Rise of the Zeta Male

In some states in the US you can lose a driver’s license if child support is backed up too much. It doesn’t make much sense-how are you going to get to work to pay support if you can’t drive there? Now in Canada your credit ratings might suffer as well. The idea is to restrain these men from spending and having money because they won’t pay for child support.


There are a few things rather illogical about this. The first is, it hinders the economy. How can people who are having their finances cut actually spend money and put forth towards job development? Even worse, how can they make money in order to actually pay the child support if you hurt credit ratings so they can’t get a roof over their heads?


Doesn’t make much sense. And it gets even trickier.


It is hard to determine (during the paperwork process) which people can’tpay child support and which people won’t. There is a huge difference. No matter what you think of child support laws, those who can’t pay are put in a worse situation than those who won’t, because they are treated the same way and get unjust punishments.


So why don’t we consider something else. Why don’t we give assistance to people who are struggling? By assuming that they can’t pay instead of won’tpay we can work with things like job assistance to keep these people employed, well fed, and able to survive on their own we can then move on to also working to help their children. We do more damage by punishing everyone for the what the few are guilty for than by helping everyone, and punishing those that don’t follow through in the end (those that are then proceeding to do well after receiving assistance can have assistance taken away/garnished wages/etc.).


Punishing these men, who often don’t deserve to be punished doesn’t help the kids. If we really want to be in the “best interest of the child” it needs to be about getting the child the best and most resources we can make available, and the last thing that will help that is making resources harder to maintain.


We toss men into jail without having a lawyer, because men are poor. We aren’t going to get men who can’t pay to pay if they are stuck in jail and cannot work. If 13% of South Carolina’s prison population is “deadbeat” dads where men are rarely (2%) even given a lawyer can you really call it a working system? No, without a lawyer you cannot prove that you cannot both pay child support AND survive on your own, tossing innocent men into jail is just going to be counterproductive.


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