problems of low-income families
alone. Nor should private and community-based groups be
expected to address these issues without government. The
operative idea here is a partnership that leverages resources
in a broad based coalition working toward the shared goal of
strong, independent families where children are well cared for
by both mother and father. Our guiding principle is that
fathers have value to children even when fathers do not have
money.
And make no mistake about it, the population we refer to as
``dead-broke dads'' has very little money. Unlike ``deadbeat
dads,'' the fathers we serve likely qualify for food stamps
themselves and statistically look very much like welfare
mothers. The difference between ``deadbeat dads'' and those we
refer to as ``dead-broke dads'' is that the former can pay
child support but will not. ``Dead-broke dads'' cannot pay
child support but would if they were able.
Deadbeat dads are often one-half of a mature divorced or
separated couple. The relationship began, they married, then
the relationship ended when one spouse decided it was over.
Public policy in these instances requires--and rightly so--that
the noncustodial parent, usually the father, provide adequately
for the children. This will ensure that the mother and the
children avoid poverty, frequently the result when the father
withdraws his, commonly higher, income. Public policy may also
require some sort of mediation process so that conflict between
the parents does not visit itself upon the child(ren). With
this kind of systemic support, the mother can get back on her
feet, find her way back into the labor market, perhaps remarry
and reestablish a middle-class lifestyle. Public policy thus
helps families bring their union to an amicable end and
recover.
This is not the situation among ``fragile families''--that
is, families consisting of two low-skilled biological parents
and their child(ren). Young, low-skilled, unmarried, poor
parents have their children before they are mature enough to
understand and manage a committed relationship and before they
recognize the full implications of unmarried, unprotected sex
and childbearing. ``Dead-broke dads'' often have their first
child before finishing high school or acquiring work
experience. They are in all practical respects unemployable.
Dead-broke dads are not just an inner-city phenomenon.
Forty-five percent are white, 37 percent are black, and whether
low-income rural or urban, they often come from families that
have suffered generations of poverty. Theirs are the
characteristics of long-term welfare recipients with limited
prospects for exiting welfare dependency. These same
deficiencies make the fathers of fragile families poor
candidates for work or marriage. Like welfare mothers, these
men require some systemic intervention and support in order to
become self-sufficient and able to function as productive
citizens and responsible parents.
One of the most significant obstacles these men face is the
child support enforcement system, which, however
unintentionally, thwarts efforts of these fathers to provide
for their children and repair relationships with their
children's mothers. The system is designed to extract payments
from ``deadbeat dads'' and to punish in myriad ways those who
do not pay. However, the system makes no distinction between
inability to pay and refusal to do so. It makes sense to punish
a man who can pay by sending him to jail for his failure to
meet his obligations. It makes little sense to send a man
without a job, or any prospects of a job to jail for his
inability to find a job he has never been qualified to hold.
Jail in this situation only exacerbates the negative. Now the
``dead-broke dad'' is further estranged from his children,
unemployable--and he has a record.
It is imperative that any proffered proposals--including
any new iteration of a Responsible Fatherhood bill, any
revisions to the child support funding structure, or changes
during the reauthorization of the welfare-to-work act--not pose
additional barriers to fathers and ``fragile family''
interaction.
In this post-welfare reform era, we have indeed changed
public assistance from a program that tolerated stagnation and
long-term dependency to a system designed to provide temporary
assistance. Now, however, the real work begins. Success must be
redefined. We must succeed at lifting families and children out
of poverty. We cannot hope to achieve those aims if fathers are
not part of the equation. Since there is little help for low-
income dads, that is where we should next turn our attention.
Just as we have shifted our focus to assist poor mothers in
their quest for self-sufficiency, we must make an investment in
fathers so that they too may assume legal, financial, emotional
and responsibility for the families they have helped to create.
Again we must redefine success. We should not gauge our
accomplishment solely on the basis of how much child support we
collect. We must also pay attention to how many fathers and
mothers successfully move beyond poverty and are able to
provide a stable and nurturing home environment for their
children.
NPCL's Partners for Fragile Families (PFF) demonstration is
uniquely qualified and currently positioned to help make that
goal a reality. As you know, PRWORA took some giant steps in
this direction, but it did not go all the way. While PRWORA
calls for child support to make appropriate referrals to
employment for unemployed noncustodial parents, it does not
allow child support to fund any recommended employment and
training activities.
The average young father who enters one of our programs
comes with strong father hunger. Typically, he has grown up
without his father and he has resulting feelings of anger and
resentment. He also feels stereotyped by society and believes
that the playing field isn't level for him as a worker or as a
father. He is typically angry, alienated and possibly
depressed. He is a tough, tough client. However, there are two
critical components of our demonstration that help to reach
these men's hearts and guide them to responsible fatherhood.
The first is one-on-one case management: This proactive
component pairs each father with a skilled counselor who serves
both as a role model and a guide. The case manager, usually a
man, depicts responsible manhood. He believes in this father's
potential and provides a format for him to set goals and work
toward those goals. If a young man has never seen what it looks
like or experienced what it feels like to be a good father, how
could he be expected to do it himself?
The second critical component is peer support groups. These
groups bring fathers together with other young men like
themselves. The groups serve two basic purposes. They provide a
forum for the men to be supported and affirmed but also to be
challenged and confronted. In the groups the men define for
themselves what it means to be a man and a father and then
challenge each other to live up to those standards. They also
brainstorm methods to overcome obstacles, stay the course and
resolve problems in the world of work and in their often
troubled relationships with their children's mother. The groups
also provide structured activities from NPCL's Fatherhood
Development Curriculum that help the fathers learn or reinforce
important knowledge and skills in areas such as child
development, communication, anger management, conflict
resolution, understanding the child support system, working as
a team with their child's mother and her family, considering
marriage and what it takes to be ``marriageable,'' and family
planning--deciding how and if additional children fit into
their lives and finances and taking steps to prevent additional
pregnancies until they are ready.
The peer support group process is often very powerful for
these fathers. Guided by a skilled and caring facilitator, they
experience male camaraderie that says men can be strong, yet
caring, that being there for their kids is the right thing to
do and they can do it. The positive feelings and competencies
that men get from the groups increase their motivation to find
work, provide for their children, negotiate with the mom, and
be there for their kids. NPCL staff has learned to trust the
process. Anecdotal reports suggest that young fathers are
indeed becoming responsible workers and parents, adept at
mediating the relationship between themselves and the mothers
of their children.
A unique aspect of our demonstration is the emphasis on
what we call team, T-E-A-M parenting, meaning that parents work
together for the benefit of their children regardless of their
marital status. And let me address the question of marriage
here by stating that we support it. However, the crucial
question for us is not whether but when.
A young father without a job or prospects may be a poor
candidate for marriage, but that does not mean he abdicates his
role as ``daddy.'' Whether or not the parents are married,
children need food, clothes, care, love and two supportive,
nurturing parents. Once a young father becomes self-supporting
and an integral part of his child(ren)'s lives and repairs, or
more fully develops, the relationship with the mother of his
child(ren), marriage becomes a more realistic option,
especially if that is something the couple seeks for
themselves.
The Partners for Fragile Families demonstration represents
the start of the fourth generation of fatherhood programs. The
Parents Fair Share demonstration, which you have already heard
about, was the third generation of fatherhood programs in this
country. Here, we have designed a program that does not simply
react to the problems low-income fathers face, but one that
aggressively seeks to initiate change based on the culmination
of best practices to date. As a result of these endeavors,
1,000 low-income, low-skilled young dads that fit our profile
will be targeted each year. For the three (3) years of the
demonstration, they will receive the capacity building and
skill training they need to more fully discharge their role as
dad. That means that 3,000 fathers will be returned to their
families by the PFF Site Demonstrations.
NPCL is uniquely qualified to provide ongoing technical
assistance and training for all of the members of the PFF
collaboration, as well as other groups interested in employing
this approach. We have trained more practitioners to work with
noncustodial parents on responsible fatherhood than any other
organization in America. Our sites will enjoy the most
comprehensive capacity building delivery strategy ever seen in
the fatherhood field.
Experienced community-based organizations that have won the
trust of hard-to-reach men will help those young fathers to
establish legal paternity, learn their legal rights and
responsibilities and negotiate the formal child support system.
Child support enforcement agencies in turn will work with
fathers to modify child support orders, give fathers time to
secure training and a job, and then gradually increase the
order consistent with the man's ability to pay. In addition,
the demonstration includes workforce development. All PFF
grantees are required to institute or provide access to
intensive career and personal development skills training in
preparation for placement in family-sustaining, wage-growth
jobs. PFF employment and training specialists will have the
knowledge, experience and desire to work with low-skilled
fathers, as well as links to jobs made available by the private
sector.
PFF is also committed to implementing a wage progression
model in order to provide for career-building jobs that offer
the opportunity for an increase in wages. Preliminary research
data from Access Support and Advancement Partnership (ASAP)
show that young men who match the profile of young fathers in
the PFF project are succeeding in training and job placement.
Of 567 of participants enrolled in the Boston and New York
(ASAP) intensive job training programs in 1997 and 1998, for
example, a total of 308 were placed in jobs after two years of
training and on-the-job experience. The average salary of ASAP
graduates in Boston was $22,308 and $20,301 in New York. By
comparison, in 1990, 61 percent of dead-broke dads had incomes
below poverty level (about $6,800) and 86 percent had personal
incomes below the poverty level for a family of four (about
$13,000). Thus, the Partners for Fragile Families demonstration
has an excellent prognosis. The Welfare-to-Work amendments
introduced by Congressman Cardin's bill would support more
programs such as this.
Much of the welfare reform debate missed such critical
considerations. We have before us an opportunity to correct
past oversights. As of August 1996 sweeping changes revised the
way welfare programs were operated. States toughened their
cooperation requirements, capped the number of children who
could receive assistance and custom-designed state eligibility
criteria. Lawmakers passed provisions to keep mom in school
while she received assistance. Much of the literature spoke of
``families'' on welfare, meaning a mother and child(ren). We
had become very comfortable in defining family with no
reference to the father. That omission proved prescient because
those policies in no way took into account his real
circumstances. Several assumptions were at play during the
welfare overhaul, including the belief that all fathers--
including those with children on welfare--had the ability to
pay any child support order fixed by an administrative or
judicial tribunal. Projections that assumed an annual increase
in earnings consistent with the rate of inflation or the
consumer price index were used in setting goals for welfare
reform. But if your basic earnings are zero, or you rarely have
a job all year long, none of that applies to you. Policymakers
trusted that we could significantly progress toward our goal of
``ending welfare as we knew it'' by having moms identify dad,
establish paternity, collect the money and transfer the dollars
to the household where the child was being reared. That is not
the case for a significant portion of our population, which
means that those policies missed dead-broke dads and fragile
families by a wide margin.
It is imperative that any new or revised policy initiatives
not repeat the shortcomings of recent-past policy by ignoring
their potential impact on low-income fathers. Indeed I am here
today to encourage the members of this committee to work toward
supporting the efforts to assist fragile families by reviewing
every family social policy change with its impact on fragile
families in the back of your mind.
When this committee reviews a proposed Responsible
Fatherhood bill, or amendments to Temporary Assistance to Needy
Families (TANF), and welfare-to-work reauthorization, Social
Service Block Grants, or child support and its funding, I ask
that you remember our fragile families. Although we have
studied these issues, I certainly do not claim to be an expert
in all of these areas. Candidly, I have only one overriding
mission here today and that is to ensure an environment in
which states and localities, public and private partners,
institutions and community-based organizations are more likely
to initiate and continue to support responsible fatherhood
programs. Unless we return fathers to their role as nurturers
and supporters of their children, not only will welfare reform
fail, we will also fail a new generation of children, our
future.
When this committee considers a Responsible Fatherhood bill
not only should the bill serve low-income, low-skilled dads it
should also provide for peer support activities, parenting
education, parenting skills development, conflict and anger
management, and a variety of other developmental activities
designed to equip young fathers to take a positive role in the
lives of their children.
To promote employment the bill should provide a combination
of short-term job acquisition, interim job training, and long-
term career development. Heretofore only accessible under the
Job Training and Partnership Act (JPTA), a Responsible
Fatherhood bill should expand the availability of multiple,
flexible strategies necessary to address the challenges these
men and their families face. Provisions for flexible
activities, funding through the workforce development system
and partnerships at the community level are all encompassed in
the Welfare-to-Work amendments introduced by Congressman
Cardin.
A great part of that response, we believe, is Partners for
Fragile Families.
When this committee considers the reauthorization of
welfare to work, I ask that you look for simplified eligibility
criteria for poor men and that criteria do not negatively
impact the circumstances of the mother and child(ren). We must
work to make implementation of this program as simple as
possible for local service providers. Additionally, we believe
it makes sense to require a personal responsibility contract
between the program and the fathers and it is important to
maintain funding for programs that serve moms while we allocate
new money to dads so that both can support their children.
Again, we believe Congressman Cardin's bill goes a long way
to address these issues. Should this committee look at new
proposals for funding of the child support system I urge you to
keep a few things in mind. First, there is almost universal
agreement that the child support funding system is too
complicated. However, there is little consensus as to what
changes in the funding system, other than the soon-to-be
implemented performance incentive plan, would support obtaining
the evolving mission of child support currently under
discussion. I am told that any of the approaches currently
being discussed would, in all probability, cause major
disruptions in our larger states. If that is the case, this
committee should be mindful that 50 percent of this nation's
child support caseload is accounted for by the eight largest
states. California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New York,
Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas could all be hurt by any dramatic
change in the current funding formula. Families within these
states as well as inter-state cases would be negatively
impacted. Disruption of those programs would surely result in
reductions in child support collections and would reduce the
likelihood that states would undertake additional fatherhood
activities. Any new proposal should ensure adequate funding for
the child support program, simplify funding and distribution,
and reward states for continual improvement in their program.
We realize that cost neutrality would be a consideration for
the federal government.
There is good news. Since the implementation of welfare
reform, states have an immense amount of flexibility to
implement various ``state options.'' States are free, within
the broadest limits ever provided, to set their own eligibility
criteria for welfare programs. The major provision of the
welfare reform legislation, TANF, only had four purposes. Those
are:
To decrease welfare dependency by providing
enhanced job opportunities;
To provide cash assistance and other services to
needy families;
To reduce the rate of out-of-wedlock pregnancies;
To encourage the formation of two-parent
households.
Within those boundaries, states have great flexibility in
providing services. The Welfare-to-Work program provides the
opportunity to serve a more targeted population including
fathers. Any changes to simplify the eligibility criteria for
welfare-to-work should clarify for states and their program
operators how to access these funds to serve low-skilled, low-
income dads.
Again, I applaud your foresight and commitment to fathers,
families and children. Your attention to this issue and the
potential for legislation that would support fatherhood
programs nationally is both exciting and gratifying. If you are
successful in developing and passing a Responsible Fatherhood
bill we, together, will be able to work to ``turn the hearts of
the parents to the children; and the hearts of the children to
their parents . . . to make ready a people prepared for the
Lord.'' (Malachi 4:6; Luke 1:17)
Thank you for the opportunity to address you this
afternoon.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Thank you very much. It is
my pleasure to welcome my friend, George Gay, Reverend Gay,
here today. He has developed a program, Color Me Father, that
has the purpose to help never-married fathers assume legal,
financial, and emotional responsibility for their children,
just what we have been talking about, but he has been out there
on the front line many years when there was no money at all,
and now when there's teeny tiny bits of money.
Thank you, George, for being with us.
STATEMENT OF GEORGE L. GAY, PASTOR, UFW BAPTIST CHURCH, NEW
BRITAIN, CONNECTICUT
Reverend Gay. Well, I'm glad first of all, to be able to be
here. I will preface my comments by saying that I am a Baptist
minister.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. That's why we have the
lights, George. [Laughter.]
Reverend Gay. However, I will try to be very disciplined. I
will also try not to be repetitive in my comments.
I would like to start by saying to Dr. Johnson that I have
met Pamela Wilson, and the curriculum that I use in my program,
I was trained by Pamela Wilson in Boston, MA to run it, and it
is an excellent curriculum, and it works.
I would like to begin by saying that I am very happy to be
here to represent the church in this matter. I have heard quite
a bit about marriage. I believe that we entertain those
thoughts early on through our spiritual training. I also
believe for a fact that there is a church just about on every
corner in every major city in this Nation. I think that it is
about time that the churches be allowed not to look at the
separation between church and State, but be allowed to join
hands to help to work and create a better community. I believe
that when true people get in trouble, they lean toward their
spiritual side. So when a young lady is pregnant and doesn't
want to tell her parents, she comes to the church. I believe
that there should be some type of assistance there. The same
thing with a young man. There will be assistance of some kind
at that church for them.
I am a strong believer that moneys that have been funneled
from the Federal Government have been trapped in bureaucratic
red tape and have not been allowed to get to the people
actually providing the services. That is another reason that I
am hoping that this time, we will be able to bypass those
issues. We are here. We're not going anywhere. I heard someone
allude to 24-7 in their comments, which means 24 hours a day, 7
days a week, the church is on call.
Now we rely for the most part on donations. However, we
know that this is work that definitely needs more support than
a church donation is able to provide. In the program, for
instance, that I run, we give a stipend to the participants.
That stipend, we ask that they use--those that do not have
work, do not have any means of support, can have a way to buy
Pampers or milk or something for that child for the session
that they attend, which is a good incentive piece. However, the
church will not continue to be able to afford to give them
that. They have ideas in my program of furthering what they are
able to do by giving bonds from a church, bonds from a bank
rather, in hopes of when that child is growing up, that child
will already have a bank account started.
My guys actually want to get into it so far, that they want
to do a training session where they are able to provide medical
attention for the children in an emergency. They want to be
certified for first aid. They want to go through that training
and then have a piece of paper that says I can do this, and I
can train somebody perhaps how to save a life, or if I am alone
with my child, I can save my child's life.
The other thing I think that's important is that we not
forget again that if we are going to build good strong moral
character, we cannot leave the spiritual part of ourselves out.
Even Dr. Sigmund Freud in his confusion, I would say, alluded
to the fact that we must remember that in order for us to be
complete, we must recognize that there is a higher power than
ourselves. I believe that reaching for that higher power within
ourselves enables us to continue to grow. A good church always
encourages anybody to continue to reach up a ladder of growth.
There is always another rung that you can go to, so when we
start talking about a baseline job or a minimum wage paying
job, it's a start. We must start somewhere and we must be able
to follow up from that with good viable technique.
Again, I allude to the program that was developed by Dr.
Johnson and Pamela Wilson as a tool for education. Again,
sticking with the church, many times we go out and we do
according to what we have learned in our spiritual background.
However, we forget sometimes, just like anybody else, we go and
we baptize, but many times we forget to teach. Those lessons
that become so valuable that we must go back and reevaluate how
many we missed in our teaching sessions. Hopefully we will be
able to fill in those gaps.
Again, when the programs close, when the traditional 8 to 5
or 9 to 5 programs close, the church's doors are always open.
There is a communication line, whether it is paid for or not
paid for. If we want to make a difference with the dads, and
not just punish them for not being able to pay their bills, if
we really want good moral fathers, then we are going to have to
go back and train and teach those fathers what they have
missed. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Thank you very much. Thank
you.
Mr. Raesz, welcome.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT E. RAESZ, JR., AUSTIN, TEXAS
Mr. Raesz. Madam Chair, Members of the Committee, thank you
for the opportunity to appear here today. I want to take this
opportunity to urge you in the course of looking at the various
proposals and offers that are being submitted to you, that you
take a look at some of the existing law and possibly look at
some modifications to avoid laws that may hinder you in your
efforts to move forward with your goals.
The Bradley amendment has been in effect, I believe, since
1986. The effect of the Bradley amendment is to limit the
court's ability to retroactively modify the existing support
orders that the individuals that we're talking about here today
are sometimes faced with.
I served 9 years as a family law judge and currently limit
my practice to the area of family law. I also spend a lot of
time in some of the local clinics that provide free legal
services to individuals of the Austin area. In the course of
those services, I have come across thousands of individuals who
I feel unjustly have suffered because of the Bradley amendment.
The amendment, when created, certainly had some good
qualities. But what we have seen over the course of time is
that not all cases can be strictly limited to the law as it's
written. I have listed a number of examples of individuals that
could benefit by some modification of the amendment, and
rightfully so. I have clients who have had serious injuries. I
had a client with a broken neck that was laid up for a number
of years and couldn't work. Over the period of time that he was
laid up, accumulated in excess of $40,000 in arrearages. It is
unfortunate as an attorney, and the judge that that individual
had to go before, we had to explain to him there is nothing we
can do. Because of the Bradley amendment, the court cannot look
beyond the date of the filing of the motion and retroactively
modify his support order to the date of his injury.
There's another example that we have listed is an
individual who came down with a serious illness. For similar
reasons was unable to make it to court, unable to hire a
lawyer, and go in and have this matter addressed before it got
out of hand. Working in the free clinics, we see individuals on
a regular basis. The individuals that you are trying to promote
participate more in their families, are individuals that are
going to court, in trying to deal with large amounts of
arrearages that resulted at times from them not having proper
notice of the court hearing at which time the support order was
set or have experienced lengthy periods of unemployment based
on no actions of their own.
