Wanted: Deadbeat parents

Deadbeat parents of both genders suck. I think we can all agree on that. Anything that can be done to call them out should be done.

 

i'm not so sure i woulda kept paying someone eight bills a month in child support when she only saw the kids at christmastime in my damned house, no less, which, in the eyes of the law, woulda made me a deadbeat parent.

 

Wow, so your mug is plastered on those pizza boxes?

 

I have no problem with this. Anything to shame deadbeat parents, especially deadbeat dads, because it makes things so much more difficult on those of us who actually care.

Hell, run their pictures in the paper.

 

I have no problems with it either.

As Starman so eloquently put it, if you don't want to pay child support, don't fuck. And if you must, wrap it up. Twice if you have to.

 

Most deadbeat parents probably don't give two shits about this. Most of them can afford child support. They just don't because there are so many cracks in the system it's easy to get away with it.

Although it would have been funny to order a pizza one night and see my (step)daughter's father's mug on the pizza box.

 

My dad almost never paid. They passed a law that allowed the court to arrest deadbeat parents. He went to jail a few times, and we'd get a few checks before they'd stop coming again. That was over about 4-5 years. We probably received a grand total of $300 in that time. And my sister and I never visited, but that was for other reasons.

Now, my wife's dad lives with a woman who has refused to marry because she got alimony and child support checks from her ex-husband. He paid her for years, and he always knew that she was living with another guy who had plenty of income and who treated the kids as his own. I don't know what to think of that scenario, but it sure seems to indicate a flaw in the system.

The pizza box thing should work well. But it'd be nice if the pizza boy could follow up with an investigation into who's actually getting and spending the money and for what , whether the parents really deserve it, whether the deadbeat is working for cash and socking away what he makes, etc.

 

Or if he's delivering a pizza to a deadbeat dad whose on photo appears on the box.

 

That's certainly the cliche, but it's not remotely supported by the evidence.

This is among the most crack-free system ever invented. For the last decade, the federal government has required every state to match the list of parents delinquent on child support to lists of bank account holders in the state. By the same law, "deadbeat" parents are required to have all employment data on file with the state child-support agency.
If anyone has fallen through the cracks, it's because they've disappeared from the mainstream economy.

Which leads me to the next point. "Deadbeat dads" are overwhelmingly poor, frequently unemployed or working in seasonal or low-wage work and -- in some cases -- in and out of jail.

As for the myth of the rich dad living it up while his kids live on Ramen noodles, I don't doubt that it happens, but it doesn't reflect the overwhelming majority of these cases.

 

If you bring a child into the world, you should take responsibility for it. If that means you don't get spend your money on what you want to, too fucking bad. Parents (male or female) who don't pay their child support deserve no sympathy.

And it's not a myth that well-to-do fathers force their kids to live on ramen noodles. It happens. Happened to me, so shove your "poor, pitiful, mistreated dads" shit where the sun doesn't shine.

 

Sportschick,

You and I both dealt with poverty and a deadbeat dad. But you have to admit that not every experience is the same. In fact, I never really blamed my dad. He just didn't have the capacity to support us. It wasn't as though he had money himself. But your situation is probably unique, and so are many others.

 

I know every experience isn't the same, and I know that some people can't afford to pay their child support. Your situation isn't unique, but neither was mine. There are a lot of parents (and not just dads) who can afford it, but don't pay their child support b/c they want to make like hard on their ex-spouse (or whatever their reasoning is). To pretend that these people don't exist is foolish.