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Deadbeat dads work to avoid manhood
I've found just the opposite to be true.
Each time I venture out to interview local men for a story, I run into deadbeat dads. How can I tell? It's easy.
These fellows owe so much in delinquent child support payments, they won't even give me their full names.
White or black, city or suburb, it doesn't really matter. Mr. Duck Responsibility is everywhere.
Earlier this week, I met him about a half-dozen times while researching a column on a grocery store planned for Uptown. I approached men at work, in bars and guys just chillin' on corners.
Sure, they wanted to talk about the lack of retail outlets in their community, the absence of jobs and the three decades of corporate disinvestment that's helped turn the neighboring Hill District into one of Pittsburgh's largest slums.
What they did not want to share were their last names, where they live and details about what they do for a living.
"Naw, man, the ex-old lady sees my name in your paper and next thing you know my butt's back in court," was a typical response.
At this point, I'm likely to suffer a heart seizure if I ever meet a local man who gleefully announces that not only does he pay child support, he's two, maybe three months ahead on his payments.
That's unlikely to happen. Instead, I meet guys who prefer to work under the table to avoid paying child support, or, worse, men who'd rather not work at all because the courts can mandate child support deductions up to 55 percent of a paycheck.
Patrick Quinn, chief administrator of the Allegheny County Family Court, said the court has 80,000 active cases. Veteran family attorney Derwin Rushing describes the issue as "a huge problem."
Though it is far easier these days to catch up with deadbeat dads thanks to a law allowing the courts to order deductions from their paychecks, Rushing said men continue to find ways to beat the system.
"They can still work under the table or try to reach an agreement on how much they pay with the mothers, but those arrangements are unenforceable," he said.
After years of grappling with the child support issue for his clients, Rushing is refusing to take on more family law cases.
"It got to the point where it was like babysitting adults. All I ever heard from the guys was whining about how they can't pay all this money," he said. "I tell them they should have thought of that before they took their pants off."
It's tough to determine who's more responsible in these cases, the men who father children into poverty or the women who see nothing wrong with having babies with guys they're neither married nor particularly committed to.
Either way, the kids lose -- and we end up with a city full of men with no last names.