What I would like to encourage you to do is look at placing
the discretion back in the courts to work with these
individuals, and where there's just reason to retroactively
modify these orders, give these individuals some relief. Right
now, we are seeing these people out working two and three jobs,
trying to pay arrearages that were based on unrealistic amounts
of income that they weren't making, but yet the courts have
entered these orders and they are now faced with paying those
sums. They are spending their time working those multiple jobs
rather than spending the time with their families.
I have a lot of faith in the judiciary. I spent a lot of
time there. I have served on a number of judicial committees,
and especially I can tell you in the State of Texas, the judges
there are looking out for the children. They are looking out
for the families as a whole. I think you can expect those
individuals to represent the State and families, and do what's
just, without jeopardizing the support that we expect our
children to receive.
We are not looking to help the dead beats. I used to put
them in jail. But there are plenty of these individuals that
are dead broke that need some assistance. They need some
relief. They need some retroactive relief in the way of the
arrearages that they are faced with. Thank you.
[The prepared statement follows:]
Statement of Robert E. Raesz, Jr., Austin, Texas
Madam Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank you
for the opportunity to appear before you today regarding
fatherhood. I have reviewed a number of the studies being made
available to your committee on the consequences of father
absence in a child's life. As a retired family and juvenile
court judge and practicing family law attorney, I deal with
these consequences on a daily basis. It is encouraging to see
you taking the action necessary to break the cycle of school
failures, unemployment, and non-marital child births and child
rearing resulting from the absence of parents. I am hopeful
that you will allow the judges of our Country the opportunity
to assist you in your efforts. I have no doubt that our courts
will fully utilize the programs you may implement if it means
the involvement and support of both parents in the lives of our
children. I am also hopeful that, in moving forward with your
programs, you will leave the courts with a degree of discretion
to utilize the programs created on an individual level, based
on the facts that they find themselves with.
In the process of looking ahead, I would also ask that you
take the time to look back at existing laws and determine how
changes in such things as the Bradley Amendment might help you
meet your goal of consistent father involvement. Our courts
inability to make child support modifications retroactive
beyond the date a modification motion is filed, a limitation
imposed by the Bradley Amendment, has left a number of the
individuals I represent, as well as many others I counsel and
come in contact with, owing large sums of child support and
interest that they do not have the ability to pay. I am not
speaking of the ``dead beat'' parents that find themselves in
that position because of their negligence or indifference. I am
referring to individuals who, due to serious injuries or
illness, unforeseen unemployment, or actual possession of their
children and other legitimate reasons, are left without the
funds to pay their support or hire an attorney to timely modify
their support orders. Many of these individuals are forced to
work more than one job in an effort to stay out of jail at the
expense of their relationship with their children.
A prime example is a client I will call John Jones. John
was involved in a serious accident which resulted in a
fractured back. He endured months of rehabilitation before
eventually being able to return to work. The accident and
subsequent inability to hire an attorney left him $40,000 plus
in arrears. The courts inability to modify the support order
retroactive to the date of John's injuries left him working two
jobs in an attempt to simply stay out of jail. This also left
John unable to spend time with his children.
This type of situation is not uncommon. My client Jim
Jones, no relation to John, has been diagnosed with an eye
condition that renders him unable drive to a job he has held
for several years. Several months passed before Jim was able to
raise enough money to hire an attorney to file a modification
action on his behalf. Jim's ex-wife, Jane, is now using his
delinquency as a tool to effect a decrease in the amount of
time he and his son are able to spend together.
I have counseled with hundreds of individuals with stories
similar to John and Jim who can't afford to hire me or some
other attorney. Their arrearages are increasing daily. They too
are experiencing problems with access to their children for
reasons beyond their control. I would suggest that a
modification of the Bradley Amendment to allow our courts the
discretion to make modification in these cases retroactive to
dates of injuries, the onset of the long term illness, the
beginning of unavoidable periods of unemployment and the like,
would result in just and fair decisions and would promote
contact between children and their fathers; contact that is
necessary to achieve the goals being set by this Subcommittee.
Some may express concerns that our courts would abuse this
discretion but I have faith in our judges as a whole and would
expect our appellate courts to rectify the few unjustified
decisions that may result, just as they do now.
I challenge you and offer my support in any possible way to
implement the programs and changes necessary to assist our
agencies and courts as they strive to keep parents involved and
balance the monetary, emotional, and developmental needs of our
children.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Thank you.
Next I would like to call on Lisa Nkonoki, who is the co-
founder and executive director of the Tate George Dreamshot
Foundation. It probably was the first voice I heard about what
a big difference dads did make many years ago, the founder of
the Dads Do Make a Difference campaign.
Nice to have you, Lisa.
STATEMENT OF LISA A. NKONOKI, CO-FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR, TATE GEORGE DREAM SHOT FOUNDATION
Ms. Nkonoki. Thank you so much for inviting me. I am very
honored. As the rest of my colleagues here, I am also long-
winded at times, but I will try and be very brief for this.
But unlike most of the people here, I sit in the position
of being one of those unwed mothers, and also a young girl who
was abandoned by my father. So please be patient with me as I
try and tell you a little bit about my story, and how I found
the Dads Do Make a Difference project.
First of all, I would like to say that we are here, the
Dads Do Make a Difference project, to say it's a positive
movement with a message. We are here to promote being a dad as
a cool, hip, responsible thing to do. That is really what we
want everybody to know, not just that it's an unwed, low-income
issue. Everybody needs to think being a dad is cool, hip,
responsible. If we all listened to Michael Jordon when he
recently retired again, it wasn't about the money. It was about
learning how to be a father, carpool, do all those things that
a lot of us have had the opportunity to do.
So I want to say to you, as a single mom for 16 years and
48 weeks, I am honored to have this opportunity to stand here
before you discussing the plight of fathers. I am, I feel, the
biggest cheerleader for dads, as the mom regarded as one of the
only moms in the country to start a positive program for
fathers. Though my own father, a Tanzanian college professor,
abandoned me at the age of one, I know first hand the impact
that not having a father had on me, especially as an unwed teen
mom myself. Fortunately, my career path and self-motivation and
family support led me to never have to apply for welfare, but
it is for many of the people that I grew up with in our
hometown of New Britain, CT, that I also speak on behalf of.
Though things were difficult at times, I was determined
that my own children's--whom I have two children, 17 and 13,
from two different fathers, as I speak to you here, one who
paid lots of child support and another who didn't pay child
support. Despite my best efforts to keep them involved, we were
definitely estranged for quite some time. I started this
project after my now 17-year-old son Jason, who was at the time
about 13, began experiencing difficulties that all the money,
privileged lifestyles, et cetera, could not change. When my
children realized that one of my best friends, who is here
today, former NBA player Tate George, despite his busy NBA
schedule and other responsibilities, took time with them to do
special activities, talk with them, and just pay attention to
them, it became evident to my son, in particular, that his own
father, who was at the time unemployed, not very busy, didn't
take the time with him.
It became evident that resentment and bitterness was going
to be the plight of my own child. I was angry. As a mom, I was
very angry. One of the things that I did as a writer, I wrote
the statement ``Dads do make a difference. Real dads do.
Children only have one lifetime, and you need to be a part of
it.'' The reasoning for that was I wanted to see the reaction
of my kids' dad. Needless to say, it was pretty bad.
At that time though, we were all reacting to negative
behaviors. One of the things that I decided to acknowledge,
despite the shortcomings that we could list about my kids'
dads, had the kids ever heard anything positive that they could
feel proud of that their father had done, or they could
identify with? Starting from there, I knew to say something bad
about dad meant that half of my children could feel that they,
in fact, were also bad. I don't think any mom directly wants
their children to feel bad for any intention. So for this
reason, the campaign is about the positive, how we can
positively empower dads and our kids, how we can communicate,
be more inclusive, give information instead of always taking
and demanding.
Take one of the dads I have worked with, Roger Van from New
Britain, CT. Formerly incarcerated with his own sons, he spent
more time in jail with his sons than he did out of jail. He was
a married father. He did live in the household. But he was
actually forced to sell drugs because of lack of employment.
Having worked with Roger over the last 3 years, I know first
hand what developing a rapport and just developing and
increasing his self esteem and helping him to build a dream
sheet for himself, meeting that father where he was at.
I want to also have you think about a couple more things.
If you call dads to come to a training program or to find out
how to see their kids, how many of them will come? If I go out
as the Dads Do Make a Difference project and tell them that
they can get free Reebok sneakers, Nike sneakers, NBA tickets,
and a chance to do activities with their kids with no strings
attached, how many do you think are coming to see me? Most of
them are coming to see me. The reason is, there's incentive. We
all live by incentives, a lot of us do. There is nothing wrong
with that, as long as in the end, we can also train and develop
a rapport and get the bottom line, and that's them being with
their kids.
What about moms like me, who never went on welfare, but
having the oldest child of four different children, the State
welfare takes the money from child support of my kid's dad. I
don't get any of it because it goes directly to pay off the
child support welfare bill. That's something that I think is
just detrimental to mothers like myself. What about fathers
with their credit reports that prohibit them from getting cars,
houses, or anything else, because of the over-burdening of
child support.
The other thing is my son who went to play for Little
League as a young teenager, needed a birth certificate long
form. His birth certificate stated that he had no father,
despite the fact that his father had been paying child support
since he was a baby. What about that? The embarrassment of our
children when they actually come out and have to deal with
either going to school, Little League, or college. Many of the
obstacles are fear, lack of information. We simply cannot have
this as business as usual. You cannot legislative positive
involvement. We cannot continue to be reactive. We need to be
more proactive. We can coach and empower dads through their
self-esteem.
One thing we have to all remember, we all have a father.
That is a common denominator that exists between all of us. So
when you all talk about what needs to be done, we need to first
get Government, court, and moms in many cases, including myself
at one point, out of the way. A lot of dads cannot see their
kids simply because the mom doesn't like who they are with,
where they are going, or what time they are going to come
around. That shouldn't be the case. Marriage does not ensure a
compassionate and educated parent.
In closing, I would like to say it takes a team effort to
win on behalf of kids, and acknowledge the part of my team that
you have to be. Everybody has a role to play. What really needs
to be clear is that people need to be trained in terms of what
their actual role is, whether it's in the church, whether it's
in business, education. How often do you hear of someone ask
for a parent-teacher conference, and as long as the mom goes,
it's OK. You don't actually ask is there a dad, or can I
schedule a separate conference. So I just encourage you, I
encourage all of us to be more inclusive of how we talk and
deal with our fathers. Most importantly, we need to rally them
on from where they are at.
As I wear this button, ``Dads do make a difference,''
people stop me on the street every day and say things,
sometimes negative, sometimes positive. But most importantly,
they are saying something. I think what's happened is there has
been no open, safe forum for people to be able to talk about
their fathers, whether they are in our lives, out of our lives,
active or inactive, deceased or alive. We need to acknowledge
that first and foremost. Thank you.
[The prepared statement follows:]
Statement of Lisa A. Nkonoki, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Tate
George Dream Shot Foundation
Dads & Kids Campaign
Dads Do Make A Difference is a positive movement with a
message. Working with Dads and kids is a transformative, and
sometimes eye-opening experience. Most importantly, it's an
opportunity to capture or recapture something we all have in
common . . . a father. One of the DDMAD missions being, to
increase the positive interactions of dads and other positive
males and kids
Many of us are blessed to share the experience with a dad,
and still far to many of us share a common void, a lifetime
scar from the lack of having that father involved in our lives
for a variety of reasons. In many cases, nothing will replace
or erase the pain, which often times is far too great for many
of us to bear. Studies clearly show the positive impact that an
involved father has on his children whether they live in the
same household or not, when it comes to education and self
esteem. However, when this is not an option, we also know
through the DDMAD Project, being able to talk about it, and
realizing that you are not alone, and sharing other like
experiences can be healthy, and hopefully will help us to
positively move forward, leaving any negative feelings, or
embarrassment behind and finally being at peace with our place,
and those who put us here on this planet.
Whether your dad is a doctor, lawyer, singer teacher,
janitor, chef, professional athlete, incarcerated or
unemployed, they all share one common fact, and that is they
are Fathers, and they have children who look like and sometimes
act like them. We must dispel the myth that men are only worth
the money that can be contributed to the life of that child. I
cringe at the thought that my children, or any child, would
only value themselves by their net worth, or their fathers
contribution, or lack of one. We need to have a reality check
on what we are considering of value when it comes to the lives
of our children. Rich children and poor children share a common
factor and that is they all need time and love. Though money
can assist us all, it can not replace the love and effort put
forth by any human being, especially our fathers.
One thing we all share is that our existence culminates
from two human beings. We all have a story to tell, and DDMAD
is listening! Some of our stories are positive, some sad, and
some have very little to tell at all. Father's stories can, and
do stir our emotions, either positively or negatively. The
truth be told, DDMAD is about advocating for the positive
influence that we know fathers can have on our lives and the
lives of our children.
Together we can make a difference, and continue the
challenge to uplift and empower the males who will undoubtedly
leave an impact on our community. It's up to us to make it a
positive experience for all.
As a single mom, I like many of you, struggled to find a
happy balance for my children, and despite what I thought might
be the perfect situation, it was not always inclusive of their
dads, despite all of my efforts. The reactions from my children
appeared fine for years, but as evidenced through a variety of
sources, including schoolwork, just did not seem to be
resolving it no matter how subtle.
After years of stressing about the fact of whether or not
dad should be involved, does he even want to be involved, what
about the money, or, I'm mad because of this or that from
whenever or with whomever, I realized that, as the saying goes,
when you have lemons, make lemonade! I realized there and then,
that you build on what you have, and considering my children, I
consider them to be rare gems to say the least (don't we all)
one of the best ways to further enhance their already beautiful
existence is to build upon from which they came. In all
fairness it does take two individuals, committed or not,
willing or unwilling to create such a jewel. To disregard any
portion of that jewel, or to let your child disallow it is to
take away from its total strength, breath, and beauty. For this
reason alone, I am totally thankful to my children's dads, not
to mention my own dad.
Though my brother and I were abandoned as infants by our
biological father, a college professor, strange as it may seem
I have grown to appreciate many of his qualities that continue
in legacy through me, not to mention that awesome, hard to
pronounce last name . . . Nkonoki!
In some ways, exploring what's good about your dad through
direct contact, or relatives, allows us to further appreciate
ourselves, and by dealing with and then letting go of any hurt
and or resentment and anger allows many of us (including adults
who have yet to heal their inner child) and the lives of their
own children to be set free. If you have a dad in your life,
don't profess to know what it feels like to wish to, or not
have one in any situation. All we know is that a greater
strength must prevail.
Look at the children of President John F. Kennedy, or, Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Nothing could replace within these
children their need for a father, but I am sure the positive
support of their families, and some overall connection helped
them endure. Yet they are all considered to carry on the legacy
of their father, despite the brief time they spent with him in
life. We all have a dad, whether alive, deceased, active or
inactive, known or unknown he is in our genes living through us
today as we exist.
Remember, kids have no choice as they join pre-established
teams, some winning and some bound to lose despite all the best
efforts. I don't know any team that won't come together at some
point, and try to win again.
In this case we all must be team players trying to win on
behalf of kids. That includes, schools, churches, community
agencies, business, and government along with moms and dads,
and most importantly you!
Winning Tips for your Team!
Who We Are
The Tate George Dream Shot Foundation was founded seven
years ago by then NBA player and former University of
Connecticut basketball great Tate George, along with marketing
executive Lisa Nkonoki, at that time a single mom. It is a
comprehensive youth development organization designed to meet
the needs of area youth and their families. Our main purpose is
to nurture and inspire young people to pursue their dreams
through the development of leadership skills, intellectual
abilities, positive attitudes, and family values.
Some of the programs we have initiated to ensure this goal
are: M y M's (Motivating Young Mothers), designed to uplift and
empower at risk teens and young, unwed parents; Tate George
Basketball Camp Scholarship program for disadvantaged youth;
and, most notably, our Dads Do Make A Difference
program which currently sponsors the Dads/Kids Campaign
developed by the foundation and adapted by the State of
Connecticut Dept. of Social Services.
The support we have received to date has been deeply
gratifying. Last year we were visited by Deputy Undersecretary
of Education W. Wilson Goode and were favorably assessed as a
program for other communities and agencies to follow. Long time
supporters include University of Connectcut's head basketball
coach Jim Calhoun, who has been a long time supporter, serving
as a spokesperson for the Dads and Coaches campaign.
Connecticut Gov. John Rowland and Lt. Gov. Jodi Rell have also
served as official spokespersons in support of this campaign,
with Lt. Gov. Rell going so far as to write to Lt. Gov.'s
across the country recommending that they take a look at this
program and adapt it to suit their specific needs.
We have also enjoyed tremendous support via endorsements
and personal appearances from the likes of Earvin ``Magic''
Johnson, TV personality Gayle King and Grammy award winning
recording artist Brian McKnight and a host of others.
Current Projects
The Dads Do Make A Difference project is
currently involved in developing several new programs. One, the
Dads Tool Kit for new fathers, will be administered
in cooperation with area hospitals The other, Dads' Backpack
Day One program, is in collaboration with Head Start programs
in New Britain, Hartford, and Manchester. In this program,
fathers are encouraged to accompany their children on their
first day in the program, where they will be presented with a
Backpack filled with literature explaining to them the
importance of staying involved in their children's education
for the long haul.
In addition, we are also set to expand the Dads/Kids and
Technology program whose goal is to recruit and train fathers
to be able to work with their children to learn and use
computer technology, interface with teachers, and assist with
homework.
Why Now
Since 1950, the percentage of American children living in
fatherless families has climbed from 6 to 24 percent as
recently as 1994. These children are five times more likely to
be poor and ten times more likely to be extremely poor. They
are twice as likely to drop out of high school and
significantly more likely to end up in foster or group care and
in juvenile facilities. Girls from single parent families are
at three times the risk of becoming unwed, teenage mothers.
Boys whose fathers are absent have a much higher likelihood of
growing up unemployed, incarcerated, and uninvolved with their
own children, ultimately perpetuating the same crippling cycle.
However, there is some good news. Major research released
as recently as 1997 has shown that fathers who are involved
with their children's education in a positive manner have a
tremendous impact on offsetting many of these troubling
statistics. Daughters are three times less likely to become
pregnant as teens and sons are ten times less likely to land in
jail. The list goes on from there outlining the tremendous,
positive affects that a healthy, nurturing rapport between a
father and his child has on the likelihood that that child will
grow up to become a constructive, self-sufficient, and well-
adjusted member of society.
It is definitely time to sit up and take notice that a
father's beneficial impact on the growth, development, and
welfare of his child is measurable by far more than simply the
size of his paycheck, as significant as that may be. And that
is the reason for the drive to initiate this project, for the
time is now to capitalize on the growing awareness among all
those who deal with children: clergy, educators, social
workers, and other caregivers, that it is high time to foster a
tide of reconciliation and return the father to a productive
place within the life of his child.
Our Goals
Our goal is to change behavior. By achieving increased
levels of positive, satisfactory interaction between
participating fathers and their children, as well as increased
levels of self-esteem among fathers, measured by their
increased ability to set definable goals for themselves and
demonstrate the self-initiative to realize them. In addition,
it will be assessed by witnessing the level of satisfaction
that participating children perceive in interactions with their
fathers. These goals will be monitored through self-assessment
questionnaires, program surveys and periodic focus groups.
Our Partners
Dads Do Make A Difference has been cited by the
National Center for Children in Poverty as the lead
organization for the state of Connecticut in raising awareness
about positive fatherhood initiatives since 1996.
DDMAD works closely with Head Start programs in New
Britain, Hartford and Manchester and has partnered with the CT
Dept. of Social Services to humanistically foster the
involvement of fathers with their children via an effective
program to advance the needs of this community.
We have also worked with the CT Dept. of Children and
Families in helping to train parent and service providers
dealing with fathers in encouraging them in being more involved
with their children. We were the only organization in
Connecticut, and one of the few in the Northeast, to receive a
1997 mini grant for fatherhood initiatives from the Dept of
Health and Human Services for our programs.
How will Sccess be Defined and Measured?
Success will be defined as being able to demonstrate an
increased level of satisfaction in the relationships between
the participating fathers and their children along with an
increased retention of these fathers as part of their families,
regardless of whether or not they are in the home. Another key
measure of success will be an increase in participating
fathers' positive self-initiative to financially participate in
the lives of their children, if that has been an issue. In
addition, program participants will be tracked over a period of
time to assess their ability to maintain these initiatives on
their own. Studies can also be initiated comparing the status
of the population of children of those who participate in our
program with their counterparts in the general population.
Target Population
Although Dads Do Make A Difference programs
welcome participation by all children and their families, the
majority of those taking advantage of our services to date have
been those from the lower-income, ethnic and urban communities.
In addition, the majority of our population is English
speaking, with literature made available in Spanish as needed.
