Cathy Young has an outstanding Reason column on the “Deadbeat Dads” phenomenon:
[…] men who father children they can’t support are irresponsible – as are the women who have those children. But no conservative has ever bashed welfare moms as viciously as conservatives and liberals bash ‘deadbeat dads.’ Most welfare opponents stress that women on public assistance want to be self-sufficient but are trapped by a bad system; ‘deadbeat dad’ rhetoric nearly always assumes that the men wilfully refuse to support their children. And, while everyone recognizes that women who fall on hard times need help, a man who owes child support may not find much sympathy when he loses a job.
Not surprisingly, inflamed “deadbeat dad” rhetoric was launched on its errant trajectory by an appeal to faulty (and outdated) advocacy science — and so joins date rape and domestic violence as “epidemics” that never were…
Young’s argument begs the question: what is the correlation between deadbeat dads and welfare moms? And who said anything about welfare? The problem with deadbeat dads is that they span all financial brackets, many <i>can</i> pay for their children but don’t. A lot of deadbeat dads were once married to the mothers and owe child support–I don’t think it’s terribly irresponsible for women to have children with their husbands, or even with men that they trust. What’s irresponsible is to shirk your (court-ordered) obligation to your children.
I know that Young is trying to even the playing field, but I think that she’s comparing apples and oranges when she says that welfare moms are as bad as deadbeat dads.
And Cynthia, if you don’t think that domestic violence was or is a problem, you need to get out of academia for a while and into the real world.