Participant Involvement
Upon completion of any of our programs, participants will
be asked to submit an evaluation sheet whereby they will be
able to make known how the programs suited their needs and met
their expectations. They and their families will also be asked
to participate in focus groups from time to time. The results
of these processes will then be used to assist us in
identifying target areas for future growth and development, as
well as streamlining any existing, continuing programs.
In addition, program graduates can also be called upon to
participate in outreach initiatives through churches, schools,
and community centers within their communities, as well as at
the Creative Center itself.
Dads Do Make A Difference--Program Overview
Father Advocacy and Information.--Dream Sheet
Idea/Roadmap Development, education/training, technical
assistance, info regarding court appearances, legislation
updates, legal rights parameters, new initiatives, paternity
determination, child support, job referrals, motivation/goal
setting
Awareness/PR Campaign.--Billboards, collateral
pieces, mailings, surveys, focus groups, fact finding
initiatives, info share with other groups
Free scheduled events and activities.--Dads+Kids
Night at the Movies, Dads+Kids Night at various sporting events
(i.e., CT Wolves, CT Pride), Dads+Kids Night at the NBA, Annual
Multicultural Book Fair, Dads+Kids Picnic & Fishing in the
Park, Dads+Kids Holiday Feast, Dads+Kids Model Search,
Dads+Kids at the Today Show
Monthly Brainstorming Session for Service
Providers.--Opportunity to provide technical assistance,
outreach and support for new and existing Dads programs
Hospital Paternity Initiative.--New Dads Tool Kit,
Pre-school Back Pack, Teen Dads Pack, Reunited/Positive Male
Pack
Parenting Skills Training.--``All Star Dads''
program teaching successful parenting techniques
Open Forums for Dads.--Opportunity for Dads to
constructively express their feelings and be heard
Head Start Partnerships (Good Guys).--Current on-
going working relationships with New Britain, Hartford, and
Manchester to provide training, outreach, activities, etc.
Dads Do Speakers Bureau.--Partnership with
celebrities and entertainment figures
Dads Info Van.--Traveling to parades and other
public events to disseminate literature, raise awareness
F.A.C.T. Blvd (Fathers And Children Together).--In
school initiative to involve Dads in their child's education,
Dads/Kids + Technology
Dads on Tour In partnership with Xando's and
Zuzu's coffee bars
Dream Shot Foundations/Dads Do Make A Difference
Direct Services for Dads and Kids
Roger Vann, father of five and two year DDMAD program
participant, realizes his dream of owning his own home
Over 800 parents, educators, students, Dads, and service
providers participated in various DDMAD educational training programs,
technical assistance and referral initiatives
Approximately 3,000 Dads & Kids serviced annually by DDMAD
programs and events in cooperation with other organizations
Dads + Kids Night at the Connecticut Pride
Dads + Kids Night at the Movies, offering monthly passes
to pre-screenings
Dads Night Out
Dads + Kids Night at the Connecticut Wolves Game
Dads + Kids Night at area sporting events
Unveiling of the first official ``FACT BLVD/ Dads BLVD''
in city schools along with Mayor Lucien Pawlak, U.S. Deputy Assistant
Undersecretary of Education W. Wilson Goode, Congresswoman Nancy
Johnson, and Superintendent of Schools, James Rhinesmith.
Training Sessions with ``Dads,'' ``Moms,'' and ``Kids''
Candid ``Dads'' interviews on tape
Multi-Cultural Book Festival at Hartford Stage
Dads + Kids Model Search, City of Hartford, for 1999 Dads
+ Kids Calendar
Annual Dads and Kids Fun Run/Walk and Picnic in the Park
Public Awareness Initiatives
``National Plug'' for the ``Dads Do Make A Difference''
project, and sponsor Xando's. Live appearance on NBC's ``Today Show,''
including presentation of official Dads Do Make A Difference T-shirts
to weatherman Al Roker and co-host Katie Couric.
Photo-op, and presented Vice President Al Gore with a
``Dads Do Make A Difference'' official T-shirt
Official visit by U.S. Dept. Assistant Under Secretary of
Education W.Wilson Goode visits schools in Greater Hartford and New
Britain, CT on behalf of the ``Dads'' project and to talk to parents,
staff and students about the importance of ``Dads.''
Dads + Kids Billboard-I 84 Hartford, Connecticut
State of Connecticut Proclamation--June 1998 ``Dads month
by Governor John G. Rowland
City of Hartford, Mayor Mike Peters, along with City
Manager Sandra Kee Borgess proclaim June 1998 Dads ``Month in the city
of Hartford.''
More than half a million dollars in Electronic Media,
Advertising and Promotion
Dads ``Public Service Announcement'' with businessman
Brian Foley
Presented outline of DDMAD project along with
complementary pin to President Clinton on Martha's Vineyard
Several visits from U.S. Dept. of Health and Human
Services to Dads programs
Lead CT service organization cited by the Center for
Children in Poverty
Approx. 1.8 million people reached to date through various
DDMAD media campaigns
Press Event to Kick-off June 1998 as ``Dads'' Month, and
calendar contest/Lisa utilized as expert for local CBS affiliate, Ch 3
interview ``Dads''/visitation and custody case
ZuZu's and Xando's Coffee and Bar on tour with ``Dads''--
East Coast locations
National Football League and Major League Soccer Players
appear at Washington, D.C. Xando's, for a press event during Fathers
Day week.
Included in the nationally distributed publication, ``The
ABC's of Parent Involvement in Education,'' published by the National
Parents' Day Coalition as a national information resource
DDMAD featured in Essence magazine
Lisa Nkonoki recognized as a 40 Under 40 business award
recipient by the Hartford Business Journal for her contributions to the
DDMAD project and community at large
Lisa Nkonoki awarded the 1999 CATCH (Committed Adults to
Children in Hartford) award. Nominated by renowned City of Hartford
Human Services Director, Dr. Ramon Rojano
Collaborations with Other Service Providers
Dads Project in area schools/ PTO-PTA
Offering technical assistance to local agencies such as
Head Start, Family Services Division of the CT Dept. of Social
Services, City of Hartford Human Services
Met with key leaders in the ``Dads'' Movement Nationally
Interfacing with Head Start locally, regionally and
nationally
Participated as panelists in ``Hot Topics'' Dads Workshop
at a statewide conference for over 300+parents sponsored by ``State of
Connecticut DCF'' that featured W. Wilson Goode from the U.S.
Department of Education, and State Representative Kenneth Green.
Initiated Monthly ``Dads'' Brainstorming Sessions for
Service providers, community leaders and fathers.
Training Sessions/Open Forums with community
organizations/schools etc.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Thank you very much, Lisa.
Vicki Turetsky, the senior staff attorney for the Center
for Law and Social Policy. Nice to have you with us.
STATEMENT OF VICKI TURETSKY, SENIOR STAFF ATTORNEY, CENTER FOR
LAW AND SOCIAL POLICY
Ms. Turetsky. Thanks. Thanks for the opportunity to testify
today. I am the granddaughter of a Baptist minister.
[Laughter.]
My name is Vicki Turetsky. My work at the Center for Law
and Social Policy is focused on child support. Before working
at CLASP, I was employed by MDRC, and was involved in
implementing Parents Fair Share. My testimony today will focus
on child support distribution policies, and how they work
against poor mothers and fathers.
Many poor mothers and fathers are capable of building
workable partnerships to help each other support and raise
their children. However, when a TANF father contributes
financial support to his children, the money must be turned
over to the State, and may not be used to support the children.
Because TANF fathers know that their child support is kept
by the State and does not benefit their children, they are
discouraged from participating in programs like Parents Fair
Share and Partners for Fragile Families. New public investments
in fatherhood programs may be met with only limited success
unless we begin to treat child support as part of the family's
own resources, rather than as an offset to welfare costs.
When the child support program was established, it mainly
served as a cost recovery program for AFDC. The AFDC bargain
was that the State would guarantee public support for poor
families. In exchange, a mother needing AFDC would be required
to turn over her right to child support owed by the father.
Support collected from the father would be kept by the State
and used to offset AFDC costs. That support is shared with the
Federal Government.
The TANF bargain is supposed to be quite different. TANF
evinces a clear public policy preference that poor families
rely on private resources before public resources. Under TANF,
mothers and fathers are expected to work and support their
children from their own resources before turning to the
Government. However, the basic rule remains the same under TANF
as it did under AFDC. Child support owed or collected when a
family receives TANF belongs to the State, not the family.
Current child support distribution rules make no sense to
poor mothers and fathers, and they have interfered with States'
abilities to implement policies supportive of family self-
sufficiency and family formation. For the most part, poor
mothers and fathers want to do right by their children. The
research indicates that many poor fathers see their children on
a regular basis, particularly when they are small.
The parents want to be able to use their own money to
support their children. When poor mothers look at their budget,
they would prefer to use their own money, their earnings and
their child support, even if it means reduced benefits. Poor
fathers want to know that their money is contributing directly
to their child's support.
We have created an untenable situation for poor fathers and
mothers who want to improve their children's lives. We tell
poor mothers and fathers that we want them to work together, we
want them to support and raise their children together, we tell
them we want them to rely on their own private resources before
seeking public help. However, our child support distribution
rules send a contradictory message: Child support is off limits
for TANF families seeking to budget and plan for the children's
support.
If the father has $50 in his pocket, he might rightly
perceive that his choice is one between paying back the State
and buying shoes for his child. Sometimes he pays sporadic
informal support for the children. Yet no one is well served
when parents agree to under-the-table payments and avoid the
formal child support system. If a TANF mother accepts informal
support, she is vulnerable to welfare fraud prosecution. In
addition, informal payments are more sporadic and typically
smaller than formal support payments. If a TANF father pays
informal support, his payment will not be credited on his
account through the formal system, and he will be liable for
the full payment.
Distribution changes enacted in PRWORA are intended to move
States in a family first direction that gets more money in the
hands of post-TANF families. This is the right direction.
However, the rules are extremely complicated and costly to
administer in practice. When fully implemented, the new law
will require States to maintain 10 accounting buckets.
The sheer complexity of the new rules will aggravate a
problem that already exists in many States: timely and accurate
distribution of child support once the family leaves TANF.
Although current support is supposed to be paid to families as
soon as they leave TANF, the child support agency sometimes has
trouble turning that money around, and sometimes it takes
months for the family to get the support after they have left
TANF.
I want to commend you to Senator Kohl's proposal, which
would allow States to pass through all support to TANF and
former TANF families. CLASP supports this direction. States
should be given the option to pass through and the option to
disregard all support, including the Federal and the State
shares. In addition, we think that the distribution rules ought
to be simplified across the board.
Three States, Wisconsin, Connecticut, and Vermont, are
currently operating programs like this under waiver. Early
evaluation results in Wisconsin indicate that families who get
the full pass through are more likely to leave W-2 sooner. In
addition, State costs are about the same, even though they are
giving up their State share of welfare collections.
In sum, effective child support enforcement should be used
to help fulfill the goals of TANF. Child support enforcement
supports TANF goals perhaps than any public policy approach.
Child support distribution rules should help rather than
undermine the efforts of poor mothers and fathers to work
together. Child support should be treated as a family resource
rather than as recouped public debt. Thank you.
[The prepared statement follows:]
Statement of Vicki Turetsky, Senior Staff Attorney, Center for Law and
Social Policy
Chairwoman Johnson and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank
you for this opportunity to testify today on ways to encourage
poor mothers and fathers to work together to support and raise
their children. I am a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for
Law and Social Policy. CLASP is a nonpartisan, nonprofit
organization engaged in analysis, technical assistance and
advocacy on issues affecting low-income families. We do not
receive any federal funding. My focus at CLASP is child
support. Before working at CLASP, I was employed by Manpower
Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC), and helped implement
the Parents' Fair Share pilot project.
Many poor fathers and mothers are capable of building
workable partnerships to help each other support and raise
their children. However, in study after study, poor mothers and
fathers of children receiving TANF say there is a fundamental
contradiction in the child support system that undermines their
ability to work together to support their children. The
contradiction is that when a TANF father contributes financial
support to his children, the money must be turned over to the
state and may not be used to support the children. Because TANF
fathers know that their child support payments are kept by the
state and do not benefit their children, they are discouraged
from participating in programs like Parents' Fair Share.
My testimony today will specifically address the negative
impact of current child support assignment and distribution
policies on the ability and willingness of poor mothers and
fathers to work together on behalf of their children. New
public investments in fatherhood programs may be met with only
limited success unless we begin to treat child support as part
of the family's own resources, rather than as an offset to
public welfare costs. Many researchers, state administrators,
and advocates for poor mothers and poor fathers agree that the
child support program needs to be realigned with TANF self-
sufficiency and family formation goals.
To bring the program into better alignment with TANF,
PRWORA ``family first'' distribution rules should be expanded.
In addition, states should be given the option to distribute
all support paid by fathers for their children, regardless of
welfare status.
The Child Support System Emphasizes Welfare Cost Recovery
When the child support program was established, it mainly
functioned as an AFDC cost-recovery mechanism. The AFDC bargain
was that the state would guarantee public support for poor
families until their children reached the age of majority. In
exchange, a mother needing AFDC would be required to assign
(turn over) to the state any rights to private support owed by
the father. The assignment applied to child support owed before
the family went on welfare, as well as support owed while the
family received welfare. The state then would attempt to
collect the child support from the father. Support collected
from the father would be kept by the state and shared with the
federal government as partial reimbursement for AFDC costs.
The TANF bargain is supposed to be quite different. TANF
evinces a clear public policy preference that poor families
rely on private resources before public resources. Under TANF,
mothers are expected to work and to support their children from
their own resources whenever they can. This expectation that
mothers develop their capacity for self-support is backed by
time limits. Fathers, too, are told they must help support
their children. The expectation that fathers will help support
their children is backed by strengthened paternity
establishment and child support enforcement procedures enacted
under PRWORA.
The ``families first'' child support distribution policies
adopted under PRWORA was an important first step in allowing
families leaving TANF to treat child support as a family
resource. The new distribution policy gives priority to child
support payments owed to former welfare families over payments
owed to the state. The new distribution policy also allows
families to keep some of the child support owed before the
family went on assistance. However, the basic rule remains the
same under TANF as it did under AFDC: child support owed or
collected while a family receives TANF belongs to the state,
not the family.
The child support program is undergoing dramatic structural
changes due in part to TANF caseload declines. In 1978, more
than 75 percent of the child support caseload involved current
AFDC families. By 2000, less than 20 percent of the child
support caseload will be current TANF families. The vast
majority of cases will involve low-income working families who
have left or stayed off of TANF. The child support program's
mission is evolving toward helping low-income families reduce
welfare receipt and sustain low-wage employment. Child support
distribution policies should support, not undercut, these TANF
goals.
Instead, program's reimbursement-driven distribution
policies have interfered with states' ability to implement
policies supportive of family self-sufficiency. The recent
changes in TANF, combined with long-term trends in the child
support caseload, have resulted in a misalignment between the
program's ability to deliver effective services to families and
a program structure that emphasizes cost-recovery. The child
support program, like other human services program, must be
brought into realignment with TANF goals and the realities of
time-limited welfare.
Child Support Distribution Policies Work Against Poor Fathers
and Mothers
Current child support distribution rules make no sense to
poor mothers and fathers. Parents want to be able to use their
own money to support their children. When poor mothers look at
their budget, they would prefer to keep their own money--their
paycheck and child support--even if it means reduced public
benefits. Poor fathers want to know that their money is
contributing directly to their children's support. Yet poor
mothers and fathers both know that unless the father can pay
enough keep their children off of TANF, his support payments
will be kept by the state and will not directly benefit their
children. \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Since most custodial parents are mothers and most noncustodial
parents are fathers, this testimony uses the term mother to refer to
custodial parents and father to refer to noncustodial parents.
Obviously, the situation can be, and sometimes is, reversed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the most part, poor mothers and fathers want to do
right by their children. Most fathers know they should take
responsibility for their children. The research indicates that
many poor fathers see their children on a regular basis,
particularly when their children are small. Child support
payments may increase the frequency of contact between fathers
and children and fathers' involvement in their children's
upbringing. Many mothers report that they encourage their
children's emotional relationship with their father and his
family, and try to keep the father involved in the children's
lives when feasible.
Many mothers and fathers are aware of each other's economic
circumstances, and repeatedly re-negotiate their financial
arrangements. Sometimes she holds back on child support
enforcement. Sometimes, he pays informal financial support for
the children. Sometimes, he does not pay regular support, but
makes irregular in-kind contributions, such as diapers, school
clothes, and Christmas gifts. Sometimes, he pays out of both
pockets--he pays off the state a little and he pays her a
little. Sometimes she settles for non-financial support.
Sometimes, they fight about the money. Sometimes, he walks
away.
We have created an untenable situation for poor fathers and
mothers who want to improve their children's lives, but can not
fully support their children without some public help. When
TANF fathers pay through the formal child support system, their
payments usually do not go back to their children. If the
father has $50 in his pocket, he may rightly perceive his
choice as one between paying back the state and buying shoes
for his child.
Yet no one is well served when parents agree to under-the
table payments and avoid the formal child support system. If a
TANF mother accepts informal support from the father, she is
vulnerable to a welfare fraud prosecution. In addition,
informal payments are made at the discretion of the father.
They are likely to decrease as the child gets older and the
parents' relationship changes. If a TANF father pays the mother
informal support, his payment will not be credited through the
formal system, and he will be liable for full payment. Informal
payments may be smaller and less regular, and there may be more
disputes about the amounts paid.
We tell poor mothers and fathers that we want them to work
together to support and raise their children. We tell them that
we want them to rely on their own resources before seeking
public help. However, our child support distribution policies
send a contradictory message: child support payments are off-
limits for families seeking to budget and plan for their
children's support.
Welfare Arrears Often Create Unmanageable Debt
Poor fathers often complain about child support arrears.
The arrears problem is part and parcel of a child support
system that is based on welfare cost recovery. If a poor
father's children are on welfare, his support order often is
not based solely on his ability to pay. Instead, the order may
be ``front-loaded'' with unreimbursed state debt, such as pre-
order welfare benefits or Medicaid expenditures paid for the
child. Childbirth costs may be added to the initial order. This
can amount to tens of thousands of dollars when a child is born
prematurely or with other health problems. Paternity testing
costs, litigation costs, and interest may be added to the
support order. ``Front-loading'' the order with costs that are
unrelated to the poor father's ability to pay can create an
unmanageable debt right from the beginning. As a practical
matter, they often create a debt that will never be paid.
In many states, the state attempts to collect support from
fathers even when they are living with their children in a two-
parent family. Sometimes, they do not tell the welfare agency
that they are living together because of policies basing
welfare eligibility on father absence. Sometimes, they do tell
the agency, but it does not operate to suspend the child
support order and ``state debt.'' In addition, the state may
attempt to collect when the parents' financial circumstances
worsen. For example, the father may lose his job after the
order was entered.
State child support programs need to deal with the problem
of arrears owed by parents, that will never be paid off. The
best approach is to begin treating child support as money owed
to the family, not to the state. Much of the arrears on the
books stem from state practices that use the child support
system to recoup welfare and Medicaid costs. Public policies
affecting the treatment of arrears should reflect child support
program goals of increasing family self-sufficiency and
supporting family formation, not cost recovery.
In addition, state child support programs should implement
review and modification procedures that (1) make it easy for
parents to request a review of the child support order and
accumulated arrears, (2) respond quickly and flexibly to
mothers' and fathers' requests for review of the order and
adjust the order upward or downward according to the parents'
financial and family circumstances, and (3) allow for a review
and modification of accumulated arrears.
The cure for welfare debt is not to repeal the Bradley
amendment. The Bradley amendment, enacted as a part of the
Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1986,\2\ requires that child
support payments owed under a support order be treated just as
seriously as any other state court judgment. However, as with
any other judgment, child support orders may be compromised or
settled by agreement of the parties according to state law.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ 42 U.S.C. 666(a)(9).
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If I fall being on my credit card payments, the credit card
company can take me to court and obtain a judgment against me.
A court can not undo that judgment at the request of one party
if it was properly entered. However, I can sit down with the
credit card company and tell them that I can not afford to
repay the debt. The credit card company can work out a
settlement with me and waive enforcement of the judgment.
Similarly, if I can not afford to pay my child support order,
the state child support agency and/or custodial parent can
suspend, compromise, or forgive arrears owed to the agency or
parent. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
recently reissued a policy statement clearly stating that
states have the authority to suspend, compromise, or forgive
TANF arrears owed to the government.
Current Distribution Rules Work Against Families Leaving TANF
Distribution changes enacted in PRWORA are intended to move
states in a ``family-first'' direction that gets more money in
the hands of post-TANF families. However, they are extremely
complicated and costly to administer in practice. They are the
uneasy result of legislative compromise between contradictory
program goals of helping families become and remain self-
sufficient and recovering welfare costs. When fully
implemented, the new law will require states to maintain ten
accounting ``buckets.''
The sheer complexity of PRWORA distribution rules will
aggravate a problem that already exists for many states:
accurate and timely payment of child support to former TANF
families. Although current support is supposed to be paid to
families as soon as they leave TANF, the child support agency
sometimes continues to retain current support for months after
welfare exits. Instead of stabilizing the family's child
support income before the family leaves TANF, child support is
interrupted right at the point of exit and for some months
thereafter.
The complexity of new distribution rules is also costly for
the states and federal government. Problems with automating
complicated distribution rules have been cited by many federal
and state administrators as a contributing cause of systems
delays and costs. The new rules require disproportionate
training and staff time devoted to administering the rules,
correcting errors, and explaining hard-to-understand decisions
to parents. Because the new policy is so difficult to explain
and administer, it will further erode confidence in the
program's fairness and accuracy. Bluntly put, the
administrative costs and costs related to program credibility
of maintaining an overly complex distribution policy squanders
limited program resources.
Under PRWORA, states have the option to distribute the
state share of child support to families, but they must return
the federal share to the federal government. This is a change
from previous policy, when states were required to pass through
and disregard $50 to AFDC families ``off the top'' of
collections, that is, before the federal and state shares of
collections were calculated. Almost half of states continue to
pass through some amount of child support from the state share.
However, under current distribution rules, the state's decision
to pass through part of the state share to families actually
increases the complexity of distribution by adding another
distribution ``pot.''
Child Support Has the Potential to Reinforce TANF Goals
TANF evinces a clear public policy preference that low-
income families rely on private resources before public
resources. The stated purposes of TANF are to: (1) provide
assistance to needy families; (2) end the dependence of needy
parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation,
work, and marriage; (3) prevent and reduce the incidence of
out-of-wedlock pregnancies; and (4) encourage the formation and
maintenance of two-parent families. The research indicates that
effective child support enforcement supports TANF goals,
perhaps better than any other public policy approach:
Emerging research suggests that stronger child
support enforcement will reduce non-marital births, divorce,
and marital disruption. States with higher rates of paternity
establishment and effective child support collection systems
have lower rates of nonmarital births. A $136 increase in IV-D
expenditures per female-headed family leads to a 2.3 percent
lower nonmarital birth rate. By contrast, a $1,253 decrease in
annual welfare benefits is only associated with a 0.063 percent
decrease in nonmarital fertility. Child support enforcement not
only deters births more effectively than welfare cuts, but it
increases the income of children already born.
The number of studies documenting that child
support reduces poverty and welfare dependence is now quite
large. States with effective child support collection systems
have significantly lower welfare caseloads. Child support is
playing a moderate to large (and unrecognized) role in
declining welfare caseloads. Enforcing child support is more
efficient than lowering welfare benefits in moving families out
of caseloads and preventing them from entering caseloads. While
cuts in welfare benefits reduces the economic well-being of
single-mother families, enforcing child support increases it.
Cost avoidance research from Washington State
indicates a synergic effect between child support and earnings
once the family leaves assistance and begins receiving
distributed collections. Compared to welfare, child support is
more complementary to work because child support payments do
not decline like welfare benefits when the mother's earnings
increase.
There is growing evidence that child support
enforcement has improved collections, especially among fathers
whose children are likely to be on welfare. From 1980 to 1996,
the proportion of unmarried mothers who were on welfare and had
a child support collection nearly tripled. However, the
significant increase in child support receipt rates has been
masked, because the caseload composition has shifted away from
divorced families to non-marital families. Strikingly, welfare
collections remained stable or even increased in some states
for the first four years after TANF caseloads began to decline.
Simplify Distribution and Give States the Option to Pass through All
Support To Families
Senator Kohl intends to reintroduce a version of his bill
last session that would allow states to pass through all
support to TANF and former TANF families. CLASP strongly
supports this direction. States should be given the option to
distribute all child support, including federal and state
shares, to families. CLASP also recommends that current
distribution rules should be simplified across-the-board in
order to put more child support in the hands of families.
By allowing states the option to distribute all support to
families, Congress would give states the flexibility to bring
their child support program into better alignment with TANF
goals. States would be better able to use child support as part
of a strategy to help families reduce their dependence on TANF,
help poor fathers improve their earnings capacity, help poor
and low-income mothers and fathers to combine their earnings to
support and raise their children, and promote family formation
goals:
Distributing child support to the TANF family
increases the likelihood that child support payments will be in
place and will continue uninterrupted when a family leaves
TANF.
It also gives the mother with earnings an accurate
sense of the amount and regularity of child support payments
available to combine with her earnings.
It allows the father to use his money to help
support his children.
It gives both parents a greater incentive to
cooperate with formal collection efforts.
A state option to disregard some or all of the support in
determining TANF eligibility and benefits is an important
component to the proposal. Parents have a greater incentive to
cooperate when child support distributed to the family actually
increases their children's financial well-being. When child
support improves family income, it boosts both parents' work
effort and may help the family leave TANF sooner. States need
the flexibility to set child support disregard policies in a
way that best fits their TANF program.
Three states currently have waivers to distribute all
current support and to disregard some or all of the support for
TANF purposes. Wisconsin passes through and disregards all
support, while Connecticut passes through all support and
disregards $100, and Vermont passes through all support and
disregards $50. Evaluation efforts are underway, and while it
is too early to assess the impact of these policies, Wisconsin
and Vermont have reported early results:
Early results in Wisconsin suggest that families
receiving the full pass-through and disregard who were
initially assigned to a lower W-2 tier were more likely to
leave welfare by the fifth quarter than control-group families.
In addition, while the state retained less child support, net
government costs were not significantly different.
Early results in Vermont suggest that the state's
pass-through policy increased the average child support payment
and the proportion of families receiving child support.
In summary, child support distribution rules should be
changed to allow states to pass through all support for TANF
and former TANF families. In a post-TANF world, it is more
important than ever that child support distribution rules
satisfy several principles. First, the rules should help,
rather than undermine, the efforts of poor mothers and fathers
to work together to support their children. Second, child
support should be treated as a family resource, not recouped
public debt. Third, the distribution rules should make sense to
families and be simple to administer and explain. The job of
the child support program should be to establish paternity,
collect support, and get the support to the family. The job of
the TANF program should be to set policies related to child
support income that encourage poor fathers to help support
their children and that help families who are exiting TANF.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Thank you very much for
your testimony. We have talked about this before. As one who
fought hard to get at least arrearages paid first to the
families before the States and failed, we got half and half,
the barriers to this kind of change are high. But it is
absolutely imperative that we make this change, because you are
absolutely right about all the human implications of that
support going directly from the father to the mother and the
child. So we look forward to working with you on that, and to
straightening out the problems over time that make it
difficult.
I wanted to ask you, Mr. Ballard, how much does it cost to
run your programs? You have really been out in the field and
working for quite a long time now. I very much like the idea in
your program, and there's a lot of good ideas on the table, but
I do like the idea that there's a couple there modeling
marriage relationships, because I think one of the reasons that
these early relationships don't survive is the same reason that
many marriages end up in divorce. Marriage isn't easy, and it
takes time to figure out how to make it through. The legal tie
sometimes holds you together during periods of frustration,
disagreement, disappointment. That's really actually how we
learn that being there matters, and staying power wins. So I
think the idea of the couple in the community modeling the
relationship is really an interesting one, as well as your sort
of home-based view, where you go into homes, but you give
services from home.
I would like to just comment too that I was very pleased in
our earlier discussion that you paid the man and his wife
equally, just for the record, and well, I might add.
So what does it cost to run your program? Can you estimate
what the cost per father is for a program like yours?
Mr. Ballard. Yes, Madam Chair. But before I do that, I
would like to introduce people from my offices. We have the
Daleys from Cleveland, OH. We have the Jenkins here in the
District. And we have the Halls from Nashville, TN. They came
up to demonstrate the importance of couples living in the
community, and sharing these services with fathers and their
families.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. That's excellent, and
welcome to you. We look forward to your commenting to us
afterward.
Mr. Ballard. It costs about $3,200 to serve one person.
However, we find that we are unable to just serve the father.
In most cases, we have to serve the mother first. Before we can
even get to him, she has to be approached. As the young lady on
the end of the panel stated, unless her heart changes toward
the father, we can't get to him. So we go out into the
community, doing outreach door-to-door, and we get to her
first, work with her, and then she gives us the father's name.
Now the children in many cases are angry. So the child also
has to be worked with. So it's $3,200 in average cost to work
with the father, and then add on as we begin to involve other
members, including his parents, as well as the girl's parents.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. So really to reach the
circle of the whole family, that's not really included in your
$3,200 per father.
Mr. Ballard. No. See, we spend about 3 to 4 hours a week
with the father in his home, providing very intensive services.
If we get a call at 2 a.m., the person gets out of bed and goes
to his home. Many times there is violence going on, and we
resolve that situation first. So we are available 24-7, and
we'll come out to his home at his call. We have gotten calls
from females as well, and we go out to serve them as well. But
we have to, in order to reach fathers, go beyond child support.
This is beyond the legal issue. This is actively building
families that never were, and creating a model for the father
to see for the very first time.
Often the father is very angry about his dad, angry about
the abandonment, and that takes a lot of effort and time to
work with him to get him past that anger in order for him to
begin to feel good about himself and then about his child.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Interesting. Thank you
very much. It's very interesting.
Mr. Johnson, in terms of the program you have been working
on, what do you estimate that it will cost, and how long do you
estimate that it will take you to get your project launched?
Mr. Jeffery Johnson. I think that we are in the process of
getting a Federal waiver. I anticipate that we will be fully
implemented in the next several weeks. But I do think that Mr.
Ballard's cost estimates are pretty good. But I would add that
one of the things we want to do in our program is to move the
Parents Fair Share model forward. That is by building a skills
training component right into the program. I do think that we
cannot take employment training, leave it to chance. So if I
estimate with a real solid employment training component, based
on some successful programs, one in New York called the Strive
ASAP program, it is going to be about an additional $5,000 or
so to go along with kind of the baseline kind of support
services.
But again, I do think that that investment in that type of
employment is going to have lasting effects from a career
perspective. In the ASAP program, for example, many of the men
they were serving met the profile of the fathers coming through
our program. So we referred to them as welfare dads or dead-
broke dads. So they were able to get them in a job. The first
job they could get after 3 weeks of training. They went out and
worked for 6 months. They had a post-placement service where
they came back in the program after demonstrating a track
record in the work environment. They worked with Concordia
College and a number of financial institutions in New York
City, and were able to develop some condensed training modules
based on a 2-year curriculum. They were able to condense it to
6 months, get those men through the program, and that they were
able to achieve about a 75-percent placement rate.
But I think that the real significant finding over 2 years
was the fact that the average wage growth was between $6,000
and $9,000. So it just says that when we have these men in a
captive situation, let's do the whole job. I think that these
partnerships that we have established with various
organizations enable us to put in place what I think will be
the most comprehensive service delivery system in the whole
fatherhood field. I just think that we have to do the whole
job. I think that it is going to appear to be costly on the
front end. But I think on the back end of it, we are going to
have reduced men in jails and more men being productive members
in our community.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Mr. Cardin.
Mr. Cardin. Thank you, Madam Chair. Let me thank all six of
our witnesses. I found your testimony very encouraging, that we
have people on the front line doing what you are doing. So
first my congratulations, and thank you for sharing your
experiences with us.
Ms. Turetsky, I want to underscore what Chairman Johnson
said about the current child support payments by fathers in
many cases going to the welfare agency rather than to the
family causes major problems of involvement of the father in
the financial planning of the household. That is something I
hope that we could deal with. But you raised a very interesting
point in that it may not even cost us any more money.
Ms. Turetsky. Yes. There are a number of studies going on
right now, including the States that have put a full pass
through into place. The studies are too early to give you
definitive results, but they are looking quite promising.
I might add that there are a number of State child support
directors who feel much as I do about the proper role of child
support in a family's life and the costliness in terms of
families' lives and in terms of complicated rules within the
current child support system.
Mr. Cardin. Those studies would be very helpful to us
because it's good for us to do what's right, but if we can also
do it without costing additional resources, that's even better
for us.
Mr. Raesz, on your point on the Bradley amendment, I must
acknowledge, I had never really focused in on that and the
hardships that that can cause. But let me just suggest, it
might be a better system if there was in place a way for review
of child support orders on a periodic basis so that you don't
reach a situation where a father gets out of hand, and that it
would then mitigate or negate the need to do retroactive
adjustments if we kept more current to the fathers' financial
ability.
There are a lot of child support orders out there that need
to be adjusted upwards, but aren't because no one looks at it
for a long period of time.
Mr. Raesz. I heard you mention that earlier. I think that's
a wonderful idea. But there are a number of individuals out
there right now that are faced with large arrearages that
accumulated during periods of illness or injury, periods where
they had possession of their children. The fathers have
possession of the children, but because of the absence of a
court order being modified, they are faced with paying
arrearages at a time they are in possession.
So I would definitely support your efforts, seeing that
review takes place periodically. I also ask for some help for
those individuals that it's too late.
Mr. Cardin. That's fair enough. I think it should be
balanced in both regards. I agree with your point. I am glad to
see that you agree with mine. It makes life a little bit
easier.
Mr. Johnson, you mentioned in your written testimony,
support for the legislation that I introduced on behalf of the
Administration to modify the welfare to work programs. I think
it is important to point out that the current program,
particularly the competitive grants, are being used--can be
used by the States for initiatives in fatherhood programs on
employment, counseling, and other types of services that can be
provided through the use of the Federal Welfare-to-Work
program, but that the current restrictions on the formula funds
make it very difficult for States to be able to deal with
people who really need help.
The legislation that I filed relaxes those requirements, to
give the States more flexibility on the use of that money. I
just really wanted to give you a chance to comment on that, as
to whether you think that would be useful in encouraging more
programs out there to help fathers be more responsible in their
families.
Mr. Jeffery Johnson. I think so. I'm glad that there was a
bill out there that talks about fathers. I appreciate the bill
that you put forth.
But I do think, it's not only some of the restrictions in
the formula, but it is also a matter of technical assistance. I
think that this Welfare-to-Work program probably has more
flexibility. I have been around employment most of my career.
It probably has more flexibility to do this work than we really
need. But I think that a lot of States are skittish about doing
a lot of work with non-custodial fathers because they don't
know how. I think that they have not been able to, up until
recently, find programs like Mr. Ballard's and others, to
really get an idea of how to really work with these non-
custodial fathers. I think that that is important.
Another part of the Welfare-to-Work reauthorization that we
particularly like, is the fact of the whole focus on personal
responsibility. We do think that given some of the life
challenges of some of these men, they need structure. You know,
you go into any school system, and you talk to the teachers
working with some of these young boys, they will say that they
need structure, and they need structure to find themselves
sometimes because they are not getting that structure from
home. I do think that at some point, men discover themselves,
find themselves, in that they are in essence taught how to
fish. But I do think this notion of a personal responsibility
contract as being a necessary part of a programmatic structure
for these programs is a critical piece. We support those
elements of the bill.
Mr. Cardin. Finally, just one additional question. That is,
how much of a problem are drugs and alcohol addiction and abuse
in dealing with a non-custodial parent? The statistics given to
us by the last panel did not indicate a very high percentage of
parents, children born out of wedlock being that--used 8
percent is what's here. I am just curious whether your personal
observations indicate how serious substance abuse is in dealing
with the problem we're trying to confront.
Mr. Jeffery Johnson. It is a problem. I think that use
varies, but you are also talking about distribution. I mean in
that there are countless studies that suggest that a lot of
young males who get involved in the drug area don't use, but
actually distribute as a way to generate income. So I would say
that while those statistics are relatively low, I do think that
drug abuse is a problem.
There's a 20-year history on this, in fact. Jim Levin, who
is now the vice president of the Thousand Work Institute, used
to run what is to say the first full service fatherhood program
back in the mid-1970's. It was an outgrowth of programs serving
mothers. He began to work with these fathers to really try to
determine what would be the incentives necessary to get them
involved. What he found out was that they had multiple
problems. They need jobs. They had substance abuse problems.
I can tell you from my own experience in working with many
sites across Parents Fair Share and the Young Unwed Fathers
pilot project, that when I would go to the sites following up
some of the work they were doing around our peer support
groups, they would have legal programs. The legal programs were
not for issues of child support, but because of trouble with
the law around drugs. I mean either use or distribution.
So I would say, Mr. Cardin, that it is a problem, and that
even though they may not be using it, that does not mean
necessarily that they are not involved in it.
Mr. Cardin. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Just as a final question,
and we are going to have to vote soon, so I would like to have
a little chance for those who are here to comment to us if they
want to individually. Each of you in your own way, particularly
some of you more than others, have been out there on the front
lines. Do you find it hard to link the people in your programs
into Department of Labor programs, Department of Social Service
programs, you know, to hook it in and coordinate with existing
resources?
Ms. Turetsky. Mrs. Johnson, may I comment?
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Yes.
Ms. Turetsky. This is new work. That means that no matter
which agency you pick, it is going to involve a stretch, and
it's going to require linkages with other agencies.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Good thought, Vicki.
Ms. Turetsky. If you put it in the Child Support Agency,
they don't do employment. If you put it in the TANF agencies,
they don't do men. So it is a matter of, as difficult as it is,
it is going to be necessary to link these programs, and to have
different programs do different pieces. But case management
there is really important, having one key agency that works
with the guy and brokers services, it is going to be critical.
Mr. Ballard. I think one of the most important things is to
be able to establish a rapport with the father and the family.
The reason we move into the community is because people want to
know you care. Often they complain about people who work in the
community, but live some place else. So I think by going into
the community--in fact, the Jenkins here moved from California
to Ward 7 in Washington, and they are buying a home. That is a
great commitment to that community.
We have noticed over the years everyone is moving out of
the community into the suburbs, and leaving people who are poor
and disconnected. So if you are going to right the problem, we
must move back into that community and not only provide a
service, but do it in a loving and a compassionate way.
Mr. Jeffery Johnson. Madam Chair, I have a member of my
staff, Dianna Durham-McLoud, who is a former State director of
child support in the State of Illinois. She was one of the
pioneers in actually using the child support system as a way to
begin to work with non-custodial parents in different ways. I
would just like her to comment, because I do think that she
talks about ways in which child support can do this in some
creative ways involving partnership, as Vicki has alluded to.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. OK. While she is coming to
the microphone----
Ms. Durham-McLoud. When we would bring men before the bar,
on a ``Rule to Show Cause,'' what we found in Cook County, IL,
was that 56 percent of those young men said, ``We would love to
pay child support, if we had anything to pay it on.'' So what
we started to do, instead of simply incarcerating them which
cost us about $17,500 a year, we would have done better to
simply give that to the family, if we are really going to
expend that kind of money, why not do something that
strengthens families.
What we started to do was to work with those fathers. We
reached out to a community-based organization that could do the
hard one-on-one case management.
I don't know of a child support worker in America who needs
another thing to do. But it did make a lot of sense for us to
be the point of information, brokering and referral for
services. We would refer them to the Parental Involvement
Program. We would refer them to mental health. We worked with
the Department of Corrections in order to identify those
fathers who were in prison. And together--and you're right, it
was tough--we stayed up a lot of nights, and we had lots of
meetings before the meetings and after the meetings. But with
the support and the cooperation of a number of forward-thinking
folks in our State, we were able to get it started and to keep
it going. But it was hard work.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. Would you agree with Mr.
Raesz's recommendation that there be some flexibility in
adjusting arrearages and the history of non-payment so that
they can get out from under this?
Ms. Durham-McLoud. Absolutely, Madam Chair. It is our
desire to make child support orders consistent with the
father's ability to pay. If a father is incarcerated, the
prospects that they could pay $300 or $400 a month are slim and
none. So it makes no sense to give them that extra burden.
Remember, in some of our States, we also charge interest and in
some other States compounded interest. We can make it literally
impossible for low-income fathers to ever become current with
their obligation.
I am working with a young man now, who I told him already,
he will be paying child support well past the time that he
starts----
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. George, I would like to
recognize you. When I was talking with the folks in your group,
it was very clear that there was tremendous need for it among
these young men, to at least know their legal rights.
Reverend Gay. Absolutely.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. In child support and
visitation.
Reverend Gay. Which was going to be my comment. I am
finding that collaboration is only used on a very base referral
basis. They want to give you a name, and that's as far as they
want to go. They don't share any resources, they don't share
any knowledge. They give you a name. And then one of my youth
that you had met was referred by let's say disciplinary people.
As soon as they got a chance, knowing that he was in the
program, knowing that he was doing better than he had been,
they sent him away. Those same people that referred him.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. This is a very big concern
to me.
Reverend Gay. It's not collaboration at all. In my
viewpoint, what's happening maybe in my State and other States,
is people see a pile of money. They go after the money. They
don't really care about the client. They don't really care
about what's going on. All they care about is there's a pile of
money I can get, and that's about it.
Chairman Johnson of Connecticut. We are really seeing a lot
of these problems. The shelters are telling me, a lot of the
transitional living places are telling me if the person is
homicidal or suicidal, you can get an evaluation, but then you
can't get treatment.
So we do have to look at some of the systemic issues
involved in this idea of coordinating services, and trying to
deliver them more effectively. I think we also have to keep in
mind that this will be a new effort. So it's not going to work
exactly right at the beginning.
But thank you all very much for your input. It has been
very helpful to have you from all different sectors of this
effort. We thank you for your thoughtful comments.
[Whereupon, at 4:19 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
[Submissions for the record follow:]
Statement of David L. Manville, ACSW/LMFT, Family Counseling and
Mediation Department Supervisor, Family Counseling and Mediation
Department, Detroit, Michigan
I welcome the opportunity to submit written testimony on
the issue of fatherhood to the Human Resources Subcommittee.
This vital interest needs to be addressed, not just by this
Subcommittee but by the current Administration. In September
1998, I was afforded the honor of preparing material and
presenting to the ``White House Commission on Public Policy''
regarding the Fathers Count Act of 1998.
In the last decade, we have seen an increase in the efforts
of programs to assist fathers in becoming and remaining
involved with their children. Work still must continue to
negate the many barriers left-standing that prevent many
fathers, especially low-income fathers from becoming vital
components of their children's lives. From 1989 through 1998, I
coordinated the Paternity Parenting Time Program through the
Wayne County Friend of the Court, Third Judicial Circuit of
Michigan, in Detroit. The intent was to provide non-custodial
parents, mainly fathers with the opportunity to obtain
parenting time through a court order. The thought was that if
the fathers were granted parenting time and be able to have
access with their children, the amount of child support paid by
these fathers would also increase, or, at the least, remain
stable. In 1996 an analysis was completed of over 600 of these
cases: 300 cases of fathers with parenting time orders and 300
cases of fathers without parenting time orders and the
interaction with child support payments. Based upon categories
of ages, the fathers without parenting time orders were
substantially lower amounts of support paid (graphs attached).
Fathers that had orders for access to their children were
willing and eager to provide financially for their children.
A major complaint from fathers is that the amount they are
in arrearage also effects their seeing their children. Under
the current federal law, if they accumulate arrearage for any
reason, their child support arrearage cannot be adjusted ,
except from the date that the motion to modify is filed. While
presenting fatherhood/parenting issues to incarcerated
individuals recently, the men's primary concern was their child
support was continuing to grow while they were locked up with
no means to pay. These fathers wondered how they would be able
to contribute to their children's well-being and financial
security when they were already so deep in debt that they could
not see their way out.
This Court is attempting to secure funding for a program
that would allow the placement of satellite Court offices in
the community, especially communities where the default rate on
paternity cases sometimes reaches 60% or more. These fathers
have not had any contact with the Court regarding acknowledging
paternity, yet were adjudicated to be the father, have had a
child support order entered against them and yet have not had
any meaningful contact with the Friend of the Court to address
these concerns. These fathers, many of whom are low-income or
unemployed will boast an inordinate arrearage level; one from
which they have little if any hope of ever escaping from. Only
the Judges have the authority to use discretion in addressing
these cases, however with the Bradley Amendment in effect, the
Judges cannot offer any workable solution to these fathers.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5694.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5694.005
Statement of John Smith, Research Analyst, Alliance for Non-Custodial
Parents' Rights, Burbant, California
Focus of the Hearing
This committee's stated focus is on (1) low-income fathers
who have children outside of marriage and (2) helping low-
income fathers improve economically and promote marriage.
This hearing on fatherhood reveals a major
misunderstanding: it assumes fathers are the source of these
problems. They are not. Child support policy, along with
changing social mores, is the problem. Nothing can be done in
the short-term to change societal norms, but child support
policy can be fixed immediately.
Improving job prospects for low-income people--whether
mothers or fathers, parents or non-parents--is a good idea. But
with our current no-fault divorce laws and lucrative economic
incentives encouraging divorce, a problem emerges: as low-
income families become middle-class, they can expect to be
divorced by women, not men. Women initiate divorce at a rate 3
times that of men. The more financially independent the women
are--either from their own earnings or from child and/or
spousal support--the greater the chance of divorce. During
economic boom times, divorce increases. During recessions, it
decreases.
But what is the real goal for getting fathers employed--is
it to better their life or is it to generate an income stream
that the government will tap into to collect child support? If
it is the latter, it will fail miserably. It is not uncommon to
see wage garnishments of 50% of the noncustodial parents' gross
wages. At these staggering levels, why work? He won't be
bettering himself--he will be working more, incurring more
expenses, paying more taxes, experiencing more aches and pains
and having less free time--all for the benefit of someone that
doesn't like him enough to live with or vice versa. But if the
reason is to support his children, this too is a fallacy, as
child support won't help his children (see ``Myth: Child
Support Lifts Children out of Poverty'' below). He is expected
to take responsibility repaying a loan that he had no say in
getting (see ``Welfare: Grant or Loan?'' below). Rarely do
people pay something for nothing.
Obviously, women should not (and cannot) be held back from
their ambitions. Everyone needs to rewarded for taking
individual responsibility. The work ethic needs to be restored.
Our laws discourage responsible behavior (see ``Perverse
Incentives of Child Support'' below). Divorce is the only
contract in America that rewards that person breaking it.\1\
Child support is tax-free income with no accountability as to
how it's spent. Visitation violations and false abuse
allegations are not prosecuted.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Gallagher, Maggie, ``The Abolition of Marriage,'' Regnery
Publishing Inc., 1996.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another problem is that being a full-time mother is not
valued and respected in today's society. The feeling is that
women should be establishing careers while leaving the raising
of their children up to ``professionals.'' Then we are shocked
to learn that these professionals--whether it's a poor inner-
city babysitter or a Louise Woodward-type nanny--are slapping,
hitting and/or ignoring the very children they were hired to
raise. The message society and the media gives is ``you can
have it all.'' This is the ultimate quantity over quality
argument. It's greed. The reality is you cannot have it all,
all at once, all the time. The media is the biggest culprit in
this arena, not only perpetuating the myth that you can have it
all, but leading us to believe that ``everyone else is doing
it, so why can't you?''
It is important to recognize two distinct groups affected
by child support collections: welfare and non-welfare. Sanford
Braver points out in his book ``Divorced Dads: Shattering the
Myths,'' that a big difference exists between divorced fathers
and never-married fathers. Government policy is clearly
delineated along the lines of welfare recipients (a.k.a. Title
IV-D) and non-welfare recipients. This probably correlates well
with Dr. Braver's married/never-married division. So if new
government programs are lucky enough to ``work,'' child support
problems will shift from the welfare group to the non-welfare
group. They will not be eliminated. The remainder of this paper
will examine family issues that apply to all socioeconomic
groups.
Child support hurts children.
How could this be? After all, kids need to be clothed,
housed and fed and that takes money. And child support collects
this money for kids--at least in theory. Child support, with
its excessive awards and draconian punishments, only serves to
force noncustodial parents into exile, irreparably harming the
children. Child support allows single-parent households to
flourish.
Child support awards are excessive.--Compare the average
child support award against other government measures such as
welfare, foster care, social security and the poverty level.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Average Child Support Award\2\.. $733/mo........... noncustodial
parent's portion
only
Foster Care\3\.................. 358/mo............
Welfare (Michigan).............. 87.80/mo\1\....... $439/mo for a
mother + 2 kids
Welfare (San Diego)\4\.......... 128.57/mo\1\...... 900/mo--mother + 4
kids (includes
food stamps)
Average welfare benefit per 131.90/mo......... Feb 1997 TANF
recipient\5\.
1997 HHS Adult Poverty 657.50/mo......... 8,163 (1 Adult
Guidelines\6\. under 65)
1997 HHS Child Poverty 221/mo............ 10,815 (1 Adult
Guidelines\7\. under 65 with 1
child under 18)
Social Security Adult Disability 470/mo............
Income\8\.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 converted into ``child equivalents'' based on audit to child poverty
ratio of 3:1.
2 Palumbo, Greg, 1997 presentation to Oklahoma's Joint House and Senate
Judiciary Committee.
3 ``The Fight Against Child Abuse,'' People Magazine, Dec. 15, 1997
4 Market Place radio interview from KPBS San Diego, aired 2/11/98 on
KCRW.
5 AFDC/TANF Feb 1997 Flash Report
6 Statistical Abstract, table 758.
7 $10,815--$8,163 = $2,652 annually.
8 Hagen, Margaret, ``Whores of the Court,'' 1997, p. 274.
Even radical feminist and author Karen Winner confirms that child
support is excessive when she writes, ``There is accumulating evidence
that men are challenging their wives for custody of the children
precisely because it is cheaper to keep them than to pay child
support.\2\ Custodial parents often complain about how low support
orders are, but when suggested that they give up custody and they pay
child support, the screams are deafening. If support orders were
equitable, this wouldn't happen.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Winner, Karen, ``Divorced From Justice,'' ReganBooks, 1996, p.
52.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Child Support Punishments are Draconian.--Congress has passed
tougher and tougher legislation since child support's (Federal)
inception in 1975--always hoping ``this time it will work.'' It never
has and it never will. The Constitution along with individual rights,
have taken a beating in the process. Today, child support is the only
debt that one can be jailed for (debtor's prison), you can lose your
driver's license (or any license) even though your ``crime'' had
nothing to do with a car, invasion of privacy is rampant through
government sponsored databases such as the Federal Parent Locator
System (FPLS) and the National Directory of New Hires (NDNH). HHS' FPLS
tracks noncustodial parents' whereabouts and gives this information to
custodial parents. However, if the custodial parent moves away with the
children against court orders, such as Geraldine Jensen, founder of
ACES did3,4 (1) they are not prosecuted for kidnapping (or
violating a court order) and (2) HHS will not give the noncustodial
parents information on their children's whereabouts. In other words,
the FPLS is a one-way street. Administrative accountability is non-
existent. Bureaucrats are free to ruin your life (e.g. false paternity
assignments and incorrect reporting to credit bureaus), and they are
legally absolved of any liability. It's open season on noncustodial
parents.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ ``Gerri Stacks The Deck,'' Burch, D.C., The Paper--Toledo's
Alternative Weekly, May 19, 1995. Also at www.ancpr.org/gerri.htm
\4\ See Jensen's appeals case 1981 WL 5460 (Ohio App. 6 Dist.)
Also at www.ancpr.org/jensen.htm
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The current session of Congress has more ``get tough''
legislation introduced by Henry Hyde and Lynn Woolsey in
addition to Christopher Cox, less than a year after President
Clinton signed The Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act of 1998 into
law. Child support and penalties accrue during unemployment and
incarceration (even if you are a POW\5\ The state of Georgia is
considering ``work camps'' for noncustodial parents.\6\ Slavery
is making a comeback.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ ``Child-support-law amendment comes to attention of Hill,'' The
Washington Times, April 27, 1999.
\6\ ``County eyes work-release facility for `deadbeat dads,' ''
Richard Raeke, Walton County Tribune, March 14, 1999.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Myth: Child Support Helps Children.--Aside from the fact
that parents are forced into exile by our child support laws,
no study has ever shown child support to help children. And how
could it, since no accountability is required of custodial
parents. Custodial parents can spend this tax-free gift on
anything they want: booze, drugs, new clothes, a new car,
vacations--maybe even on the children. Nobody knows how much of
the money ever reaches the child. UCLA Professor William S.
Comanor estimates that only $1 in $5 of child support actually
is spent on the child.\7\ Why not adopt the same documentation
rules for custodial parents that the IRS requires for tax
deductions? Ditto for penalties and fines.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ ``Child Support Feels Different on Male Side,'' William S.
Comanor, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 22, 1999.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Studies do show that states highest in child support and
welfare payments rank lowest in child well-being (in fact, this
information was presented to this very same committee in
1995).\8\ Why? Money is a destabilizer or put differently, a
single-parent household enabler. What was responsible for
increasing child well-being? The intact family, something not
terribly popular with society's ``me, me, me'' attitude.
Divorces increase during economic boom times and decrease
during tough times. Child support, like welfare, creates an
individual economic boom (without requiring work, no less).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Testimony of Cynthia L. Ewing, Senior Policy Analyst,
Children's Rights Council, Feb. 6, 1995.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perverse Incentives of Child Support.--Child support not
only encourages irresponsible behavior, but demands it.
Consider the case of the responsible noncustodial parent who
works a second job to make up for the severe economic loss
child support payments have created. He's doing what we would
consider to be the responsible thing to do: improving himself,
supporting his current family. The work ethic. He will have
higher expenses, pay more taxes and have less time for himself
and his family. But when the custodial parent hears of his
second job, she files a petition for upward modification of
child support based on his new increased income. The judge will
grant this increase, as it is law. Net effect: the more
responsible you are, the more child support punishes you. Why
not cut back on your hours; even work less than full time?
Enjoy yourself. Plus, you could use this as a form of revenge.
The custodial parent has had all of her expenses paid for by
the taxpayer (prosecution, attorneys, court fees, admin
services). The noncustodial parent is forced to hire an
attorney, file court papers and miss work--all direct expenses
that he must pay. If he fails to do this, he will lose on
default judgment.
Welfare: Grant or Loan?--Welfare is treated as a grant. The
mother applies for welfare and gets it. The father has no say
in the matter. If it were a loan, there would be principal,
interest, late payment penalties and a length of the loan. For
the mother, it is a grant--there is no intention of it ever
being repaid, by her. But for the father, welfare that the
mother applied for and received--often without his knowledge or
consent--has now become a loan, complete with interest,
penalties, even jail. For low-income fathers, it may be a moot
point, as many do not earn enough to repay it.
For non-welfare fathers, why would anyone repay a loan that
they had no say in obtaining? Granting welfare to one party and
asking a non-participating party to repay this is the ultimate
in irresponsibility. If a mother must go on welfare, the father
should be offered custody of the children. If he assumes
custody, then the mother would work (consistent with welfare to
work policy) and pay the father child support.
Remember, collecting child support in welfare cases
produces no benefit to the mother or children. All money goes
back to the government. Please do not use the excuse that child
support will lift children out of poverty.
An underlying problem with child support is that awards (1)
do not reflect the dynamic nature of the economy and (2) are
not necessarily based on earnings. Child support is based on a
percentage of income, but not a dynamic or current percentage.
If the child support order is calculated during a high earning
period (overtime or commissions), then the noncustodial parent
is stuck with a high order. Likewise, if the parent becomes
disabled or get laid off, child support ignores these facts.
Why not make the percentage a true percentage? If your support
order is 20% and you get laid off, 20% of $0 = $0.
Secondly, child support orders are often based on imputed
wages--what the judge thinks you could or should be earning.
Why not simply use reality? Disallow imputed earnings and base
support on actual earnings. Imputed earnings, taken to
extremes, becomes legalized indentured servitude--slavery.
Another assault on the Constitution. The California Supreme
Court has already greased the slipperiest of all the slippery
slopes with its 1998 Moss decision.
No-fault Divorce.--As Children's Rights Council attorney
Ron Henry says, marriage is the fastest and surest way out of
poverty. Conversely, divorce (or splitting up if not married)
is the fastest and surest way into poverty. On average, over
3,000 divorces occur each and every day. No-fault divorce must
be eliminated. No-fault divorce may be the crown jewel of the
``me, me, me'' generation. Once you have a child, ``me, me,
me'' should become ``us, us, us'' (referring to the family).
Problem: Women Initiate Divorce 3 Times that of Men.--
Perhaps this subcommittee needs to open a new hearing on
motherhood and divorce. Most Americans believe the out-dated
myth that a man dumps his poor wife for some hot, young babe.
That's Hollywood. Reality is shockingly different: women
overwhelmingly dump men.\9\ Women breaking up families--not a
politically popular notion, but a reality. And what punishment
awaits those who break this (marriage) contract? Lucrative
spousal and child support awards.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ See Braver, Sanford, ``Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths,''
Tarcher/Putnam, 1998.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who Needs Marriage?--Talk about equality; marriage is on
par with being single. By making marriage equal to non-
marriage, there are no benefits to getting married--so why do
it? We've made marriage unnecessary. Unmarried couples can live
together, open joint bank accounts, buy cars, even get spousal
benefits assigned by their employer. What if you couldn't
receive child support unless you were first married (and no-
fault divorced was eliminated)?
Myth: Child Support Lifts Children out of Poverty.--
Children in poverty are on (or eligible for) welfare. All child
support collected in welfare cases goes back to the government,
not to the family. If welfare hasn't lifted these children out
of poverty, it is impossible for child support to do so.
Furthermore, child support advocates conveniently ignore the
fact that many families of noncustodial parents are driven into
poverty by child support orders. If all the unemployed, single
custodial mothers worked minimum wage jobs, an additional $70B
in household income would be available to children.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ ``Bucking the Trend,'' A Coalition of Parent Support
Whitepaper on California Law, Feb. 21, 1998.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fundamental Problem 1: The Greed Factor.--Child support
encourages greed. It boils down to the premise that (1) poverty
is the cause of poor child well-being and (2) money solves this
problem. Money has never solved any social problem. LBJ's war
on poverty is a perfect example. After spending trillions of
dollars, poverty is alive and well. Studies have also shown
that children raised below the poverty level academically
outperformed children living above the poverty level--the
reason: they were living in an intact family.\11\ As mentioned
above, money is a single-parent household enabler, a
destabilizer.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ Testimony of Cynthia L. Ewing, Senior Policy Analyst,
Children's Rights Council, Feb. 6, 1995.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current laws encourage custodial parents to get as much
money as possible from the noncustodial parent. The Bureau of
Family Support Operations in Los Angeles runs a public access
TV program that urges custodial parents to ask for increases
``because things change.''\12\ Nationally recognized child
support advocate Leora Gershenzon of The National Center for
Youth Law, commenting on the large increase in establishing
paternity orders said, ``Besides receiving child support, the
children will benefit from access to the father's medical
history, rights of inheritance and eligibility for the father's
health insurance.''\13\ The ACLU states, ``. . . it is
essential to consider ways to obtain an award that is higher
than the basic amount dictated by the guidelines.''\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ ``Focus on the Family,'' LA District Attorney's Office, Bureau
of Family Support Operations.
\13\ ``Unwed Dads Step Up for Legal Ties That Bind,'' Los Angeles
Times, March 8, 1998.
\14\ ``The Rights of Women,'' ACLU, Southern Illinios University
Press, 1993, p. 136.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greed is also encouraged within child support enforcement
administration, as their funding is based on child support
collected (or amount to be collected). If the goal is to
increase child well-being, why not base performance incentives
of these organizations on child well-being instead of money
collected? The fact that child support collections has become a
big business is another clue to its greediness. Lockheed-
Martin, the world's largest defense contractor, states that
child support collections is ``the company's fastest-growing
line of business.''\15\ In today's one-sided atmosphere of
``anything goes,'' private collection companies have no qualms
boasting about how they intrude on noncustodial parents' rights
and why these parents shouldn't have any rights.\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ ``COMPUTERS: Troubled Child Support Project Dies,'' Los
Angeles Times, Nov. 21, 1997.
\16\ Child Support Intervention, Inc., ``Mothers Against Fathers in
Arrears, No Bill of Rights,'' See www.deadbeatparent.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fundamental Problem 2: The Revenge Factor.--The concept of
custody (or primary caretaker) is the perfect vehicle for
revenge and is used everyday for just that. Why do we treat
children like property? ``She got the house, the car and the
kids.'' We've all heard it. When children are treated like
property (cold and callously), they act cold and callously and
we get situations like Littleton, CO. We are reaping what we've
sown. Our children are not suffering from too much parental
involvement, they are suffering from a lack of it, as is all of
society. When our children are not raised properly, everyone
pays the price. Time is needed to instill values in children.
When sole custody is awarded (sometimes under the name of joint
custody), not only does the child lose contact with that
parent, but the custodial parent is apt to suffer from what Dr.
Richard Warshak calls ``overload''--trying to be a full-time
parent while holding down a full-time job.\17\ Depression,
anger and hopelessness result.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ Warshak, Richard A., ``The Custody Revolution: The Father
Factor and the Motherhood Mystique,'' Poseidon Press, 1992.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
While billions of dollars are spent annually to enforce
child support, nothing is spent on enforcing visitation.
Visitation violations are as common as clouds in the sky, yet
they are not prosecuted. People like ACES' founder Geraldine
Jensen know they can break the law with no repercussions. HHS
proudly announced that they have made $10M in grants available
to study access (visitation). How does this $10M nation-wide
figure compare to support enforcement? Los Angeles County alone
spends $120M each year (and now wants to raise this 6 fold to
$720M). Adding insult to injury, a Children's Rights Council
member in Toledo notes that many of these grants are going to
battered women's shelters and other distinctly anti-male, anti-
father and anti-family groups\18\. Actions speak louder than
words.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ Young, Cathy, ``Ceasefire!,'' Chapter 5, Legislating the
Gender War: The Politics of Domestic Abuse, Free Press, 1999.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
False allegations of abuse (spousal and/or child sexual)
represent the largest social problem facing our nation. False
abuse claims are frequently used during custody hearings.
Because no trial is given and no evidence required, false abuse
is the perfect vehicle to gain instant custody of your child.
By the time your trial comes around, no judge will remove a
child from the parent who issued the TRO (temporary restraining
order). The party that lies, wins. What is needed is a strict
physical evidence standard in all abuse cases. Period. Vigorous
prosecution of people making false claims should follow. False
abuse allegations should carry stiffer penalties than the abuse
penalty itself, as the person is knowingly defrauding an
innocent person.
The solution
Having a Child is an 18-year Unbreakable Commitment.--When
a couple has a child, they have made an 18-year commitment--
regardless of their marital status. Children have the right to
be raised by both biological parents and the parents have a
responsibility to raise their children. As a society, we need
to demand accountability for their actions. If you don't think
you can stay with your partner for 18 years, you have no
business having a child. ``Move-aways'' would be strictly
prohibited unless otherwise agreed to in a written shared
parenting plan.
Child Support as a Last Resort.--Make shared parenting a
rebuttable presumption in all divorce and child support cases,
when parents cannot reach a voluntary agreement. Shared
parenting is based on a written plan (unlike joint custody) and
requires both parents to spend equal time (unless otherwise
agreed to) raising their children. Shared parenting focuses on
physical time spent with children and most closely emulates the
child's environment prior to divorce. Since each parent is
spending equal time and resources raising their children, the
need for child support collections evaporates. Child support
would only be collected in cases where one parent refuses to
either (1) spend half their time raising their children or (2)
follow and agreed upon parenting plan.
With child support eliminated, the greed factor is
eliminated. Parents know they cannot continually go back to
court and ask for more money (plus, free resources would not be
available to them). With the concept of custody dissolved, the
revenge factor disappears--there is nothing to fight over. If
false allegations of abuse (that cannot be backed up with
physical evidence) are made, watch out--you're headed for jail.
If you move away with your kids (of course, they are not your
kids), you will be prosecuted for kidnapping, unless agreed to
in your parenting plan.
With the greed and revenge factors eliminated, parents can
now concentrate on what they should have been doing all along:
getting on with their life.
Possible Objections.--The most likely argument against this
is that restricting ``move-aways'' violates a person's freedom
of movement. Once a couple has children, their freedoms
temporarily are overridden by the child's need to have both
parents and the parent's responsibilities. If a parent wants to
wander, then don't have kids. It's time to enforce responsible
behavior and hold people accountable for their actions.
Conclusions
Continuous introduction of child support legislation and
increasingly draconian punishments reflect the frustration of
24 years worth of failed policy. With each new failure, the
same ``get tough'' mantra is repeated instead of looking for
new, fair and permanent solutions. Personal responsibility is
defined as zipping off a check once a month and only applies to
noncustodial parents.
Thinking that low-income fathers can be ``fixed'' has two
major flaws. First, if the low-income group becomes middle-
income, then child support problems will simply shift into this
category and not be solved. Secondly, if low-income fathers are
put to work simply so the government can take the money they
earned and pay it to the mother--why work? In many cases, child
support is 50% of a person's gross pay. This explains why many
quit after their employer informs them of a wage garnishment.
Getting a new minimum wage job becomes an instant doubling of
their pay.
While societal change is an unclear and long process, our
laws can, and must, be changed now--switching their sole focus
from money to increasing parental involvement. This means
maximizing the involvement of both parents. Shared parenting is
the mechanism to do this. The greed and revenge factors would
be eliminated from family law. A strong message of the work
ethic, personal responsibility and accountability is what these
new laws must promote and reinforce. Kids need parents, not
money.
Child Support: Myths & Realities
Myth: Money (i.e. Child Support) Solves Problems (Of Kids Being
Raised In Poverty, Poor Child Academics, Behavior Problem,
Child Well-Being, etc.)
Reality #1: Since no accountability exists to
ensure that child support is actually spent on the child, this
claim cannot be substantiated. UCLA Prof. William S. Comanor
has research showing that only 20% of child support is spent on
children.
Reality #2: Child support acts as a single-parent
(read: broken home) enabler. Child support, like welfare,
enables one parent to take the kids and move away from the
other parent. This causes irreparable harm to children.
Reality #3: Poverty is not the cause of poor child
well-being, in fact, studies show just the opposite. An intact
family was the key determinant for child well-being. States
with the highest welfare and child support payments ranked
lowest in child well-being. Why? That money was a single-parent
household enabler, children were raised in non-intact homes.
During economic booms, divorce increases; during tight times,
divorces decreases.
Reality #4: Trying to solve poverty by throwing
money at it won't work. We know that thanks to LBJ's War on
Poverty programs. Money has never solved a social problem.
Reality #5: Parental (that's both parents)
involvement is what kids need. Matthew Eappen had two well-
educated, prosperous parents--but lacked parental involvement,
preferring to hire nanny Louise Woodward (a teenager no less)
to raise their child.
Myth: If All Uncollected Child Support Was Paid, It Would Save
The Taxpayers A Bundle
Reality #1: A figure of $34B-$41B is commonly
referred to as uncollected child support. The government and
other sources indicate it is in the $5B range. And how would
they know it's $41B? No central repository of support orders
exists that is accurate. It is a well-known fact that many
duplicate support orders exists (which should never happen) and
that erroneous bills are routinely sent out. Los Angeles County
is a prime example of this.
Reality #2: The medical, behavioral and academic
problems created by children raised in single-parent households
dwarfs the cost of welfare. These costs include not only
police, jails, hospitals and courts, but the psychological
costs of citizens living in fear.
Reality #3: Child support orders are excessive by
any measure. The average support order exceeds that of welfare,
foster care, social security disability--you name it. As
pointed out in a 1992 GAO study and later confirmed by ASU
researcher Sanford Braver, most parents who don't pay child
support cannot afford to pay it.
Reality #4: Mothers are free to get welfare. Until
this program is changed to disallow this practice, the
taxpayers will be funding single-parent households, which is
the genesis of these problems.
Myth: Child Support Will Lift Children Out Of Poverty
Reality #1: All child support collected in welfare
cases goes to the government, not children. If welfare hasn't
``lifted kids out of poverty,'' then child support surely
can't.
Reality #2: Poverty is not the problem; Money is
not the solution (see first myth above).
Myth: Child Support Orders Are Fair
Reality #1: Many custodial parents complain that
child support is too low. However, when asked to reverse the
support order (i.e. give up custody and pay the exact same
amount of child support to the other parent), the scream bloody
murder.
Reality #2: While over $5B is spent annually on
child support collections, nothing is spent on visitation
enforcement. HHS boasts they have allocated $10M in grants to
study visitation and access--that amounts to less than 0.2% of
the budget.
Reality #3: The government gives custodial parents
information on the whereabouts of noncustodial parents through
the Federal Parent Locator System (FPLS). But when custodial
parents kidnap or move the children, HHS will not give
noncustodial parents information on where the children are
living.
Reality #4: Welfare: grant or loan? The mother
initiates this process, receives all the benefits and is not
expected to repay the government one cent. The father, on the
other hand, usually doesn't know the mother has applied for
welfare, has no say so in the matter and is expected to repay
welfare plus penalties and interest!
Reality #5: Making false allegations of abuse is a
well-known and well-practiced tactic in family law. False
allegations are not prosecuted, physical evidence is not
required (hearsay will do) and no trial is given. In short,
you're guilty until proven innocent and you are denied your due
process of law.
Reality #6: Even radical feminist Karen Winner
states in her book, Divorced From Justice, that child support
is excessive--clearly exceeding the amount necessary to raise a
child. (p. 52).
Myth: Paying Child Support Shows Responsibility
Reality #1: Raising a child takes a lot more work
than simply zipping off a check once a month. To equate writing
a check with raising a child is ludicrous.
Reality #2: Most people would not consider an
able-bodied person who parks in handicapped spots a responsible
person as long as he paid the fine. Why do we think this way
when it comes to child support?
Statement of Bill Harrington, President, American Fathers Alliance
Introduction
America is in the midst of a continuing family policy
crisis. While policymakers search for answers after years of
family decline in America and after years of both Congressional
and State legislating on welfare and several issues relating to
women and children; America is just now looking toward
FATHERHOOD for answers. The American Fathers Alliance supports
the work of the House Human Resources Subcommittee in holding
this hearing and we look forward to the valuable information
various researchers may provide on the value of involved
fatherhood and strategies for reversing our decline of positive
father parenting in America. What we look for most, is the
realization that fathers are parents too, and that America's
history of marginalizing positive father parenting has been to
the detriment of not only fathers and family life in America,
but the greatest detriment has been to the children of America.
We urge Committee members, and all interested people, in
reading the attached document; The daddy bond: The earlier a
man starts to care for his baby, the better. This detailed two
page article by Richard Laliberte appeared in Parents magazine,
November of 1995. By detailing the critical value of father
parenting in the first six months of life, we ask one question,
where is the public policy, law or procedure, anywhere in our
welfare system or legal system in any state, especially for
unwed fathers, designed to meet this critical aspect of
positive child development? Our failure to have answers to this
question makes it clear that America's fatherhood crisis is
deep and vary pervasive. Further, we must look to the equally
pervasive common child residential schedule of EVERY OTHER
WEEKEND with the other parent approved by our legal system in
most cases. Even though not one recognized mental health
professional or reputable author on the subject of parents or
parenting, recommends that in most cases, EVERY OTHER WEEKEND
meets the needs of a predictable majority of children, this
pattern of limited parental involvement by fathers, amounts to
a scheme of institutionalized child abuse. This is an outcome
in over 60% of all cases of separated parents with court
ordered Parenting Plans/Child Custody Orders. This is where the
debate over social support and funding for programs for
divorced and unwed fathers begins, because it is only with the
understanding that what most fathers want most of all is one
thing--to be able to see and parent their children--without
undue hassle from the mothers and undue interference by
government officials.
The American Fathers Alliance joins with many father
organizations from all over America, and other supporting
organizations and individuals, in wishing for the success of
these hearings and the open doors to funding of fatherhood
programs that are so critically needed.
First Things First
To its credit, in 1996 Congress and President Clinton
through the Personal Responsibility Act, enacted a special
program entitled: Non-Residential Parents Access Grant Program.
Congress appropriated $10,000,000 in federal funding to start
this program. All 54 jurisdictions have develop programs and
applied for funding, both the public and private sectors. This
was the first and very honest recognition that non-residential
parents, somewhere between 85 and 90% of whom are fathers, were
in need of federal programs and financial assistance to enable
them to be more involved with their children and better
parents. In effect for years, we had a national tolerance
program for parental kidnapping of children. Father/child
relationships had no recognized value and violations of court
orders concerning father/child relationships are still
routinely ignored. Fathers are an unrecognized national victim
of systematic and routine violations of civil rights--the
fundamental right to be a parent. When the White House Welfare
Reform Task Force submitted its proposal to the president for
his final consideration, the collective task Force
recommendation was for an appropriation of $200,000,000 per
year for the Access Grant Program. The American Fathers
Alliance calls upon Congress to fully fund the one existing
fatherhood program in the amount of $200,000,000 per year as a
first gesture of serious attention to the needs of all fathers
at the start of the 21st Century. If we are to invest in the
future of our children, that investment must start here.
Unwed Fathers
The most critical issue for never-married fathers is
establishment of the parent/child relationship. Even though
Congress has enacted wide sweeping paternity establishment
goals to the several States, Congress failed to create programs
to assist unwed fathers in delicate social situations from
enacting the critical parent/child parenting relationships.
Research has shown that if unwed fathers physically hold their
newborn child in their hands within the first 24 house of life,
these fathers are 50% more likely to stay involved in the life
of their child. Congress should create such a program for
fathers at hospitals and birthing clinics, and fund the program
sufficiently. When enacted and properly funded, this success
would greatly reduce our difficulties enacting realistic child
support orders, WITHOUT FABRICATED ARREARAGES, and instead
create voluntary paying fathers in more cases of children born
to unwed parents. The key issue missing from existing policy is
the dignity of the infant/father relationship. Again , as
stated in the attached research from Parents magazine, we see
the value of an involved father in the first six months of
life. This tangible investment of an involved father is the
best early child development program. An involved father is the
cheapest investment the federal government can make in the
lives of these children. AGAIN, A FATHER IS THE REPLACEMENT FOR
GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS, BUT GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS ARE NOT A
REPLACEMENT FOR FATHERS!!!
Secondly, for unwed fathers, is needed a program to
determine the best living environment for the child prior to
entry of any court order. Congress should enact a national
Friend of the Court program, modeled after Wayne County in
Michigan. This program acts quickly when either parent first
contacts the government for services. The parents are asked to
immediately come in for parenting interviews, and a
professional does a parenting assessment, and renders a
recommendation to a Judicial officer. In this current program,
a slight majority of parents recommended for child placement,
as in the best interest of the child, are FATHERS. This program
of fairness for children born in sensitive and delicate
situations, should be modeled and expanded to other critical
urban areas.
Further, this Wayne County program in Detroit reflects the
second level of the best interest of the child, THE BACON
TRAIL. Once we have determined, initially, the best interest of
the child, we can look at stability and employment, and
childcare services, WITHOUT the necessity of government
funding. Most fathers are willing and wanting to work. With a
child in their home to care for, and with the dignity of being
a fully engaged and responsible parent, the father is more
likely to raise the child without needed public services for
either the father or the child. We know from federal welfare
reform the easy cases are now off the welfare rolls, and we are
left with the longer term, more difficult family situations.
Research shows that by the end of the second year after the
birth of the child, the average father is earning at or around
$15,000.00. This puts the father/child relationship just above
the federal poverty level, and moves the child out of a
dependency lifestyle. In comparison with their mothers, the
child would remain in a dependency lifestyle for several years,
living through public subsidies of various forms funded through
a variety of federal programs. THE BACON TRAIL, the home with
the bacon and a strong work ethic, is most often the proven
better home for the child. Congress needs to fund programs
where fathers can have contact and get assistance in providing
and protecting their young children, and where residential
placement with the father, is in the best interest of the
child.
Additionally, The American Fathers Alliance, Statement for
the Record, at the March, 1999 hearing on Childcare, provided
another father-friendly strategy for positive father-child
relationships and reduces federal expenditures. Having a Father
as First-Choice childcare policy, we can use limited federal
resources for the truly needy cases, where there is no father
available for childcare.
Fragile Fathers--Fragile Families
The American Fathers Alliance fully recognizes the
dysfunctional childhood many fathers experienced, and further,
that a number of fathers have fallen victim to life's many
compromises and find themselves in economic chaos and a
significant number involved with substance abuse of one kind or
another. Fatherhood programs are needed to assist these fathers
in re-gaining their personal and parental equilibrium so they
can function as responsible citizens, and most important,
function as male parents. Congress would do well to provide
funding for a variety of programs to assist male parents who
really want help and are willing to work within guidelines
until they can operate on their own and secure living wage
employment. This is one area where Child Support policies need
to be flexible to avoid unjustifiable increasing ARREARAGES,
and unrealistic orders when the fathers are not working for
pay, but rather are working on their personal character so that
they may once again function as male parents without any social
support. Rather than making permanent criminals out of these
imperfect parents, Congress can create programs that will offer
America's greatest gift: A SECOND CHANCE.
Divorced Fathers
Most divorced fathers are in need of a single national
program--a program for FAIRNESS. Unjustified anti-father bias
is rampant in our legal system in all states as well as in all
social service programs. Congress could meet a minimum need of
all fathers by funding serious educational programs on the
extensive value of positive father parenting and FATHER-LOVE.
Judges and other courthouse professionals involved in working
with separated family members, need to understand the
significant negative impact of orders that unreasonably work to
deny the formation and/or maintenance of father/child
relationships. Congress should fund research to determine the
number or percentage of children of divorce, who experienced
unreasonable and unjustified limited contact with their
fathers, and who later engaged in anti-social behavior and/or
criminal contact. If we want to assess the social cost of
fatherless children, we need to look at this crucial area. The
answers are there and they are not pretty, but if we are to
maintain this national standard of discrimination against
fathers and children, we need to at least understand the
consequences of this conduct. If America wishes a more gender-
neutral program of deciding divorce outcomes, an extensive
Judicial educational program on fatherhood needs to be funded.
The report of the United States Commission on Child and Family
Welfare: Parenting Our Children--In The Best Interest of the
Nation, 10-96, should be reviewed for its many positive parent
recommendations. The Minority Report's of Commissioners John
Guidubaldi and Bill Harrington should be reviewed for more
specific recommendations directed at fathers and fatherhood.
Divorced fathers cover the spectrum of all income levels.
For significant numbers of what were middle class fathers at
the time of separation, once these fathers are assessed
significant child support orders, orders for maintenance/
alimony, and temporary attorney fees, significant numbers of
these middle class fathers actually meet the low income or
poverty levels needed to qualify for program assistance. These
fathers deserve federal funding for non-profit programs to
assist fathers in all areas of family law, including
calculation of child support.
Conclusion
Children NEED fathers. Fathers ARE parents. If we are to
see dramatic change in the lives of our children then
government needs to pay attention to these two simple
statements and apply them to any programs and legislative
solutions they consider when dealing with families. We cannot
continue to treat fathers as paychecks and visitors in the
lives of their children and expect children to grow into
wholesome adults. Fathers need to be treated AS parents and
recognized for the valuable contributions that they endow upon
their children. For those less educated, programs should be
developed that help educate the needy. It is not financial need
that should drive legislative action for families, but rather,
educational need that will bring us out of the darkness which
lies before us. Until we resolve to treat fathers as parents
and children as beings in need of their fathers, we can only
expect the worst from future generations.
What We Must Do.--Congress should approve father-friendly
legislation under the Fathers Count Act of 1998. This
legislation should make positive father parenting a national
priority. Congress should approve substantial funding--at least
$2 Billion for nationwide and targeted fatherhood programs. A
public relations campaign should be launched to make the word
``FATHER'' a positive term in American discourse and a greater
reality in every day family life. An inventory should be taken
of federal laws, policies and programs that serve to discourage
father involvement, and a campaign launched to repeal these
provisions and substitute father-friendly sections. Congress
should encourage the National Governors Association to survey
state laws, policies and procedures for language that serve to
discourage father involvement, and undertake efforts to repeal
l these provisions and substitute father friendly provisions.
The term ``DEADBEAT'' should be outlawed and classified as a
hate term in criminal statutes, and become actionable when used
against individual parents by public officials and social
service bureaucrats.
The 21st Century should begin with an equal call to
parenthood and greater involvement in the lives of children by
loving and caring fathers as well as mothers. The federal
government should become father-friendly by moving to
prioritize parenting matters equally for mothers as well as
fathers and de-emphasizing financial outcomes as now our
highest priority for children.
Statement of Stuart A. Miller, Senior Legislative Analyst, American
Fathers Coalition
Madam Chair and Honorable Members: The American Fathers
Coalition applauds Chairwoman Nancy Johnson and the rest of the
esteemed members of this Committee for the efforts they are
making to find ways to more meaningfully include fathers in
children's lives.
This proposal is a step in the right direction and we
support this initiative. However, we don't feel that this
proposal goes quite far enough. Our primary concern is that
this proposal seems to do little to nothing for divorced
fathers, whom we proffer face similar, if not greater
obstacles, to involvement in their children's lives as do the
targets of this initiative.
The detrimental and well documented consequences of father
absence are not limited to children from socially or
economically disadvantaged families. Children from all walks of
life are suffering the consequences of father absence. Those
same children, like all children . . . love, want and need
fathers involved in their day-to-day lives. Obviously we are
talking about the super-majority of fathers, the 99.9% of
fathers that are not a threat to their children . . . fathers
who could be involved in their children's lives, but for one
reason or another, are not.
There is no greater crisis facing America today that the
degradation of the two-parent, married, intact family. We need
to do everything we can to restore and prop-up that most
preferred living arrangement for children. However, when that
living arrangement breaks down, we need to do everything we can
to try to ensure that children are allowed to have the maximum
involvement of both parents in their lives. In particular, we
need to provide a support structure for all fathers. We need to
enable and encourage them to be there for there children. When
you have a weak link in a chain, you support the weak link. It
makes no sense to put so much strain on that link that you
practically ensure that it will break. AFC suggests that this
is exactly what have done . . . encouraged the link to break .
. . and we have allowed it to remain broken.
Congress has taken a very active role in trying to ensure
that children's needs are met. But, with regard to parents,
those efforts have been primarily focused on the financial
needs of children. Until now, the arguably more important needs
of children . . . the physical, emotional and psychological
needs have received far less attention than they deserve.
Some detractors to father involvement suggest that this is
an area that is best left up to the states. And it may be.
However, the same rational that prompted Congress to get
involved in the financial support of children would also
clearly justify Congress' involvement in these other areas,
too. As a matter of fact, pursuing efforts to maximize father
involvement in children's lives may be the most productive and
most cost effective means of financial child support
collection. Census Bureau Statistics, based on mother-only
reporting and a host of reputable studies show a direct
correlation between father involvement and financial child
support compliance. Where fathers have joint-custody 90.2% pay
all of their support on time and in full. Where fathers have
visitation, almost 80% (79.1%) pay all of their support on time
and in full.
With the vast majority of child support cases being non-
TANF cases, Congress should allow divorced dads to participate
in Congressional fatherhood initiatives, too.
Thank you.
Additional Resources--Women May Be Inhibiting Greater
Father Involvement
With dual-income families now the norm, why are many women still
carrying the majority of the responsibility for housework and child-
care? Is it because of the ``lazy husband'' who only wants to watch TV
when he returns home, or the ``macho man'' whose responsibility it is
to take out the garbage, not change a diaper? While fingers have
pointed at men, new research looks at the other side--how women may
inhibit the collaborative efforts they are requesting.
The current issue of the Journal of Marriage and the Family
includes the first study to define and empirically document ``maternal
gatekeeping.'' The study explores how women's beliefs and behaviors may
actually be one of the potential factors inhibiting a collaborative
effort between men and women in housework and child-care. The article
is based on a sample of 622 dual-earner mothers.
``While many mothers in the work force feel they need more support
in family work, most don't even realize their actions may be placing
obstacles in the way. They, themselves, may be limiting the amount of
their husband's involvement,'' said Sarah Allen, author of the study
and recent Brigham Young University graduate student.
Maternal gatekeeping is defined as having three dimensions
including the following:
(1) Mother's reluctance to relinquish responsibility for family
matters by setting rigid standards;
(2) the need for external validation of one's mothering identity;
and
(3) traditional conceptions of family roles.
Included in these dimensions is the various ways wives manage,
exclude or choose their husband's levels and types of paternal
participation in family work. According to the study, 20 to 25 percent
of dual-earner wives may be classified as ``gatekeepers.'' It is also
interesting to note that the conceptualized dimensions of maternal
gatekeeping tend to be a ``package deal''; mothers higher in one
dimension, were generally higher in the other two as well.
Standards and Responsibilities
Some women discourage their husband's involvement by redoing tasks,
criticizing, creating unbending standards or demeaning his efforts to
protect authority in the home. This is most evident when wives act as
household managers by organizing, delegating, planning, scheduling and
overseeing the work done by husbands in order to maintain
responsibility for the day-to-day aspects of family work. Their
husbands, then, act as helpers by doing what is requested. But, this
pattern may also encourage fathers to wait until they are asked to help
and to request explicit directions.
Maternal Identity Confirmation
Rather than issues of control and management, in this
dimension of gatekeeping, it is common for a woman's self-
identity to be tied to how well she thinks others view her
homemaking and nurturing skills. Because of this belief, she is
more likely to resist her husband's involvement, as it would
diminish her value.
Differentiated Family Roles
Differentiated family roles refer to roles for mothers and
fathers that reflect a clear division of labor and distinct
spheres of influence. Here, a mother who thinks family work is
primarily for women may be hesitant to encourage paternal
involvement and increase the likelihood she will monitor her
husband's involvement.
As stated in the study, some women both cherish and resent
being the primary care-giver, feel both relieved and displaced
with paternal involvement, are both intentional and hesitant
about negotiations for more collaborative sharing, and feel
guilty and liberated with more involvement from men in family
work. This ambivalence about increased paternal involvement
serves to keep the gate to the domestic garden periodically
swinging open and closed with gusts of wind invisible to
fathers.
``This is a very complex subject filled with a variety of
gender issues,'' said Alan Hawkins, second author of the study
and director of the BYU Family Studies Center. ``While the term
has been loosely used in the field, no one has previously
investigated its many dimensions or adequately defined it. With
more attention to these issues, perhaps more mothers will be
able to achieve greater collaboration with their partners.''
The maternal gatekeeping study was conducted and written by
Sarah M. Allen and Alan J. Hawkins, research associates of the
BYU Family Studies Center. Alan is one of the few graduate
students to have her master's thesis published in the premier
journal in the field.
BYU Family Studies Center The Brigham Young University
Family Studies Center is dedicated to conducting quality family
research and providing valuable information to families that
will enhance their lives. The Center has the largest
concentration of family research faculty in the nation and is
eager to become a valuable resource for family related issues.
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore contact fathers'
involvement in their children's schooling. Twenty fathers were
interviewed and data analysis sought to describe and interpret
common patterns and themes. Four key findings emerged from the
study:
(a) all fathers who participated expressed a strong desire
for school involvement, and believed they had a responsibility
to be involved;
(b) the majority of fathers were not currently involved;
(c) the majority of fathers reported that they were
prevented from or obstructed in their efforts to become
involved;
(d) fathers reported that the loss of their children was
the major consequence of separation and divorce and that this
sense of loss extended to loss of involvement in their
children's schooling.
The findings from this study will be of relevance to
practitioners and policy makers in law, education, and mental
health in developing policies consistent with changes to
Commonwealth Family Law.
Statement of Cory J. Jensen, Legislative Assistant, Men's Health
Network
The Men's Health Network welcomes the opportunity to submit
testimony on the issue of fatherhood. The Human Resources
Subcommittee as well as the current Administration should be
applauded for recognizing fathers as an integral part in their
children's lives. As current fatherhood initiatives are being
considered we must make efforts to reduce the barriers that
keep fathers from becoming involved with their children. We at
the Men's Health Network are concerned that any programs
undertaken could be subject to fail due to problems caused by
the Bradley Amendment.
Based on a brief survey which included responses from
thirty-six states, fathers identified arrearages as a factor
keeping them from becoming more involved with their children.
Many of these arrearages accumulated due to illness,
unemployment or underemployment. Such arrearages might be
called ``ghost arrearages,'' arrearages that would not exist if
the child support order had been modified, based on the
parent's actual income, to properly conform with the state's
guidelines. These fathers want to be responsible and pay for
their child support, but they simply do not have the means to
pay. Once these fathers obtain a job that allows them to
contribute to the upbringing of their children, they are
already thousands of dollars in debt and financially ruined.
The courts have recognized that child support often times needs
to be modified in accordance with the father's ability to pay.
Yet the court's ability to modify a child support order is
hampered by the Bradley Amendment [PL 99-509 Subtitle B Sec.
9103].
Bradley Amendment Impedes Progress
Federal law requires that a child support ordered be
adjusted (or modified) at the request of either parent, to
match the parent's ability to pay either more or less child
support. However, the Bradley Amendment passed Congress in 1986
and states that a child support order cannot be modified
retroactively under any circumstances, except to the date that
a modification was filed and the other party was served. In
many circumstances, fathers are not aware that they can file to
have their child support changed if they become unemployed or
are unable to work due to a medical condition or injury. During
an extended hospital stay, arrearages can accumulate to
incredible levels. Unfortunately the court cannot modify these
arrearages to the initial point a father's earning level is no
longer adequate vis-a-vis his child support payment.
Amending the Bradley Amendment to allow judicial discretion
would be strongly advised. Judges can determine the difference
between a father that cannot pay his child support due to a
legitimate reason and the father that willfully chooses to not
pay his child support.
State Legislators Ask for Relief
Attached to this testimony are letters by state legislators which
stress the problems that they have found in relation to the Bradley
Amendment. For instance, the Oklahoma State Legislature has found the
Bradley Amendment to be impeding on their ability to effectively pass
their own laws.
Jim R. Glover, Speaker Pro Tempore Emeritus, of the
Oklahoma House of Representatives, wrote:
``. . . the Bradley Amendment superceded legislation that was
intended to allow finding and establishing of truth and being
fair in paternity cases, specifically a marriage where a wife
had an adulterous affair that resulted in a child being born
that was not her husband's.
``. . . similar situations . . . because of the Bradley
Amendment. A temporary child support order cannot be
retroactively modified after a paternity determination finds an
accused man not to be the father of an out-of-wedlock birth. .
. . where a parent was given their children to raise by the
other parent, who never modified a child support order, only to
be assessed the unpaid child support . . . at a later date. . .
. citizens who have paid child support through a non-official
process, where the parent is then forced to pay a second time.
. . . other instances where an injured parent does not or
cannot modify child support, who loses income, and then becomes
recorded as another nonpayor with arrearages.
``Apparently the intention of this Federal Law is that it is
more important to collect money from anyone as child support
than allowing the truth to dictate what is fair.''
Fellow State Representative Bill Graves also expressed his
displeasure with the Bradley Amendment:
``I am hopeful that the Congress will repeal the Bradley
Amendment involving child support matters . . . the Bradley
Amendment is not only unconstitutional, it is unwise and
unrealistic.
Oklahoma State Senator and Family Law Attorney, James A.
Williamson indicated his experience of how the Bradley Amendment
adversely affects the modification of child support:
``In those cases, when a non-custodial parent has, by
agreement, taken over physical custody and there is no formal
change of the Court Order, the modification of the child
support should be effective as of the date of the change of
custody. The Bradley Amendment currently prohibits that
effective date. I therefore respectfully suggest Federal Law be
amended to allow for those circumstances.''
Case Examples
While the Bradley Amendment effectively ties the hands of
state legislators, its largest impact is on the fathers and
mothers that suffer unreasonable arrearages. These arrearages
also have the effect of alienating the children from the parent
saddled with such a large debt, discouraging marriage, and
destroying 2nd families. Many of these fathers are candidates
for the very fine fatherhood programs being contemplated by
this committee or currently being implemented by the
Administration.
Here is just a small sampling of the hundreds of responses
received by the Men's Health Network.
Arizona.--After downsizing at a major international
airline, a father was forced to either take a job in a new
location outside of the state or to find a new job and stay
near his daughter whom he has joint-custody of. He chose to
stay in Arizona and seek new employment. A reduction in child
support was denied, as it was determined that he left his job
voluntarily to seek a lower wage job. Over a three year period,
arrearages have accumulated to over $10,000.
California.--A father is arrested for failure to pay child
support and arrearages. Arrearages accrued due to father's
inability to work after an automobile accident placed him in
intensive care and subsequent nine-month recovery.
Connecticut.--A father accrued arrearages after he lost his
job due to work-place restructuring. When seeking modification
of child support order arrearages continued to accumulate due
to court delays.
A father accrued arrearages after losing his job due to
disability. Arrearages continue to accumulate at the level of
his previous income, not at present level of disability
payments.
Delaware.--Father on disability. His children received
payments as a result of his disability. However, his child
support was not modified and he was not credited for the
children's share of his disability payments directly to their
mother. As a result, he accrued unmanageable arrearages.
A father was laid off work at a refinery. Long term
unemployment resulted in unmanageable arrearages.
Florida.--A father accrued arrearages after a hernia
operation and subsequent inability to work.
A father accrued arrearages after child support order was
not modified once he became the custodial parent.
A father placed on disability accrued arrearages.
Georgia.--Several cases of fathers who have lost their jobs
and fallen so far behind on child support that they could not
make up their arrearages.
A father accrued arrearages after he became disabled and
was jailed after he was unable to pay.
Illinois.--A father injured from a serious auto accident is
forced to find a less physically demanding and unfortunately,
lower paying job and accrued arrearages that he could not pay.
Massachusetts.--A divorced father lost his $72,000 a year
job and was forced to move to California to find work in a
related field at $20,000 less a year. Mother moved with
children to Pennsylvania. Father accrued $83,000 in arrearages
due to period of unemployment and long delays from conflicting
court jurisdictions while trying to get the support order
modified.
A father accrued $10,000 in arrearages due to an accounting
error at the department of revenue.
A father accrued arrearages because child support was
assessed at the non-custodial level even once the children came
to live with him.
Michigan.--A father accrued arrearages after the Friend of
the Court based his child support payments on an income not in
accordance with his actual income.
A father accrued arrearages while recuperating from back
surgery.
Nevada.--A father lost his job due to company downsizing.
After finding a job that paid less he filed for a reduction in
child support, but accrued arrearages in lieu of a court
decision.
New Jersey.--A father accrued arrearages due to court
delays in assessing his child support order.
New York.--A disabled father accrued arrearages when the
deductions from his disability check were not credited toward
his child support payments. Additional arrearages were
accumulated due to improper coordination between the courts in
New York and New Jersey, where his children live with their
mother.
A father accrued arrearages due to illness and
unemployment. After becoming ill with hepatitis, he was laid
off due to unavailability of sick leave.
North Carolina.--A disabled veteran had his child support
order placed at the level of his ``potential earnings'' instead
of at the current level of his disability payments. Unable to
pay the monthly support order, which exceeded his monthly
income level, he was considered in contempt of court and sent
to jail.
Ohio.--A father accrued arrearages after being laid off.
Additionally, child support order was based on child being
placed in full time day care although the child is now older
and attends school.
Pennsylvania.--A father accrued arrearages while unemployed
yet child support order was maintained at a level in accordance
with his previous income.
South Carolina.--A father accrued arrearages due to being
laid off from job.
Tennessee.--A father accrued arrearages due to inability to
work after a work-related accident.
Texas.--A mother accrued arrearages due to unemployment and
health problems.
A father lost his job when the company he worked for
closed. He accrued arrearages during his long period of
unemployment.
Virginia.--A father is held in contempt as he failed to pay
his arrearages due to a broken collarbone and pending surgery.
A father accrued arrearages while unemployed even though he
was the custodial parent.
Conclusion
While this is only a small sampling of cases, it
demonstrates the problems inherent with the Bradley Amendment.
Although these hearings do not specifically address the Bradley
Amendment, we feel that members of Congress should know that
the fine fatherhood initiatives being promoted by both the
Administration and Congress cannot meet expectations as long as
the men who participate in those programs are burdened with
child support arrearages that are unreasonable and do not
reflect their earning capacity during the period that the
arrearages accrued.
Further, society's goal of encouraging marriage among this
population is impeded when these fathers are burdened with
``ghost arrearages,'' debt that would not exist were it not for
the Bradley Amendment. Arrearages also hurt second families
when this improper debt overcomes a struggling family's ability
to cope with unemployment, illness, or injury. Courts need the
flexibility to help create a family, but potential wives will
be reluctant to marry a man, even if they have a child
together, if it means that she is marrying an unmanageable
debt.
To that goal, we are suggesting changes in the Bradley
Amendment which will allow a court to modify an order
retroactively unless the arrearage was accrued during a period
when the person could have paid but willfully chose not to do
so.
House of Representatives
State of Oklahoma
April 22, 1999
Mr. Cory Jensen
Men's Health Network
P.O. Box 75973
Washington, D.C. 20013
Re: Committee on Ways and Means
Dear Mr. Jensen:
In my tenure as an elected member of the Oklahoma State House of
Representatives and now holding the position and title of Speaker Pro
Tempore Emeritus, there have been numerous instances where Federal Law
has superceded the ability of the people of the State of Oklahoma to
determine what is best for Oklahomans. Nowhere has this been more
apparent than when it comes to laws that impacts the family, family
dissolution, or instances where families never form after an out-of-
wedlock birth. I have seen numerous instances where members of state
agencies such as the Department of Human Services and the Division of
Child Support Enforcement have interfered with, or opposed good
legislation because of possible conflict with Federal Law.
This year the Oklahoma House of Representatives passed unopposed a
bill that would clarify paternity establishment and afford protection
to a husband who knew a child born in marriage was not his. This bill
was killed in Senate Committee after a letter was received from a
Federal Child Support Enforcement Official from the Dallas Regional
Office threatening to cut off Federal Funding for Social Programs in
Oklahoma. It was later discovered that three words in the bill needed
to be changed and these words were to clarify retroactive modification
of child support because of the Bradley Amendment. The impact of this
letter and the Bradley Amendment (P.L. 99-509, Subtitle B, Sec. 9103)
superceded legislation that was intended to allow finding and
establishing of truth and being fair in paternity cases, specifically a
marriage where a wife had an adulterous affair that resulted in a child
being born that was not her husband?s. Apparently the intention of this
Federal Law is that it is more important to collect money from anyone
as child support than allowing the truth to dictate what is fair.
Apparently similar situations of being unable to correct an
injustice can exist in many other instances because of the Bradley
Amendment. A temporary child support order cannot be retroactively
modified after a paternity determination finds an accused man not to be
the father in an out-of-wedlock birth. I have heard plenty of instances
where a parent was given their children to raise by the other parent,
who never modified a child support order, only to be assessed the
unpaid child support plus arrearages at a later date--effectively
paying twice and to a parent who did not provide support. There have
also been complaints from citizens who have paid child support, through
a non-official process, where the parent is then forced to pay a second
time. There are other instances where an injured parent does not or
cannot modify child support, who loses income, and then becomes
recorded as another non-payer with arrearages.
It is time to let the State of Oklahoma decide when it is
appropriate to give judges discretion to retroactively modify child
support so that it can be fair to all. It is time for Congress to give
the State of Oklahoma the autonomy to determine what is in the best
interest of the citizens of Oklahoma.
Sincerely yours,
Jim R. Glover
Speaker Pro Tempore Emeritus
House District 65
House of Representatives
State of Oklahoma
April 22, A.D. 1999
Mr. Cory Jensen
Men's Health Network
P.O. Box 75973
Washington, DC 20013
Ref: Committee on Ways and Means
I am hopeful that the Congress will repeal the Bradley Amendment
(P.L. 99-509, Subtitle B, Sec. 9103) involving child support matters.
First, under the Constitution, Congress has no powers in regard to
domestic relations matters. Under Article 1, Sec. 8 of the
Constitution, the Congress has only certain enumerated powers. James
Madison, the so-called Father of the Constitution, said the Federal
government had only certain enumerated powers and that all the rest
were left to states. This is made clear by the 10th Amendment to the
Constitution which provides: ``The powers not delegated to the United
States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states, are
reserved to the States respectively, or the people.''
Thus, for Congress to legislate in the matters of child support or
child custody, such as the Bradley Amendment does, is an
unconstitutional use of powers. Congress should not interfere with the
rights of the States to decide matters in this area through their own
elected state legislators.
In addition to the foregoing, the Bradley Amendment creates
problems in cases where a non-custodial parent has, by agreement, taken
over physical custody of the child even though there is no formal
change of court order. The Bradley Amendment prohibits a modification
of child support in this circumstance being effective as of the date of
the change of custody. Thus, the Bradley Amendment is not only
unconstitutional, it is unwise and unrealistic.
Very truly yours,
Bill Graves
State Representative, Dist. 84
Oklahoma State Senate
April 22, 1999
Mr. Cory Jensen
Men's Health Network
P.O. Box 75973
Washington, DC 20013
Re: Committee on Ways and Means
I have been requested to submit a letter indicating my experience
as a Family Law Attorney with the issue of modification of child
support.
I have been in Family Law practice 23 years in Oklahoma and I have
found that many times parties make post-decree agreements which are not
reduced to a Court Order. In those cases, when a non-custodial parent
has, by agreement, taken over physical custody and there is no formal
change of the Court Order, the modification of the child support should
be effective as of the date of the change of custody. The Bradley
Amendment currently prohibits that effective date.
I therefore respectfully suggest Federal Law be amended to allow
for those circumstances.
Sincerely,
James A. Williamson
Statement of Richard ``Casey'' Hoffman, President, National Child
Support Enforcement Association, and President, Child Support
Enforcement, Austin, Texas
Chairwoman Johnson, Representative Cardin, and
distinguished members of this Subcommittee: I am writing to
submit written comments of the National Child Support
Enforcement Association (NCSEA) for the Subcommittee's April
27, 1999 Hearing on Fatherhood.
However, first I want to thank you for your long-standing
commitment to issues that affect families--fathers, mothers,
and children alike--and particularly for this Subcommittee's
focus on improving aspects of the child support enforcement
program. As you know, the National Child Support Enforcement
Association is a national, non-profit organization over 50,000
professionals that, through education, training, and advocacy,
works to ensure that children receive financial and emotional
support from both parents--mothers and fathers alike. As you
prepare to delve into the issues related to fatherhood in this
country, and perhaps respond with new legislation, NCSEA would
like to share with you our perspective and recommendations.
NCSEA Recommendations
NCSEA's statement today reflects our unique vantage on the
intersection of programs that serve fathers and the state-federal child
support enforcement program that serves families. NCSEA urges committee
members to incorporate the following two recommendations into any
forthcoming legislation related to fatherhood:
Allow state Title IV-D child support enforcement programs
to administer any congressionally authorized and appropriated funds to
the states for the purpose of promoting responsible fatherhood to help
young men become better fathers and providers; and
Require fathers to establish paternity in order to be
eligible to participate in any responsible fatherhood initiative.
Background
There is a growing recognition that responsible, loving fathers
make a valuable contribution to the well-being of their children and to
society. It is also clear that children who grow up without a
responsible father in their lives are more likely to be poor, to drop
out of high school, to end up in foster care or juvenile justice
facilities, to bear their own children out of wedlock, and to be under-
employed as adults.
More than any other agency in state government, the child support
program is in a position to reach out to fathers separated from their
children--to provide benefits and to benefit from supporting
responsible fatherhood initiatives. Fathers who are employed are better
able to pay child support and support their children, as are fathers
who have a positive involvement in the lives of their children.
Child support agencies are already involved in forging
relationships with fathers. The national child support community has
already begun to forge relationships with community-based organizations
providing services to fathers--often at the initiation of the
community-based organizations that recognize the importance of
establishing paternity and paying child support as a key element of
responsible fatherhood.
In the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation
Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-193), Congress recognized the important role the
child support program plays in promoting responsible fatherhood by
requiring states to establish paternity for 90% of the children born
out of wedlock and by including the block grant for access and
visitation programs in the child support title of the Act.
Child support agencies' involvement will provide consistent,
comprehensive message development. Appropriating any block grant or
other funds through the state child support agency will ensure that the
message of responsible fatherhood is consistent and comprehensive,
including the message that establishing paternity and providing
financial and emotional support are critical to child well-being.
Indeed, a father who fails to establish legal paternity has no legal
standing under the law with respect to his child.
Child support agencies provide a natural link to coordinate with
TANF programs to develop self-sufficiency. An effective responsible
fatherhood initiative for low-income fathers should be coordinated with
the state TANF agency, so that there is a comprehensive strategy to
develop self-sufficiency for the family. The child support agency
already has such a relationship with the TANF agency, including with
computer data that links mothers and fathers.
Child support agencies already require mothers to cooperate to
receive services and are in an ideal position to instill such
responsible decision-making in fathers as well. Establishing paternity
should be a condition of receiving services from a responsible
fatherhood program. These programs are intended to provide assistance
in getting a job or improving job skills, as well as to develop or
enhance parenting skills. In return for receiving these services, the
father should assume legal responsibility for his child through
paternity establishment.
Moreover, Congress has already increased the cooperation
requirements on mothers; they now are required to name the father of
their children and to cooperate in establishing paternity for their
children in order to receive government benefits such as cash
assistance. If mothers fail to cooperate, they are subject to sanctions
that range from a 25% reduction in benefits to no benefits at all for
the family. Fathers should also be required in order to receive
fatherhood services to enhance job and parenting skills.
Child support agencies are already expected to increase fathers'
role in families through welfare reform's new national goal of
increasing paternity establishment. Finally, as noted, Congress has set
very ambitious standards for states to establish paternity in 90% of
the cases of children born out of wedlock--in recognition of the
importance of the role of fathers in their children's lives. Requiring
the fathers to cooperate will help our country achieve this goal.
Conclusion
Child support enforcement agencies touch the lives of the
families that need assistance the most from fatherhood programs
and of the children who need their fathers. A united approach
to family building will result in a better future for children.
I urge members of this Subcommittee to seriously consider
adopting NCSEA's recommendations if we are to fund coordinated,
effective fatherhood programs.
Thank you for holding this important hearing on fatherhood
and for the leadership that you and other Committee members
provide on such critical family issues. Your work will have a
lasting impact on those American children who live in single
parent households.
Statement of Gregory J. Palumbo, Ph.D., Oklahomans For Families
Alliance, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
The Removal of Fathers from the Family
What is the status of families in Oklahoma? Oklahoma has
one of the highest divorce rates in the nation, one of the
highest rates for out-of-wedlock births, one of the highest
rates of teen pregnancy, and one of the lowest rates of
paternity establishment. The marriage rate in Oklahoma has
plummeted since 1980 so that now Oklahoma has nearly equal
numbers of marriages and divorces. The rapid decline of two-
parent family structure in which to raise children in Oklahoma
has coincided with the passing of Federal Laws and Federal
Agency policies, enacted by the State of Oklahoma, that provide
incentives for broken families. Fathers have almost exclusively
been the targets of these laws and policies with the true
losers being the children.
Unfortunately, many of the behaviors that result in these
negative social indicators for children are learned, and passed
down from generation to generation as the welfare and
entitlement philosophy and programs demonstrate. Oklahoma and
the nation have promoted policies that devalue the importance
of a two-parent family and make it easy for families to never
form, hinder their formation, and make it far to easy to
dissolve a marriage . . . especially when children are
involved. What has in affect been done through policy and law
is that one parent can to do what is in the best interest of
the parent, without accountability or having to take
responsibility for choices, that ultimately put children at
risk and in harms way. In almost every case, it is fathers who
have been driven from their families or have never been allowed
to enter, creating the next generation of fatherlessness and
children at risk.
In the mid-1960's Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted the
outcome of driving fathers from families in order for mothers
to qualify for welfare benefits . . . society would pay a price
for fatherlessness with increased social problems. Senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan was right. The consequences of
fatherlessness for children, for being raised in a broken home,
are associated with dramatic increases in suicides, being
homeless or runaway, exhibiting behavioral disorders,
performing poorly in school, becoming a high school dropout,
becoming teen mothers, and filling prison beds.
Legislation that affects the family is unequivocally the
most important bills considered in the State and the Nation,
and their enactment into law affects everyone--today, tomorrow,
and for future generations to come. So why has this nation
taken family structure made of two parents, a structure that
worked for millennia, and in a short 40 years created
incentives to destroy it?
There was a lesson to be learned from the welfare
experiment that failed. In 1960 there was over 700,000 families
receiving AFDC. And as more entitlement programs were added to
the welfare package, the numbers of single parent families
headed by mothers rose dramatically so that by 1994 there were
over 5 million of these families, over a 700% increase in
welfare families while the nations population hadn't doubled,
with more than 15% of all families with children under 18 now
receiving AFDC and numerous other entitlements. Generational
welfare was occurring whereby a family on welfare produced the
next generation of welfare recipients and non-welfare mothers
were being recruited into the program. Fathers were excluded
from these families by law, in order for mothers to qualify for
welfare benefits, with the end result that children were being
raised without the presence of a father or the stability of a
two-parent family. We now have a need to teach young men how to
be fathers as a consequence of this policy. Money and benefits
paid to only one parent for having children, and excluding a
parent that was almost always the father, were the incentives
that caused the destruction of two parent families for the
poor. We now repeat this process through cash incentives for
divorce, but now we call it child support.
It is clear to see how laws of good intention were twisted
due to money. As the number or welfare recipients increased, so
did the budget, and so did the bureaucracy, and so do taxes.
According to the Heritage Foundation, the total state and
federal expenditures for welfare benefits exceeds 500 billion
dollars. The cost to society for the criminal legal and prison
industries costs another 500 billion dollars per year . . .
incarcerating mainly children raised in fatherless homes. This
does not include the 100s of billions in dollars in costs we
must pay because of divorce or the subsequent problems
associated with broken families. And as the family consisting
of a father and mother and children disappears, the federal and
state budgets continue to increase, as we need more programs to
deal with the problems created by raising children in broken
families.
There is a crisis in America because of out of wedlock-
births and divorce. Nearly one third of all births today are
out-of-wedlock, and over half of divorces today involve
children under 18, with 50% of these occurring when the
children are younger than 5 years of age. Approximately 1.5
million parents with children join or add to the ranks of
families with children at risk every year--who are being raised
absent one biologic parent--the father. Yet less than 10% of
biologic fathers have primary physical custody of their
children after divorce, separation, or because the children
were born out-of-wedlock. Then, only one in 6 children see
their father weekly after divorce or separation. And ten years
after divorce or separation only 1 in 10 have weekly contact
with their father, and 66% have no contact what so ever. When
fathers are so important for the well being of their children,
both financially and emotionally, why does Oklahoma and the
nation continue to provide incentives to exclude fathers from
families and their children? Why have we replaced a failed
welfare and entitlement policy with a private entitlement
policy funded by fathers in the name of child support which was
mandated by the Federal Government in laws passed since 1975?
Money and jobs can be the only answer since the surest way to
remove children from poverty is to raise them in an intact two
parent family, and not raise them in a single parent family.
Our state laws and their treatment of fathers today are not
much different than the laws that created the welfare problem,
providing financial incentives to states, an industry, and one
parent to drive fathers from families. You may ask why do we
not have legislation in Oklahoma that promotes marriage and
ensures children have two parents? Follow the money to see who
benefits. There are cash incentives in the form of block grants
from the federal government to the states for broken families.
Broken families also provide jobs programs. In 1994, California
received a net income to its general revenue fund of 108
million dollars in federal block grant dollars above its costs
for child support enforcement. It made money from broken
families. It also spent over 355 million dollars in child
support enforcement . . . huge jobs program for the state.
Oklahoma in contrast received 2.6 million dollars in net income
to the state while spending 18.6 million dollars on child
support enforcement. This cash flow for broken families will
continue to increase dramatically as more states receive more
dollars for broken families in the form of these federal block
grant reimbursements. In 1998 there were over 60,000 employees
in federal and state child support enforcement divisions while
there were only a little over 100,000 IRS employees. And for
all of these employees, the cost of this enforcement was over 1
billion dollars more than the money collected for families on
welfare as reimbursement to the taxpayer for these expenses,
which was the original purpose for establishing child support
enforcement. The bottom line is that broken families are
profitable to states and to too many groups including private
business, and they provide clients for social programs and the
criminal justice industry.
Young Men Want to be Fathers to Their Children
In 1998 The Oklahoma Fatherhood Program of COPE, Inc. held
fatherhood classes in the Oklahoma County Juvenile Detention Center as
a pilot program. There was only sufficient time and space to enroll
young teenage fathers while the program was offered. Almost every one
of the young men enrolled in our classes came from a broken home absent
their biologic father, and they were now fathers to children born out-
of-wedlock. They were repeating the cycle of their childhood. Some of
the mothers of their children already had new boyfriends (approximately
15-20%) driving some of the young fathers out of the lives of their
children. Yet all of these young men in a few short weeks demonstrated
they had a desire to be a father to their child(ren). Each went through
parenting class, watched instructional videos, participated in
discussions on fatherhood, etc. Every one of the participants in the
class exhibited a real commitment to be a part of their child's life.
The Fatherhood classes ended when the funds for the pilot program
expired.
There are other examples that demonstrate men wish to be parents
for their children. The voluntary paternity establishment program run
by the Office of Child Support Enforcement and state agencies is one.
Approximately 80% of men identified by the mothers as the father of
their child show up in the hospital for the birth, even though
paternity establishment through DNA testing will demonstrate many are
not the biologic father. Then there are numerous fathers after divorce
who spend thousands of dollars trying to enforce access and parenting
time orders so that they can see their children. If fathers did not
care about their children, fathers wouldn't try to remain involved in
their child's life after divorce, and one would expect fathers to be
the driving force behind divorce--yet mothers file the vast majority of
divorces for no better reason than a bad hair day according to research
by Dr. Sanford Braver. Then there are studies which indicate many
mothers see no need for father involvement in rearing children, and
further, that many mothers interfere with a father's access to his
child(ren). Many of the problems fathers have had in being a parent to
their children can be traced to Federal policies and laws that have
rewarded states for broken families with a focus on money and child
support. It is clear from the Congressional Record of the 1980's that
it was not the intent of Congress to promote only the financial support
of children by the legislation being considered, and that was made into
law, but that emotional support for children should also receive
priority. Unfortunately states and custodial parents do not receive
money for the emotional support of children so there has been little
legislative activity or enforcement in this area.
Father Cleansing through Policy and Law
Federal and state laws that paid a mother to not marry the father
of her children was bad public policy, yet now it is being expanded
through privatization. In order to maximize the financial support of
children and mothers, Federal Law superceded state laws for
establishing child support obligations based on the needs of the
children and circumstances of the parents. Again the Federal government
has its fingerprints all over these destructive policies. First came
the laws, and then consultants for the Department of Health and Human
Services and the Office of Child Support Enforcement began promoting
child support guidelines to states that went well beyond the cost of
raising children. One of these consultants has a child support
collection company under contract to many states where they collect on
both ends . . . raising child support guidelines and collecting child
support. What is clear from data collected by the Census and analyses
performed by others is that child support doesn't remove children from
poverty and it likely never can or will. Why? Because poor people have
children with poor people . . . parents who are unskilled, have less or
little education, or have other limitations. The best way to remove
these children from poverty is to promote marriage and provide both
parents with the skills and education that will allow them a better
future and less need for government assistance.
Instead the nation has gone in an opposite direction . . . Federal
law has subsequently mandated that fathers be defined as criminals upon
failure to financially support their children regardless of
circumstance. States have been more than willing to comply with Federal
law by vilifying fathers and passing laws that punish fathers for
failing to pay.
What types of fathers are we punishing with these harsh laws? We
have laws in Oklahoma and elsewhere in the U.S. that make a husband
financially responsible for any child born in marriage, even if the
mother had an adulterous affair and left her husband prior to birth of
the child. We allow a mother of a child to withhold informing the
father that she had a child out-of-wedlock, and then years later come
back for back child support regardless of the man's current
circumstances--like a second family and children to support. There are
states that apparently do not care who the father is for paternity as
long as some man is called the father and a child support order is
entered. And then there are fathers who willfully raise their children
full time for years after a mother leaves them in their care, only to
find years later that they did not modify a child support order so they
can now pay back child support to the parent that abandoned the child.
We allow states to force a person to work overtime or obtain additional
employment in order to survive after having to pay oppressive child
support, knowing full well that the primary beneficiaries of the policy
are federal and state tax revenue coffers, then the child/mother, and
then the person earning the money. Federal and State law penalizes
fathers who lose a job by making them debtors due to child support,
often with interest added to the debt, and possible imprisonment. There
are mothers who are being forced to work because their husbands can't
keep any of the extra income they earn due to child support and taxes,
thus robbing children of their parent's time. There are fathers and
their wives who are distraught because the father needs medical care
that will prevent him from having income and paying child support for
several weeks or more . . . making him a deadbeat and a debtor with a
possible prison term. Many of these problems are due to one specific
Federal law . . . the Bradley Amendment (P.L. 99-509, Subtitle B, Sec.
9103) that prevents retroactive modification of child support when
warranted. Congress needs to modify this law so real circumstances can
be taken into account when it comes to child support obligations, and
let the states decide how best to do this.
Where are the studies examining how many fathers have been legally
cutoff from their children and families, financially bankrupted by the
child support policies and laws, who have lost careers or businesses by
becoming entangled in this quagmire of flawed social policy and law,
who have spent their retirement accounts trying to stay up to date on
child support, that have had to give up seeing their children because
the mother moved with the children or interferes with access, or who
have been sent to county, state, or federal prison? Why is it that all
we hear about is the dollars collected, the dollars owed, and the
newest laws that will further vilify and punish fathers whiling growing
federal and state government bureaucracies and industries that are
parasites of the intact two-parent family and children? How have we so
lost our way in a short 40 years?
A Solution to Fatherlessness
The federal financial incentives for broken families must end if we
are to re-establish the intact two-parent family as the norm--an
environment where for millennia children and society have flourished.
We must as a nation hold both parents of children truly accountable for
financial and emotional child support, thus removing the financial
incentive for one parent to divorce or never marry. We must change laws
like the Family Support Act of 1988 that has served as a family
destruction incentive act, a divorce industry and government
bureaucracy growth and reward act by reinserting discretion,
circumstances, and common sense when setting child support awards. We
must modify the Bradley Amendment (P.L. 99-509, Subtitle B, Sec. 9103)
that prevents retroactive modification of child support when warranted.
Making a father into a debtor to the state or another parent due to
child support will not solve the problem of children being raised in
poverty, but will drive fathers from the life of their children.
Congress needs to modify this law so real circumstances can be taken
into account when it comes to child support obligations, and let the
states decide how best to do this. We must begin to disassemble the
federal and state bureaucracies that parastize families and promote
their destruction using cash and other entitlements as the incentive,
and redirect their efforts to education and promoting family formation.
The damage done to men and fathers for 40 years must also be reversed.
Men raised in fatherless homes and children experiencing it for the
first time must be educated on the role of fathers in the family and in
society. Women must be educated to the risks they expose their children
to by having children out-of wedlock or after divorce. We as a nation
must begin to reassemble two-parent family structure through public
policy and law, by mainly removing the incentives for creating single-
parent families.
It has only been in the last few years that Congress and the nation
have begun to examine public social policies in regards to family and
the role and importance of fathers. It is time for this Congress to
act. As a first step in the reintegration of men and fathers into the
family, Congress should pass the Fathers Count Act of 1998. Many young
boys and men who have been raised absent a father have many of the
social ills and characteristics associated with fatherlessness. These
young men have many of the characteristics of long-term welfare
dependants requiring assistance. These young boys and men need
education, job skills, mental health and substance abuse treatment,
family counseling involving the mothers of their children,
transportation, etc. Most importantly these boys and young men need
access to their children on a regular and continuing basis from birth
onwards, so that they form the emotional bonds that are so important
for the child's development and for themselves to remain involved in
financially and emotionally supporting their children through life.
Congress should approve substantial funding for the FATHERS COUNT
ACT OF 1998 of at least $2 billion for nationwide and targeted
fatherhood programs. Public relations campaigns should be instituted to
educate the public to the needs children have for two biologic parents,
and the risk mothers and their children face by choosing single-
parenthood, divorce, and a non-stable or non-traditional two-parent
family lifestyle. The National Governor's Association should be urged
by Congress to survey, examine, and identify state laws, policies, and
procedures which discourage two-parent family formation and stability,
or that criminalize fatherhood so that they may be rewritten or
repealed. If this Congress takes steps now to recognize the importance
of fathers in childhood development, then we as a nation can begin the
21st Century promoting the involvement of both mothers and fathers in
rearing children in an intact two-parent family within marriage, and
the benefits that their children will receive from this traditional
family structure.
Statement of John R. Stoutimore, Attorney at Law
1. At the time of John Rabon's divorce, Mrs. Rabon was given
custody of the three children and Mr. Rabon was ordered to pay support
by wage withholding.
2. Texas Child Protective Services subsequently placed the children
with Mr. Rabon after determining that Mrs. Rabon had abused and
neglected them.
3. In Texas, the Title IV-D agency is the Office of the Attorney
General (OAG). Mr. Rabon requested the OAG's assistance in terminating
his child support payments and obtaining support from Mrs. Rabon.
4. After confirming that the children lived with Mr. Rabon, the OAG
wrote Mr. Rabon's employer and instructed the employer to cease child-
support withholding.
5. The OAG did not file a motion to terminate Mr. Rabon's child
support obligation. Consequently, Mr. Rabon's child support liability
remained in effect.
6. Further, the OAG did not file suit to obtain child support
payments from Mrs. Rabon.
7. Because Mr. Rabon's child supportliability did not terminate
when his employer ceased withholding, Mr. Rabon's 1998 income tax
refund has been seized for ``child support arrearage.'' The children
remain with Mr. Rabon.
John R. Stoutimore
Attorney at Law
Fort Worth, Texas
March 30, 1999
Men's Health Network
Attn: Ms. Tracie Snitker
P.O. Box 75972
Washington, DC 20013
Re: John Rabon
Dear Ms. Snitker:
In my family-law practice, I have met several child support
obligors who have complained of (1) the OAG's wrongful seizure of
income tax refunds to pay non-existent child-support arrearages; and
(2) the OAG's refusal to seek modification of child support orders when
the subject children have begun to reside with the obligor.
John Rabon's case is a prime example. At the time of the Rabons'
divorce, Mrs. Rabon was given custody of the three Rabon children and
Mr. Rabon was ordered to pay support via wage-withholding.
In February 1998, a Child Protective Services (CPS) caseworker
determined that the children had been abused and neglected in their
mother's care, and the children were sent to live with Mr. Rabon
without court action. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Rabon requested the OAG's
assistance in terminating his child support payments and obtaining
support from Mrs. Rabon. The OAG asked Mr. Rabon to confirm his actual
CPS-authorized custody of the children, so Mr. Rabon obtained a
confirmation letter from the CPS caseworker. This 5/12/98 letter is
attached as EXHIBIT A.
Based upon the CPS letter and other information provided to the
OAG, the OAG wrote Mr. Rabon's employer on 6/1/98 and instructed the
employer to cease withholding. This letter is attached as EXHIBIT B.
Now, by letter dated 3/5/99, the Department of the Treasury has
notified Mr. Rabon that $1,071.00 of his income tax refund for 1998 has
been withheld because of a child support arrearage asserted by the OAG.
This letter is attached as EXHIBIT C.
Mr. Rabon insists he had no notice whatever of any claimed
arrearage and is now attempting to obtain a full return of the monies
withheld. Too, he is considering filing a pro-se suit to terminate any
technical arrearages as of the date the children began living with him,
and to obtain support for the children from Mrs. Rabon. It appears to
me that the OAG should file the case for him. Two issues present
themselves:
1. First, when the OAG learned that the children were living with
Mr. Rabon, why didn't it file a motion to terminate Mr. Rabon's child-
support obligation and obtain support payments from Mrs. Rabon? The OAG
knew that merely terminating the employer's withholding would not
terminate Mr. Rabon's support liability, and it also knew that such
letter would not obtain any support whatever from Mrs. Rabon.
2. Second, although the OAG letter obtained temporary relief for
Mr. Rabon, such relief was short-lived given that the OAG subsequently
seized his tax refund. The OAG could assert that Mr. Rabon was already
in arrears when the OAG instructed the employer to stop withholding--
but if that were the case, the OAG should not have stopped the
withholding. Hence, we must conclude that the OAG seized Mr. Rabon's
income-tax refund over a paper-arrearage that arose after the employer
stopped withholding. In other words, the OAG letter caused the
arrearage.
Having experienced the OAG's reluctance to perform its duties in
cases such as this, I believe any effort to correct these errors
through local OAG personnel will be met with hostility or, at best,
inaction. Can you provide me with a contact person responsible for
investigating the OAG's actions in this case and obtaining relief for
Mr. Rabon and the Rabon children?
Please feel free to call or fax me at the above address. My e-mail
address is [email protected].
Very truly yours,
John R. Stoutimore
[Exhibits A, B and C are being retained in the Committee files.]